[HN Gopher] Fern Hollow Bridge should have been closed years bef...
___________________________________________________________________
Fern Hollow Bridge should have been closed years before it
collapsed
Author : freetime2
Score : 247 points
Date : 2024-06-19 05:45 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (practical.engineering)
(TXT) w3m dump (practical.engineering)
| augustl wrote:
| Predictions and pre vs post accident is an interesting subject.
|
| Which bridge that is currently in operation should be closed
| next?
|
| (Not a dunk on the article, which brilliantly addresses the
| difficulty of knowing in advance vs making real world changes.
| Practical Engineering is an awesome YouTube channel!)
| loeg wrote:
| > Which bridge that is currently in operation should be closed
| next?
|
| The article/video actually touches on this:
|
| > The City of Pittsburgh quadrupled their spending on
| inspection, maintenance, and repairs. And they redid the load
| ratings on all the bridges they owned, resulting in one bridge
| being closed until it can be rehabilitated and two more having
| lane restrictions imposed.
|
| I don't know which one bridge it is, though.
| carols10cents wrote:
| It's the Charles Anderson Bridge.
| https://engage.pittsburghpa.gov/charles-anderson-bridge
| holmium wrote:
| Damn, I was hoping this bridge would stay in its current
| limbo state where it's open to pedestrians and bikes but
| closed to vehicles. It's so much nicer not having a five
| lane stroad that lets cars go 50mph into a park, and
| instead having a pseudo-community space.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| The article goes incoherent in the first paragraph:
|
| "...collapsed without warning. ...And this bridge had been listed
| as being in 'poor condition' for over a decade. "
| jlund-molfese wrote:
| Practical Engineering is emphasizing the suddenness of the
| collapse itself and pointing out that it was impossible for
| drivers (who were not aware of past inspections) to do anything
| about it. There is no inconsistency.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| When it finally collapsed it did so without warning, but it was
| abundantly foreshadowed.
| kibwen wrote:
| It really is supremely fortunate that the collapse took place in
| the early morning when few people were about. I've walked under
| that bridge many times, it's a lovely recreational footpath
| through the heart of Frick Park, and more than once I've
| clambered up the hillside under the bridge for fun.
| fh973 wrote:
| This is all interesting, but misses the point: the bridge
| collapsed due to a social (management, responsibilities,
| organization, ...) failure. Investigating the engineering story
| distracts from that, both in the video and apparently effectively
| as there is a NTSB investigation and not mentioning if any
| organizational review if the same rigor.
| kd5bjo wrote:
| He talks about this a bit in the final three paragraphs, that
| the people writing the work orders are already overwhelmed by
| the amount of paperwork they need to deal with, preventing them
| from paying enough attention to what these reports are actually
| saying, and these new recommendations will have the primary
| effect of increasing that burden.
| p_l wrote:
| (haven't yet read the full report) If NTSB in non-aviation
| areas works the same way as in aviation areas, that's
| definitely covered by the investigation.
|
| That's why ridiculously common case summarized as "pilot error"
| usually involves several components including organization,
| training, etc.
|
| EDIT (After reading the report): And indeed, "what we found"
| section and "what we recommend" is all about how PennDOT and
| related orgs operate.
| rini17 wrote:
| Grady does not miss the point, but repeatedly says he does not
| understand the social part. This calls for someone else with
| better expertise to do that kind of analysis.
| beowulfey wrote:
| I would argue that he did not miss the point at all actually--
| he deliberately mentions it at the end.
| m2f2 wrote:
| Same stuff for the Genoa, Italy bridge (Ponte Morandi). Everyone
| running on that would feel vibrations and "repairs" were just
| lipstick on a ugly face, until it finally collapsed, with 43
| dead.
|
| Surprisingly, or not so, no one was found guilty, not even the
| inspectors that didn't report the ongoing damages, just because
| "it would be too costly to rebuild it, and profits of the highway
| company (1) in charge of it would be zero".
|
| (1) the company name is Atlantia, fully owned at the time by the
| Benetton family, yes those of the sweater chain
| rapsey wrote:
| Yet Italy spent years trying to put Adrian Newey in jail for
| building an f1 car involved in a fatal crash.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Not a well-connected Italian, obviously.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > Not a well-connected Italian, obviously.
|
| Obviously, since he isn't an Italian at all :-/
| shiroiushi wrote:
| They also tried to put a bunch of earthquake scientists in
| jail for not predicting an earthquake.
| naasking wrote:
| No, they were jailed because they reassured the population
| that there was _no_ risk of earthquake, when there
| absolutely was. That 's very different.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| Still ridiculous, though. Do doctors in Italy go to jail
| for giving false negative cancer diagnoses? Can I sue the
| weather man when I get struck by lightning when they said
| there's no chance of rain? Maybe next time the public
| should interpret the seismographs themselves.
|
| Edit: It was eventually overturned [1]. Still, a shocking
| indictment of the court system.
|
| 1. https://www.theverge.com/2014/11/11/7193391/italy-
| judges-cle...
| naasking wrote:
| > Still ridiculous, though. Do doctors in Italy go to
| jail for giving false negative cancer diagnoses?
|
| If there were strong indications of cancer and a doctor
| blatantly ignored it? An argument could be made that's
| negligence causing death.
|
| Clearly some degree of negligence _is absolutely_
| criminal when people 's lives are on the line. Maybe you
| don't agree where that line was drawn in this specific
| case, but that's not an argument that no such line
| exists.
| buildbot wrote:
| Yeah don't get involved in the Italian "justice" system. For
| another example, the still ongoing prosecution of Amanda
| Knox.
| _glass wrote:
| There is a really good paper with a simulation.
| https://gerardjoreilly.github.io/files/Journal/J6-2019_Calvi...
