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The agency is seeking to replace the 79-year-old Goethals Bridge, he said, which is outdated and in need of constant maintenance.

“The bridge is structurally sound,” he said. “We’ve taken great pains to keep that bridge and all of our bridges structurally sound. But obviously as the bridge gets older more problems could develop.”

In Ways Large and Small, Many Bridges Meet Definition of ‘Deficient’
By RUSS BUETTNER and SEWELL CHAN

More than 2,000 bridges in New York State meet the federal government’s definition of “structurally deficient,” from the heavily traveled on-ramps of the Brooklyn Bridge to a 28-foot span across Trout Brook near the Canadian border.

The bridge that collapsed Wednesday in Minneapolis had also been labeled structurally deficient. But the term can have a variety of implications, and does not necessarily mean that any of the bridges are in real danger of significant failure. Typically the finding means inspectors have identified some kind of deterioration, cracks or movement.

The ramps to the Brooklyn Bridge, which carries about 132,000 vehicles a day, were downgraded last year from fair to poor condition. Yesterday, city officials said $149 million in repairs to the span were under way and that the bridge was safe. Still, city inspectors were at the bridge yesterday afternoon to check on its condition.

Those inspectors were not the only government officials scrambling yesterday to reassure the public that a tragedy on the order of the Minneapolis collapse is not likely in New York, even though the region’s bridges are among the oldest in the country and endure punishing winters and extreme traffic loads.

Gov. Eliot Spitzer directed the Department of Transportation, the Thruway Authority, the Bridge Authority and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to inspect the 49 bridges in the state with similar designs to the bridge that collapsed in Minneapolis, including the Tappan Zee.

In New Jersey, Gov. Jon S. Corzine ordered state transportation officials to immediately examine all of the state’s 6,400 bridges, even though only 2,400 of those are under state control.