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101 Comments
- xmzx, on 11/12/2009, -4/+38It's the typical American way, they want endless services but don't want to be taxed a penny. They don't understand the correlation between the taxing and services.
- ugacrew, on 11/12/2009, -5/+26Our income tax rate was much higher when these bridges were built. At our current rate we won't be able to afford the replacement/repair of our infrastructure. We need to bite the bullet and start investing in our infrastructure before it fails us. We need it to because our economy depends on it.
- cjays1, on 11/12/2009, -1/+21The solution is simple. Have a foreign nation rebuild our infrastructure after bombing the !@#$ out of us.
- schnikies79, on 11/12/2009, -0/+19Functionally obsolete does NOT mean they are unsafe or structurally deficient, it just means the design is outdated.
I don't know why keep putting these two together. - LinuxPerson, on 11/12/2009, -1/+19That's because we are busy wasting our money blowing up and then rebuilding bridges overseas.
Don't bitch about ***** infrastructure here at home if you support the wars, this is what happens when there is a resource black hole that both political parties rabidly support. - didntlisten, on 11/12/2009, -0/+18this isn't that surprising, I mean way more than 25% of this country is "structurally deficient", both literally and metaphorically.
- MrSteamTank, on 11/12/2009, -1/+13Things only change when people die. The moment a piece of the bridge falls and crushes some poor chump below is when money will be spent to fix it.
- Sporky023, on 11/12/2009, -0/+12Get rid of that thing going on in the middle east. There's a tax drain.
- BotchaMcCoola, on 11/12/2009, -0/+11That is working big time in Germany and Japan. Plus they got rid of most of their militarist gene pool. Heavy price to pay but what dividends!
- The2DQuartet, on 11/12/2009, -2/+13Minneapolis '07 x 150,000?
The bridge is noteworthy because of its catastrophic failure during the evening rush hour on August 1, 2007. It collapsed into the river and onto the riverbanks beneath, killing thirteen people and injuring 145. ... In 1990, the federal government gave the I-35W bridge a rating of "structurally deficient," citing significant corrosion in its bearings. Approximately 75,000 other U.S. bridges had this classification in 2007.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minneapolis_bridge_co ... - twiztidsinz, on 11/12/2009, -2/+10BUT THAT'S SOCIALISM!!
- darkcthulhu, on 11/12/2009, -0/+8But who would police the world and make it safe for the children?
- Lilitou, on 11/12/2009, -1/+9@ MrSteamTank: You're right. There's a bridge not far from me in NY that has been literally falling apart for a long while now. Pieces of the road bed just break off and fall into the Hudson River. They just keep patching it and putting down metal construction plates to cover the holes. (The newest problem is that the plates shift and open up the holes again.)
But no one's died yet. So we're stuck with the bridge while they dither for years about its replacement.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tappan_Zee_Bridge - askantik, on 11/12/2009, -0/+7This is old news. The Army Corps of Engineers says a lot of things that we never listen to.
- j0phus, on 11/12/2009, -1/+8The London Bridge is in Lake Havasu... Arizona.
- fasda, on 11/12/2009, -12/+19they do pretty well with medicare and why blame the federal government with state and local not repairing their infrastructure
- RegalBegal, on 11/12/2009, -0/+6Like on I95 through Pawtucket, RI.
It got so bad and the state is too broke to fix it now truckers coming through have to exit before they reach the bridge or face a 3000 dollar fine. I wonder what it costs for the almost 24 hour State Trooper presence watching the north and southbound lanes.
This is the busiest highway on the ***** east coast! - BotchaMcCoola, on 11/12/2009, -0/+6I was about say something similar. Thanks for saying it better!
- twiztidsinz, on 11/12/2009, -0/+6Pretty sure the weight of a 'fat ass in a car' has the same effect as a 'skinny ass in a car' on a bridge given that average weight of the car itself is something like 4,000lbs.
But hey! Don't let that stop you from pointing fingers baselessly. - wilcocola, on 11/12/2009, -0/+6True, but maybe in the long run it is costing us more to keep maintaining these Functionally Obsolete bridges rather than replacing them with a modern simplistic design that utilizes the latest materials and engineering knowledge. There is a point where the usable life of these old bridges is just gone, and maintaining an obsolete design is nonsense.
- Sporky023, on 11/12/2009, -1/+6Just did a little searching:
The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, or AASHTO as it's called, estimates the cost of fixing all these bridges is about $140,000,000,000.
see http://www.transportation1.org/Bridgereport/front- ...
That's $140 billion, or about one year of the Iraq war.
That's pretty simple. - j0phus, on 11/12/2009, -2/+7Republicans would rather just build new bridges to nowhere than fix bridges that are in those not "real america" parts of the country.
- DavidYeah, on 11/12/2009, -1/+6***** bridges, I got a tax cut.
