[dinopello]

What it's like on a collapsing bridge over the Mississipi, in a bus with 52 children...

..."It was like a roller coaster ride"

Actually a very good interview.

[Heineken]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('frankthetank', 'G')overnor of MN was on "Nightline" saying that the cost to replace this plus a couple other "things" would run between $150-300 million. I wonder if we can subtract that from Iraq/or the money we just gave to Israel ($30 billion)?

[MrBill]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Heineken', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('frankthetank', 'G')overnor of MN was on "Nightline" saying that the cost to replace this plus a couple other "things" would run between $150-300 million. I wonder if we can subtract that from Iraq/or the money we just gave to Israel ($30 billion)?

[Barbara]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Keith_McClary', '
')Hey, some of us furriners also have crumbling infrastructure. For example the Italians built a bunch of fancy expressways, bridges and overpasses in the '60s and '70s.

Fortunately they can always go back to using the Roman roads.

[MD]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Twilight', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('CNN', '
')The bridge was undergoing nonstructural re-decking work, U.S. Transportation Department spokesman Brian Turmail said.

[Ming]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('joewp', 'T')he American Society of Civil Engineers has been talking about this problem for years. The country is falling apart, since we've decided to forgo routine maintenance on our infrastructure for other purposes.

And the scary part is, brides were rated near the highest, a C, or mediocre. Solid waste was the only area better, a C+.

[web]http://www.asce.org/reportcard/2005/page.cfm?id=103[/web]

[Ferretlover]

lol "brides were rated near the highest," Glad to see that brides have Some value!! *giggle*

HHmmm... I wonder if the Minnesota legislature will reconsider building that $954 million dollar sports complex now.....

[gg3]

Recently we have had:

Something blow up under the streets of Manhattan.

Something else blow up bigtime in Texas.

This bridge going ker-plop into the water.

At least one other dramatic infrastructure failure I can't remember at the moment.

OK, now if all of these were the results of Al Qaeda attacks, we would be on a war footing for real.

But instead they're the result of apathy compounded by selfishness over long spans of time.

I say apathy and selfishness are forms of terrorism in slow-motion because they erode the physical and cultural fabric of society until something snaps or breaks.

---

What do to about transportation society-wide.

No further expansion of the road networks; instead, maintain the roads we have, progressively restrict automobile commuting to facilitate commercial traffic, and expand the bus and rail networks.

What to do about transportation as an individual:

Buy yourself a bicycle and a large supply of spare parts. Live in a place where you can get to essential services at bicycle or horse-and-carriage speeds. In fifty years after PO and global warming have screwed us to the wall, when all this crap has crumbled into twisted wreckage, we'll look back and say "Wow-wee! People actually built things like that back then?!"

Skyscrapers and high bridges and all that stuff will become the fodder of myths and legends.

Consider some of the new-age myths about Atlantis that were around in the 1970s or so. You ain't seen nothin' yet.

---

Ironic Moment department:

I forkin' hate it when the news reports say "TONS of concrete." One cubic yard of concrete is two tons. It takes about 16 cubic yards, or 32 tons, to do a mid-sized house foundation. Saying "TONS of concrete" when the reality is more like tens of thousands of tons, is like saying "a few cars on the road" during a commute-hour gridlock traffic jam. Not only can't Johnny spell, he can't do his arithmetic either.

[Heineken]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MrBill', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Heineken', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('frankthetank', 'G')overnor of MN was on "Nightline" saying that the cost to replace this plus a couple other "things" would run between $150-300 million. I wonder if we can subtract that from Iraq/or the money we just gave to Israel ($30 billion)?

[mistel]

MD wrote
"They blew out the arch with an imbalance that started with resurfacing and was tipped over by either a harmonic dynamic load (moving rush hour traffic) or a combination of unusually heavy trucks at the wrong moment in the right place."

I agree, it could also be the vibration of the resurfacing machines causing damage. I have seen two concrete trucks in the debris.


Nikola Tesla (1856 - 1943) - Master of Resonance

It was an innocent experiment. The year was 1898 and Tesla attached a small vibrator to an iron column in his laboratory located in New York City. He closed a switch and it began vibrating. He had noticed that at certain frequencies specific pieces of equipment in the room would start to jiggle. Changing the frequency would move the jiggle to another part of the room. Unfortunately, he had not taken into account the fact that the column ran downward into the foundation beneath the building. His vibrations were being transmitted all over Manhattan.

[oiless]

Just looking at the picture in the very first post in this thread
I think they're going to find corrosion related stress cracking around the riveted fish plates on the truss assembly.

[Twilight]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Bloomberg', '[')url=http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aV0qaVkODzQI&refer=home]Bridge-Collapse Probe Focuses on Construction Work, NTSB Says[/url]

The National Transportation Safety Board interviewed construction workers and gathered data about the placement and weight of equipment and materials, NTSB Chairman Mark Rosenker told reporters today in Minneapolis.

The work was taking place toward the bridge's southern end when the span collapsed, Rosenker said.

[Keith_McClary]

So who is ultimately responsible for determining that bridges (or other infrastructure) are safe?

I've read that Fed. law requires biennial inspection, but the inspectors are state officials with qualifications from engineering schools.

So the responsibility is diffuse, as in Katrina or 9/11 or the Iraq mess.

