Romania has 4,250 bridges, 717 of them are in a lower technical class

Newsroom 17/08/2018 | 07:30

After several wagons of a freight train fell off a viaduct that broke apart in the town of Carcea in Dolj county, the National Company for Road Infrastructure Administration (CNAIR) said that of the 4,250 bridges on the Romanian National Roads network, only 37 are in technical class 5, and most of them are located on secondary roads, taken in the past by local authorities. Also, 680 bridges are in technical class 4.

None of these bridges presents an imminent collapse risk because they are permanently monitored and where the worsening of the situation is noted, measures are taken to close them to traffic and divert traffic to other routes, according to CNAIR.

The current norms establish that the revision of bridges is done every six months or sooner, if the situation requires it.

“To avoid confusion, we have to say that the interval for periodic maintenance works ranges from 10 to 15 years and the interval for capital rehabilitation or repair is 35-50 years, depending on the technical evaluations,” informs CNAIR who gives as an example the Maracineni Bridge, rehabilitated after the floods in 2005, which was repaired this year as part of a regular maintenance program rather than a rehabilitation program.

“It should be noted that including the fact that no expertise was needed for long periods of time demonstrates that the situation of the bridges in Romania is not in a serious situation and the problems that can arise can be kept under control by current repair activities,” the company said.