| zeristor wrote:
| As the video states this was flagged by inspections 14 times
| over 7 years or so.
|
| There's even inspection reports of one of the cross supports
| rusted through and disconnected, a cable taking some of the
| strain. At the very least the bridge should have just been
| closed, as unsafe.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > As the video states this was flagged by inspections 14
| times over 7 years or so.
|
| And the article starts by stating that the collapse was
| 'without warning.'
| nkrisc wrote:
| I take that to mean there were no signs of imminent
| collapse, just sudden failure.
| Gare wrote:
| Warning in this context means something obvious to the
| unsuspecting user that collapse is imminent. Like a
| building creaking or buckling minutes or hours before
| finally giving way.
| LegitShady wrote:
| In engineering terms thats a mode of collapse, thing, not
| about people actually warning.
|
| When we do design, we're generally designing things so that
| if it fails it does so in a way that doesn't suddenly all
| collapse at once, but first deforms for a while so people
| can get away.
| bboygravity wrote:
| Vibrations on a bridge are not normal?
|
| I'm asking because I've been in standstil traffic (in my car)
| on the Lisbon "golden gate" type bridge and that thing was
| freaking bouncing up and down from traffic on other lanes.
| dscottboggs wrote:
| Bridges do move some normally, yes. It may depend on the type
| of bridge though? Certainly suspension bridges do.
| tiagod wrote:
| It's a suspension bridge. And a solid one :) Takes 6 lanes
| of traffic and whole trains on the bottom.
| throwaway211 wrote:
| Trains cross bridges easily as they're either balanced
| with each half on each side, or half on and half on
| ground. And other time's just between these stable
| points. Furthermore, trains run on tracks which reduces
| chance of turning acceleration.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Yes and no.
|
| Railways work well in the center of bridges. One bridge
| that violates this principle is the Manhattan Bridge; it
| was built before we had fancy engineering simulations or
| much experience with railway suspension bridges at all,
| and so the lower deck is a pair of railway tracks on
| either side of a roadway.
|
| This unusual design is very stressful on the bridge and
| has resulted in expensive rehabilitation programs.
| buildbot wrote:
| Unless it's a floating bridge...
| tiagod wrote:
| Interestingly, the 25 of April Bridge in Lisbon was made by
| the American Bridge Company, same as the Bay Bridge, but not
| the Golden Gate.
|
| And yes, it's normal. That bridge is very well maintained
| (there's a whole team there working daily, afaik, and I've
| witnessed many interventions in the past).
| rob74 wrote:
| Now that you mention it, the diagonal braces on the piers
| (no idea how they're actually called) look very similar to
| the Bay Bridge. But to the casual observer, the number of
| piers and the color look more like the Golden Gate bridge,
| plus that's by far the better known one, so I'm not
| surprised it got this nickname...
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Depends on the bridge type, I guess.
|
| But it's true that big structures are often designed to move
| as a way to deal with forces. It's much better than something
| firm that doesn't move until it snaps.
| tim333 wrote:
| I'm not sure you can diagnose it much from feeling vibrations
| if running. As an aside I don't remember it being open to
| pedestrians - I used to drive it occasionally.
|
| More to the point a proper study a year before the collapse
| with endoscopes showed the cables were pretty rusted and
| dangerous https://www.lastampa.it/esteri/la-stampa-in-
| english/2018/08/...
|
| The company managing it had tendered to get repairs done but
| they hadn't started by the time of the collapse.
| speakspokespok wrote:
| I just spent the last 4 years living in a series of countries
| that Americans would call '3rd world'. Places where proper
| funding of infrastructure, let alone inspections are so far below
| US metrics of adequate, they'd legitimately scare you.
|
| Bridges and overpasses that exist until they break and the people
| die. People call out to God for justice! But all that infra is
| then rebuilt the same way if it's rebuilt / when it's rebuilt.
|
| Something something American tech people have forgotten just how
| amazing the US is because they don't realize how good it is. They
| take too much for granted. They have the safety to be snarky on
| the internet.
|
| Get a passport and go for a walk.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| "Things are worse elsewhere" is not a valid reason to endure a
| poor standard of living here when we absolutely do not have to.
| MaxikCZ wrote:
| So its okay that bridges in US fall, even when being inspected
| dozen of times and being urged for repairs every time, because
| other countries have it worse?
|
| Why not compare to country where bridges dont fall at all?
| bell-cot wrote:
| > Why not compare...
|
| On the engineering side - you learn far more from analyzing
| failures than from analyzing successes.
|
| On the social side - there's nothing mysterious about how the
| US bureaucracy failed here. Briefly contrasting that with
| Utopialand (where the society & government are different, and
| bridges never fall) can work as journalism. Or as a rebuttal
| to "failures will always happen" doomsayers. But the utility
| is pretty limited. The US isn't a tech company, where you
| might fire up the troops by talking about how your
| competition is delivering obviously-better results on metric
| X.
| lucianbr wrote:
| > On the engineering side - you learn far more from
| analyzing failures than from analyzing successes.
|
| This is just sophistry. You won't learn how this collapse
| could have been prevented, or how to prevent others like
| it, by studying countries where infrastructure is worse.
| You're already doing better than those places, and still
| it's not enough.
|
| Also, I'm pretty sure engineering schools study both
| failures and successes. It is incredible to me that someone
| would honestly believe studying bridges that have not
| fallen is useless.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Does the NTSB agree with you, and write lengthy
| investigative reports about most of the bridges which are
| successes?
|
| Another engineering quip: "Any idiot can build a bridge
| that stands. But it takes an engineer to build a bridge
| that barely stands."
| panick21_ wrote:
| You can also get a passport and go somewhere better. And the US
| is richer then those places. So take a walk and think about how
| to actually systematically improve infrastructure management.
