BridgeSafety

Editorial Policy

Last updated: June 2026

This page explains who is behind BridgeSafety, how our pages are produced, and the standards every page on bridgesafety.org is held to. We publish it so readers, journalists, and search engines can judge our work by a clear, stated process rather than guesswork.

Who runs BridgeSafety

BridgeSafety is an independent publication built and maintained by the BridgeSafety Team. We are not funded, owned, or directed by any of the agencies, companies, or organizations that appear in our data. We do not accept paid placements, sponsored rankings, or fees to add, alter, or remove an entry. Our editorial judgment is not for sale.

How our content is produced

BridgeSafety covers U.S. bridge safety and structural condition. Our pages are assembled programmatically from the FHWA National Bridge Inventory (NBI): we fetch the primary records, process them with documented, repeatable methods, and render them as pages a non-specialist can read. We parse the FHWA annual National Bridge Inventory release, normalize each bridge’s deck, superstructure, and substructure condition ratings, and compute a single readable condition grade. The sufficiency rating and any structural-deficiency flag are carried through verbatim.

We are transparent that this is a data-publishing operation, not a wire service of on-the-ground reporters. Where we add narrative, that narrative describes and interprets the underlying public data — it never invents facts the data does not contain. Automated assembly is reviewed against the source, and the methodology behind any score or ranking is documented and linkable.

Editorial standards

  • Primary source only. Every figure traces back to the FHWA National Bridge Inventory (NBI), cited and linkable on the page where it appears.
  • No invented numbers. If a value is not in the underlying public data, it does not appear on bridgesafety.org. We never generate synthetic statistics to fill gaps.
  • Documented methodology. Rankings, grades, and composite scores are editorial calculations derived from public data using stated, repeatable formulas — not certifications or endorsements.
  • Dated and refreshed. Refreshed once per year, within roughly 60 days of FHWA posting the annual NBI file.
  • Corrections welcome. When a reader or the source identifies an error, we fix it — see our Corrections Policy.

Verification and fact-checking

Because our numbers come straight from the FHWA National Bridge Inventory (NBI), our verification work is about faithful processing rather than re-reporting. The detail of how we check figures before publication is described in our Fact-Checking Policy.

Ownership and funding transparency

BridgeSafety is part of a small portfolio of independent public-data sites. The site is free to read and carries no display advertising. We do not sell personal data. Where an outbound link is an affiliate link, it is disclosed and never changes our editorial judgment.

Contact

Questions about how a page was produced, or about these standards? hello@bridgesafety.org. See also our About page and our Corrections Policy.