EXCLUSIVEIs a bridge near you at risk of collapse? As an expert study finds a staggering 42,000 American bridges are structurally deficient, use our map to check your local area

The United States is in the grip of a $400 billion infrastructure emergency.

A disturbing new analysis by industry experts concludes that more than 200,000 bridges — a third of the total in the US and carrying millions of vehicles a day — now need major repair or complete replacement.

Of that number, as many as 42,000 bridges are so badly maintained that they are judged structurally deficient and at heightened risk of abrupt closure or worse.

Some of these compromised structures rank among Americas most famous landmarks, including the Brooklyn Bridge in New York, and the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge that connects Washington DC with Virginia.

And, thanks to climate change and catastrophic weather events such as the recent hurricanes Helene and Milton, the problem is getting worse.

Some of Americas most iconic bridges judged to be structurally deficient.

Americas worst bridge disaster in recent years was the collapse of the I-35W bridge in central Minneapolis in 2007. More than 100 vehicles plunged into the Mississippi river below and 13 people were killed.

Indeed, Americas bridges are believed to be ageing more rapidly than expected, say engineers, with one expert warning some will be smashed apart like Tinkertoys amid extreme temperatures and floods.

We will see more washouts of bridges from high-water events, Paul Chinowsky, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Colorado told DailyMail.com. And youre going to start seeing almost an epidemic of emergency bridge repairs to prevent catastrophic failures.

The worst disaster of recent times came in 2007, when the crowded I-35W Mississippi River bridge in Minneapolis, Minnesota, collapsed during evening rush hour, leaving 13 dead and 145 injured.

Design flaws were blamed for the collapse, which saw 111 vehicles plunge into the river below.

The notorious 2022 collapse of the Fern Hollow bridge near Pittsburgh was likened to a scene from a disaster movie after the 450-foot structure split apart. A bus was stranded above a ravine before its terrified passengers were winched to safety.

Embarrassingly, the Fern Hollow bridge failed on the very day that President Joe Biden had arrived in the city to promote his $1 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

The deal allocated $100 billion to bridges, but even that vast sum is only one quarter of the total needed according to the American Road & Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA).

The non-profit ARTBA released its annual Bridge Report in August finding that 36 percent of Americas bridges, 221,800 in total, need repair, including 76,175 that should be replaced entirely.

Seven percent of total bridges in the US – more than 42,000 – are at the greatest risk and described by the Department for Transport as structurally deficient.

Structurally deficient does not mean that the bridges are at risk of imminent collapse, but the American Society of Civil Engineers says they do present higher risk for future closure or weight restriction. 

The Fern Hollow Bridge in Pittsburgh looked like  scene from a disaster movie when it collapsed due to lack of maintenance. It failed on the very day President Joe Biden arrived in the city to promote his $1 trillion Infrastructure Deal.

The ARTBA bridge report lists the 250 most heavily used bridges in this category, including one on Interstate 110 in Los Angeles which is crossed by vehicles 300,000 times a day.

In fact, Los Angeles has four of the 10 busiest bridges at risk.  Philadelphia has three in the top ten – while Chicago, Puerto Rico and San Diego have one each.

Decades of low investment lie behind the crisis. The Fern Hollow bridge collapse in Pittsburgh, for example, was caused by critical lapses in maintenance and oversight, according to a report by the National Transportation Safety Board.

Had proper procedures been followed, the 447-foot-long structure would have been closed years earlier for major repairs.

NTSB chair Jennifer Homendy warned at the time that: Only through diligent attention to inspection, maintenance, and repair can we ensure the roads, bridges, and tunnels we all traverse every day are safe for the traveling public. Lives depend on it.

Civil engineering professor Paul Chinowsky warns there will be more Fern Hollows to come.

When you combine deferred maintenance on bridge infrastructure together with increased events from climate change, thats a very dangerous combination, he told DailyMail.com. Bridges, especially steel bridges, are multiple pieces that are put together. Theyre like a very large Tinkertoy set. The place you tend to have failure in bridges is in connections, where it goes together. And when connections fail, bridges essentially collapse.

He pointed to the example of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore which collapsed catastrophically in March this year, killing six, when it was struck by a container ship.

It didnt just all fall down as one piece, said Professor Chinowsky. It failed into lots of little pieces. Its the Tinkertoy effect.

Changing weather patterns mean we have a very unwelcome surprise coming our way, he continued, with emergency repairs – and the delays that go with them – becoming routine.

Professor Rick Geddes, director of Cornell Universitys infrastructure policy program said it was astonishing and jarring that America, the richest nation in the world, should be in this position.

People are realizing a lot of this stuff is at the end of its design life. We have to get serious about doing maintenance. We have to future-proof our bridges.

The sheer age of Americas infrastructure is a large part of the problem. Some 42 percent of bridges are at least 50 years old, with some more than double that.

Americas highways expanded rapidly during the 1920s but it wasnt until the Interstate Highway Act of 1956 under President Eisenhower that the system that we know today began to take shape.

The Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore collapsed like a Tinkertoy after it was rammed by a cargo ship earlier this year. The owners of the ship face a $100m federal lawsuit for failing to maintain the vessel.

New Yorks famous Brooklyn Bridge is among those in need of major repair work.

A view of the weed-infested Interstate 405 crossing Vermont Avenue in Los Angeles - one of the three busiest structurally deficient bridges in America.

This was at the height of the Cold War and the need to move military equipment around the nation quickly and evacuate major cities in the event of a nuclear strike was the main impetus for investment.

By the 1980s, the country had moved on to other priorities and the decline of Americas roads began.

The situation facing ordinary Americans was summed up just a few months ago when, in July, the Department of Transportation in Washington state said that drivers should be careful crossing the 103-year-old Fairfax Bridge in Pierce County.

Accompanied by photos of rusty steel beams and missing chunks of wood, the department wrote on Facebook that, you better check the weight of your vehicle, especially if it was an RV or a pickup.

The memo was disturbingly frank: Some of you will want to know if we plan on replacing this bridge, it read. The answer is complicated.

The bridge is competing with other aging bridges for funds. Without more investment in preservation, we will continue to see more bridges weight-listed, longer detours (where applicable) and highways with rough road ahead signs.

The post noted there was no detour available.