Iowa’s deficient bridge ranking misleading

     Last week, the American Road and Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA) released its Annual Bridge Report for 2025.

   The State of Iowa noted that the State of Iowa ranks number one in terms of percentage of structurally deficient bridges (19 percent). Iowa also ranks number one in the nation for the number of structurally deficient bridges (4,544).

   The report states that there are 14,923 bridges in Iowa that have been identified as needing repairs.

   Jones County Engineer Derek Snead said a report like this can be misleading when you're comparing Iowa to other states in the nation.

   "One thing to consider with that is that Iowa is very, very agricultural," he said. "When our road system was developed, it was pretty much set by a one-to-one mile grid system. As many roads as possible get the grain to the market faster."

   Snead explained Iowa's road system includes low-volume roads, as well as roads that cross many bodies of water.

   "Not a huge density of population" he added.

   All of these factors, Snead said, means that Iowa does not generate a ton of revenue to fix what it has. Despite a dense population, there are a lot of structures (roads, bridges, etc.) in Iowa.

   "A long time ago," he said, "it worked really well because the loads (on the roadways) were not very heavy. Now we are putting heavy loads on everything."

   He said posted structures, bridges that have weight limits on them, is what creates the deficiencies. Ag equipment today is so much bigger, weighs so much more, and is being used on roadways that weren't built for that.

   "You've now created an entire system where a whole bunch of bridges are less efficient structures," summarized Snead.

   So how does the State of Iowa compare to Jones County? It's safe to say that Jones County is not contributing to the number of structurally deficient bridges.

   When Snead started in his role as county engineer in 2012, there were 52 posted bridges in Jones County, meaning they all had various weight restrictions.

   "A little under a third of our entire system was posted," he said.

   Over the course of 10 years or so, Jones County Secondary Roads made it their mission to see that many of these structures were taken off the deficiency list.

   "We had a bridge crew and we worked really hard at both constructing new bridges and really focused on rehabbing the ones that we could to make them legal, not replace them with new, but to make them legal for heavier loads," explained Snead.

   Since 2012, 13 years later, Jones County is down to just four posted bridges. Two bridges, Ely Stone Bridge and Landis Bridge, are currently closed to traffic. Of those six bridges, four are on the Secondary Road Five-year Road Program for replacement. Landis is on the program for complete replacement in Fiscal Year 2026.

   "Over the course of the next two to three years," offered Snead, "we're hopeful that we could be down to one posted bridge in the entire county."

   That means by that time, Jones County could have the least number of structurally deficient structures.

   Now, each county receives federal bridge money, an amount that is determined by several factors. One of those factors is the number of deficient structures.

   "We're above average in size and revenue," said Snead. "We do receive less than average funding because we have good bridges."

   The amount allocated is proportionate to other counties of similar size.

   "By us rehabbing and replacing a lot over the last 10 years, we’ve been afforded the luxury of utilizing out continuous bridge money to still replace structures on low-volume roads," said Snead.