Painting railroad bridges

Some folks in the Cincinnati area want railroads to paint their bridges. It seems the bridges haven't been painted in decades. They're eyesores.

A CSX spokesman says the company realizes the bridges may need a paint job, but it can't afford to repaint all 11,000 or so bridges that it owns.

The company's focus is to make sure the bridges are structurally safe.

I've heard similar complaints about the CSX bridge over U.S. 60 in Barboursville, but I've also heard an explanation as to why CSX isn't all that keen to paint the bridge. Namely, the old paint on the bridge probably contains lead. To remove the old paint, CSX would have to cocoon the bridge, sandblast the old paint and haul the sand to a hazardous waste landfill. That's an expensive process.

And because the peeling paint is mainly an eyesore with no known danger to the structural safety of the bridge, why should CSX spend hundreds of thousands of dollars if not millions to paint it? What would CSX get out of it?

I've noticed similar paint deterioration at similar railroad bridges in this area, but from what I've seen, the railroad bridges over the Ohio and Kanawha rivers look pretty good paintwise.