INDIANAPOLIS (WOWO): Indiana‘s highway commissioner is warning the state needs to make plans to repair hundreds of bridges over the next decade.   About half Indiana‘s 54-hundred bridges are more than 50 years old — they were built when construction of the interstate highway system kicked into high gear.

The problem is, they have an expected life span of 75 years. INDOT Commissioner Karl Browning says seven-percent of Indiana‘s bridges are rated in poor condition, but says that number will nearly double over the next 10 years, with hundreds more rated just fair. And once a bridge declines to fair condition, Browning says, it becomes significantly more expensive to fix.  

Browning says INDOT‘s goal has been to have no more than eight-percent of the bridges on the critical list. But he says it‘ll take an extra 58-million dollars a year to maintain that pace. But he says a better target would be three-percent, which would cost 100-mlllion a year.