Some ugly numbers on deficient bridges

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The Reason Foundation has posted up some data on the number of deficient bridges across the nation. The feds track this stuff for obvious reasons (mobility across states, an understanding as to how states are doing and what they are doing with fed money, and also because bridges that are rated ‘deficient’ become eligible for federal funding for repair.
Overall, Reason notes that

The condition of the nation’s highway bridges continued to improve from 2004 to 2005. Of the 596,980 highway bridges in the current National Bridge Inventory, 147,913—about 24.52 percent—were reported deficient for 2005 (see table), a slight improvement from 2004. In 1998 about 29.0 percent were rated deficient. However, progress is slow; at the current rate of improvement, it would take 50 years for the percentage of deficient bridges to be eliminated.

So how do individual states do? New England as a whole does poorly, and Massachusetts is no exception, coming in at 45th out of 50 states. A whopping 36+ percent of Mass. bridges are rated deficient according to Reason. Even discounting states with relatively new infrastructure, like Arizona and Nevada, there are old infrastructure states like Illinois (17+ percent) and Virginia (22+ percent) that perform so much better than we do. The Reason table follows:

Deficient Bridges
Rank State % Deficient
1 Nevada 3.89
2 Arizona 5.5
3 Wyoming 12.37
4 Colorado 12.96
5 Minnesota 13.16
6 Wisconsin 15.93
7 Delaware 16.55
8 Utah 17.55
9 Illinois 17.56
10 California 17.59
11 Florida 18.33
12 New Mexico 18.43
13 Idaho 18.91
14 Tennessee 19.26
15 Georgia 20.35
16 Texas 20.56
17 Kansas 21.05
18 Montana 21.2
19 Indiana 21.83
20 Arkansas 22.24
21 Virginia 22.46
22 Alaska 22.84
23 Ohio 23.61
24 South Carolina 23.63
25 North Dakota 24.24
26 Nebraska 24.55
27 Washington 24.55
28 Alabama 24.94
29 Oregon 25.34
30 South Dakota 25.62
31 Mississippi 26.42
32 Maryland 26.93
33 Iowa 27.06
34 Michigan 27.9
35 New Jersey 27.91
36 Maine 29.87
37 New Hampshire 30.54
38 Louisiana 30.67
39 North Carolina 30.91
40 Kentucky 31.45
41 Missouri 31.47
42 Oklahoma 33.04
43 Connecticut 34.18
44 Vermont 34.8
45 Massachusetts 36.38
46 Hawaiii 36.85
47 New York 37.08
48 West Virginia 37.1
49 Pennsylvania 39
50 Rhode Island 53.01
  Mean 24.52