Calcasieu River Bridge on I-10 : Rating of 6.6 out if 100

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Officially known as the WWII Memorial Bridge, the I-10 bridge over the Calcasieu River is unofficially known as a public menace. It looms over the river, defiantly standing against all odds. Literally.

Built in 1952, the 64-year-old bridge has seen us go from no space program, to landing on the moon, to launching a global communications infrastructure. It’s older than John Malkovich, Hulk Hogan, and Cornel West. It was around before we had cell phones, personal computers, and just about everything else we take for granted in 2016. Heck, it’s even older than the McDonald’s Corporation and all of the Kardashians.

It might still be standing, but we all know it’s not safe. In fact, if you Google “Calcasieu River Bridge sufficiency rating”, you’ll pull up a lot of hits related to an article from Travel and Leisure magazine that listed the I-10 bridge as one of the most unsafe in the nation.

But the funny thing is that the article is from 2013. If you follow the data back to its source - the National Bridge Inventory Database - things are a little different now.

They’re worse.

Much worse.

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Back when the Travel and Leisure article went up, the NBI gave the Calcasieu River Bridge a sufficiency rating of 9.9%. Out of 100.

If any of our kids brought home a test with a 9.9% score, we probably wouldn’t be very happy. I’m not sure why we’re okay with a bridge that over 72,000 cars cross every day having that low of a score.

But wait! There’s more.

According to the NBI today (March 2017), the bridge has a sufficiency rating of 6.6

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That's right, its official rating is 6.6% out of 100. If the bridge was an elementary school student, the only question it didn't get wrong on its test was writing its name on the Scantron. And even then, we're not entirely sure it managed to spell it right.

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