- j0phus, on 11/12/2009, -2/+7Actually the majority of the stimulus hasn't been allocated to projects yet. Do you know how the grant process works?
Where are you getting information that our government is paying to paint peoples roofs (white I assume?) - agrabes, on 11/12/2009, -0/+5I don't think that's quite the right way to say, as someone who is working as a quasi-structural engineer for an electric utility. It's more like, you never make a structure 100% secure simply because it is impossible. Not to mention it would be cost prohibitive, bad for the environment, and probably reduce the functionality. I mean, you could pour a solid concrete wall into a river that people drive across for a bridge, with huge steel anchors in all directions, and turn that bridge into a hydroelectric dam... Now your bridge is much more narrow, costs -way- more, impacts the environment by messing up the natural flow of the river, and takes -much- longer to build. It's just impractical to try that hard. Instead, according to national and local safety codes you build the most economical bridge that is still safe and move on. You don't "cut corners" you just use the most efficient design.
- mishabear, on 11/12/2009, -0/+4@ Techno. You said something about raising taxes. That was enough to make someone freak out and digg you down. I agree with you. What I love though are the people who holler "No Taxes!" but then in their next breath say, "The government should do something."
- autokad, on 11/12/2009, -0/+3i'd put my bets on 500 year old bridge any day over the crap they build today
- agrabes, on 11/12/2009, -0/+3I still don't think it would work in all situations. All of our infrastructure is crumbling, that includes things like the electric grid which is private. So just by becoming private doesn't mean things will automatically be ok.
Having toll roads works great as an addition to public roads, they are well kept up and smooth driving, but having only toll roads doesn't really seem practical. Imagine having to pay a toll each time you pull out of your driveway in the morning. Or, maybe if you pay a monthly fee, what happens when you go to a road owned by a different company? Now you're paying each time you enter another company's territory.
Maybe cities or counties could contract another company to own/manage their roads, but that doesn't help at all. The money still comes from the government and they aren't going to want to pay a private company what they wouldn't pay for themselves. That's just the way it works, cities originally make these plans to resurface their roads every so often, then they want to do something else or they hit a budget shortfall so road maintenance is the first thing to go. - tdogg241, on 11/12/2009, -1/+4No thanks to Reagan, who was largely responsible for gutting DOT funding. Democrats may be "Tax and Spend," but to me that's better than the republican alternative of "Spend and Spend."
- pgiessel, on 11/12/2009, -0/+3Wrong, its because when the original bridge loading was define (1944), a "normal" truck on the road was a two axle 10 ton truck. In Alaska, they regularly move 200 ton loads down our roads. An extra 200 pounds for the driver is unnoticeable.
- dutchguilder2, on 11/12/2009, -0/+3Anybody can make a safe structure. The skill is in making just safe enough.
- Sporky023, on 11/12/2009, -0/+3Engineers have known this for many years. See http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/
- UselessTrivia, on 11/12/2009, -0/+3Define functionally obsolete: Does that mean that the technology used in construction was obsolete but the bridge is still functional?
Do either of these two terms imply a safety hazard? Structurally deficient sounds bad and probably is...but functionally obsolete may sound worse than it really is.
We've got a phone system at work that's 20+ years old. It's obsolete, but it still makes a dial tone whenever I pick up the phone, so it's functional.
Just because something's obsolete doesn't mean you throw it away.
If it's a safety concern, though, we should really get on those. I know in my area there have been tons of bridges being torn up ever since the stimulus money started flowing. Most of these are simple road spanning bridges, maybe a 50 yards at best. The two big ones around here are pretty old and janky...I'm sure they need to be ripped out, but they're on a major river crossing so nobody has touched them yet. - chukd, on 11/12/2009, -11/+13I thought the money for the "Stimulus Bill" was supposed to fix this. Instead it all went to things like painting roofs and ACORN.
- cyoder, on 11/12/2009, -0/+2The article describes this as "bad news", but I actually feel it's good news. Theoretically, these bridges have been in rough shape for awhile; I think it's great that they actually KNOW now (it's only "news" because they were recently inspected), and if it's made public which bridges are deficient-rated, local governments will be under scrutiny to do something about them.
It doesn't look good immediately, but over the long run, I think this should be a good thing. - agrabes, on 11/12/2009, -0/+2I didn't say that toll roads were the only possibility, I brought up 2 alternatives. Both seem infeasible.
1. Pay a monthly fee to access all roads owned by a certain company. This becomes a problem, because when you leave territory owned by one company you would then have to pay another company a toll to enter, or you would also have to pay them a monthly fee. That becomes an inconvenience to the customer and is probably a huge ripoff. Say you drive on one set of streets daily, but also use another's streets maybe once a week, or to get to work you need to cross the border from one company to another, then back again. Or maybe you cross into a 3rd or 4th company's territory. Now you're paying 4 monthly fees, but you are barely driving at all in 3 of those 4 territories. Sure, a monopoly could take over and you wouldn't have those kinds of issues. But is that any better than the government? Probably not much, since a monopoly has little interest or need to be innovative or consumer friendly.