I haven't even seen any mention of an investigation. but if there is one it will be the usual whitewash/cover-up.

The Buck Stops ... somewhere else.

(EDIT - Aug. 8 ) Still haven't found who's ultimately responsible - I guess I will have to wait until the lawsuits start. I'm surprised there aren't any by now - the lawyers must be on holiday.

[MD]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Twilight', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Bloomberg', '[')url=http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aV0qaVkODzQI&refer=home]Bridge-Collapse Probe Focuses on Construction Work, NTSB Says[/url]

The National Transportation Safety Board interviewed construction workers and gathered data about the placement and weight of equipment and materials, NTSB Chairman Mark Rosenker told reporters today in Minneapolis.

The work was taking place toward the bridge's southern end when the span collapsed, Rosenker said.

[SchroedingersCat]

One thing to keep in mind is that in MN they use a lot of salt on the roads and bridges in the winter to melt the ice -- something like 5 tons per lane-mile per year. This salt gets into the cracks and joints of a bridge and can eat it from the inside. I'm guessing the inspections were visual and not x-ray or ultrasound.

[dohboi]

{thread merged by emersonbiggins}



latimes

I live about a mile from the bridge that collapsed so it is on my mind perhaps more than some. But it does seem to be focussing the nations attention, at least for now, on what I remember as a burning issue in the '90s that was never addressed and faded away--namely, decaying infrastructure.

Tens of thousands of old (and some not-so-old) bridges across the country will have to be replaced in the next few years or many of them will fail. Will it be possible to even begin to address this as oil and other basic materials get ever more scarce?

Might this be a really visible side of resource depletion, as such basic amenities go un-repaired and un-replaced? (Of course, no one in MSM is discussing the failure in these terms, proving again that disasters do not usually result in clearer analysis if the real problems.)

Will priorities start to shift? Our governor in his infinite wisdom vetoed a small gas tax increase (there had been none in over a decade) that had broad, bipartisan support, to fund safer roads and bridges. In fact the only tax he approved was to jund that most urgent of all our pressing public needs...no, not education, or hospitals, or libraries (all of which are in crisis)...but baseball. Yes footing the bill for a new baseball stadium for the billionaire owner of our team was the highes tax priority in the state mere months before one of the greatest failures of basic infrastructure in modern history. He now support the tax, but I'm doubting that it was a deeper conversion on what is vital and what isn't.

What should the priorities be as resources dwindle? Maybe funding entertainment to divert us from an ever more depressing reality is the best use of our bucks?

How will these structural failures exacerbate the effects of the PO world? Even if you can figure out how to effectively make bio-diesel with favorable eroei, it won't get your vegetable truck to market if the bridge you have to go over to get there has collapsed!

[Graeme]

Shai Agassi Launches Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Venture
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')hai Agassi, former SAP executive, has formed Project Better Place, a company with $200 million in first-round funding that is focused on developing a sustainable infrastructure to support the transition of country-wide transportation systems to electricity and away from fossil fuels.
The company will deploy a regional and global infrastructure to support electric vehicles on a country-by-country basis. Project Better Place will establish a widespread grid of electric charging spots at current parking locations as well as battery exchange stations through software systems integration.

[Graeme]

Here's a related article. I was tempted to post as a separate thread but thought otherwise. They are similar.
Making the Dumb Grid Smarter
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')hat kind of information has real value-and not merely so that utilities can respond effectively to outages. A smart grid, which would include intelligent meters in every home, would save money for utilities and their customers by eliminating the need for people who drive around reading electric meters.
Most exciting of all, a smart grid would set the stage for a radical idea called VTG, or vehicle to grid. If plug-in electric vehicles, which are under development by General Motors and Toyota, can be connected to the grid, electricity, ideally generated by renewables, could replace gasoline as a transportation fuel.
Electric vehicles would run cleaner than gas-powered cars and reduce America's dependence on imported oil. Car owners could buy electricity from the grid when they need it and sell back to the grid when they don't, using their car batteries as storage. You can even imagine some car owners day-trading electrons, selling them during the afternoon when they are expensive, buying them at night when they are cheaper.

[Tanada]

According to adn.com the Knik arm bridge and toll authority received their environmental impact approval in December 2007 and can now move on to contracting and construction of the bridge. Recently in speeches Barack Obama whom I consider most likely to be our next President of the USA has been saying that he considers infrastructure improvements to be good for the economy, rather in the mold of FDR during the Great Depression when many large public works projects and thousands of small projects were built.
The KABATA web page gives a tentative schedual for construction to begin in Spring 2009, perfect timing for a public works project under the first year of the Obama administration.
Schedule
What do you all think?

[Tyler_JC]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tanada', 'A')ccording to adn.com the Knik arm bridge and toll authority received their environmental impact approval in December 2007 and can now move on to contracting and construction of the bridge. Recently in speeches Barack Obama whom I consider most likely to be our next President of the USA has been saying that he considers infrastructure improvements to be good for the economy, rather in the mold of FDR during the Great Depression when many large public works projects and thousands of small projects were built.
The KABATA web page gives a tentative schedual for construction to begin in Spring 2009, perfect timing for a public works project under the first year of the Obama administration. Schedule
What do you all think?