Every day in Dallas, millions of car and truck trips roll across bridges that engineers have flagged as structurally deficient, many of them aging interstate spans still hauling heavy commuter and freight traffic. That label means at least one critical piece of the bridge is in poor condition, and in Dallas, several of those spans sit on some of the most heavily traveled roadways in Texas. Officials say a number of the highest-use crossings are already in line for repair or replacement, but the statewide backlog is anything but small.
According to ARTBA, which compiled figures from the Federal Highway Administration's National Bridge Inventory, Texas had 680 bridges classified as structurally deficient and 10,621 bridges identified as needing repairs in a June 2025 data pull. ARTBA's analysis estimates the statewide repair tab at more than $7.1 billion and notes that the deck area of those deficient structures works out to roughly 1.1% of all bridge deck area in the state.
Dallas' Busiest Deficient Spans
Local reporting and the federal inventory put multiple Dallas interstate crossings near the top of Texas' most-traveled deficient bridges. I-35E over Oak Lawn Avenue and Turtle Creek carries about 194,000 vehicles per day, and the I-45 northbound connector over I-30 sees roughly the same volume. Long stretches of I-635 and I-30 also each haul tens to hundreds of thousands of trips on an average day. Those concentrated, high-use spans help explain why Dallas County shows up so often on short lists of bridges that need major work, per The Dallas Express.
Work Already Under Way And What Comes Next
The Texas Department of Transportation reports it has been replacing the US-175 bridge at Lake June Road as part of a roughly $26.8 million project, with the old span removed in mid-2025 and final work on the new bridge and an adjacent pedestrian trail scheduled to wrap up in spring 2026, according to TxDOT. On the city side, Dallas approved an $8.79 million construction contract for the Trinity Strand Hi-Line Span pedestrian bridge to connect Design District trails, with city records listing an April 2025 start and March 2026 completion window.
North of downtown, Highland Park's capital-projects page shows the town's Wycliffe Avenue dam and bridge, along with related flood-mitigation reconstruction, slated to begin in early 2026. Taken together, the projects sketch out a regional push to deal with aging structures before they force disruptive closures.
What "Structurally Deficient" Actually Means
Federal guidance defines a structurally deficient bridge as one where at least one principal element - the deck, superstructure, substructure or culvert - is rated in poor or worse condition on the National Bridge Inventory scale. Most highway bridges must undergo routine safety inspections at least every 24 months. That red-flag label generally means a bridge is moved higher on the repair priority list and watched more closely, not that it is automatically shut down.
Even so, agencies can post load limits or close a span if an inspection turns up immediate hazards, according to the Federal Highway Administration. In other words, "structurally deficient" is a serious warning light on the dashboard, not a guarantee the bridge is about to fail.
Why Funding And Coordination Matter
ARTBA's profile notes that the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act set aside about $576.8 million in bridge formula funds for Texas over the life of the program, with roughly $461.4 million available and $300.7 million already committed to 301 projects as of the June 2025 data pull. Those figures barely make a dent in the more than $7.1 billion estimated backlog, which means state, county and local partners will have to keep steering money toward the busiest and most critical Dallas-area spans to avoid costly closures and gridlocked detours later.
