(Bloomberg News) Jim Benton, a Jeffersonville, Indiana, jewelry-store owner, says sales fell 40 percent in two weeks after the Sherman Minton Bridge connecting his border community to customers in Kentucky closed Sept. 9.
Fifteen miles from the bridge's Kentucky side, officials at United Parcel Service Inc.'s Worldport, the world's largest automated package-handling facility, say they've used software to reroute trucks with no substantial impact. That's not so easy for Benton, who said he's keeping longer hours and buying less merchandise for the holiday season.
Benton's plight is playing out for small businesses across the U.S., where 3,538 bridges were closed in 2010, as customers shop elsewhere rather than take detours. With the average U.S. bridge seven years from the end of its useful life, and one-fourth of 600,000 crossings classified by regulators as "structurally deficient," more places will be hurt by closings, said Barry LePatner, founder of LePatner & Associates LLP, a New York-based construction law and consulting firm.
"Bridge failures throw a monkey wrench into the economic life of communities," LePatner said. "Things aren't going to get better, things are going to get much worse."
The Minneapolis-St. Paul regional economy lost as much as $73 million after the collapse in August 2007 of the Interstate 35W bridge, according to a 2008 study by the University of Minnesota. Thirteen people died and 145 were injured when the bridge, Minnesota's busiest, collapsed. It was rebuilt and reopened in September 2008.
Soda-Can Cracks
The Sherman Minton Bridge, which carried about 80,000 vehicles a day across the Ohio River, was closed after cracks as wide as a 12-ounce soda can were found in the structural steel, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. It will be closed indefinitely, according to a notice the Federal Highway Administration posted Oct. 27 in the Federal Register.
Benton says he's having customers pick up repairs on Saturday, when the traffic isn't as bad. He's made special arrangements to return unsold merchandise.
The disrepair of U.S. surface-transportation systems cost businesses and households about $130 billion last year, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers, based in Reston, Virginia. Of that, $32 billion is related to travel delays, it said in a report issued in July.
The average U.S. bridge is 43 years old, while the average useful life is generally about 50 years, according to the highway agency. The agency said in 2006 that it would cost $140 billion to immediately repair every deficient bridge in the U.S. That's more than three times what the U.S. government receives in taxes annually to pay for road, mass transit and bridge projects.
The amount of traffic a bridge carries, the location of the next nearest bridge, and whether it's on a commuter route determine how much economic impact a closing may have, Andrew Herrmann, president of the American Society of Civil Engineers, said in an interview. The group in 2009 issued a report card that gave the condition of U.S. bridges a grade of C and overall infrastructure a D.