“The Department of Transportation, for years, has been underfunded for preservation and maintenance, and what this tells you is that our bridges and our roads need to be invested in — those things that are fundamental to keeping them in service and in good service.”
“I think what I actually said [to lawmakers] was I was going to make preservation sexy again.”
[On the condition of the Carbon River Bridge] “The flange on the beam was actually waving, which I have not seen since college, but it’s a sign of failure.”
With a record $15.5 billion transportation budget and a long backlog of aging infrastructure, Washington State’s new Secretary of Transportation, Julie Meredith, is putting her shoulder to the wheel at a pivotal moment.
In her first interview on Inside Olympia Meredith, a 30-year agency veteran and licensed engineer, acknowledged the enormity of the challenge. “The Department of Transportation, for years, has been underfunded for preservation and maintenance,” she said. “It is time for us to look at our infrastructure and invest in what we have to keep it in a state of good repair.”
More than 560 bridges are in poor condition, and ferry service is just beginning to recover. Meredith confirmed that the hybrid-electric ferry Wenatchee will return to service this summer, and solicitations for three to five new vessels are now open — including from out-of-state builders.
Meanwhile, major projects like the Hood Canal Bridge and the Carbon River Bridge near Mount Rainier highlight the urgency of infrastructure preservation. “When they looked at the beams… the flange on the beam was actually waving, which I have not seen since college,” she said. “It’s a sign of failure.”
Meredith emphasized a need for realism: “We didn’t get to this state of transportation overnight, and it’s not going to turn around in just a year.”
Looking ahead, Meredith is focused on expanding multimodal options, managing EV infrastructure amid federal funding shifts, and incorporating artificial intelligence into traffic systems. “AI will make our lives easier… It should help us manage the systems in a more effective way.”
Despite rising costs and limited funding, Meredith remains optimistic: “The goal was to finish what we started.”