By Michael Laris
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 5, 2007; A01

The 14th Street Bridge has a long, craggy hole near the area that once was a drawbridge. A span over Columbia Pike in Arlington County has exposed reinforcement bars. The joints holding up Chain Bridge have aged severely.

Bridge inspection reports maintained by Washington area governments show that several major bridges are deteriorating and need repairs, with defects that range from missing chunks of concrete on an abutment of the Key Bridge to heavy structural deterioration on the 11th Street Bridge over the Anacostia River.

The inspection reports, which the federal government requires every two years, offer a striking picture of the state of area bridges and the difficult task officials face as they try to ensure safety. Despite significant flaws in some of the spans, engineers and transportation officials emphasize that the region's bridges are safe and that some deficiencies are largely cosmetic, not structural.

Any bridge would be closed immediately if inspections turned up an indication of imminent danger, officials said.

The reports show that two major Anacostia crossings -- the Frederick Douglass Bridge and the 11th Street span -- have been declared "structurally deficient," the same designation as the bridge that collapsed Wednesday in Minneapolis. The Douglass Bridge was shut down in July for an overhaul scheduled to be completed next month. The 11th Street Bridge is scheduled for major revamping in 2009.

The "structurally" deficient label has been applied to 15 bridges in the District, officials said, and more than 1,600 others in Maryland and Virginia. Nationwide, there were 73,764 such bridges last year.

It is a broad designation that covers major deterioration in a bridge's key components but is not a list of teetering bridges. If a span's deck or one of its main structural features is declared a four or lower on a 10-point scale, it goes on the list. Engineers can then step up inspections and repairs, pending far-reaching improvements or possible replacement. A four is deemed "poor condition," while a one represents "imminent failure" and zero is "failed."

The 11th Street Bridge, for example, received a rating of four after it was found to have large holes in parts of its main structure.

Bridges are critical to the District, which is split by the Anacostia, and to the Washington region, essentially cut in half by the Potomac River. Five of the region's most heavily traveled bridges carry tens of thousands of commuters over the Potomac each day. The Capital Beltway is anchored by two massive structures that connect Virginia and Maryland: the Woodrow Wilson and American Legion bridges.

The Legion Bridge was last inspected at the end of 2006, and a summary of the report showed that its major elements had no serious problems. Workers are cleaning, repairing and repainting the underside of the rusting span.

The Wilson Bridge was inspected before it opened last summer. As a precaution, Maryland transportation officials are preparing to inspect a span along the Capital Beltway in Montgomery County, near the Prince George's County border, that was built similarly to the crumbled Minneapolis bridge. State officials did not release the most recent inspection report for the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, saying they need to review it first to make sure the findings are understandable and do not breach security.

Across the region, the reports provide what amounts to a priority list for transportation departments. An inspection that shows a bridge in dire condition leads to emergency repair work. Less severe findings could lead to patch jobs, such as temporary reinforcements, and closer scrutiny. The documents also are used to determine how bridge maintenance and reconstruction money is spent.

The reports show that in some cases, significant problems are pointed out years before new steel or cement replacements are readied.

An October 2004 letter from a District transportation consultant, for instance, recommended that all pins and hangers -- the structural joints that support the span -- on the Chain Bridge be replaced or, at a minimum, tested, refurbished and reinstalled.

"The bridge was constructed in 1937 so the pins and hangers have 67 years of weathering and fatigue," according to the letter. "The pins and hangers have not undergone regular inspection over the life of the structure so the rate of deterioration can not be determined."

Officials are in the process of choosing a contractor and said work on the bridge would begin soon, said Ardeshir Nafici, the District's acting chief transportation engineer. "Things don't happen instantly," Nafici said, adding that engineers pay special attention to bridges that are undergoing the long process of being overhauled.

The Chain Bridge is not listed as structurally deficient.

But government bridge engineers said long delays don't necessarily mean increased danger, even with structurally deficient bridges.

The Washington Boulevard bridge over Columbia Pike -- which a 2006 inspection report notes has "full height vertical cracks" on two major supports -- has been structurally deficient for 27 years, noted Nicholas J. Roper, a bridge design engineer for the Virginia Department of Transportation.

Engineers have called for its replacement, and the bridge first made it onto the state's main construction list in the early 1990s. Designs for a full replacement are being drawn up, but construction is at least two years away.

"Structural deficiency tells me to inspect more frequently, perform maintenance more frequently and, if possible, repair whatever is deficient to upgrade the condition rating and remove it from the 'bridges-to-replace list,' " Roper said. "Eventually, though, replacement may be the only option that works."

In other words, "it's like your car. You start repairing it so much, it would be cheaper to buy a new one," said Kathleen Penney, deputy chief engineer for the District's transportation department.

The inspection reports filed in three gray cabinets in the D.C. transportation department's New York Avenue office offer a vivid account of the reality of deteriorating bridges.

The covers have shiny color photos showing the arches of the Key Bridge with ducks in its foreground and Georgetown behind. Another depicts the Washington Monument behind a picture of the 14th Street Bridge. Inside, the images and descriptions are less rosy. The most serious cases come with a "Letter of Concern" or even more urgent "Critical Finding Reports."

In September 2004, a District consultant noted holes "varying in size from 2 [inches] diameter up to 15 inches long" on the 11th Street Bridge, which carries Interstate 295 over the Anacostia.

A report in January said the main bridge structure is in "poor condition" with "moderate to heavy corrosion." That bridge was given a federal rating, known as a sufficiency rating, of 23 out of 100. A rating under 50 means a bridge is eligible for replacement.

"The bridges are safe, I can tell you that. But we have some deficiencies based on the reports we get every two years, or less than two years," Nafici said. "This is an ongoing process, a daily process."

Government engineers say they are constantly fighting age and physics in maintaining the region's bridges.

"The principle is that bending paper clip," Roper said. "Metal can bend both directions, back and forth, back and forth, up and down. After time, it begins to get tired. When it gets tired, it begins to get brittle. . . . The same type of thing is happening up on bridges, or buildings, or anything that uses steel or steel supports."

But, he said, such structures are built with a buffer so that they will not fail after deterioration or unforeseen stresses. "You need extra capacity in that bridge for things that go beyond just 'Will it carry the truck?' "