There are about three thousand bridges in Latvia, more than a third of which belong to local and regional governments. Most of the bridges were built in the sixties and seventies of the last century and have come under the control and care of local and regional governments after the restoration of Latvia’s national independence. The State Audit Office performed an audit in 11 local and regional governments and established that the bridges of those local and regional governments had not received the necessary attention from the state or their direct owners, that is, local and regional governments. As a result, the safety of at least 98 bridges out of the 332 bridges owned by those local and regional governments is uncertain.
There is a lot of talk about mobility nowadays, and it is an integral part of the normal functioning of the community. Bridges are an essential element of this mobility as they ensure that we can get to our workplaces, visit a doctor or a shop and receive other services. They are needed by entrepreneurs who create jobs to transport raw materials and manufactured goods. We witnessed the impact of the bridges on mobility by experiencing the difficulties caused by the closure of two bridges in Riga, the Brasa overpass and the Zemitani overpass. We are still feeling the effects today. It will not be an exaggeration to say that life without bridges at least becomes significantly slower if not quite stops, not to mention the danger to health and life in the event of one of the bridges collapsing.
Although the laws and regulations do not define specific management activities for bridge owners precisely, a considerable and careful owner can find the action algorithm in the Latvian standard LVS 190-11: 2009 “Bridge Inspection and Load Testing”, as well as in the Bridge Management Guidelines and the Bridge Inspection Manual developed by the state-owned “Latvijas Valsts celi” Ltd.
The audit findings show that many necessary governance measures are often not implemented in local and regional governments. Bridges are not primarily perceived as civil engineering structures but as regular road sections and management is limited to the work required to maintain the carriageway, such as patching potholes.
City municipalities have at least identified the condition of bridges and know the measures to be taken to improve the condition of bridges; however, many regional governments have not done even that. Only 16% of bridges in the regions have undergone major inspections. In the opinion of the State Audit Office, the “ostrich policy” observed in some local and regional governments is also a worrying trend when the public is not informed about already known unsafe bridges by installing mass restriction signs on the bridges.
Supervision over how local and regional governments maintain road bridges was entrusted to state-owned limited liability company “Latvijas Valsts celi” under the supervision of the Ministry of Transport. However, the audit has found that those control activities have not ensured that local and regional governments take better care of bridges. After the audit, the State Audit Office has provided recommendations to the Ministry of Transport to improve the efficiency of inspections performed by “Latvijas Valsts celi” by reporting identified deficiencies to local and regional governments, following the elimination of the shortcomings, and informing the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Regional Development on the cases when the necessary measures to improve the safety of the bridges are not taken.
The formal reason for the deplorable situation with municipal bridges is insufficient funding. Nevertheless, the State Audit Office does not consider it a sufficient reason to postpone the solution of problems indefinitely. As it happens with virtually all engineering structures, they will not collapse tomorrow or a day after tomorrow even due to poor maintenance, but the longer the maintenance and reconstruction of bridges are delayed, the higher the costs will be for us in the future.
The State Audit Office sees the condition of bridges owned by local and regional governments as a significant problem that will be on the government’s agenda in the next decade; therefore, this audit report should be perceived as a wake-up call. At present, one can not consider it a problem for local and regional governments as owners of bridges alone, as the service life of bridges built 60-70 years ago and generally poorly maintained is coming to an end and will require major investments of almost 85 million euros to renovate existing bridges and build new ones in regions. Suppose the government and local and regional governments do not find solutions and financial support for the relatively rapid arrangement of this area. In that case, we can expect consequences that will affect the mobility, security, and economy of the population as a whole painfully.
The State Audit Office has provided recommendations for improving the situation to the 11 local and regional governments included in the audit sample. However, it calls on other local and regional governments to address it as well, as the situation with municipal bridges and overpasses detected during the audit is probably similar throughout Latvia.
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