The structural integrity of rural bridges is essential to farmer profitability. The Soy Transportation Coalition has announced a new partnership to promote better evaluation and management of this important infrastructure.
According to Mike Steenhoek, executive director of the Soy Transportation Coalition, the organization is taking part in an innovative project designed to demonstrate the effectiveness of load testing technology when assessing the load carrying capacity of rural bridges.
?The (STC) partnered on an initiative in which we promote the use of bridge load testing equipment,? Steenhoek said. ?You attach sensors to the underside of the bridge, and then you have test loads that go over the bridge at various parts of the bridge. You then get real data that allows you to make an objective, data-based determination about the condition of the bridge. That?s an initiative we?ve been partnering with counties and engineering firms.?
STC partnered with Kirkham Michael for the project, a civil engineering firm with operations in Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska. Steenhoek says a significant number of rural bridges in Iowa are load restricted, requiring vehicles transporting agricultural commodities to detour ? often at significant distances. This results in additional costs being inserted in the nation?s food delivery system and diminished profitability for Iowa farmers.
?We helped underwrite the costs of this overall initiative where (Kikham Michael) acquired some bridge testing equipment, they got trained on it, and then they did some testing for one of their client counties ? Van Buren County ? in southeast Iowa,? Steenhoek said. ?They tested several bridges that had pretty significant load restrictions. One bridge had a load restriction of 25 tons. They did those test loadings and were able to entirely remove that restriction so that all legal loads can use that bridge now.?
More information on the project can be found at soytransportation.org.
