The bridge collapse In Minnesota was a Preventable event say experts
Yet in a footnote on the News it said there are 100's of bridges with the same basic design all across N America

My question is do you cross one of these regularly?
And in the light of whats happened if you have to take a detour to avoid using such a bridge if the structural Steelwork has been Questioned by engineers

How many miles Plus time will it add to your Journey if you have to take this route?


Can see a few Billion Dollars are going to be required to carry out this survey and any remedial work

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Can see a few Billion Dollars are going to be required to carry out this survey and any remedial work

That will just have to wait. Maybe after we bring freedom and democracy to Iraq we'll be better able to afford repairs to our crumbling infrastructure.

I've driven across that bridge numerous times, and still have alot of friends in that area, so was quite devastated by what happened.

Bridge safety is very important, and it's unfortunate that it takes this kind of incident to make the authorities take a harder look. TWO YEARS ago there were problems identified, and they were working on them, but chose not to close the bridge while they brought it up to date. Now whether the existing problems or the construction going on is what caused the collapse is something I'm sure they'll divulge in the investigation.

In Portland, they do bridge work constantly, usually closing the bridge being worked on. Yes, it's inconvenient, but there is always an alternate route available.

I'm sure that people who depend on the numerous bridges in the Portland area appreciate the attentiveness given to the upkeep, even if they're inconvenienced with a bridge closure every few years.

A few billion dollars would not cover the cost of repairing, replacing and adding bridges in New York State much less the whole country.

There are lots of bridges around here. (17,335 in New York State)

In a 2006 report issued, 4,501 were considered functionally obsolete by the Federal Highway Administration. (Lane widths, shoulder widths, or vertical clearances adequate to serve traffic demand.)

The FHA classified another 2,110 as being structurally deficient. (In need of work but aren't in danger of imminent collapse)

I transverse bridges all the time, nature of the beast of living on an island. I do take the ferries from Long Island to Connecticut whenever feasible, but if I am heading west or south at all I have to take several major bridges to get there.

There has not been a bridge or tunnel built connecting Long Island to the mainland since the early to mid 1960’s. There are currently ten bridges and tunnels that provide access to the mainland (or other islands) for about 7-1/2 million people. It is hard to get on or off Long Island now, if one of those bridges or tunnels ever goes down or closes it would be much more difficult. It is not practical to go around and take another route

September 11, 2001 made many Long Islanders realize how cut off they really are. They closed all the bridges that day as only emergency vehicles were permitted.

There has been talk for 30-40 years of building a bridge connecting Long Island to Connecticut, but that has never really gotten past the “talk” stage.

The following are all the access points to and from Long Island, going south to north. I saved the northern most passage for last because (In my opinion) it is the weakest link out of them all. It need to be replaced, it is fatigued and bears more traffic than it was designed for. The problems have been noted and talk of a replacement span has begun, but it is running into problems. So in the meantime heavy loads (tractor trailers and the like) now must use the left lane when going over the bridge. This puts the weight on the stronger portion of the bridge. That makes me feel real safe crossing it too .

Long Island is in desperate need of more bridges and tunnels but so far nothing is imminent or really even on the table. It will take a disaster like the recent bridge collapse in Minnesota for anything to get done.

The Verrazano Narrows Bridge (Long Island to Staten Island, opened 1964)

The Brooklyn Battery Tunnel (Long Island to Lower Manhattan, opened 1950)


The Brooklyn Bridge (Long Island to Lower Manhattan, opened 1883)


The Manhattan Bridge (Long Island to Lower Manhattan, opened 1909)


The Williamsburg Bridge (Long Island to Lower Manhattan, opened 1903)


The Queens Midtown Tunnel (Long Island to Midtown Manhattan, opened 1940)



The Queensboro Bridge , also known as The 59th Street Bridge (Long Island to Midtown Manhattan, opened 1909)


The Triborough Bridge , actually three bridges that connect Long Island, Randalls Island, and the Bronx. (Opened 1936)


The Whitestone Bridge (Long Island to the Bronx, opened 1939)

The Throgs Neck Bridge (Long Island to the Bronx, opened 1961)

The Brent Spence Bridge, a 1700 ft. double decker interstate bridge over the Ohio river, is one of the scariest bridges I've ever been on. Older than the I35 bridge, with 150,000 vehicles travelling over it daily, it has "long ago surpassed its maximum design limits."

Basically the association of bridge engineers estimates that it would cost 9 Billion dollars each year for 20 years to correct all deficiencies in bridges in America.

I've always had a fear of steel bridges and I guess it was well founded.

Gee. Maybe the yanks should spend more at home fixing bridges than abroad fixing other peoples' problems.

Yeah, there have been no bridge collapses in Canada.

from Koz's links

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The Bronx Whitestone opened to traffic a mere 23 months after the awarding of its first construction contract so that motorists could cross it on April 30, the opening day of the 1939 New York World's Fair in Flushing

That is frightening! Well Greased Palms for fast completion to meet the deadline?

