Pennsylvania transportation officials aren’t reliably following their own rules for filing bridge inspection reports, resulting in “concerning inconsistencies” in these critical reviews, state auditors said Tuesday.
PennDOT inspection documentation varied based on where the bridges were located and who was scrutinizing them, Pennsylvania Auditor General Timothy DeFoor said during a news conference announcing his findings .
DeFoor said the agency does have strong safety requirements for rundown bridges — exceeding national inspection standards — but must do a better job of complying with them.
“I’m here to tell you as an auditor: Processes matter. Writing things down matters,” he said. “It is important for our safety and the investment of our tax dollars that all bridge inspection reports are consistent, filed on time and the qualifications of the teams doing inspections are readily available.”
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Pennsylvania has the nation’s third-most bridges, and PennDOT, the commonwealth’s transportation agency, is tasked with monitoring the condition of about 25,000 of them. On average, state-owned bridges are about 50 years old, auditors said.
During the audit period, which extended from July 2020 through May 2023, the commonwealth spent roughly $1.2 billion to fix or replace these bridges, DeFoor said.
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Not all Pa. bridge inspectors were qualified, auditors found
Inspection teams are supposed to be supervised by a leader with certain federal qualifications, DeFoos said.
But some of PennDOT’s team supervisors failed to meet the minimum criteria, he said, and the agency couldn’t prove that certain independent contractors qualified as team leads, either.
“It is critical, especially for bridges identified in poor condition, that qualified individuals perform each of the required inspections which includes steps of a highly technical nature and whose results have a critical impact on ensuring the safety of those utilizing the bridges,” the audit states.
PennDOT officials said they agreed this had been a problem at the time the audit had been performed but have taken corrective steps.
Written alerts of bridge problems were missing, Pa. auditors said
Auditors said information included in inspection reports differed based on which PennDOT district was handling the check and whether state employees or independent contractors were involved.
Of greatest concern to auditors, PennDOT did not always appear to follow its own procedures for reporting on bridges with “critical and high-priority maintenance issues,” DeFoor said.
When inspectors identify a defect that threatens public safety or the structural integrity of a bridge, they are supposed to send a written notification to district engineers within 24 hours, according to PennDOT rules. Engineers must then file an action plan for dealing with these hazardous or perilous problems.
Auditors identified cases when inspectors didn’t promptly pass these written alerts to the district engineers or didn’t do so at all. Action plans were also missing in some instances.
PennDOT told auditors the written notifications were only for the official record and said they sometimes verbally communicated with the district engineers about urgent bridge problems. However, there’s no record of these phone calls, according to auditors.
The transportation agency said officials would emphasize the importance of the written notifications in future inspector trainings.
More: An Erie County township will replace 3 aging bridges in 2025 without spending a dime. Here's how.
Many of Pennsylvania’s bridges in poor condition
Attention has turned to the state of America’s aging infrastructure with the collapse of several bridges in recent years, including one in Pittsburgh in January 2022.
In that case, the Fern Hollow bridge gave way while a bus and four cars were crossing it, resulting in multiple injuries but no fatalities. Federal transportation safety officials blamed the bridge failure on severe corrosion and insufficient maintenance by the city of Pittsburgh.
Tens of thousands of bridges across the nation are deteriorating.
An Associated Press analysis this year concluded that more than 40,000 U.S. bridges are in poor condition. Pennsylvania accounts for about 3,000 of these structures, trailing only Iowa in the number of bridges in poor shape, according to the analysis.
This article originally appeared on Beaver County Times: Auditors find 'concerning inconsistencies' in Pennsylvania bridge inspections
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