The Reason Foundation is a nonprofit think tank that produces public policy research on a number of issues, including issues related to the nation's highway infrastructure.

The foundation's annual highway performance report for 2005, released in June, contained a category ranking each state's percentage of deficient bridges in relation to the total number of spans in each respective state. The report's findings should be viewed with heightened interest and concern, considering the collapse of the Interstate 35W bridge linking Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minn., on Aug. 1.

That especially applies to Pennsylvania, which ranked second-highest in terms of the percentage of deficient bridges for the year in question. Only Rhode Island had a higher percentage of deficient spans, although it has fewer bridges than the much larger Keystone State.

Rhode Island's percentage was listed as 53.01; Pennsylvania's, 39 percent. The top five states in terms of lowest percentage of deficient bridges were Nevada, 3.89 percent; Arizona, 5.5 percent; Wyoming, 12.37 percent; Colorado, 12.96 percent; and Minnesota, the site of this month's tragedy, 13.16 percent. According to the report, there are 36 states where at least 20 percent of the bridges are deficient; in 48 states, at least 10 percent of bridges are deficient.

Robert Poole, director of the Reason Foundation's transportation studies, noted correctly that the states continue to fall farther behind in the goal of keeping their bridges safe.

"We're prospering as a nation, driving more as commuters and shipping more goods, and that's pounding the highways and wearing them out," he said. "We need to rethink how we fund and repair our roads and bridges."

Despite the current stepped-up initiative by the Rendell administration to address the commonwealth's bridge and highway needs, it's right to reflect on the impact of deteriorated highways on the state's economy. Businesses and industries considering expansion factor in ease of moving raw materials, finished products and other goods before deciding where to locate.

Pennsylvania can't tout itself as ideal for attracting new business and industrial development when studies continue to uncover unflattering realities that exist here. Likewise, deterioration isn't a tourism asset.

Of the 596,980 bridges in the Reason Foundation's current National Bridge Inventory, 147,913 — 24.52 percent — were reported deficient in the newly released findings.

The study found that, at the current rate of repair, it will take 50 years to fix today's deficient bridges.

That is too long to wait.

It is to be hoped that Pennsylvania's proposed stepped-up initiative will, over the next few years, put the commonwealth in much better standing in future Reason Foundation bridge reports, as well as in studies conducted by others.