| keiferski wrote:
| This viewpoint is funny, because if you go to many places in
| Eastern Europe that Americans likely consider "behind", the
| infrastructure is far, far superior to anything in the US. In
| my experience, pretty much every developed country has better
| infrastructure than the US.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Eastern Europe is pretty much by definition not "third
| world". Third world would be Africa, maybe the Middle East
| and Southeast Asia.
|
| There's a wide range of circumstances there, which makes
| sense since "third world" was a political designation, not an
| economic one.
| shiroiushi wrote:
| If you're going to use the political definition of "third
| world", then you need to include Switzerland. I'm sure
| that's not the type of country the OP was referring to.
| These days, almost everyone who uses this term is using it
| in the economic sense, since the Cold War has been over for
| decades.
|
| Do you also complain when people use the term "decimated"
| and they aren't talking about killing 1 of every 10
| soldiers?
| keiferski wrote:
| Sure but my point was more that if you grab your passport
| and go for a walk, most places are going to have better
| infrastructure - even the "second world" countries like the
| Balkans.
| AdamN wrote:
| No need for the condescension. Many of the people here don't
| even live in the US anyway.
| chx wrote:
| > how amazing the US is because they don't realize how good it
| is.
|
| And then there's a political commentator who calls the United
| States (and the United Kingdom) a Fourth World -- and that's
| not a positive thing. https://archive.is/UIr49
|
| How America Collapsed and Became a Fourth World Country
|
| How America (and Britain) Became Failed States
| defrost wrote:
| For those interested in the official NTSB report:
|
| _Collapse of the Fern Hollow Bridge_ Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
| January 28, 2022
|
| Highway Investigation Report HIR-24-02 released: February 21,
| 2024
|
| PDF (136 pages):
| https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/...
| viewtransform wrote:
| NTSB Animation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-VnWB4fiFk
| dmurray wrote:
| If you knew all this, would you have avoided driving over the
| bridge? Would you have wanted the local government to close it
| indefinitely awaiting repairs?
|
| Let's say it would collapse with 100% certainty randomly in the
| next three years, and you're in the danger area for 2 minutes,
| with a 20% chance of fatality (in fact, nobody died). That's
| still around a one in 4 million chance any given trip kills you,
| about the same as 30 miles of driving for the average American
| driver.
|
| Most people would accept that level of risk. Perhaps not to save
| a couple of minutes on the journey, but if everyone was
| redirected to another route at rush hour, it might cost each
| commuter 10-20 minutes.
|
| A handful of newsworthy bridge collapses per decade across the US
| doesn't seem so bad. Instead of negligence, perhaps that
| indicates an appropriate level of maintenance and risk tolerance,
| and an appropriate human price to add to the 500,000 other road
| deaths over the same period.
| arethuza wrote:
| "Most people would accept that level of risk"
|
| I wouldn't and I _definitely_ wouldn 't if I had other people
| in the car.
| AdamN wrote:
| It's likely that you live in an area with similar mortality
| risk from air pollution. Is there a reason not to move to an
| area with lower risk from air pollution?
| arethuza wrote:
| Yes, I'm being "irrational" by some viewpoint, I know that.
| jorvi wrote:
| Loneliness is quite damaging to someone's health. Why are
| you irrationally suggesting to him to dump all his social
| ties and net raise his risk of disease and death?
|
| :)
| 1992spacemovie wrote:
| I get your point, however, no offense intended, this type
| of questioning is kinda asinine. One risk is immediate
| (right now), and to a relative extent, an easy choice to
| mitigate. The other risk is long term (maybe never), and
| mitigating the risk is much more costly (uprooting family,
| moving, finding a new residence... with today's prices).
| jameshart wrote:
| Air pollution causes 'excess deaths' in the sense that
| people die of air pollution related diseases at some rate
| instead of dying of something else, generally a short time
| later. There's a very different risk assessment between
| long term choices that have a remote effect on the likely
| ultimate cause of your inevitable death, versus the
| probability of premature death through a sudden violent
| traumatic event.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> It 's likely that you live in an area with similar
| mortality risk from air pollution._
|
| They're not really equivalent, unless you've got a high-
| risk condition like asthma.
|
| Statistically speaking, a 100% chance of losing one year of
| lifespan (out of the 76 years an American can expect) is a
| greater mortality risk than a 1% chance of instant,
| immediate death.
|
| In fact, if you're aged 26, a 1% chance instant death has
| _half_ the mortality risk - and the older you get, the
| better it looks.
|
| However, if you look at humans' revealed preferences,
| people would _much_ rather lose one year of lifespan than
| take a 1% chance of losing their entire remaining lifespan.
|
| Mortality risk isn't a very good predictor of human
| preferences, it turns out.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Let's look at money. Would you rather have a 1% chance of
| losing a million dollars today, or a 100% chance of
| losing $20k when you're 76?
|
| Statistically speaking, a small chance of losing
| everything today is actually worse than a guaranteed
| chance of losing a smaller amount later.
| spuz wrote:
| I believe regardless of the actual probability of failure, most
| people would have refused to drive across the bridge had they
| seen one of the supports had become completely detached.
| Another way to put it is if authorities had closed the bridge
| in 2019, I believe most people wouldn't complain when they were
| presented the photo of the detached support.
|
| Also I don't think it's possible for your risk calculation to
| be done preemptively. We don't know the final breaking point of
| a piece of steel until we break it. All the calculations and
| modelling of the bridge will have been done with error margins
| and because of that we don't have any choice but to over-
| engineer things so we always stay outside of the worse-case
| margin for error. Given all that, I don't think it's
| unreasonable to expect the risk of a bridge collapse to be a
| lot lower than the average risk we take on the road.
