- Around 25 percent of bridges in the U.S. were built before the 1960s, and in an age of climate change, these ailing pieces of infrastructure are starting to feel the heat.
- According to a new report by The New York Times, bridges are facing unprecedented pressures from climate events, including large temperature swings, increased flooding, and troublesome soil erosion.
- A bipartisan infrastructure bill passed in 2021 earmarks $110 billion for rebuilding the nation’s aging roads, bridges, and highways, but these new projects need to build in preparation from our climate change future.
U.S. infrastructure is dangerously behind the times—and nowhere is that more apparent than the country’s aging bridges. According to a new report by The New York Times, one-fourth of the nation’s bridges were built before 1960, and as if old age wasn’t enough stress on these rusted-out trusses, cracked asphalt roadways, and worn-down foundations, climate change has only made a bad problem worse.
“We have a bridge crisis that is specifically tied to extreme weather events,” Paul Chinowsky, a civil engineering professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, told The New York Times. “These are not things that would happen under normal climate circumstances. These are not things that we’ve ever seen at this rate.”
Due to the age of these bridges, many of them were designed without the need to withstand the sharp temperature swings that are now commonplace across the U.S. due to climate change. As metal tends to have that pesky habit of swelling and contracting with rising and failing temperatures, our warming world becomes a particularly thorny issue for these ailing pieces of connective infrastructure.
www.popularmechanics.com
