Officials to discuss bridge
preservation
By Kurt Esposito
Assistant
Campus Editor
Engineers and county officials will meet today
at the annual County Bridge Conference to discuss issues ranging from
the lack of funds for county bridges to the preservation of historical
bridges.
According to a report by the Indiana Local Technical
Assistance Program, almost 30 percent of Indiana's 12,000 county-maintained
bridges are either structurally or functionally deficient.
Charles Scholer, a professor of civil engineering,
said that a large number of the bridges in the state are in less than
ideal condition and need wise evaluation and maintenance.
Thomas Martin, program director of the Indiana
Local Assistance Program, said that the general construction and maintenance
of county bridges, as well as funding, are always pertinent topics at
the conference.
The program's report also found that there is a
lack of funding for bridges, and it is predicted that funding will probably
decrease even more during the next fiscal year.
"Funding is always a big problem. There are never
enough funds and there are always scarce resources. What do you do?"
said Charles Sutton, an associate professor of civil engineering.
At the conference a panel will discuss how to balance
the preservation of old bridges with the practical and economic considerations
of local governments. Historians want to preserve all historic bridges
while county officials favor more cost-effective developments.
In order to preserve existing bridges, counties
would be forced to spend more money to build bypasses around those bridges.
"It's a controversial problem and a rather expensive
problem," said Scholer.
Scholer said if they do decide to build bypasses
around existing bridges the question would become, how many historic
bridges do they keep?
The other topics to be discussed at the conference
are high performance concrete and its use in new bridges, new guidelines
to rate bridges' rails and new software that will make it easier to
calculate the cost of bridge replacement.
Martin said he hopes people attending the conference
will leave with an increased awareness about the needs for more funds
and routine maintenance of bridges.
The Indiana Local Technical Assistance Program,
a federally-funded part of the department of civil engineering, is hosting
the conference, which is in its 20th year.
The conference was created to meet the needs of
a diverse audience that includes engineers, consultants and state and
county officials. The attendance for the event has grown from 50 people
to approximately 200 people each year.
Sutton said, "What it accomplishes is it gets people
together that have a common interest in bridges that have to be built
and maintained by the counties."
Sutton said the conference is valuable not only
because of the presentations but because of the ideas shared by colleagues
during the breaks and lunch.
"It's a positive communication mechanism," said
Sutton.
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