Maybe Governor Daugaard should recruit some bridge engineers from Minnesota. Governing compiles Federal Highway Administration bridge inspection data for 2012 and finds that South Dakota ties with Rhode Island for the fourth-highest percentage of structurally deficient bridges in the nation, behind Iowa, Oklahoma, and Pennsylvania.
Now don't get nervous on the Exit 109 overpass: "structurally deficient" means one or more bridge components show deterioration, not that the bridge is unsafe. And you'd expect some deterioration up in this harsh Great Plains climate, right?
But compare the numbers for South Dakota and Minnesota:
| State | Total Bridges |
Structurally Deficient |
Functionally Obsolete |
StrucDef% | FuncObs% |
| South Dakota | 5,870 | 1,208 | 237 | 20.6 | 4.0 |
| Minnesota | 13,121 | 1,190 | 423 | 9.1 | 3.2 |
("Functionally obsolete" means the bridge was built according to outdated standards.)
Minnesota has more than twice as many bridges as South Dakota, subject to the same snow and temperature extremes, yet they have 18 fewer structurally deficient bridges. Percentage-wise, South Dakota's bridge deficiency is twice as bad as Minnesota's. That's one more sign that Minnesota does a better job of investing its public wealth in public goods.