(The Center Square) – State transportation officials warned Thursday that 342 of Washington’s bridges are now at least 80 years old, pegging the estimated replacement costs at approximately $9.2 billion.
The Washington State Department of Transportation manages 3,427 bridges, the oldest of which was built in 1915, with an average age of 51.7 years. The average lifespan is 75 years. WSDOT rated 9.9% of the total state inventory as being in poor condition as of June 2025, rising from 8.5% in June 2024.
For comparison, only 4.8% of the 4346 bridges owned by cities, counties and other entities are in poor condition. WSDOT Bridge Engineer Evan Grimm told the state Transportation Commission Thursday that poor condition doesn’t always mean a bridge is unsafe, but it does make it more expensive to fix.
“The preservation need isn’t changing,” Grimm said. “The problems we’re seeing aren’t going anywhere.”
Maintenance Operations Manager James Morin said crews are increasingly responding to potholes and other issues that pop up in the middle of the night, pulling them away from strategic maintenance. He compared WSDOT’s situation to a homeowner relying on a roof rated for 35 years to last for 50 years.
“You’re going to end up with a blue tarp on the roof in the middle of a storm, right? Your neighbors are all going to be upset, and the homeowner association is going to get after you,” Morin explained. “And, unfortunately, we really are in the situation where we have … a blue tarp situation around the state.”
Grimm offered the Fairfax Bridge as one example.
WSDOT closed the gateway to Mount Rainier in April 2025 after decades of deferred maintenance. A few coats of paint every few years would’ve prolonged the structure’s life. But WSDOT allocated its preservation funding to other priorities, even though it knew the structure was quickly deteriorating. Now, Grimm says the bridge could potentially cost taxpayers $160 million to replace.
“This shows how rapid the deterioration was happening,” Grimm said, referencing photos from 2022 to 2025 showing corrosion due to decades of deferred repairs. “We don’t know exactly when it’s going to happen. We can’t predict, but we saw it right in front of our eyes. It’s just very quickly deteriorating.”
Morin cited the Hansen Road overpass as another example. WSDOT closed the bridge last month after it went three decades without being sealed. He said WSDOT should reseal bridge decks every three to five years to prevent contaminants from entering the substructure. Instead, WSDOT is repairing decks.
The WSDOT operations manager said if the state shifted crews entirely to resealing bridges, it would take almost all of them away from bridge repairs. Strategic maintenance helps prevent those repairs, but Morin said limited resources have led to prioritizing preventive maintenance for newer bridges.
Gov. Bob Ferguson announced a historic $2.1 billion preservation budget for the next decade at the end of last year, just days after visiting local officials over the Fairfax Bridge. About $1.1 billion would go toward bridge preservation — with nothing set aside for Fairfax — to help address the backlog of work.
Republicans have argued that the money has been there all along. The Democratic majority has allocated money from the controversial Climate Commitment Act to fish passage projects and to electrifying Washington’s ferry fleet, while barring funding for most highway and bridge projects.
The commissioners said WSDOT’s bridge presentation showed that the state is “at a tipping point.”
They said it’s time to have some “hard conversations” about how to manage the system and funding.
Grimm said the work is overwhelming, with deferred maintenance and preservation work, leading to a “downward spiral.” He cited the Fairfax Bridge again as an example, where repainting would have cost about $5 million or more in 2013, but instead, taxpayers are looking at a major replacement project.
“We’re playing wack-o-mole,” he said in reference to WSDOT dealing with emergencies as they come.
