Several of Colorado’s worst bridges are getting help from the Colorado Bridge Enterprise.
Through its first bond issuance, the CBE Board Of Directors has ensured funding for 63 of the state’s most troubled bridges.
“These are Colorado’s worst bridges,” says Colorado Department of Transportation Spokeswoman Stacey Stegman, “The worst of the worst that we have in the state, we rate them on a scale from zero to 100, and any of these bridges are under 50, some of them even as low as 20 with zero being the worst.”
These bridges were chosen out of some 128 bridges considered to be in poor condition, which isn’t surprising considering many of the bridges in Colorado are over 50 years old.
“It’s getting to the point where they need a little bit of TLC or we’re going to see problems. When I say problems on a bridge, if there was any indication that any of these bridges was unsafe, we would close them. Rather, what we would start to see if we didn’t have the funds to address them would be limited heavy vehicles from traveling on them, or closing them altogether,” says Stegman.
Work on many of the bridges is already underway, and bonds have been issued for $300 million. The bonds will be paid back using FASTER funds, raised from higher car registration fees. The total cost of the bridge repairs will be about $600-million.
A full list of the bridges can be viewed at:
www.coloradodot.info/programs/BridgeEnterprise/documents/BridgeProjects.pdf