A citizens group has charged that because of campaign contributions from highway interests, little has been done about fixing the nation's 72,000 structurally deficient bridges.

State and construction industry officials immediately disputed yesterday's findings, in a report by the nonprofit Pennsylvania Public Interest Research Group called "Greasing the Wheels: the Crossroads of Campaign Money and Transportation Policy."

The group said that despite the August 2007 collapse of the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis that killed 13, Congress directed only 74 of 704 highway earmarks in last year's transportation appropriations bill to bridges, tunnels or overpasses.

"Most of the $570 million went for new highways and other new construction," the group said, because millions of dollars "also flowed in another direction, from highway construction companies and the trade associations that represent them to the campaign coffers of elected officials in Harrisburg and Washington, D.C."

"In our current political system, elected officials must raise huge sums of campaign contributions from major donors to win re-election," said PennPIRG Field Organizer Catherine Ngo.

"In part because of this, we believe that transportation spending is skewed toward road-widening and new highway projects favored by developers, road builders and the other interests who make those contributions."

She said elected officials also find it easier to defer preventive maintenance in favor of new construction "because constituents don't notice it."

A spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, which has shifted its funding focus to bridge repairs in recent years, disputed the findings.

PennDOT has increased annual spending on bridges from $259 million to nearly $1.6 billion during Gov. Ed Rendell's administration, spokesman Rich Kirkpatrick said.

"This year, for the first time in memory, the number of [structurally deficient] bridges has fallen. It reached a peak of 6,034 late last year, and fell to 5,911 in March, 5,881 in September and 5,846 in October. We still have a long way to go, but under Gov. Rendell, we are focusing on bridges," he said in an e-mail.

Projects to add capacity -- like new or widened highways -- now account for 5 percent of projected spending, down from 20 percent, he said.

Pennsylvania devoted about 40 percent of its $1 billion-plus federal stimulus allocation to bridge work and only one stimulus project in the state -- preliminary work for Route 28 improvements -- was a capacity-adding project, he said.

"We are focused on fixing what we have. The facts speak for themselves," Mr. Kirkpatrick said.

Robert Latham, executive vice president of Associated Pennsylvania Constructors, a Harrisburg-based trade association of construction companies and suppliers, also faulted the PennPIRG findings.

"The entire focus at PennDOT is rehabilitation of bridges," he said. "Any dollars left over after that are going to pavement or safety repairs."

He said the industry has no influence on what projects are selected and no particular preference for the type of work it gets, as long as there is work to do.

"We think there should be more funding so there can be some highway capacity projects," he said. "We just don't have the money to do that right now."

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