AMES, Iowa — Nearly 24,000 bridges line Iowa's beautiful landscape, but more and more are in need of repairs due to "poor" conditions.
The Iowa Department of Transportation says that doesn't necessarily mean Iowa's bridges are unsafe.
A report from the DOT says about 20% of Iowa's bridges are in poor condition, nearly 40% are in good condition and over 42% are in fair condition.
Those conditions can be a bit misleading, so bridge maintenance engineer Scott Neubauer broke it down for Local 5.
"So the three main elements of a bridge are the deck or the driving surface, the superstructure, which is the elements that hold the deck up, and then the substructure which is the elements that hold everything on the ground," Neubauer said.
"It has nothing to do with the safety of the structure at all," Neubauer said. "Just because it's 'poor' doesn't mean it's unsafe for anyone, it just means it's getting to, probably, an age that it's starting to show some deterioration and is either going to need to be replaced or repaired."
Bridge inspectors check on structures once every 24 months, but Neubauer said sometimes it's more.
The repairs on those bridges take time and money. The Biden administration hopes to help with that with its infrastructure deal.
Funding or not, the work continues.
"We're trying to build our new bridges to last 100 years, you know, we've got new materials and technologies that we can use now," Neubauer said.
You can read the full report from the Iowa DOT below: