Dr Colin Caprani, bridge engineer and senior lecturer in civil engineering at Monash University, has warned that a critical failure on Australia’s bridges like that of Genoa will likely happen if governments continue to neglect the country’s ageing bridges.
Caprani told Government News that more end-of-life failures such as that in Genoa could happen in the country as the age profile of bridges increases and the growing infrastructure backlog worsens.
“Australia needs the selective introduction of structural health monitoring (SHM) of ageing bridges, which use sensors to measure the response of a bridge to certain loads, at a local and state level,” Caprani continues.
“We’re blindfolded, and we don’t know how far from the cliff edge we are.
“The only way to remove the blindfold is better modelling, quantifiable measures, and structural health monitoring, which would let us see where the cliff edge is.”
Caprani argues that an estimated 70 per cent of Australia’s bridges are more than 50 years old and beyond their design life, which means the risk of these bridges failing is accelerated by increased load, worsening traffic, and the push to introduced automated truck platoons.
“In 10 to 15 years, Australia’s bridges will be in the same condition as the US, where 30 per cent of 625,000 bridges are listed as functionally obsolete or structurally deficient,” Caprani adds.
“It gives you an idea of the influence of ageing and increasing traffic roads and what they’re doing to our bridges. That’s where we’re headed.”
Caprani believes that a lack of public information, coupled with a number of Freedom of Information requests pushed back, means the current condition of bridges in Australia and the money spent maintaining them is currently unknown.
“I can’t even begin to put a quantum on it,” Caprani adds.
“It was shocking to me that the South Australian Road Authority would try to fight over information on their bridges. And that’s just one state.
“Tasmania, ACT, NSW – they all give nothing. Queensland gave some data via email and Western Australia give any inspection data.”
Caprani now urges the government to improve transparency around the condition of bridges, highlighting the US’ publicly accessible national bridge inventory as an example that Australia could learn from.