29th Annual Highway Report: Structurally Deficient Bridges

Reason Foundation Baruch Feigenbaum, Senior Managing Director

Truong Bui, Director of Data Strategy and Analytics

Jay Derr, Transportation Policy Analyst

Thuy Nguyen, Data Scientist

March 19, 2026

Federal law mandates the uniform inspection of all bridges for structural adequacy at least every two years; bridges rated “deficient” are eligible for federal repair dollars. The National Bridge Inventory (NBI) is the source of the bridge data in the table and figure following, which is provided in summary form in Better Roads (see Appendix). Since the NBI contains some recent inspections and some as old as two years, the age of the “average” inspection is about one year old. So, a “December 2024” summary from the NBI would represent, on average, bridge condition as of December 2023.

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