| beAbU wrote:
| Yeah it's exactly this mentality that resulted in the Ford
| Pinto scandal of the 70s.
|
| How does that 1:4M probability change when you commute over the
| bridge twice a day? Humans are notorious for being bad gauging
| risk, and we very often make the mistake that past success
| means lower risk of future failure, which for a deteriorating
| bridge is exactly the opposite of what's going to happen.
|
| In my opinion bridges shouldn't collapse, like ever. Annual
| inspections for years prior pointed to a severely deteriorating
| structure, even after the temporary cable stays were put in
| place. The tweet with a picture of a completely detached member
| a couple of years before the collapse makes this even more
| egregious.
|
| This is a textbook example of where bureaucracy prevails over
| common sense. Heads should roll. Thankfully nobody died, but
| the lack of maintenance and upkeep resulted in a total failure,
| wasting lots of taxpayer money to replace.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > How does that 1:4M probability change when you commute over
| the bridge twice a day?
|
| You can get a good sense of this from the equivalence listed
| immediately after the odds:
|
| >> That's still around a one in 4 million chance any given
| trip kills you, _about the same as 30 miles of driving_
|
| So it'd be closely analogous to driving a 30-mile commute
| twice a day. How much risk do you feel that involves?
| Panzer04 wrote:
| 2x daily 30 mile commute sounds like a (relatively)
| substantial risk to me? Driving is already more or less the
| most dangerous activity most people engage in nowadays,
| tolerated by long acclimatization and sheer utility.
|
| Moreover, people generally perceive things in which they
| (theoretically) have more control over as safer - You can
| control/mitigate the risk you undertake as a driver to some
| extent (drive slower, bigger gaps, etc), not so for a
| random bridge collapse.
| EricE wrote:
| The Pinto thing was dramatically overblown. And seriously set
| back the acceptance of small cars in the US. For a supposed
| environmentalist and consumer advocate, Ralph Nadar did FAR
| more harm than good by grifting off a bunch of sensationalist
| poppycock. That he's still looked upon as some sort of folk
| hero is beyond disgusting and just shows how gullible people
| continue to be paying attention only to the sensationalistic
| superficial propaganda and not looking deeper.
| quesera wrote:
| Ralph Nader's direct harm to the US continued into at least
| the year 2000, the legacy of which is even more pronounced
| today. :(
| rob74 wrote:
| A well-maintained (and well designed, but there's no reason to
| think the design was at fault here) bridge shouldn't collapse.
| Ever. "Appropriate maintenance" in this case would have been to
| periodically unclog the drains so the water can run off in a
| controlled fashion and not pool and corrode the supports. How
| expensive can that be? Instead, the bridge collapses (and they
| were lucky that no one was killed in the collapse), and they
| have to replace it for millions of dollars. Money saved on
| maintenance is the very definition of the proverb "penny wise,
| pound foolish" IMHO.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| I don't know how things work in other countries, but in the
| US new construction is almost always funded with a big chunk
| of federal dollars (deficit spending), but maintenance has to
| be done out of your own state or local budget. The incentives
| are all fucked up.
| wazoox wrote:
| Same in other countries for many things. It's relatively
| easier to spend big on white elephants but almost
| impossible to get basic day-to-day operation money.
|
| Case in point right now at the France-Italy border :
| they're building the longest rail tunnel in the world under
| the Alps for tens of billions. There is a tunnel already
| (Frejus tunnel), which is used at 25% of its capacity, but
| public money is raining on this unstoppable, useless
| project.
|
| On the other end, all over Europe and particularly in
| France and Italy, rail and road infrastructures are in a
| state of disrepair. Wouldn't this money be better used
| repairing thousands of bridges, tunnels, etc? Sure, but no
| politician could campaign on "I've got billions spent in
| our region!". No multinational civil engineering and
| construction company such as Eiffage or Bouygues would get
| big money. All the big boys are in favour of the project,
| and all the small guys simply don't count.
|
| This is all completely fucked-up, frankly. It's a general
| failure of democracy and a global corporate takeover.
| em-bee wrote:
| that's because the frejus route is unsuitable for high
| speed rail.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turin%E2%80%93Lyon_high-
| speed_...
|
| _Additional traffic limitations stem from the impact of
| excessive train transit on the population living near the
| line. Some 60,000 people live within 250 m (820 ft) of
| the historical line, and would object to the noise from
| late-night transits. In 2007 the conventional line was
| used for only one-third of this calculated total
| capacity. This low use level was in part because
| restrictions such as an unusually low maximum allowable
| train height and the very steep gradients (26-30%0) and
| sharp curves in its high valley sections discourage its
| use.
|
| A 2018 analysis, by contrast, found the existing line
| close to saturation, largely because safety regulations
| now prohibit passenger and freight trains from crossing
| in a single-tube tunnel. This very significantly reduces
| the maximum allowed capacity of the 13.7 km long Frejus
| tunnel, which trains of one type must now fully cross
| before any train of the other type can be allowed in the
| other direction. The historical line's path through the
| deep Maurienne valley is also exposed to rockfalls, and a
| major landslide in August 2023 forced its closure for
| most likely over one year._
| wazoox wrote:
| No that's barely a bad excuse. The projected market for
| the new line is 500 000 passengers a year, that's 2
| trains each way per day. That doesn't even begin making
| the slightest sense. As passenger traffic cannot be a
| valid justification, they turned towards fret trains. Too
| bad, fret has been dropping between France and Italy for
| some years. Fret trains have dropped dramatically in
| France well below the European average (17% of cargo
| traffic) to 9 to 10% of traffic. If you want to revive
| freight trains, you can't just build one frigging tunnel,
| you need to rebuild almost from scratch the whole thing
| first because Fret SNCF has been closed down in 2023 and
| dismantled!
