Learn More About Long-Term Bridge Performance at the TRB Annual Meeting

What is bridge performance? What do we need to do to ensure our Nation's bridges are safe, efficient, durable, and economical? And how can we manage our bridges better? These questions and more will be addressed at a session on the Long-Term Bridge Performance (LTBP) program at the Transportation Research Board (TRB) Annual Meeting in Washington, DC, on January 15, 2009. The session will run from 8 a.m. until noon. The event is sponsored by the TRB Committee on Structures Maintenance, Committee on Bridge Management, and Committee on Dynamics and Field Testing of Bridges.

"Come hear from the team engaged in the Long-Term Bridge Performance program, the Federal Highway Administration's flagship program to conduct a comprehensive examination of our Nation's workhorse highway bridges," says Hamid Ghasemi, LTBP program manager at the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA).

The 20-year LTBP research initiative will inspect, evaluate, and periodically monitor a representative sample of bridges nationwide. These bridges will represent many structural types and materials and a variety of conditions, exposures, and locations. The TRB session will provide more details on the plans for the program, including covering such topics as, "LTBP: Why a 20-Year Research Program and What Do We Expect to Achieve?," "Defining and Measuring Bridge Performance," "Critical Long-Term Bridge Performance Data Priorities and Bridge Selections," "Bridge Monitoring: Instrumentation," and "LTBP Database."

For more information on the LTBP program session or the LTBP program in general, contact Hamid Ghasemi at FHWA, 202-493-3024 (email: ltbp@dot.gov), or visit www.tfhrc.gov/ltbp.

Figure 2. Screen shot. A screen shot from FHWA's Long-Term Bridge Performance program Web site (www.tfhrc.gov/ltbp).

		November 2008
		FHWA-HRT-09-008