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Arlington
Memorial Bridge Deterioration Illustrates
Nationwide
Need for National Park Road Maintenance Funds
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Federal Highway
Administration Inspection: Fix the Bridge or Close It in 2021
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Washington,
DC – March 2016 / Newsmaker Alert / Arlington
Memorial Bridge – the symbolic entry to Washington, D.C. and its iconic
monument core – needs a major overhaul or it will have to be closed in
2021.
An
inspection by the Federal Highway Administration last month found that
deterioration of the bridge has accelerated since a 2015 inspection. Repair
and renovation costs are estimated at $250 million. The National
Park Service has spent nearly $10 million on temporary repairs since
2010 with another $5 million emergency repair due to start late this year.
“Memorial
Bridge is a significant example of the immediate challenges we are facing
across the National Park System to repair and maintain roads, bridges,
and other essential transportation systems that not only connect people
to the parks, but that also can be part of people’s daily commutes,” said
National Park Service Director Jonathan B. Jarvis.
Nationwide,
the National Park Service (NPS) has $11.9 billion of deferred maintenance
projects – maintenance that has been put off for one year or more because
of a lack of funds. Of this total, slightly more than half is deferred
transportation maintenance.
The
NPS transportation portfolio includes about 5,500 miles of paved roads,
the equivalent of 970 miles of paved parking areas, more than 4,500 miles
of unpaved roads, and more than 1,400 bridges. In addition to the Arlington
Memorial Bridge, the National Park Service is responsible for parkways
including the Baltimore Washington Parkway and George Washington Memorial
Parkway in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. Across the country,
the NPS also manages the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina and Virginia;
Natchez Trace Parkway in Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee; and Colonial
Parkway in Virginia. Important NPS road systems that allow visitors to
access our national parks include the Grand Loop at Yellowstone National
Park, the Going to the Sun Road at Glacier National Park, and the Arterial
Loop at Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area. Each of those parkways
or loop roads have repair needs that, taken together, exceed a billion
dollars.
The
National Park Service received some transportation funding increases as
a result of the federal highway bill signed into law in December 2015.
The NPS transportation allocation rose from $240 million in 2015 to $268
million in 2016 and will increase by $8 million per year over the next
four years to $300 million per year by 2020.
The
new federal highway funding law also included new programs that could help
support large projects like Memorial Bridge, but those programs require
non-federal matching dollars.
“The
National Park Service will need the support of partnerships with other
federal, state, and local entities, to compete successfully for funds available
from the Department of Transportation,” Jarvis said. “We are pursuing every
funding possibility to find a path forward to repair Memorial Bridge.”
The
NPS has created successful coalitions and partnerships to accomplish other
major transportation projects. For example, the NPS is partnering with
the State of Florida on the $144 million Tamiami Trail bridge project to
restore more natural water flows to Everglades National Park, and has leveraged
other Federal Department of Transportation funding for that project.
“This
is the centennial year of the National Park Service, and the record breaking
visitation we have seen over the past two years clearly demonstrate that
the American people love and care about their national parks,” Jarvis said.
“It’s crucial that we find a solution to care for the iconic places in
our care, so that the places that inspire us are here to do the same for
generations to come.”
About
the National Park Service
More
than 20,000 National Park Service employees care for America’s 410 national
parks and work with communities across the nation to help preserve local
history and create close-to-home recreational opportunities. Visit us at
www.NPS.gov,
on Facebook Facebook.com/nationalparkservice,
Twitter Twitter.com/natlparkservice,
and YouTube YouTube.com/nationalparkservice.
Media
Contacts:
Jeffrey
Olson (NPS)
202-208-6843
Jennifer
Anzelmo-Sarles (NPS)
202-619-7177 |