What condition are Pennsylvania’s roads and bridges in? An engineer speaks.

• Scott LaMar
  BioRecent Stories

  

  Scott LaMar has worked in both radio and television for more than four decades.
  
  Currently, LaMar is the Host and Executive Producer of The Spark program on WITF-FM, 89.5 & 93.3 in Harrisburg, Pa.
  
  Previously, LaMar was WITF TV’s Sr. Public Affairs producer and produced the station’s award-winning weekly public affairs TV program, Smart Talk.
  
  In addition to his on-air duties, LaMar has moderated political candidate debates, including those for candidates running for Pennsylvania governor and the U.S. Senate and was a regular contributor to BBC World News TV before and after the 2020 U.S. Presidential election.
  
  LaMar often emcees or moderates local events and has gone as far as California to emcee a national event.
  
  The American Society of Civil Engineers honored LaMar with their national Excellence in Journalism award in 2020. He has been nominated for five Mid-Atlantic Emmy Awards.
  
  LaMar and The Spark have been recognized throughout the Central Pennsylvania community including ADVOZ Lancaster’s “Dignity in Dialogue Award”, the South-Central Assembly’s “Regional Citizen Award” and was named a “Humanitarian Hero” by The Humane Society of the United States/Pennsylvania.
  
  A native of Coatesville, Pa., LaMar has also worked as a broadcast news anchor, sports play-by-play announcer and manager.

 Charlie Riedel / AP Photo

FILE PHOTO: In this March 30, 2018, file photo, a motorist waits at a traffic light while the waxing full moon rises in the distance in Overland Park, Kan.

Airdate: Tuesday, November 8, 2022

Infrastructure – especially transportation infrastructure is a huge issue here in Pennsylvania. The state’s roads and bridges have often been characterized as at least needing improvement.

Nick Giglio is a transportation inspector for Urban Engineers in Allentown.

Last month he was honored as one of the American Society of Civil Engineers “New Faces of Civil Engineering” at the organization’s annual conference in Anaheim, California.

There, he spoke about Pennsylvania’s roads and bridges,”Pennsylvania’s roads and bridges are certainly worse than the average state as far as conditions of them is concerned. However, they are doing better than they have been in previous years. I believe they reached a peak in 2017 as far as how many structurally deficient bridges we had in the state. We have slowly made progress in the right direction. However, overall, the number is still out of position. That ranks us within the top five or top ten, depending on the numbers of worst bridges and roadways in the nation based on state.”

Giglio said the age of Pennsylvania’s bridges is a big reason there are so many that are in need of modernizing.

What about roads?,”One thing about highways that I’ve learned over the years, that truck traffic in particular is speeding up the process of deterioration. And with highways, there’s many layers of pavement that all individually got affected by essentially heavy truck traffic and traffic and traffic in general. So the condition of the top layer of pavement is always something that can be visually paid attention to. But the condition of every layer of pavement is something that can’t necessarily be seen, but yet it requires even more attention because that affects the entire condition of the roadway. And when it’s over long distances, such as highways, I can end up requiring very expensive fixes in order to insure another 50 to 100 years of longevity for roads that are only getting more and more crowded.?