The number of structurally deficient bridges is actually down by about 7,000 from 2017, but those bridges weren't fixed. The number fell because the Federal Highway Administration weakened the standards of what it means for a bridge to be deficient, the report explains.
The collapse of a bridge earlier this week in Tennessee is raising new alarms about the delicate state of infrastructure across the U.S.
There's another way of making that number go down