Aug 3, 2007, 16:27 GMT
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.
Your Talkback on this Story