New York - Alarmed by the collapse of an eight-lane bridge
in Minnesota this week, New York officials are scrambling to review
the condition of their own state's bridges, acknowledging that more
than 2,000 have been rated structurally deficient by federal
investigators, news reports said Friday.
The New York Times reported that 2,110 bridges in New York state
are classified as structurally deficient, but needed no immediate
work or were already under repair. They include the iconic Brooklyn
Bridge linking Brooklyn to Manhattan used daily by about 132,000
drivers.
City officials said they were spending 149 million dollars to
repair the more than 100-year-old Brooklyn Bridge.
News reports said there are more than 22,000 bridges in the state
of New York, some of them 200 years old and among the oldest in the
United States.
A 40-year-old bridge linking the cities of Minneapolis and St Paul
collapsed on Wednesday, killing at least five people and injuring
about 80. Police said 8 people were still missing.
New York Governor Eliot Spitzer directed the state's
transportation authorities to inspect 49 bridges in the state that
have similar designs to the collapsed bridge in Minneapolis, The
Times reported.
New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine ordered similar examination of the
state's 6,400 bridges, of which 2,400 are state-controlled.
The New York Post said New York State inspectors had determined
that 84 per cent of New York City's 19 largest bridges remain in poor
or fair condition even after the state spent billions of dollars
repairing them.
The Post said only three short bridge-crossings over the Harlem
River and Newtown Creek were rated good or very good by state
inspectors. It said the Brooklyn Bridge is safe despite its poor
rating.
'The poor rating for the Brooklyn Bridge means only components of
the bridge are in poor condition, that would be the ramps leading to
the bridge and not the bridge itself,' said Lori Ardito, first deputy
commissioner at the city Department of Transportation. 'If the bridge
was deemed to be unsafe, we would close it.'
Major reconstruction for the Brooklyn Bridge is scheduled to begin
in 2010, The Post quoted Ardito as saying.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
USA
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