The Nation's transportation infrastructure is in dire need of repair and rehabilitation. Substantial increases in the number of vehicles and the miles driven over the next 25 years will drive a large requirement in new infrastructure as well.
The traditional approach to replacing, rehabilitating and building new bridges and roadbeds relies on materials and designs that are substantially life limited. The Nation's 600,000 bridges, for example, average 43 years in age, and the best of these have a 50-year life expectation. Recent bridge collapses and loss of life have raised the public's commitment to invest in bridge infrastructure, yet the investment required simply to bring non-compliant bridges into compliance is more than $150 billion. Replacing bridges that will be beyond their useful lives would cost a multiple of that number.
ECC is working on advanced methods for using carbon fiber and other advanced composite technologies to strengthen and protect existing bridge infrastructure. The Company's efforts are focused on a kit technology that will be easy to apply and cure. ECC believes that such a kit approach would lower the costs associated with the massive rehabilitation effort that the U.S. faces, as well as reduce the cost of new bridge and roadbed infrastructure.
