Md., Va. Diverted Bridge Money

Funds Were Used To Widen Roads, Fix Streetlights

Virginia and Maryland officials used more than $30 million from the federal government's main bridge repair and replacement fund on projects that weren't bridges, according to interviews and government documents tracking spending over the past four years.

The federal bridge money was transferred to general transportation accounts that funded such things as streetlights in suburban Maryland and the widening of Ox Road in Fairfax County and King Street in Leesburg.

Millions more in federal dollars might have been diverted to projects other than bridges in the two states, but federal and state officials say their accounting systems are not set up to track which projects eventually got the money.

The transfers from the Highway Bridge Replacement and Rehabilitation Program -- created after the deadly collapse of a span over the Ohio River in 1967 -- are permitted under federal rules.

But as Congress prepares to debate a major infusion of cash for bridge work after the Aug. 1 collapse of the Interstate 35 West span in Minneapolis, the transfers help show the limits of the patchwork of systems in place to track and prioritize federal spending on aging bridges. Nationwide, state officials have transferred $2.1 billion from the highway bridge program to other accounts since fiscal 2002, according to government figures.

More than 175 bridges in the Washington region are listed as structurally deficient by federal standards, meaning they have significant problems and need work to keep them safe in coming years. There are no clear estimates of what it would cost to restore or replace them all.

The money Virginia and Maryland moved to non-bridge projects represented about 5 percent of the more than $650 million government figures show the two states received since 2004 under the main federal bridge program. Although substantial additional federal and state funds are spent on bridges each year, the transferred millions could have benefited some of the local spans with falling concrete or corroding steel, some transportation advocates say.

"It's the way governments, unfortunately, operate," said John B. Townsend II, a spokesman for AAA Mid-Atlantic. "These monies are set aside for that purpose because bridges need an infusion of money to make sure they are properly maintained, are up to code and are structurally sound."

The fragility of some area bridges was made clear Friday when chunks of concrete fell from a bridge over the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, closing all lanes while workers cleared debris. An inspection of the Greenbelt Road bridge in 2005 found two of the span's three key structural elements to be "satisfactory," which federal standards define as including "some minor deterioration," according to federal inspection data from 2006. The third key element of the bridge was rated "good," which can include "some minor problems," according to federal standards.

State officials say that they spend large sums to keep bridges safe and that the complex realities of federal funding sometimes require such transfers to solve accounting, timing or other planning problems.

Virginia officials said that moving bridge money in 2004 helped prevent the state from losing other federal funds that year. The state fell short on funding for road projects that were set to receive federal dollars. If the state hadn't come up with the money, it could have lost those funds, the officials said. So, it reached into the bridge account.

But there are also political realities. Given limited funds and seemingly limitless traffic, the expensive and sometimes little-noticed work of upgrading bridges can lose out in funding debates to popular projects such as widening roads, transportation experts said.