In two decades, Oklahoma’s bridge condition ranking has climbed out of the cellar and is now one of the best in the nation, Oklahoma Department of Transportation Executive Tim Gatz informed the state Transportation Commission last week.
The Sooner State has been ranked No. 4 among the states with the lowest percentage of structurally deficient bridges on the highway system, according to the most recent inspection data from the Federal Highway Administration as analyzed by ODOT. “That’s a high achievement,” Gatz said. “We’ve come a long way.”
The ranking applies to nontolled interstates, U.S. highways and state highways under ODOT jurisdiction; they do not include municipal or county bridges, Gatz noted.
The only states whose bridge ranking is better than Oklahoma’s are Arizona, Texas and Georgia.
Today, 35 highway bridges in Oklahoma are rated as poor, meaning fewer than 1% of all highway bridges are structurally deficient, Gatz said.The remaining bridges are programmed to be addressed in the Eight-Year Construction Work Plan or the Asset Preservation Plan.
Oklahoma broke into the Top 10 national bridge ranking in 2019 after years of focused planning and effort as well as significant financial support from the state Legislature to reverse the state’s 49th place in the nation for bridge conditions in 2004.
At that time, 1,168 of the 6,800 state highway bridges, or 17% of the structures maintained by ODOT, were rated structurally deficient or in poor condition.
The ROADS Fund, [Rebuilding Oklahoma Access and Driver Safety], which originated 19 years ago, “was the beginning of new investment at the state level and has really helped turn the tide, along with continued support from governors, good staff and private sector partners,” said Gatz. “This is something to be proud of but we will need to continue our efforts in order to keep our infrastructure manageable.”
The transformation began with enactment of House Bill 1176 in the Second Special Session of the Legislature in 2006. The measure more than doubled the annual funding for road maintenance over the next five years.
Then-Representative Mark Liotta, R-Tulsa, and then-Senator Frank Shurden, D-Henryetta, persuaded their colleagues to make a long-term commitment to appropriate badly needed funds to repair and replace Oklahoma’s dilapidated bridges, crumbling highways and eroded county roads.
HB 1176 reversed more than two decades of neglect by doubling funding for both the state and county road systems. The lawmakers prioritized bridge repairs and dedicated the first new funds to the worst examples as identified by ODOT.
In a break with decades of traditional political pie-carving, HB 1176 removed legislators from the highway and bridge maintenance selection process and turned it over to professionals at theTransportation Department. “They have the data; they know where the needs are, where the traffic is heaviest, which bridges and highways are in the greatest need of attention,” Liotta explained. “We let their engineers decide where the maintenance dollars ought to go.”
Furthermore, the legislators did it without raising taxes, without increasing debt, while paying off old debt, and without taking tax dollars previously dedicated to any other funding priority. “We used new dollars,” Liotta recalled during a conversation Aug. 8 with Southwest Ledger. “We were in a growth pattern at that time.”
The timing was critical. Oklahoma was in imminent danger of losing eligibility for federal matching funds on its transportation projects, Liotta said.
“The purpose of the federal bridge inspection program and Federal Highway Administration reporting is to ensure we are taking care of our highways and bridges, so I’m certain we had been formally ‘warned’,” Gatz told Southwest Ledger. “Although I can’t point to any record that necessarily says so, I trust Mark Liotta’s memory.”
Counties were urged to work together in circuit engineering districts on their transportation projects, which ensured that needs of smaller counties received equal consideration with the larger counties.
“I never dreamed it would work as well as it has,” Liotta said. “It was nothing short of a miracle.”
The latest Transportation Commission meeting is proof of that. The commission voted Aug. 4 to award 30 contracts totaling more $160 million to improve interstates, highways and bridges statewide.