The data released from different reports can be confusing, because each uses its own metrics. But each has its value.   The most recent infrastructure report card from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), “Report Card for West Virginia’s Infrastructure,” lists 20 percent of the Mountain State’s bridges as structurally deficient. But that report is based on data from 2021, when the WVDOT’s bridge replacement and rehabilitation program was hitting its stride. In September 2024, the nonprofit national transportation research organization TRIP released a report saying West Virginia has a backlog of $198 billion to repair its roads and bridges. But that report is based on data from 2022. An update using 2023 data is expected around the end of the year.  A report by the American Road & Transportation Builders Association, “National Bridge Inventory: West Virginia,” based on 2024 data released by the FHWA, shows the number of structurally deficient bridges in the Mountain State dropping by 175 structures between 2020 and August 2024, as the state’s bridges are replaced or rehabilitated.

But even the most current FHWA data lags behind what’s actually going on in the field. Wriston said bridges listed as poor or deficient that are currently being worked on or replaced will be carried on the books that way until work is done or a new bridge opens. Gov. Jim Justice’s Roads to Prosperity program set in motion a break from a nationwide trend of underinvestment in infrastructure. For West Virginia, maintaining bridges meant managing a system in decline due to chronic underfunding. It takes time to complete a bridge project – to get environmental clearance, move utilities, purchase right of way, develop plans, advertise and let a construction contract, and get a contractor on the ground working. As bridge projects completed in 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 are factored into the reporting, WVDOT is going for not the C or D or even the B on the report card. West Virginia deserves to be the A++ and the agency’s ten year bridge plan is based on providing that.

Bridges currently among the $4 billion in active construction projects, for example the widening at the Donald M. Legg Memorial Bridge and the new Nitro WWI Memorial Bridge between Nitro and St. Albans on I-64, are still listed in the condition of the old green bridge – even as contractors put the finishing touches on them. 

“The metrics are always going to lag behind simply because of the nature of the bureaucracy involved in reporting that data and getting this stuff to the people that track this stuff,” Wriston said. “We do it more in real time, because we’ve invested in the back-office stuff. We have a bridge management system. We have the data first.

“If you’re diligent in staying on top of it, you can see what that trend is going to be. You can see where you are today and where you’ll be tomorrow,” Wriston said. “That’s what we’re saying.  Much of what’s being reported does not take into account what’s happening to those structures today. They show a bridge with 1,000 square feet of deck as poor, but that bridge is under construction and at the end of that construction in six months, that bridge is going to be good. So that’s 1,000 feet that gets put in the other column, that gets put in the good column.”

WVDOT tracks its own data in real time and predicts a fall from as high as 40 percent to around 14 by the time reports start rolling in that take into account the work happening now.  From there, Secretary Wriston sets an even more aggressive goal moving forward. 

“We’re managing it as a holistic system, all at once, and that’s how we’re working on it,” Wriston said.

WVDOT has a 10-year bridge plan in place and uses its bridge management system to prioritize how to get the most work done efficiently to improve the entire system.

“Once we get the poor condition bridges down to the three or four percent range, and it’s possible,” Wriston said. “You set a plan out with a goal; that’s our goal.”

“Over the next 10 years, if we are able to follow our ten year plan, and we have the funding levels necessary to do that, we’re going to be in a position to where our bridges are going to be the talk of the country,” Wriston said. “Our bridge inventory is truly going to be an example of how that sort of a transportation asset is managed.”

 “I can’t tell you how proud I am of this transportation department,” Wriston said. “It saw early on, the Governor had his big bold vision, the one that put us on the path, the one that if we execute it we can invest in our infrastructure and get a rate of return. Applying the resources the Governor provided us with the Roads to Prosperity, that was our responsibility.”

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