Roads & Bridges

Bridges Roads and Parking Areas

Pennsylvania’s state parks and forests operate and maintain 860 vehicular bridges and hundreds of additional pedestrian bridges to move visitors across rivers and streams.

The typical design-lifespan of a vehicular bridge is 50 years. In some cases, one bridge may provide the only entrance to a park. Nearly 1 in 4 bridges within state parks and forests is used by school buses and residents living on private property within the boundaries of the public lands, and almost all have been used at some point for emergency vehicle access.

If such a bridge fails, so does the local economic engine

feeding nearby shops, restaurants, and other businesses, and countless residents’ and visitors’ lives are impacted. The U.S. Highway Department estimates that one in every three bridges in the country is structurally deficient or functionally obsolete.xxiv

NACE International. Highways and Bridges. (Accessed on 7/14/2017)

860 bridges


The amount of vehicular bridges maintained within PA state parks and forests

50 years


is the lifespan of a typical bridge

1 in 4


The number of bridges used by school buses and residents

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