What Specific Changes Are Needed and Why?

The SRI Foundation provides a description for the changes needed in their Historic Bridge Study that was conducted back in 2003. Excerpts from the study outlining the needs are shown in the table below.

SRI Foundation Recommendations

Proposed language in the Administration's Safe, Accountable, Flexible, and Efficient Transportation Equity Act of 2003 (SAFETEA) provides some relief. Section 144(o)(4) of title 23, the Historic Bridge Program, would be amended by adding the words "200 percent" after "amount not to exceed," and replaces the word "title" with the limited section reference. This corrects a conflict with the use of transportation enhancement funds for bridge preservation and increases the allowable limits under the Highway Bridge Program.

Mandate the Development of Historic Bridge Management Plans. Just about everything under the sun concerning historic bridges was touched on over the two days. There was, however, little debate or difference of opinion that the primary recommendation to FHWA, the Congress and the states, is to mandate the development of historic bridge management plans. The group felt that management plans are seminal to saving historic bridges, serving as the umbrella under which other actions, such as Programmatic Agreements (PAs), best practices examples, and improving data accessibility, would insure the preservation of the Nation's historic bridges. Management plans should be "bridge-specific" rather than a series of vague, general recommendations. Every attempt should be made to identify those bridges where rehabilitation/preservation is appropriate and feasible, and to develop specific treatments for these bridges. This recommendation logically follows completion of the statewide historic bridge inventories. As one participant succinctly stated, "Now that we have identified all these wonderful spans, what do we do with them?" It was the consensus of the group that management plans would go far toward protecting historic bridges.

What does all this mean? There are three parts to this, all discussed below.

The first two issues deal with some problems and limitations with the government funding. Section 144(o) of the SAFETEA provides money up to the cost of demolishing a historic bridge for use in preservation. The first proposed change is to simply add the phrase "200 percent" so that in the document, "not to exceed the cost of demolition" would read "not to exceed 200% the cost of demolition." This would double the amount of money available through that program, and make preservation much more realistic.

The second funding issue involves removing the part where the text reads "Any bridge preserved pursuant to this paragraph shall thereafter not be eligible for any other funds authorized pursuant to this title." This sentence causes a huge problem with historic bridge preservation funding. It means that if someone takes the demolition money to help preserve a bridge, they will be unable to also apply for Transportation Enhancement funding to preserve a bridge. The money available from demolition may be enough to perhaps relocate a bridge to a new location for preservation, but once the actual restoration of the structure begins, the funds fall very short of finishing the job. As such, Transportation Enhancement grants, which are a valuable source of financial assistance toward bridge preservation, are unavailable because according to the text, additional funding is not allowed after the demolition money is taken. This stipulation does not make much sense, and removing it would allow preservation projects to compete for these Transportation Enhancement grants, as well as being able to take advantage of the demolition funding.

The third issue is the largest, and perhaps the most important, change that is needed. Currently, the policy requires all states to maintain an inventory of all remaining historic bridges and their status. However, there is no policy that requires the states to develop a program to deal with these identified and inventoried historic bridges. The fact that the requirement for inventories is present in the legislation speaks to the fact that historic bridges are recognized as important, yet no requirement is set up to make the states do anything with these bridges. It is makes logical sense to introduce a requirement that states develop a historic bridge management plan. This will make states actually do something with the historic bridges they identified and inventoried.

Note that although the amount of money that the historic bridge community would be gaining from these changes would help immensely on various historic bridge projects, it would actually represent the smallest fraction of the total transportation-related spending contained in the SAFETEA. This is essentially pocket change in terms of government spending, and as such, it would not be a large burden for the budget by any stretch of the imagination.