The value of bridge maintenance
We have about 45,000 bridges and other civil structures In the Netherlands. Budgets for maintenance of these assets have been under pressure for years. Not only does this apply to the 6,000 bridges that are operated by the national authority Rijkswaterstaat, regional authorities and municipalities face similar challenges.
Today, a plenary debate is being held with Cora van Nieuwenhuizen, Dutch minister for infrastructure, on the state of maintenance of our national highway bridges. I call on our politicians to head her call for more funding for maintenance and replacement of bridges. Because good maintenance of our bridges is essential to the functioning of our society. This afternoon I was asked to share my opinion about the matter by the national ‘BNR’ news radio station.
Detour and extra congestion costs
On the radioshow, we discussed the state of maintenance of our major highway bridges and the economic effects of emergency closures. The occasion was the publication of a report, commissioned by ‘Bouwend Nederland’, the biggest employers’ organization in the construction and infrastructure industries in the Netherlands, on detour and extra congestion costs in the scenario of an emergency closure of a major motorway bridge. The report demonstrated that a total closure of the Moerdijk bridge that spans the A16 motorway, will costs the transport branch up to five million Euros on an average working day.
A broader perspective
The report was commissioned by the Dutch transport and logistic sector and focused solely on the economic damage to this sector. Although I acknowledge that transportation of goods is a vital aspect of our economy, I want to put the matter in a broader perspective. A bridge is much more than just an asset that serves the needs of the transport and logistics sector. Nor is a bridge the property of our bodies of government. What we need to realize is that bridges are built for people, and therefore belong to all citizens. Ultimately, all bridges are built and paid for with tax money, yours and mine. For practical reasons, citizens have outsourced bridge building and maintenance to the government, trusting the government to manage their property well.
I have always believed that you can tell the level of civilization by the bridges that people build. The same adage applies to the way that we look after our bridges. This is simply a matter of common sense, as obvious as washing your car and occasionally taking it to the garage for regular inspections. Furthermore, everyone that owns a house knows that regularly cleaning your windows frames prolongs the life of the paintwork, and that fixing your roof prevents further damage.
A broader perspective
How do you address this major challenge when you have 45,000 infrastructural works to maintain? The first thing you need to do is start prioritizing. make a good inventory of the objects, then cluster them by type of object, location and urgency. By clustering, the learning capacity and innovations such as digitalization and automation can be used optimally. And since human resources are also limited in our bodies of government, a cooperative way of working with engineering firms, universities and contractors can help facilitate the call for long-term planning. Above all, let's not put money and time into tendering procedures (on competition), but let's get down to business.
Interview on BNR Nieuwsradio, June 3rd 2019, by Paul Laseur
You can listen to the radio interview in Dutch here: https://lnkd.in/ddcSsmY