The equipment, called Structural Health Monitoring, was made possible when the West Virginia Department of Transportation received a Strengthening Mobility and Revolutionizing Transportation (SMART) Grant Program of $820,000 to install the equipment.
West Virginia is the first state in the country to use the Stage One SMART Grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation specifically for this type of advanced bridge monitoring.
Shaz Umer, director of strategic initiatives of the U.S. Department of Transportation, said the system's real-time data collection is a game changer.
“It offers continuous monitoring that surpasses traditional biannual inspections,” Umer said during an announcement of the system at the Guyandotte boat ramp near the bridge. “The sensors detect subtle changes in vibration patterns and indicate potential structural deterioration and damage.”
Umer said the system showed its effectiveness when detecting a 3.3 magnitude earthquake several months ago. The system also provides information on the bridge's response to environmental factors such as temperature fluctuations. That helps with maintenance decisions, he said.
"This project increases bridge safety. It utilizes intelligent sensors to identify areas of concern for the bridge within minutes, as opposed to waiting for an incident to happen,” Umer said.
Benefits of the new system
The system will also save taxpayers approximately $350,000 annually, Umer said, as a cable-stayed bridge routinely costs thousands of dollars in maintenance every year.
The system will decrease the possibility of a major roadway detour due to a bridge closure. The system will also help improve travel time and safety benefits for people of West Virginia, Ohio and all those using and under the bridge, Umer said.
Stephen Todd Rumbaugh, West Virginia transportation secretary, said the East Huntington Bridge was chosen due to its complicated structure. The bridge opened to traffic in August 1985.
"If you're going to try to monitor and get ahead of the game on anything, you want to take one of the most complicated structures you have ... because the more preventative you can do up front saves more in the end. It's better to be proactive than reactive," Rumbaugh said. “We knew it wasn't quite performing up the way it should be, so if it was a good fit for the program and it is already, we're getting fruits of the labor, so to speak.”
Some of the sensors on the bridge’s cables were put on during a routine inspection in November 2024 followed by repairs that took a month, causing stress on local businesses, residents and first responders. The black dots or boxes on the cables that drivers see on the bridge cables are the sensors, Rumbaugh said.
Finding problems early
Gov. Patrick Morrisey said the span is a key bridge due to the number of vehicles that cross it daily — about 14,000.
“No one wants to see holes and bridges and problems, so if you could be proactive and preventative in advance, which I think is what's happening here, that's good for safety, it's good for West Virginians and obviously it's going to continue to help commerce and infrastructure,” Morrisey said.
In West Virginia, 21% of bridges are structurally deficient, nearly triple the national average, according to the state Division of Highways.
"It means we can detect problems early before they become emergencies,” Rumbaugh said. “It means we can prioritize our resources, making smarter more cost-effective repairs, and most importantly, it means safer roads, stronger connection and peace of mind for every West Virginian who travels across one of our bridges.”
While the system will give engineers real-time data on the bridge's condition, Tracy Brown, a state bridge engineer, said hands-on routine inspections will continue.
Wael Zatar, Marshall University professor of civil engineering, said federal law requires bridge inspections every six years and hands-on inspections every few years depending on the importance of the bridge.
Brown said it’s still important to get hands-on inspections on occasion to verify what the sensors are showing.
The equipment has been on the bridge for several months and has already identified future maintenance needs for the bridge, which it wouldn’t have caught until years later, Rumbaugh said.
Brown said this is a big step in maintaining bridges.
“The thing I always used to say, you know, we [have] roughly 7,300 bridges. I said I would love for us to be able to inspect every bridge we [have] every single day. But now it's becoming possible with technology, we're able to see real-time data any time we want to see it on this bridge,” Brown said. “We'll see where the technology takes us, but right now we'll still be doing the human inspections.”
Benefits already seen
Since they have been put on, the sensors have alerted engineers of the February earthquake near Oak Hill, Ohio — that was felt by some in Cabell County — and more damage after that, Zatar said.
"Which is important because otherwise the bridge should have been stopped and inspection should have been done after the earthquake. It (is) just something that that is very typical,” Zatar said.
Zatar said they have also found vibrations in the cables that they were not aware of before that could be causing damage in the dampers.
"And also it raised the deterioration of the bridge, so that was not known to us last year,” Zatar said.
Zatar said they have been monitoring it and have seen the vibrations being repeated at least 12 times in the last few months from different cables.
"Just that one fact alone will allow us to prolong the life of this bridge,” Brown said. “The longer life you can get out of it, the more beneficial it is to more taxpayer savings."
As time goes on, engineers will be able to receive more information, which will allow the bridge's lifespan to grow even more, Brown said.
Brown said the bridge is in good condition. Workers took care of some corrosion that was in the cables last year.
What's next
Now that the West Virginia Department of Transportation received funding for the Stage 1 grant, it is eligible to apply for a Stage 2 grant, which could provide up to $15 million. Zatar said they plan to apply and hope to provide six additional bridges with the SHM system. The state is focusing on complex structures for now such as cablestayed bridges, truss bridges and tied-arch bridges.
The SMART grant program is a federal grant program administered through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to conduct demonstration projects focused on advanced smart community technologies and systems in order to improve transportation efficiency and safety, according to a WVDOT news release.
The grant paid for 20 cable accelerometers, 19 deck and tower accelerometers, six tiltmeters, four crack meters, six displacement sensors, a weather station and a vessel collision detection system. The network tracks stress, movement and potential damage, feeding data into a smart platform that adjusts reading frequency by sensor type.
© 2025 The Charleston Gazette (Charleston, W.Va.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
