When I woke up on the morning of Jan. 28, 2022, I was prepared for our city to be the focus of the nation with a visit from the president of the United States. But just weeks into my administration as mayor, we were met with one of our biggest challenges — the collapse of the Fern Hollow Bridge.

I’ll never forget the fear I felt that morning, and I am forever grateful that there wasn’t a single life lost that day.

After issuing the emergency declaration and beginning the work to rebuild the bridge, I gave my team clear direction on what should happen next and pledged to keep our residents safe on our roads and bridges.

On Feb. 21, we learned the root cause of the Fern Hollow bridge collapse after a nearly yearlong investigation. I want to thank the National Transportation Safety Board for its diligence and thoroughness in completing that investigation. Over that same year, my administration has taken steps to understand and repair not just Fern Hollow but all of our bridges. We needed immediate action to ensure that we were doing all we could to prevent another Fern Hollow from happening.

My team worked quickly to put together a plan to help us understand the condition of every city-owned bridge, assessing bridges that had not been looked at in many years and reassessing bridges that had. Our Bridge Asset Management Program was designed not only to guide us but also to address the most serious deficiencies and keep all of our bridges in a state of good repair.

This work was led by a cross-departmental team of city employees who augmented their efforts by bringing on WSP, a consultant with extensive experience in infrastructure inspection, construction, maintenance and comprehensive asset management. The city, with the consultant team, reviewed every bridge through reports, pictures, onsite inspections and advanced drone technologies to make sure that we understood the condition of every bridge and ensure the public’s safety.

Working in partnership with our Department of Mobility and Infrastructure, we were able to inspect and reanalyze every city-owned bridge. We now know the state of every bridge we own and what is needed to keep our residents safe. And, for the first time, we have a comprehensive investment strategy to help deliver the much-needed funding to take on these major infrastructure projects.

In December 2022, we published the first report of our Bridge Asset Management Program. In the following months, we received follow-up reports, including a March 2023 report that identified 77 bridges with critical, high priority or priority maintenance needs. Critical needs are items that are to be addressed within seven days and can include updating signage with new weight loads to replacing of bridge deck joints.

With the help of WSP, the city has addressed all of our bridges with critical needs. Most of the high priority needs have been resolved or will be resolved as part of larger rehabilitation projects. In order to move this work forward, and to clear the list of priority tasks, I increased the capacity of DOMI’s Structure Division and included a new five-person Bridge Maintenance Division in the 2024 budget. We also increased the budget for bridge maintenance and repair by 300%.

When we announced this program the first year of my administration, I made a promise to the people of Pittsburgh to make our city the safest city in America. That means making sure our bridges are safe, maintained and cared for. And we will never hesitate to take proactive action to close a bridge the moment it is deemed unsafe.

We know we have more work ahead of us, but we have kept our promise of putting together a proactive strategy for the long-term care and maintenance of our bridges. The city also is committed to working with all of our local, state and federal partners to pursue funding in order to fully unlock our ability to transition to a proactive approach to bridge maintenance in the future.

We pledged to be honest, open and transparent about the state of our bridges. And today we are continuing to follow through with that promise. We invite everyone to review these reports and the actions taken at pittsburghpa.gov/mayor/bamp.

Ed Gainey is the mayor of Pittsburgh.

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