New bridge number request form - local system
Questions? Contact bridgedatarequests.dot@state.mn.us
Bridge Definition: A structure, including supports erected over a depression or an obstruction, such as water, a highway, or a railway, having a track or passageway for carrying traffic or other moving loads, and having an opening measured horizontally along the center of the roadway of ten feet or more between undercopings of abutments, between the spring line of arches, or between the extreme ends of openings for multiple boxes.
- This definition of a bridge includes multiple pipes where the clear distance between openings (spans) is less than one-half of the smaller contiguous opening.
- This definition of a bridge includes only those railroad and pedestrian bridges over a public highway or street.
Structures that meet the Minnesota bridge definition are required to have an assigned bridge number, be inventoried, and regularly inspected. Structures that do not meet the definition can still have a bridge number assigned, but are not required to be inventoried or inspected as bridges under Minnesota Statute 165.01.
These structures meet the definition of a bridge and are required to have bridge numbers.
- A pedestrian only structure over a road.
- Any type of structure for highway vehicles with a span (opening) of 10 feet or more.
- An 8-foot-wide box culvert under a road at a 37-degree skew.
- The bridge length of this structure is 10 feet calculated as (8 feet) / (cos 37°).
These structures do not meet the definition of a bridge and are not required to have bridge numbers.
- A pedestrian only structure over a waterway.
- An off-highway recreational vehicle bridge over a waterway.
- Two 8-foot-wide box culverts with 8-inch-thick walls separated by 3.0 feet of fill.
- The clear distance between openings is 4.3 feet calculated as (3.0 feet) + (0.66 feet x 2).
- The box culverts are spaced farther than one-half of the smallest opening and are not a bridge (4.3 feet > 4.0 feet).