|
| With the amount of money invested you could probably fly
| everyone from Lyon to Turin on expensive aviation biofuel
| for centuries before recouping the humongous investment.
| This is just stupid grandiosity allied with corruption.
| Sharlin wrote:
| Yeah, that sounds really strange. Not sure how it is
| elsewhere in Europe, but in Finland whoever builds it,
| maintains it. Intercity road and rail networks are all
| owned and managed by the state, and that's actually how the
| equivalents of "road" and "street" are defined within the
| field: anything owned by the state is a road, anything
| owned by the municipality is a street.
|
| In recent years there have been plans to "boulevardize"
| some major arterials within city boundaries, meaning the
| city takes over responsibility of the road segment and
| turns it into a street with lower speed limits, multimodal
| access, and so on. The intention is, of course, to
| facilitate urban development in the corridor.
| dmurray wrote:
| Finland joined the EU too late and too rich, perhaps. In
| other countries the EU was the main source of funds for
| building motorways, but doesn't own them or maintain
| them.
| Sharlin wrote:
| Hmm, perhaps. These days you can still get 30-50% from
| the EU but essentially only if it's part of TEN-T or
| maybe some Green Deal related project.
|
| The core network of major roads in Finland can be kept in
| a good shape, the issue is largely the thousands of kms
| of secondary and tertiary roads in the middle of nowhere
| that have too little traffic to be any sort of a
| maintenance priority, or to be eligible for EU funding.
| But you can't really help it in a country that's as
| sparsely populated as Finland outside major urban areas.
| p1mrx wrote:
| Maybe we should spend federal dollars on stainless steel,
| to reduce maintenance costs.
| bregma wrote:
| Ah, but replacement comes out of the capital budget not the
| operating budget, and involves ribbon cuttings and
| speechifying on opening day as opposed to inconvenient lane
| closures or even hidden ongoing tasks that are invisible to
| the voter.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Let's say [...] you're in the danger area for 2 minutes, with
| a 20% chance of fatality
|
| > That's still around a one in 4 million chance any given trip
| kills you
|
| That's a one in five chance that any given trip kills you,
| unless 20% means something very different to you than it does
| to me.
| adrianN wrote:
| The average American driver includes drunk and tired drivers
| who play on their phone while speeding. The numbers for sober
| people driving reasonably e.g. on their commute are probably
| better.
| ncruces wrote:
| Those drive on the same road, right next to you.
| adrianN wrote:
| That doesn't make my statement wrong.
| pintxo wrote:
| Someone else posted the NTSB video on the bridge:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-VnWB4fiFk
|
| I am fairly certain that a large majority of people, if they'd
| have had access to those images of the bridges structural
| members, would have stopped using it.
| kube-system wrote:
| Most people are unable to accurately diagnose a bridge
| structure other than "yeah looks rusty". And if that were the
| case, they wouldn't be driving much of anywhere in that part
| of the country, which is called the "rust belt" for a reason.
| Pittsburgh has a very high number of bridges, if you go
| anywhere in that city and you don't want to cross a rusty
| bridge, you can't go very far.
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| There's rusty, and then there's "I can see daylight through
| the steel".
|
| I think most people can accurately diagnose that as an
| actual, real problem.
| kube-system wrote:
| That isn't an uncommon sight around Pittsburgh. Whether
| or not it is an imminent structural issue depends on
| where the holes are.
| pintxo wrote:
| This one settled it for me:
| https://youtu.be/J-VnWB4fiFk?si=BHg_ppZIAb2ykU2-&t=301
|
| It's an important enough member to warrant 10 (I am
| assuming symmetry here, you cannot see all of them) not
| quite tiny bolts and nuts, but you can see clearly
| through the thing.
| quesera wrote:
| > _which is called the "rust belt" for a reason_
|
| ...but not for the reason you're implying.
|
| The "rust belt" used to be the "steel belt", until free
| trade agreements made the US steel industry non-viable.
|
| Rust is symbolic of that decay.
|
| All of the infrastructure that was built when these areas
| were economically solid, is now rotting along with the
| economy that built them.
| danielhep wrote:
| Something I think you're missing here is that when the bridge
| collapses, cars can no longer drive across it until a new
| bridge is built, so the inconvenience is almost certainly much
| worse than if they'd just closed it for maintenance for a bit
| in the first place.
| hedora wrote:
| Also, it probably would have been a lot cheaper to have
| someone roto-rooter all the drains of all the bridges in
| Pittsburg once a year than to clean up one collapsed bridge
| and rebuild it on short notice. I suspect they have other
| bridges with similar water damage and have to pay to fix
| those too.
| jameshart wrote:
| > Let's say it would collapse with 100% certainty randomly in
| the next three years, and you're in the danger area for 2
| minutes, with a 20% chance of fatality
|
| Or how about let's say it would collapse with 100% certainty
| randomly in the next three years, and a school bus with twenty
| kids in it drives over the bridge twice a day, with each child
| facing a 20% chance of fatality.
|
| 'I probably won't be the one who dies when it collapses' is a
| _terrible_ metric for whether or not we should try to mitigate
| the risk of a bridge collapse.
| quesera wrote:
| School buses are never a useful way to think about risk. You
| might not be intending it, but this is a cheap manipulation
| technique.
|
| Bridges sometimes fail catastrophically, with risk to life.
| Modeling risk is a necessary way to consider the costs of
| mitigation.
|
| Leaving aside the poor helpless babies, what metric would you
| suggest?
| tzs wrote:
| > That's still around a one in 4 million chance any given trip
| kills you, about the same as 30 miles of driving for the
| average American driver.
|
| For those wondering if that is right, it is. Here's the math.
