Total bridges
314
Public highway bridges in Douglas County
County profile · official public datasets
Douglas County, KS
314 public highway bridges tracked in the FHWA National Bridge Inventory: 78% rated Good, 21.3% Fair, 0.6% Poor.
- 314
- Public bridges
- 78%
- Good condition
- 0.6%
- Poor condition
The verdict
According to the Federal Highway Administration's 2024 National Bridge Inventory.
Douglas County pairs a top-quartile lowest Poor-condition share among rated counties in the state with a newer average build year than the state inventory.
- Top 15%
- lowest Poor share in state
- 0.6%
- Poor-condition share
- 314
- public highway bridges
- 1989
- avg year built
Poor is an FHWA condition category from the lowest applicable component rating (4 or below), not a live crossing-safety or closure decision. Rankings cover counties with at least five public highway bridges.
Douglas County Bridge Snapshot
According to the Federal Highway Administration's 2024 National Bridge Inventory, Douglas County ranks #16 of 104 Kansas counties with at least 5 public highway bridges on Poor-condition share (lower share ranks better; currently 0.6%). Douglas County, Kansas contains 314 public highway bridges. Roughly 78% are rated “Good,” 21.3% “Fair,” and 0.6% “Poor.” Poor means the lowest applicable deck, superstructure, substructure, or culvert rating is 4 or below on the 0–9 NBI scale. It is a condition category, not a live safety or closure decision.
Responsible agencies inspect covered bridges on risk-based intervals under current NBIS rules and submit inventory data to FHWA annually. The list below shows every NBI-tracked bridge in the county. Use the “Sort by” controls to change the ordering, and click any row for its reported inspection date, traffic count, and condition fields.
Source: FHWA National Bridge Inventory. See methodology for full definitions.
Good condition
78%
245 of 314 rated 7-9
Fair condition
21.3%
67 of 314 rated 5-6
Poor condition
0.6%
2 of 314 rated 4 or below
In-state Poor-share rank
#16 of 104
Among Kansas counties with 5+ bridges, lower share ranks better
Condition distribution
Share of 314 NBI-tracked bridges by lowest applicable component rating.
Good 78% (245)
Fair 21.3% (67)
Poor 0.6% (2)
Douglas County's Poor-condition bridges carry 14,300 vehicle crossings a day
That is 0.9% of the county's reported daily bridge traffic on 0.3% of its bridges: Poor-condition structures carry more traffic than their share of the inventory. Each Poor bridge averages 14,300 crossings a day against 5,343 for a Good-condition one. A Poor rating is a condition category, not a closure or a live safety judgement; it means the lowest applicable component rating is 4 or below.
Computed over the 313 of 314 bridges in this county that report an average daily traffic count. Source: FHWA National Bridge Inventory, 2024 release.
18.2% of Douglas County's bridges have passed the 50-year mark
57 of the 314 bridges with a recorded construction year were built in 1974 or earlier. Age alone is not a defect: a well-maintained older bridge can rate Good, and 78% of this county's inventory does. Even so, this older cohort is the population from which future Poor ratings are drawn, which is why the age profile below matters alongside the condition split above.
Cutoff derives from the 2024 release year minus a 50-year design life. Source: FHWA National Bridge Inventory, 2024 release.
One structure carries 100% of the county's Poor-condition bridge traffic
K-10 HWY EASTBOUND over WAKARUSA RIV & LOC RD, built 1977, carries 14,300 vehicles a day, the most of any Poor-rated structure here. The county's Poor-condition exposure is concentrated rather than evenly spread, so the 2-bridge count understates how much of the daily burden sits on a single crossing.
Share is of the 14,300 daily crossings on Poor-rated bridges that report a traffic count. Source: FHWA National Bridge Inventory, 2024 release.
When Douglas County's bridges were built
314 bridges with a recorded construction year, grouped by decade
- 1920s 1
1920–1929
1 bridges
- 1930s 15
1930–1939
15 bridges
- 1950s 14
1950–1959
14 bridges
- 1960s 11
1960–1969
11 bridges
- 1970s
1970–1979
75 bridges
- 1980s
1980–1989
47 bridges
- 1990s 26
1990–1999
26 bridges
- 2000s
2000–2009
39 bridges
- 2010s
2010–2019
80 bridges
- 2020s 6
2020–2029
6 bridges
What this shows Construction peaked in the 2010s, when 80 of the county's bridges still in the inventory were built, which is 25.5% of those with a recorded year. That cohort is now 5 to 14 years old in the 2024 inventory. Its average build year is 1989, 17 years newer than the Kansas average of 1972.
How Douglas County compares with Kansas's closest counties by inventory size
The 5 Kansas counties nearest Douglas County in number of bridges, with their condition splits. Its 0.6% Poor share is the 1st-lowest of these 6. Its average build year of 1989 against a peer-group mean of 1973 is 16 years newer.
Showing the 5 closest of 103 Kansas counties eligible for comparison.
| County | Bridges | Good | Fair | Poor | Avg. built |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cherokee County | 317 | 42.6% | 53% | 4.4% | 1967 |
| Wyandotte County | 315 | 62.5% | 34.6% | 2.9% | 1980 |
| Cloud County | 314 | 52.5% | 40.8% | 6.7% | 1961 |
| Douglas County (this page) | 314 | 78% | 21.3% | 0.6% | 1989 |
| Jewell County | 307 | 57.3% | 35.5% | 7.2% | 1972 |
| Coffey County | 305 | 75.4% | 23.3% | 1.3% | 1984 |
Each share is of that county's own total tracked bridges; peers are the counties with 5 or more bridges whose inventory size is closest to Douglas County's. Source: FHWA National Bridge Inventory, 2024 release.
Nationwide counties with similar inventory size or average build year
Two NBI-derived peer sets for Douglas County, both outside Kansas so the neighborhoods are not the same-state size table above.
Similar inventory size
Nearest county inventories outside KS (314 bridges here).
- Jackson County, AL · 314 bridges
- Franklin County, MA · 314 bridges
- Audrain County, MO · 314 bridges
- Durham County, NC · 314 bridges
Similar average build year
Nearest mean year-built outside KS (1989 here).
- Harris County, TX · avg 1989 · 4,029 bridges
- Mecklenburg County, NC · avg 1989 · 746 bridges
- Buffalo County, NE · avg 1989 · 459 bridges
- Brazos County, TX · avg 1989 · 370 bridges
Source: FHWA National Bridge Inventory, 2024 release. Peers floor at 10 bridges so stub inventories cannot own the match.
Poor-condition bridges (2)
Read our methodology - how this data is sourced, computed, and verified.
Related
Data sourced from official public datasets. See our methodology for details. Retrieved and formatted by PlainBridges
Every figure on PlainBridges is rendered directly from federal source data, no number is typed in by an editor. This page draws directly on federal source data, no figure is typed in by an editor. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error. NBI condition categories reflect the latest reported inventory record, not a live safety, closure, or travel decision.