Two Raleigh bridges among state's worst

Fayetteville, N.C. — Two bridges in Raleigh ranked among the state's 20 worst in a report issued Thursday by AAA Carolinas.

The group found the Interstate 440 bridge over Hillsborough Street in Wake County to be the fourth worst in the state. The bridge has been a regular on the list. It is set to be part of a widening project that isn’t yet on the state Department of Transportation’s calendar.

The bridge over Western Boulevard on Pullen Road ranked 12th.

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In Cumberland County, two bridges on N.C. Highway 24 are in the top 10 – one over Cross Creek and one over the Norfolk Southern and CSX railroads.

AAA Carolinas rates substandard bridges in the state to highlight the need for legislative funding. Approximately 30 percent of the state’s bridges are rated substandard.

“It is less expensive to keep bridges in good repair than to replace them," said David E. Parsons, president and CEO of AAA Carolinas.

"North Carolina’s bridges continue to suffer from a lack of adequate funding spanning more than a decade,” he said. “The federal stimulus package obviously is welcome but the state legislature needs to step up and find a way to regain the no-longer-appropriate motto of North Carolina as ‘The Good Roads State.’”

Substandard bridges are officially classified under federal guidelines as “structurally deficient” or “functionally obsolete.”

A “structurally deficient” bridge is in relatively poor physical condition and/or inadequate to handle truck weight. A "functionally obsolete” one has an inadequate design for its current traffic volume.

In its rankings, AAA Carolinas considers which bridges handle the most traffic and affect the greatest number of motorists.

Find a complete list and ranking of the 5,609 substandard bridges statewide on AAA Carolinas Web site.