|
| Americans drive about 3.2 trillion miles per year and about 40
| 000 people are killed. That's one death per 80 000 000 miles.
|
| Assuming each mile is equally deadly, that chances you survive
| a given a mile would be 79 999 999 / 80 000 000. To survive a
| trip of N miles, you have to survive each individual mile
| sequentially. The chances of that would be (79 999 999 / 80 000
| 000)^N.
|
| The chance of not surviving that trip would then be 1 - (79 999
| 999 / 80 000 000)^N.
|
| For N = 30 that is 1 / 2 666 667, which is close enough to
| dmurray's number to count as a match. There's enough fuzziness
| is in the inputs that all we can hope for is the same ballpark.
|
| I've seen others say the rate is one death per 120 000 000
| miles, and for N = 30 that does give 1 / 4 000 000, so I'd
| guess they are using that rate.
|
| > Most people would accept that level of risk. Perhaps not to
| save a couple of minutes on the journey, but if everyone was
| redirected to another route at rush hour, it might cost each
| commuter 10-20 minutes
|
| One big difference is that with the bridge _everyone_ has the
| average risk. I cross the bridge, I 'm rolling a d4000000 and
| hoping I don't get a 1.
|
| With a car I can take steps to make the chances of dying on my
| particular trip much lower than average. With the car I can
| often time my trip so as to go at times of day or during
| weather conditions or during traffic conditions when accident
| rates are lower.
| simple10 wrote:
| Are we going to start seeing Google Maps offer alternate routes
| to avoid sketchy bridges?
|
| Seems possible. Airline booking sites already offer filters to
| exclude 737 Max planes.
| hi-v-rocknroll wrote:
| For context, there were 42,391 structurally deficient bridges in
| 2023.[0]
|
| 16 of the worst are in LA county and several see 300k trips
| daily, including one carrying the 405.[1]
|
| 0. PDF https://artbabridgereport.org/reports/2023-ARTBA-Bridge-
| Repo...
|
| 1. https://artbabridgereport.org/state/ranking/top-bridges
|
| EDIT: States with the least % of SD bridges: AZ, NV, TX, DE, and
| UT.
|
| WV and IA have the most at almost 20% SD bridges respectively. (1
| in 5!)
|
| EDIT2: Raw data https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/bridge/nbi/ascii.cfm
| francisofascii wrote:
| It should be mentioned that structurally deficient does not
| mean unsafe.
| greggsy wrote:
| After reading the measument rules, it is... complicated. From
| what I can gather, it seem that if _any_ of the components
| (deck, culverts, sub /superstructure, waterways, etc) receive
| a 'poor' rating, the whole structure is marked as
| structurally deficient. It also factors in things like the
| current and expected traffic patterns and mainability.
|
| https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/01/18/2017-00.
| ..
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| Yes, but as illustrated by the original article/video,
| bridges are designed as a total system. One of the major
| causes of the Fern Hollow Bridge collapse was certainly the
| deficient drainage caused by blocked drains.
|
| Bridges (and buildings) are designed as systems. Water
| management is one of the biggest headaches in civil
| engineering - poor performance of any subsystem with a
| water management role is a legitimate cause for concern.
| michaelt wrote:
| So the industry's rating system maps this bridge - totally
| fucked, key structural members rusted away entirely, others
| with large, clearly visible holes right through important
| points, weakened to the point it ended up falling down - to
| "structurally deficient" and then maps "structurally
| deficient" to "not necessarily unsafe" ?
|
| Kinda makes me think George Carlin was on to something with
| his hate of soft, euphemistic language.
| rcxdude wrote:
| That's one of the points in the video: the paperwork tends
| to obscure the state of the system to decision makers. It's
| easy for the bridge inspectors (or even a random member of
| the public) to see that it needs to be closed down and
| repaired, but it's not what the decision-makers see: they
| see a 100-page report with a long list of action items,
| many of which are not actually incredibly urgent, much like
| every other bridge they get inspected. It makes it
| difficult to actually get a good sense of where the bigger
| problems are. (of course it should actually be the case
| that they are on top of everything that is highlighted in
| the inspections, but that's expensive and it seems like no-
| one wants to pay for it)
| michaelt wrote:
| That's related, but it's not my point. Saying "decision-
| makers miss details in 100-page reports" makes it sound
| like the report is merely _too thorough_ , and the
| inspectors did _too good a job_.
|
| My point is the report's summary _could_ have said "This
| bridge will fall down within 3 years" instead of
| obscuring the with vague, watered-down jargon like
| "structurally deficient"
| naikrovek wrote:
| Thank you for this. This is neat data.
|
| I'm not sure about anyone else, but I'm pretty sure our bridges
| should be something considered important enough to keep
| maintained. :(
|
| > 36 percent of all U.S. bridges (over 222,000 spans) require
| major repair work or replacement. Placed end-to-end, these
| structures span over 6,100 miles - and would take over 110
| hours to cross at an average speed of 55-miles-per-hour.
|
| That's a lot of bridge.
| greggsy wrote:
| Those states also have some of the fewest bridges, with the
| exception of Texas, which has the most of all states, and
| double the second place state (Ohio). That said, Ohio is 41
| times smaller...
|
| So many ways to dice this information and I don't even live in
| the US.
