On April 22, 2025, the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) ordered the Fairfax Bridge closed to all traffic, effective immediately. This was a safety measure to protect the traveling public due to the extremely poor condition of the bridge. The closure effectively stranded 40 residents on the south side of the Carbon River and State Route 165, with few if any alternative routes.
The Fairfax Bridge is a 494 foot long bridge comprised of timber trestle approaches and a 240 foot long three-hinge steel deck arch main span. Previously known as the O’Farrell Bridge, it was completed in 1921 as a joint venture between Pierce County and Washington State at a cost of $80,000. The bridge’s main span sits about 250 feet above the Carbon River and replaced trains as the main route for accessing the town of Fairfax.
The bridge closure has since sparked outrage in the media and with the affected residents. Jayme Peloli is a member of the Wilkeson Town Council and a vocal critic of the State’s handling of the bridge’s condition over the years. The State, Peloli argues, has effectively watched the bridge deteriorate and done nothing about it.
The bridge’s condition really became an issue in 2008, when bridge inspectors began noting areas of peeling paint, rust blooms and minor pitting. WSDOT has since noted that the bridge was last painted in 1988. As reported by the News Tribune on November 11, 2025, successive inspections in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2013 and 2015 all reported the same issues.
In 2013, WSDOT closed the bridge to commercial vehicles. In 2018, the paint system was described as “failing” and section loss was up to 100% is some areas. The section loss was spreading in 2020, 2022 and 2024 reports.
In response to the worsening condition, the State reduced the bridge’s load rating three times between 2009 and 2024. Its final rating was a mere 8 tons, compared to 36 tons for the HS-20 design truck.
When asked by the media why the bridge’s deficiencies were never addressed, the answer was a familiar one – lack of funding. Washington owns, operates and maintains 3,384 bridges. Of those bridges, 315 are older than 80. Of their steel bridges, 55 are in need of painting, 47 are overdue for paint and just 6 were in the process of being painted. The problem with the Fairfax Bridge is it just didn’t rate high enough among the State’s priorities.
Peloli has asked the State Auditor to investigate the issue, stating the State’s lack of response to the deteriorating Fairfax Bridge as a “deep rooted issue with maintaining rural bridges.”
But you can hardly blame WSDOT. In recent years the State has faced some severe transportation funding challenges:
- In 2013, the courts sided with 21 tribes and required WSDOT to put more funding into correcting fish barriers under state highways. This injunction added a costly fish passage program to WSDOT’s already lengthy “to-do” list.
- The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, increased construction activity by Sound Transit and other local agencies and high inflation meant construction costs went up substantially
- WSDOT and lawmakers – facing some difficult transportation funding decisions – decided to continue funding large mega projects, shifting funding meant for preservation to these capital improvement type projects
- Facing increasing costs for the Fish Passage Program, WSDOT has had to cut back even further – leaving a preservation program at funding levels that aren’t even keeping up with current deterioration levels
Deterioration is an exponential curve. As bridges age, the rate of deterioration increases. WSDOT and lawmakers need to increase funding for bridge improvements, not reduce it. By reducing it from an already inadequate level, we only get further and further behind that curve.
With inadequate funding levels, decision makers must decide how best to spend these limited transportation dollars. Legally, the State had to address fish passage – the courts said so. And the State can hardly shutdown mega projects like the SR 509 Gateway project or the SR 520 Rest of the West project – shutting down and restarting such projects later is time consuming and costly. The only obvious place to trim back was preservation.
And preservation funding wasn’t zero. There are still some projects moving forward, just not enough to keep things from getting much worse overall. Only those limited projects had to be prioritized. The State focused on freight routes – like I-5 and I-90 – the keys to Washington’s commerce and economy. Unfortunately, when it comes down to prioritizing projects, the Fairfax Bridge just didn’t make the cut.
The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) tracks the percentage of bridges in poor condition by deck area. When that percentage exceeds 10%, FHWA steps in to help get the number back under 10%. Luckily for WSDOT, the number of new structures from fish passage and the mega projects is increasing the denominator faster than the rate of deterioration. For now, the State is able to stay below that 10% value – but for how much longer?
Which then begs the question – how should an agency like WSDOT manage its assets? Should we target the “worst-first,” regardless of traffic volumes or freight usage? Or should we be more strategic?
In a perfect world, a steel bridge would be painted before the paint had completely failed and the underlying steel was still in good condition. But due to funding constraints, we have to wait longer to paint bridges. And by the time we get to these bridges, the steel has been exposed for so long that irreversible damage to the steel has taken place. And that damage is expensive to correct, making such projects that much more expensive. A literal snow ball effect.
And why are costs rising? Inflation makes material and labor more costly, but there is also a local inflation effect. The compounding problems of light rail expansion, fish passage, mega projects and other heavy civil infrastructure work in our area means we simply do not have enough resources to go around. There aren’t enough contractors to do the work and not enough engineers to design it all. With limited capacity, some contractors are putting in outrageous bids for this work – and still winning the work. And we want this work done quickly, meaning more overtime for laborers and overall higher wages.
We need to rethink transportation and reassess its value to our society. Without roads and bridges, our supermarket shelves are empty, our Amazon packages don’t get delivered and our fuel pumps are empty. Before we start building new stuff or trying to save the fish through transportation, we need to fix what we have. We have billions of dollars of high value assets out there that you and I own – and they are wasting away.
And what about the Fairfax Bridge? WSDOT conducted a planning study which advanced two options to deal with the bridge. The first option would construct a new bridge to the north of the existing bridge at a cost of $160 million and would take 6 years to complete. The second option would demolish the bridge without a replacement at a cost of $80 million, $46.6 million of which would compensate the 40 residents stranded by the bridge’s removal. Neither option is currently funded as of November 2025.
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