Chicago Area Local News

CHICAGO (CBS) ― A troubling report indicates the state has found little progress on "urgent" repairs for some of the most heavily-traveled bridges in the Chicago area.

As CBS 2's Joanie Lum reports, Illinois is in better shape than most states. But the Associated Press found that of the 20 busiest bridges in the state, only six have undergone necessary repairs, and funds are short.

The findings come as the one-year anniversary of the tragic Interstate 35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis approaches. Thirteen people died when the bridge caved in and sent cars plunging into the Mississippi River.

In Illinois, Gov. Rod Blagojevich and state engineers have said the Minneapolis bridge collapse should have been a wakeup call, but few bridges have actually been repaired.

Overall, the vast majority of Illinois' 26,000 bridges have been deemed safe. But a review of records last year by The Associated Press found more than 1,500 Illinois bridges had worse structural ratings than the Minnesota bridge collapse.

The worst-rated bridges are mostly little-traveled spans in smaller counties in central and southern Illinois. They're usually old and carry little truck traffic.

But of the five busiest bridges with structural deficiencies, only one has been fixed – the Lake Shore Drive bridge over LaSalle Drive. The following four have not:

--The Stewart Avenue elevated section of the Dan Ryan Expressway;
--An elevated section of the Dan Ryan over the South Branch of the Chicago River;
--The Interstate 55 bridge over Lemont Road in Will County;
--A section of the bridge just before the Eisenhower Expressway turns into Congress Parkway.

The Stewart Avenue bridge on the Dan Ryan, between Chinatown and U.S. Cellular Field, carries about 200,000 vehicles a day. Officials estimate repairing it could cost at least $23 million.

But these are hardly the only bridges that are in trouble. The Illinois Department of Transportation found 17 percent of bridges in Illinois are in poor condition. Almost 4,300 bridges need repairs statewide, IDOT said.

The Stevenson Expressway bridge over Lake Shore Drive is in worse shape than the bridge that collapsed in Minneapolis, IDOT said.

"We're doing our best with the resources we're given," said the Illinois Department of Transportation's engineer for bridges and structures, Ralph Anderson.

"But as dollars go down, the pressure's on. ... It's getting to be a higher risk all the time when you're just not certain all the repairs are getting to every spot that's necessary," he said.

Anderson told CBS 2 earlier this week that wear and tear on bridges is inevitable.

"It's just a fact of life that we have corrosion because Illinois has snow and ice. Also, Illinois has many, many heavy trucks," says Ralph Anderson, IDOT's Chief Bridge Engineer.

Still, in an Associated Press interview, Anderson hastened to add that he didn't believe the undone repairs put drivers in peril.

Just because bridges are deemed deficient, he said, doesn't mean they're in imminent danger of collapse. And officials closely monitor the bridges and would either close them or limit traffic across them at signs of weaknesses.

"I am confident that the bridges are safe," he said.

The process of identifying bridge deficiencies, drawing up detailed plans to fix them, calling for contract bids and then finishing the repair work is highly involved, said Anderson, and the process can take months or even years.

"Our industry can only do so much work in any one year," he said.

Lacking funds means authorities are sometimes forced to put off repairs not considered urgent, said another IDOT bridge engineer, Todd Ahrens. Authorities, for instance, determined they could safely delay repairs to the Stewart Avenue bridge -- though the state has recently sought bids, meaning repairs could start soon, he said.

"If it had been an emergency -- we would have had someone out there," Ahrens said.

Furthermore, construction costs are rising through the roof.

"Double digit inflation of our constructions costs, gasoline, oil-based asphalt, cement and steel are eating away at our declining transportation dollars," according to Tod Faerber, President of the Illinois Road Builders Association.

Earlier this week, Gov. Blagojevich called on state lawmakers to pass a capital bill that would pay for repairs on all bridges that are considered structurally deficient, or in need of an upgrade. But considering previous budget battles in Springfield, Blagojevich may face an uphill battle.

One structural engineer argued Wednesday that while insufficient funds is part of the problem, it also provides an "easy excuse" for inaction.

"The Minnesota collapse doesn't appear to have been the wake-up call it should have been," said John Frauenhoffer, head of a Champaign engineering firm and past president of the Illinois Society of Professional Engineers. "If anything ever happened at one of those bridges, it'd be impossible to explain to the public why those repairs hadn't been made."

CBS 2's Joanie Lum and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

(© MMX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

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