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/190386/number-of-road-br...
| justin66 wrote:
| > That said, Ohio is 41 times smaller...
|
| ?
| bluish29 wrote:
| Texas is about 6 times bigger than Ohio. Texas is
| approximately 678,052 sq km, while Ohio is approximately
| 106,056 sq km.
|
| The population of Texas is around 25.1 million people
| compared to 11.5 million in Ohio, a difference of 13.6
| million people. That means about 2 times population wise.
|
| I don't know by which size metric it is that ohio is 41 times
| smaller than texas?
| jon_richards wrote:
| Also texas has 683,533 lane miles of road vs ohio's 262,492
| and a GDP of $2,563,508m vs ohio's $872,748m. Seems like
| they aren't putting that land mass to good use.
| jldugger wrote:
| Annual Rainfall per square inch seems like a relevant
| factor though.
| jon_richards wrote:
| Texas averages 36 inches of rain and 2 inches of snow
| each year. Ohio gets 40 inches of rain and 28 inches of
| snow.
| jldugger wrote:
| > Texas averages ... 2 inches of snow each year.
|
| Really? That does not comport with my experience growing
| up there.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Everything is bigger in Texas, particularly claims about
| how big Texas is.
| dmoy wrote:
| At first glance I'm not sure what raw number of bridges has
| to do with having a higher or lower _percentage_ of
| structurally deficient bridges.
| jibe wrote:
| More context:
|
| About ARTBA
|
| The Washington, D.C.-based American Road & Transportation
| Builders Association (ARTBA) is a non-partisan federation whose
| primary goal is to aggressively grow and protect transportation
| infrastructure investment
| ourmandave wrote:
| I was going to say they were sounding the alarm about bridges
| nation wide years and years ago.
|
| They finally passed an infrastructure bill which hopefully
| includes fixing 'em.
|
| I know they've been _replacing_ a lot on I-80 in IA.
| bombcar wrote:
| This is actually part of the PROBLEM - with so many bridges on
| the "worst possible category" it becomes a bridge who cried
| wolf scenario. There is no way to highlight "yeah this one is
| going to fall down tomorrow" if the worst you can do is mark it
| "this bridge bad like 42k others".
|
| You need some form of a "stop ship" where inspectors get some
| number of "no way, close this entirely" that they can use
| without repercussions or something.
| djbusby wrote:
| Deficiency Rating + Load Volume. Address the worst bug
| affecting the most users first?
| joncp wrote:
| They sort of do have that power. They have the ability to
| lower the max vehicle weight and eventually it gets lowered
| to where no real traffic can go over it. Grady talked about
| it in the video.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| There is a catch-22 for such a judgement call. As bridges
| generally weigh far more than the traffic they carry, there
| isn't much room between a bridge that is too dangerous for
| traffic and one that is too dangerous for _anything_ ,
| including repair work.
| eauxnguyen wrote:
| There's a road near me that's been replaced by a large 4 lane
| state route. There's almost no reason to drive it as there
| are no houses or farm access. The bridge is being completely
| replaced. The road is closed during construction, and I think
| the only people impacted by it are the recreational bikers. A
| boondoggle while other bridges around the country are in
| dangerous disrepair. I wish we knew there was a sensible
| prioritization that was published for review by we the
| taxpayers.
| erikaww wrote:
| Yes! I want a cost benefit analysis and to ask every
| stakeholder imaginable for any sort of road repair or
| expansion. The fact that not every repair or expansion has
| a single improvement for non car users is pitiful.
|
| We need to hold road infrastructure to the same
| consideration as we do transit and rail. If we didn't give
| it unlimited funding, then it would already be doing this.
|
| We are wasting trillions and losing so much economic growth
| by doubling down on a bad investment year after year for
| decades. Imagine if this money was put into education or
| healthcare or transit. We'd actually have a net benefit!
| bombcar wrote:
| A big part of that is who pays - state and federal dollars
| that are unused go away, so they often find a program that
| can use it, even if it's not the best use of funds locally.
|
| Local roads often don't qualify, but state and federal
| highways do.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I think this leans on a thing that I think of as the "law of
| average quality." The belief that there's some mark, near the
| middle, and things below that mark are bad, and things above
| that mark are good. It's something that is only true if
| you're comparing things against themselves. If there are any
| external goals for the things being discussed, _almost
| everything can be bad_ (and correspondingly, almost
| everything can be good.)
|
| I feel like this thought process leads to the "worst possible
| category" containing 42k bridges. The construction of the
| categories was based around whether the bridge is safe, and
| this category says "the bridge is not safe." It's when you
| put it off long enough, and let the infrastructure
| deteriorate long enough, that you start going "which is the
| most unsafe though?" Or, "is a safety factor even necessary?
| They are by definition a >1.0 factor applied to what we think
| is safe." Then, "one in a hundred year events" or "once in a
| decade events." Eventually it's "hasn't collapsed yet!"
|
| The fact that the list got that big means our problem isn't
| prioritization, our problem is failing to repair bridges.
| Commit to and budget for repairing 42k bridges, then
| prioritize where you start.
| Fatnino wrote:
| I mean, it's not even remotely legal but some TNT can shut
| down a bridge and highlight that it needed help...
|
| And it can be done in a way that there isn't a bus on the
| bridge when it collapses.
| bsder wrote:
| Managing structurally deficient bridges is more problematic in
| places with winter or at least more varied weather (like
| Pennsylvania).
|
| Just like this bridge, the big problem is that something
| happens and degradation switches from "slow but manageable" to
| "Oh, shit, suddenly that beam is _gone_ and this bridge might
| collapse ".
| nemacol wrote:
| Awesome to see WV at the top of yet another list of shame.
|
| While our state representatives are issuing a tax refund
| because we are "running a surplus"
|
| This state is wild. I bet it will be the first to be merged
| with a nearby state because of poor governance.
