The 2009 federal highway authorization bill provides the best opportunity in more than 50 years to chart a new course for America's surface transportation programs, said American Road & Transportation Builders Association President & CEO Pete Ruane
at the 25th Annual International Bridge Conference, held earlier this month in Pittsburgh, Pa.

The United States has nearly 576,000 bridges. Approximately 22 percent are located on the National Highway System (NHS) and 55,245 are on the Interstate System.

Ruane cited research from the American Association of State Highway & Transportation Officials calling for 10,000 miles of new routes or corridors and upgrading 20,000 miles of the NHS. If this goal is achieved, it could mean at least 10,000 new or replacement bridges on the NHS. Spurred in part by the tragic collapse of the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis last August, Ruane said states such as Missouri, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts are launching major bridge repair/replacement programs. Others are expected to follow.

With the U.S. Department of Transportation reporting more than 25 percent of the nation's bridges to be structurally deficient or functionally obsolete, the trend toward greater investment should continue, the ARTBA CEO said. He cautioned, however, that a nearly 40 percent increase in highway and bridge construction costs since 2003 was making bridge improvements much more expensive, and would require additional federal, state and local funding.

He outlined the two major thrusts of ARTBA's legislative proposals for the 2009 bill, which include expanded investments in the core highway, bridge and transit programs-financed by a minimum 10-cents per gallon increase in and indexing of the federal motor fuels tax-to protect past infrastructure investments, particularly on the Interstate system.

The second part of ARTBA's plan calls for initiation of a 25-year national construction priority-the "Critical Commerce Corridors" (3C) goods movement program-to add new infrastructure capacity to the nation's transportation network. It would include eliminating the more than 200 freight bottlenecks identified by the U.S. DOT by upgrading the existing NHS and building new multi-modal infrastructure capacity.