Bridge closings may soon overtake potholes as the most confounding infrastructure issue confronting Mississippi drivers.

This week alone, more than 100 city and county bridges judged deficient by federal National Bridge Inspection Standards and the Mississippi Office of State Aid Road Construction are being closed by the Mississippi Department of Transportation.

As of April 10, 542 local bridges have been closed across Mississippi according to the Office of State Aid Road Construction.

In the graphic below, place your cursor over a county to see how many bridges are closed in that jurisdiction.

Dashboard 1

To identify specific locations of bridges that have been closed, use the zoom in and out buttons in the bottom left corner of the Google map below. Click on the hammer icon to see the bridge’s details. Green car icons indicate bridges that were closed but recently have been reported re-opened. Yellow wrench icons indicate bridges recently given bond money for repairs.

If you have a photograph of one of the closed bridges, please add them to our database by following these steps:

  1. Click on the icon in the top right corner of the Google map above, where it says ‘view larger map.’
  2. Once on that page, hit the ‘Edit’ button on the left side of the screen. (If that option doesn’t appear, you may need to login to or create a Google account.)
  3. When you’ve found the bridge you’re looking for, click on its pin (the little blue hammer) and press the camera icon in the bottom right of the pop-up to upload your image.

If there are bridges in your community that are closed but not reflected in these maps, add them to the Google map by clicking here and following these steps:

  1. In the first column, enter the body of water or road that the bridge intersects.
  2. If you know how to find the bridge’s coordinates on Google, enter the latitude and longitude into the second and third columns, respectively. If you can’t find them, don’t worry, just enter the address into the description column and we’ll take care of it from there.
  3. Once you’ve added the bridge to the database, e-mail us a photo so we can verify its closure (try to include a sign that indicates the bridge is closed or the next best visual evidence) at alex@mississippitoday.org.

To ensure accuracy and ease of use, please add only those bridges that you know are closed, do not add bridges that already are in the database and do not delete or alter previous entries.

Read the latest on bridge closures in Mississippi.

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Alex Rozier, from New York City, is Mississippi Today’s data and environment reporter. His work has appeared in the Boston Globe, Open Secrets, and on NBC.com. In 2019, Alex was a grantee through the Pulitzer Center’s Connected Coastlines program, which supported his coverage around the impact of climate change on Mississippi fisheries.