MSNBC.com has introduced a way to allow its visitors to check the conditions of bridges that they cross most frequently and illustrated this feature during an ONA session.

Following the collapse of the Interstate 35 West Bridge in Minneapolis, federal officials, along with the public, wanted more information about "their" bridges. A team of eight producers, editors, analysts, and directors gathered huge amounts of data from the National Bridge Inventory in order to make this happen.

Bill Dedman, MSNBC.com investigative producer, believed that there was still a story well after the frenzy in Minneapolis had settled. Through the use of the Freedom of Information Act, the Federal Highway Administration handed over the latest public National Bridge Inventory. Much of the information showed that many bridges were less than adequately taken care of by the Federal Highway Administration. A result of this knowledge propelled Bill Dedman and Phil Zepeda, MSNBC.com interactive producer, into the middle of a three-month project that would revolutionize the way bridges are understood.

"Once we succeeded to get the new databases, it was an obligation to tell people about it," said Dedman.

The Bridge Tracker, introduced in January 2007, illustrates the condition and inspection dates for more than 100,000 steel truss bridges in the U.S. that are crossed by at least 10,000 vehicles per day. The innovative tracker allows the user to select a route and view details of each bridge on that path. With the wave of a mouse over the color-coded bridge icons, valuable facts about each bridge are displayed, including inspection schedules, conditions, and general information that wouldn't be known otherwise.

Zepeda used a small set of programming languages including JavaScript and C#, and mapping software Microsoft Virtual Earth to create the tracker. "[In online journalism] you definitely need to know programming skills," said Zepeda. "Programming is a lot more sophisticated now."

Dedman and Zepeda decided to present their findings at a journalism conference to give the audience insider knowledge of the process they used to develop the tracker. Audience member, Linda Dono, Special Projects Editor of Gannett News Service, was excited to know that technology played such a large part in this project.

"Web design is very important for the survival of the news business. We've got a lot of new ways to present information, and for people in the news business; web design is a 'new hat,'" said Dono.

Even as refined as the Bridge Tracker is now, there are a few tensions with its technology. Its main limitation is that the amount of traffic in each city is different, so only the bridges that support at least 10,000 vehicles a day appear on the map; however, for smaller cities, the population of vehicles is much less. In that case, no bridges will appear.

Similar to all things new, the Bridge Tracker will continue to be updated with the latest data from the National Bridge Inventory, so that it becomes faster and can accommodate more people.

--Nicole McGloster