Binghamton Mayor Jared Kraham said a project to inspect railroad bridges in the city is progressing quickly.
Kraham said engineers contracted by the city have inspected most of the 28 railroad bridges in Binghamton. The city contracted with an engineering group, HUNT-EAS, to do the inspections following the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio earlier this year.
Kraham said, so far, engineers have found some issues with some of the structures, but nothing that poses imminent danger.
“They haven’t found anything that they felt required any kind of emergency closure or shutting down of traffic, whether it be automobile or rail traffic, but they are finding pretty significant damage, lack of maintenance, on these bridges,” Kraham said.
The bridges are the property of railway companies, mostly Norfolk Southern. That means the engineers can only visually inspect the bridges.
Kraham said the engineers are mostly through completing the visual inspections, but they’re running into delays receiving inspection reports from the federal government through public records requests.