 Regardless of when or where you're watching this video, chances are that you probably crossed over or even under a bridge at some point during your travels today. Maybe you didn't realize it, or maybe you just didn't care. Either way, that's exactly the way PennDOT wants you, our customers, to feel. Motorists should not be concerned about the condition of the bridges they cross every day. It's PennDOT's job to worry about bridge safety and it's a job that we take very seriously. Hi, and thanks for watching. I'm Gary Hoffman, Chief Engineer for PennDOT. Bridge safety is paramount to an exceptional transportation system. And bridge safety can only be assured with proper and frequent inspections and a good preventing bridge maintenance program that allows us to fix things before they have a chance to break. In effect, preventing maintenance will breathe new life into an old bridge. By performing the right treatment at the right time on the right bridge, we can in effect turn back the clock on a bridge's life and extend the overall performance life for a relatively small investment. PennDOT maintains the third largest number of state-maintained bridges in the nation, about 25,000 bridges in all. A solid bridge maintenance schedule is vital if we are to keep costs down and provide the best possible service to our customers. Our customers expect and deserve to have the safest and best maintained bridges. Unfortunately, failing to provide the proper type of bridge maintenance can jeopardize this expected level of safety. Perhaps my colleague, the District Engineer from our District 4 office near Scranton, can better explain. Hello, I'm Chuck Matei, PennDOT's District Engineer for Engineering District 4. Last February, an expansion dam came apart on one of our Interstate 81 bridges near Scranton. A metal plate broke loose and more than two dozen cars ended up with flat tires. Still, other vehicles suffered damages to their undercarriage. One car and, more importantly, one person crashed into a guide rail. Fortunately, no one was seriously hurt, but this incident could have been prevented if sufficient money was programmed to make the repairs before we had a problem. And that problem is not limited to just one bridge. Many of our Interstate bridges date back to the 1960s and many are in dire need of major repairs. Without the proper funding, the near disaster we had on Interstate 81 near Scranton could happen again and perhaps with more grim consequences. Bridge maintenance and preservation work is intended to preserve and extend the useful life of a bridge for a significant period of time without involving major component replacement or rehabilitation. And, more importantly, preserve our customers' expected level of safety. Basically, we define preventive maintenance as the planned strategy of cost-effective treatments applied to preserve our bridges. In essence, it means performing the proper maintenance activities to our bridges at the proper time. Our bridge engineers have learned through countless years of expertise and research that certain preservation and maintenance activities performed properly and at the right time will extend the lives of our bridges. In other words, spending a relatively small amount of money today will save us large amounts of money tomorrow. It's sort of like owning a car. Make the small investments in maintenance to make it last longer or plan on buying a new car every three years. Although we spend about $300 million on about 250 bridge projects every year, we simply cannot afford to buy new bridges whenever they start to show their age. Some of the crucial bridge preservation and maintenance activities that provide the biggest benefit for the smallest level of investment include such activities as bridge painting, repairing or installing new expansion dams on bridge decks, eliminating deck joints in old bridges, maintaining proper deck drainage, repairing bridge beam ends, restoring or replacing bridge bearings, patching or repaving bridge decks, repairing or replacing bridge approach slabs. These repairs all make good common sense, but finding the resources to perform these repairs can be a challenge. Even more challenging is the fact that too frequently bridge maintenance is put on the back burner in exchange for more noticeable improvements like a new pavement. Unfortunately, deferring good bridge maintenance practices for other improvements is a recipe for disaster. Regardless of how smooth the new road feels or how good it looks, it is only as good as the bridge that will eventually carry it. To maintain public safety, to move commerce unimpeded and to keep a good inventory of bridge conditions across the state, PennDOT thoroughly inspects all of its bridges at least once every two years. PennDOT has a team of 50 certified bridge safety inspectors who, combined with consultants, thoroughly inspect over half of the state's bridges every year. To facilitate these inspections, PennDOT has a fleet of six truck-mounted bridge inspection cranes deployed in six strategic locations across the state, including Harrisburg, Allentown, Montoursville, Butler, Pittsburgh and Uniontown. Good bridge management starts with good bridge condition information. All of our bridge inspection data is stored in a bridge management system. This information allows us to prioritize maintenance and rehabilitation needs and to make other sound decisions regarding our bridge infrastructure. But good information is only part of the equation. There must be a recognition and willingness to do the maintenance and preservation work with the first available dollars, not the last. It just makes good sense to do so. I'm confident that increased levels of bridge preservation, coupled with the sustained high level of investment and with maintenance first as our underlying philosophy, Pennsylvania's bridges will be able to meet the needs of our customers today and in the years ahead.