Evaluation and Testing of Five Bridges for Northampton County, Pa

Bridge weight limits can adversely impact safety, service delivery, and economic activity. They force first responders, school buses, deliveries, and commercial vehicles to travel on longer, less efficient routes, resulting in longer response times, business inefficiencies, and higher costs when these vehicles need to detour around specific bridges. To determine if five bridges in Northampton County, PA required bridge weight limit postings, Pennoni’s Intelligent Infrastructure Systems (IIS) coordinated field testing and load rating analysis using THMPER™(Targeted Hits for Modal Parameter Estimation and Rating). THMPER™ was developed by Drexel University and allows for the efficient collection of structural response measurements. The bridges were found to have load ratings greater than 40 tons indicated that each bridge has sufficient load-carrying capacity and does not need to be posted for structural safety reasons. IIS is working with the County and PennDOT to have the postings removed.