County profile · official public datasets

Travis County, TX

1,544 public highway bridges tracked in the FHWA National Bridge Inventory: 63.9% rated Good, 35.9% Fair, 0.2% Poor.

1,544
Public bridges
63.9%
Good condition
0.2%
Poor condition

The verdict

According to the Federal Highway Administration's 2024 National Bridge Inventory.

Travis County pairs a better-than-median Poor-condition share among rated counties in the state with a newer average build year than the state inventory.

Top 36%
lowest Poor share in state
0.2%
Poor-condition share
1,544
public highway bridges
1988
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.

Travis County Bridge Snapshot

According to the Federal Highway Administration's 2024 National Bridge Inventory, Travis County ranks #90 of 247 Texas counties with at least 5 public highway bridges on Poor-condition share (lower share ranks better; currently 0.2%). Travis County, Texas contains 1,544 public highway bridges. Roughly 63.9% are rated “Good,” 35.9% “Fair,” and 0.2% “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.

Total bridges

1,544

Public highway bridges in Travis County

Good condition

63.9%

986 of 1,544 rated 7-9

Fair condition

35.9%

555 of 1,544 rated 5-6

Poor condition

0.2%

3 of 1,544 rated 4 or below

In-state Poor-share rank

#90 of 247

Among Texas counties with 5+ bridges, lower share ranks better

Condition distribution

Share of 1,544 NBI-tracked bridges by lowest applicable component rating.

Good
63.9% (986)
Fair
35.9% (555)
Poor
0.2% (3)

Travis County's Poor-condition bridges carry 178,290 vehicle crossings a day

That is 0.6% of the county's reported daily bridge traffic on 0.2% of its bridges: Poor-condition structures carry more traffic than their share of the inventory. Each Poor bridge averages 59,430 crossings a day against 17,036 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 1,544 of 1,544 bridges in this county that report an average daily traffic count. Source: FHWA National Bridge Inventory, 2024 release.

24.9% of Travis County's bridges have passed the 50-year mark

384 of the 1,544 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 63.9% 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 80.4% of the county's Poor-condition bridge traffic

IH 35 over FM 1825 N / GRAND AVE, built 1990, carries 143,268 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 3-bridge count understates how much of the daily burden sits on a single crossing.

Share is of the 178,290 daily crossings on Poor-rated bridges that report a traffic count. Source: FHWA National Bridge Inventory, 2024 release.

When Travis County's bridges were built

1,544 bridges with a recorded construction year, grouped by decade

bridges

What this shows Construction peaked in the 2000s, when 334 of the county's bridges still in the inventory were built, which is 21.6% of those with a recorded year. That cohort is now 15 to 24 years old in the 2024 inventory. Its average build year is 1988, 8 years newer than the Texas average of 1980.

Source FHWA National Bridge Inventory (year built) As of 2024 NBI release

How Travis County compares with Texas's closest counties by inventory size

The 5 Texas counties nearest Travis County in number of bridges, with their condition splits. Its 0.2% Poor share is the 2nd-lowest of these 6. Its average build year of 1988 against a peer-group mean of 1994 is 6 years older.

Showing the 5 closest of 246 Texas counties eligible for comparison.

Bridge inventory size and condition shares for Travis County and the 5 Texas counties closest to it in inventory size
County Bridges Poor
Travis County (this page) 1,544 0.2%
Williamson County 1,170 0.3%
Collin County 1,127 0.1%
Denton County 991 0.9%
Fort Bend County 795 2.5%
El Paso County 783 0.8%

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 Travis 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 Travis County, both outside Texas so the neighborhoods are not the same-state size table above.

Similar inventory size

Nearest county inventories outside TX (1,544 bridges here).

Similar average build year

Nearest mean year-built outside TX (1988 here).

Source: FHWA National Bridge Inventory, 2024 release. Peers floor at 10 bridges so stub inventories cannot own the match.

Poor-condition bridges (3)

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.