Minnesota's Preservation of State-Owned Historic Bridges for Long-Term Transportation Use: Fid-Bau Portal

Minnesota's Preservation of State-Owned Historic Bridges for Long-Term Transportation Use

Frame, III, Robert M. / Olson, Steven A. / Squitieri, Amy

Bridge engineers have long been accustomed to working within standards and guidelines, such as those promulgated by the Bureau of Public Roads (BPR), state highway commissions, and the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO). However, with the passage of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) in 1966, engineers encountered a governmental element that was not necessarily in harmony with the existing process, nor was it managed by familiar agencies and professionals. The NHPA vastly widened the involvement of the federal government, and subsequently the state governments, in the protection of the nation's historic resources. Simultaneously, the Act inserted cultural resource management, in the form of the Section 106 process, into the established system of designing, building, and maintaining the nation's bridges. The NHPA proved to be a controversial addition to bridge management and, almost a half-century later, remains troublesome to some agencies, stakeholders, and projects. This paper presents an innovative approach to the management of historic bridges that was developed for the Minnesota Department of Transportation (Mn/DOT) by Mead & Hunt and HNTB. Mn/DOT found the task of working through the historic and engineering issues associated with managing historic bridges to be time-consuming, inefficient, and costly. Hoping to streamline this process, Mn/DOT worked with Mead & Hunt and HNTB to develop management plans for selected historic bridges that would incorporate a new collaborative approach by the historian and the engineer.