2. Contracted road managers. In this case it's still government money, so it would be government rules. Little change from present system.
If there is an easy technological solution, it hasn't appeared yet. - Ghostwo, on 11/12/2009, -0/+2Pennsylvania has one of the highest road densities of any state, as well as a really high number of bridges. Toss in the winter weather and heavy use of road salt, and it's no wonder we're #2. We've had at least two bridge collapses in the Pittsburgh area alone over the last few years.
- schnikies79, on 11/12/2009, -0/+2Possibly. There is functionally obsolete bridge crossing the ohio river near me. It's inspected often as had no problems except needing a new road surface and a new paint. Structurally nothing has broke or needed to be replaced. It was built in the 60's.
The only reason it's considered obsolete is because how wide it is. - Sporky023, on 11/12/2009, -0/+2Aye. As a civil engineer, I have to say your characterization of the reality's a bit thin.
Most of these designs have a factor of safety of about 2. Which means if we say it's rated for 50,000 lbs, we designed it to hold 100,000. - YZBot, on 11/12/2009, -1/+3There was a design flaw in the bridge. The gusset plates were too small and thin. Combined with an extra layer of concrete and heavy construction vehicles working on the bridge it became overloaded and collapsed.
"The NTSB determined that corrosion was not a significant factor, ..."
Even if they fixed the parts that made it listed as deficient it still could have collapsed because of the design flaw. - cyoder, on 11/12/2009, -0/+2Good stuff, man. But I was more referring to this becoming a public matter, thanks to the I-35W bridge collapse and the ensuing media coverage.
- The2DQuartet, on 11/12/2009, -1/+3I understand there's a difference between "structurally deficient" and "rubble", and I would imagine the case with the vast majority of bridges around the world is that over the years since they were built, traffic levels have increased dramatically while the bridges' respective strength has been constantly in decline. My point is that this particular bridge was identified as a potential problem 17 YEARS before it fell down.
- chadsexingtime, on 11/12/2009, -0/+2Quick, someone warn Madison county!
- Aquileria, on 11/12/2009, -1/+3"... in it's current form..."
I think you mean current forms*, each state's program is different. In NY the program works really well, the national, state, and county governments each pay a third of the cost (thus motivating each level of government to have fraud investigators, accountability, etc.). In states where the program works poorly, it's usually because the Federal level contributes the most, thereby removing any financial incentive for the state + local governments to enforce the system. - FauOz, on 11/13/2009, -0/+1So what did they so with all the tolls and road fuel 35 Gal. taxes?
- agrabes, on 11/13/2009, -0/+1I'm not ignoring the possibility, I'm just pointing out that we don't know of anything now and that there are a -lot- of things that you would have to figure out to make this issue work. This is a -massive, massive- system and it would take so much work to figure out how to do it that it probably wouldn't even be worth it from a business perspective. Not to mention, I can't think of hardly anyone who would want it and it by necessity creates a monopoly unless there are somehow 2 or 3 different roads leading directly to each house, and on top of all that I seriously doubt that it would be enough of an improvement in road quality to justify all of this crazy restructuring in the first place.
There are just too many problems now. I mean, you didn't see people saying, "Let's get rid of all those horses so we can stop our horse ***** problem!" back then, did you? It would have been a bad idea, there was no good solution to horses then so of course everyone just dealt with the way it was. It worked well enough for their needs, even if it did have a few drawbacks. When automobiles and steam engines, etc. started showing up, that's when people thought "Hey, these are pretty cool. Let's use these instead of horses!" So before we start talking about making roads private, let's let it be feasible and make economic sense first. - InactiveUser, on 11/13/2009, -0/+1I guess this means America will have to tax the rich again in order to repair them...so sad..
- Kate1240, on 11/12/2009, -0/+1Structurally Deficient.. Homestead bridge in Pittsburgh..
- Kate1240, on 11/12/2009, -0/+1nope stimulus is paying BO's friends and campaigns in 2010.
- kbillar, on 11/13/2009, -0/+1Yet again you are ignoring the possible creative innovation that can overcome these problems. Personally I am limited as you are as to ideas as to the innovative solutions to current problems with private road ownership, but that doesn't mean they do not exist. People for the life of them couldn't figure out a way around the horse ***** problem before the advent of automobiles, horse ***** lined the streets of every road and caused serious health problems, and then the automobile came along. Keeping the way things the way they are just because we are not capable of imagining the creative technology that could make private roads possible, doesn't mean that private roads should not exist or I not possible.
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