A new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that the Federal Highway Administration’s Highway Bridge Program needs clearer goals and performance measures to make it more focused and sustainable. The study found that bridge conditions in the country, as measured by the number of deficient bridges and average sufficiency rating, improved from 1998 through 2007. How much of that improvement can be credited to the Highway Bridge Program is uncertain, the GAO said, because the program provides only part of what states spend on bridges, and the program’s funds can, in some cases, be spent on a variety of bridge projects without regard to the bridge’s deficiency status or sufficiency rating.
The Highway Bridge Program’s “statutory goals are not focused on a clearly identified federal or national interest,” according to the GAO, “but rather have expanded from improving deficient bridges to supporting seismic retrofitting, preventive maintenance, and many other projects, thus expanding the federal interest to potentially include almost any bridge in the country. In addition, the program lacks measures linking funding to performance and is not sustainable, given the anticipated deterioration of the nation’s bridges and the declining purchasing power of funding currently available for bridge maintenance, rehabilitation, and replacement. Once the federal interest in bridges is clearly defined, policymakers can clarify the goals for federal involvement and align the program to achieve those goals. HBP sustainability may also be improved by identifying and developing performance measures and re-examining funding mechanisms.”
The GAO report was requested by the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. The Highway Bridge Program is the primary federal source of funding for maintenance, rehabilitation and replacement of bridges. The program supplied $4 billion in bridge funding to the states in fiscal year 2007.
The GAO noted that the pimary purpose of the Highway Bridge Program is to enable states to improve the condition of their bridges, but state transportation departments have discretion to use the funds for programs other than reducing their inventory of structurally deficient bridges. GAO representatives visited several states and found program money being used for seismic retrofitting and supplementing funds for other federal-aid highway programs.
One of the reasons the states cited for not focusing Highway Bridge Program funding on deficient bridges was that the program provides no incentives for improve deficient bridges. The GAO concluded, “Without performance measures to link funding and performance, states lack an incentive to improve the return on the federal investment and are not held accountable for the results of their investments.”
The GAO also identified the same looming crisis in funding for the Highway Bridge Program that has become obvious in the Highway Trust Fund: Funds are lagging, but demand is increasing. “Our analysis of trends in bridge condition shows that a large share of the nation’s bridges could soon become eligible for HBP funding for bridge rehabilitation and replacement projects,” the GAO wrote. “This anticipated spike in demand for limited HBP funding makes it increasingly important to be able to determine the impact of the HBP and have some level of assurance that the funds are being applied cost effectively to further nationally-defined goals for improving and preserving the nation’s bridges.”
The GAO report is available from the Transportation Research Board at Review of the Highway Bridge Program.
