How Long Can a State Go Without Repairing Roads and Bridges?

Mississippi’s increasingly unreliable infrastructure -- its crumbling roads and hundreds of deteriorating bridges that have been closed or weight-limited -- is straining the state’s businesses and local governments. It’s no wonder, then, that they, along with transportation advocates and their allies, have pressed the legislature to do something about it. Yet year after year, lawmakers in Jackson have come up empty-handed.

This year was no different, even though lawmakers came tantalizingly close to a road improvement package. A week or so after they failed to pass a fix-up plan, Gov. Phil Bryant announced that the state Transportation Department would immediately shut down 83 locally owned bridges. Federal inspectors had found that the bridges -- most of which were built with timber parts and located in rural areas -- were deficient and unsafe for vehicular traffic. Since then, more bridges have been added to the list. All told, some 500 across the state are out of service.

“It is probably the No. 1 problem the citizens are talking about today,” says state Sen. Willie Simmons, a Democrat who chairs the chamber’s Highways and Transportation Committee. Two of the counties in Simmons’ Mississippi Delta district shut down more than 30 bridges each. Those closures can reroute residents on 40- to 50-mile detours, and they can prevent firefighters and paramedics from getting to residents quickly. “Everybody agrees that we have a crisis, and it needs to be addressed,” Simmons says. “The problem is, we need to find the ways and means to pay for it.”

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