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Gee. Maybe the yanks should spend more at home fixing bridges than abroad fixing other peoples' problems.

I am beginning to agree. I think we should stop worrying about any other Country's problems, and just be ready to defend ourselves.

Thanks, Kendor. I always like to see pictures of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge (4th down on your link) collapse. (For those who don't know, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, aka Galloping Gertie, is entirely inside the United States. But Kendor is not one to let facts spoil a good story.)

Galloping Gertie on Wikipedia


Color video of the The Narrows Tacoma Bridge Disaster of 1940.

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That is frightening! Well Greased Palms for fast completion to meet the deadline?

I knew that Bedstor, that is why I always take the Throgs Neck Bridge when going that way

It is a little shaky, but I figure the odds are a bit better

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But Kendor is not one to let facts spoil a good story.)

Nor apt to point out that the first and second cited were of the 100th anniversary of the same Quebec Bridge collapse during construction.

Looking at Kendor's citations regarding bridge collapses in Canada, we see:

The engineering design and construction of the bridge that collapsed in 1907 which Kendor refers to in items #1 and #3 of his citation was done by "... a renowned bridge builder from New York by the name of Theodore Cooper..." (From Kendor's citation, above.)

Four citations of the same October 2006 incident. (# 2, # 4, #5 and #6 of Kendor's citation).

Also Kendor holds Canadians responsible for bridge collapses that happened to U.S. bridges, but which were studied by Canadian Engineering Departments.

quote:

Smith, Doug, "A Case Study and Analysis of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge Failure", 99.497 Engineering Project, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, March 29, 1974.

(#3 in Kendor's citation)

Or U.S. bridge collapses reported on a page in which the word Canada appears, in an unrelated issue: a Minnesota collapse, Item #7 on Kendor's list.

Or in the Copyright data of an article, #7 on Kendor's list, about the Tacoma, Washington bridge collapse mentioned by Kendor in #4 above.


Or a bridge collapse in Oklahoma because the American being investigated in connection with the incident was arrested in Canada by Ontario Provincial Police.
See mention of Canada, which nails us for culpability in the Oklahoma affair!!!

I didn't actually go beyond page 1 of Kendor's citations.

But kudos to Kendor, he made my case for me. I love your research, Kendor!

There have been bridge collapses due to government negligence in just about every country with bridges, surely.

Is the problem better or worse in the US?

'...there aren't organized constituents lobbying for public goods like highways and bridges - people take those things for granted. A thousand grifters have gained office promising to cut taxes as if they existed in a vacuum, without mentioning the cost; no politician has ever won office promising to keep highways from collapsing on their constituents. For 30 years, we've been told by a series of right-wing snake-oil salesmen that they could deliver more and better public services while constantly cutting the taxes that pay for them, but it was always a fraud. The result is that the United States enjoys the third-lowest tax burden among the 30 most advanced economies as its public spaces gradually come apart at the seams.

I would argue that skimping out on infrastructure investments in the name of a low tax burden is a triumph of ideology over commonsense, but it goes beyond that. Conservative philosophy stresses limited government, not bad government, and nothing can change the fact that the public sector remains the only way to organize collectively when there's no profit involved. So nobody seriously believes that the the hidden hand of capitalism is going to step in and inspect and repair bridges that are open to the public. When lawmakers don't fund that work, they know full well that it won't get done.

What's more, the evidence that infrastructure investments result in increased economic productivity is fairly conclusive; some studies have estimated that every dollar invested in public infrastructure yields 104 percent return through increases in productivity.

So something more is going on. Stephen Flynn says, "Americans have been squandering the infrastructure legacy bequeathed to us by earlier generations. Like the spoiled offspring of well-off parents, we behave as though we have no idea what is required to sustain the quality of our daily lives."' www.alternet.org

In my old home town, they're talking about spending hundreds of millions to repair a bridge. In my new home town they recently replaced (bit by bit) the entire deck of a 1930's bridge. I guess those preventative measures are the kind of items that don't hit international headlines.

Maybe the answer is the Libertarian one - everyone should grab some planks and nails and make their own bridges...

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Maybe the answer is the Libertarian one - everyone should grab some planks and nails and make their own bridges...

Yeah! Whatever happened to John Galt?

Frankvan asks reminiscently "Whatever happened to John Galt?"

Rumor has it that he grabbed some planks and nails and made his own bridge ... and it fell down. R.I.P.

Really? I read somewhere he was gulching. Who is John Galt, anyway ?

Search for posts by JohnGalt (sic). You may find his posts interesting.

Dancer asks: Who is John Galt, anyway ? Wink

Gee, everyone seems to be asking that! I think I even saw it on a billboard!

Anyhow, we did have a member once who styled himself after Rand's annoyingly noble, gifted, moral, absolutely stiff with integrity, and self-righteous hero. Right wing, of course.