List of all U.S. Bridges
December 17, 2015 7:02 AM Subscribe
Working on a project and I need a list of all (or a lot) of the bridges in the United States.
Basically, I need the data behind this interactive map by Transportation for America. They point to the Federal Highway Administration’s National Bridge Inventory (NBI). But all I can find on the NBI is a count of how many bridges each state has, and other high level data like that.
Can anyone help me find a data file (that shows the bridge name, location, structural status, etc. of each bridge, rather than a state-level overview?
Basically, I need the data behind this interactive map by Transportation for America. They point to the Federal Highway Administration’s National Bridge Inventory (NBI). But all I can find on the NBI is a count of how many bridges each state has, and other high level data like that.
Can anyone help me find a data file (that shows the bridge name, location, structural status, etc. of each bridge, rather than a state-level overview?
Best answer: I think if you start here you can get at it. I started from Data.gov and looked for bridge info. There are 610,000 bridges. The Atlas is downloadable but I'm not installing Silverlight so I'm not totally sure what's behind there.
posted by jessamyn at 7:13 AM on December 17, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by jessamyn at 7:13 AM on December 17, 2015 [1 favorite]
Best answer: Oh wait, sorry it's downloadable here. 71 MB of bridges.
posted by jessamyn at 7:14 AM on December 17, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by jessamyn at 7:14 AM on December 17, 2015 [2 favorites]
A word of warning - some state inventories may be poorly coded in terms of location, if nothing else. I speak from (second hand) experience - in some DOTs, bridge folks keep their own inventory of bridges which works for them, but their locations may not be verified. One effort to geocode bridges resulted in bridges being pinned hundreds of miles away from their actual location, appearing to be in another state. (This example has since been remedied, but I can imagine there are other states who still have similar issues.)
posted by filthy light thief at 7:17 AM on December 17, 2015
posted by filthy light thief at 7:17 AM on December 17, 2015
For basic geo locations, Bridgehunter.com is a database of historic or notable bridges in the United States, past and present. You can probably ask for their data set, if nothing else.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:18 AM on December 17, 2015
posted by filthy light thief at 7:18 AM on December 17, 2015
Best answer: Also all bridges are available here if you want something that isn't a shapefile (although it's fixed-width and not a plain-jane csv). Direct link to the 2014 zip is here.
posted by soma lkzx at 7:19 AM on December 17, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by soma lkzx at 7:19 AM on December 17, 2015 [1 favorite]
Another source for this data is OpenStreetMap. That's likely to catch a lot of small bridges that aren't on the official DOT list. There's 2.6M bridges in OSM globally.
posted by Nelson at 9:01 AM on December 17, 2015
posted by Nelson at 9:01 AM on December 17, 2015
And if you want to see some stunning photos of some of the bridges in your list, you get to look at http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393050564 by one of my favorite documenting photographers, David Plowden
posted by morspin at 9:41 AM on December 17, 2015
posted by morspin at 9:41 AM on December 17, 2015
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I found it by clicking a random bridge in VA and googling some of the data from the info popup - "1964 SBL I-95 bridge."
posted by soma lkzx at 7:13 AM on December 17, 2015