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| Many western countries in general do not care for routine
| maintenance of infrastructure / buildings / water lines / busses.
|
| Norway has to be among the worst.
|
| It is not fun and glorious for a political administration to set
| aside $$$$ every year that will just go to people doing boring
| work that the voters will not be impressed with.
|
| You dont see politicians "Under my administration we painted XX
| buildings, we did need maintenance of YY bridges, we replaced ZZ
| parts of the railway that would become problematic with time.
|
| Rather: "Under my administration we opened up a new large
| hospital (because the other had near 0 maintannce for decades),
| we built 2 new bridges etc"
| Aerroon wrote:
| "If you don't want to pay taxes then who's gonna pay for the
| roads?"
|
| Apparently, nobody pays for it either way. It's astounding to
| me how little tax money goes into paying for infrastructure.
|
| In 2023 the US federal government spent $44.8 billion on
| infrastructure and transferred $81.5 billion to the states.
| That's $126.3 billion out of a $6.1 trillion budget. ('Only'
| $4.4 trillion in revenue though.)
|
| That's 2% of the budget.
| rileymat2 wrote:
| In theory, shouldn't it be this way?
|
| Having localities pay from local tax money seems like it
| would focus money on expenditures that the people that use
| them and pay for them will approve of with their own skin in
| the game. There are some interstate highways that serve
| multiple localities, but these should be the minority, right?
| immibis wrote:
| Only if the city has the right to bar travelers from
| passing through.
| ghaff wrote:
| A lot of road infrastructure funding at the town/city
| level can disproportionately go to wear/tear/usage by
| people/trucks that don't live in the town and the
| taxpayers don't benefit (in fact often the opposite). It
| makes more sense at the state level especially if you
| factor out interstates and in fact that tends to be how
| things are handled much of the time in the US.
| rileymat2 wrote:
| Yes, that's fair, but we know the vast majority of trips
| are local outside of certain exceptions.
| mc32 wrote:
| And yet we have money to spare for foreign aid, NGOs,
| spendthrift in military buying, etc.
|
| We should cover all our internal needs before we show our
| largesse elsewhere.
| gumby wrote:
| Most "foreign" aid, especially military aid, is is spent
| within the "donor" country. Japan is the most extreme in
| this regard, followed by the USA.
|
| And, like maintenance: foreign aid can avoid local
| problems, e.g. stabilizing countries in central America can
| reduce the incentive for people to flee to the US (which
| for most people is a distant plan C over staying where they
| are or moving a short distance away).
| mc32 wrote:
| Its grift. Why does the US have to spend money on
| military aid to first world countries, even if a very
| sizable chunk is spent on American weaponry?
|
| That money could be spent on maintenance rather than
| fattening our MIC.
|
| NGOs are similar. In theory they sound good, the leaders
| can pull sizable salaries, eclipsing any congresspersons
| earnings and they are incentivized to keep the bad thing
| happening--if they solved the problem their reason to be
| would cease.
| philistine wrote:
| To understand why the US government spends so much on
| rich countries, you can't just think in economic terms,
| since that's not what why the US government is doing it.
|
| The reason is geopolitical. It is seen as necessary to
| give money to allies to prop up their military so the US
| hegemony can be maintained. Adversaries (China, Russia,
| Iran) need to be made afraid not only of US might, but
| also of Allies' might. So the US doesn't wait around for
| those countries to spend on their military on their own,
| or god forbid to realign their alliances based on their
| spending. Checks it is.
| tim333 wrote:
| I'm not sure there's that much military aid to first
| world countries. Where there is like with Israel I think
| generally the US thinks it's strategically advantageous.
| gumby wrote:
| Egypt, on the other hand, has a huge fleet of tanks that
| they just keep in storage (at their own cost). They
| basically are taking the military aid in the hope that
| the US would help them should a war develop.
| FredPret wrote:
| It would be ideal if US allies would spend more on their
| militaries, but the last time a US President insisted on
| that he was mocked mercilessly.
|
| But contrary to popular belief, the MIC isn't that fat.
| They are mostly public companies - you can check out
| their profits yourself. Here's one:
| https://valustox.com/NOC
|
| Their margins tend to be small. Their revenues are
| incredibly steady (they're pretty much government
| departments). Staying ready for war like this is actually
| a wise course of action - it would be catastrophic to
| have to ramp up in the next emergency like in WW2.
| ak217 wrote:
| The military is not exactly ready for war, though.
| Shipbuilding capacity is greatly diminished and the Navy
| has massive issues with most of its design and
| procurement programs. Other services have issues too,
| though not as severe.
|
| The military is in desperate need of more new contractors
| like Anduril and SpaceX to provide competition for the
| incumbents, as well as stronger collaboration with allies
| like having Japanese shipyards build some of our ships.
| FredPret wrote:
| Anduril and SpaceX will probably be very good for the
| MIC. But the incumbents aren't doing too badly - they're
| currently supplying a proxy war against one of the US's
| major rivals.
|
| The programs and systems may not be perfect but at least
| there _are_ programs and systems.
| gumby wrote:
| > It would be ideal if US allies would spend more on
| their militaries, but the last time a US President
| insisted on that he was mocked mercilessly.
|
| I think the mockery was over how he transactionally
| framed it rather than the principle itself. But TBH do we
| really want European countries to rearm? After centuries
| of fighting they quieted down after outsourcing it to the
| US. And since they weren't fighting that outsourcing
| wasn't even that expensive. I am sure it was cheaper to
| have all those US troops supporting NATO countries than
| to get drawn into yet another war over there.
|
| > Staying ready for war like this is actually a wise
| course of action - it would be catastrophic to have to
| ramp up in the next emergency like in WW2.
|
| It's like insurance -- you hope that it's a deadweight
| loss but pay for it because it's cheaper than holding the
| risk yourself. And I do think the western countries
| overdid it in regards to downsizing after the end of the
| cold war.
| jessriedel wrote:
| The vast majority of the budget is just transfers from one
| person to another. (Social security, welfare, medicaid, etc.)
| Doesn't make much more sense to compare this to
| infrastructure spending than it makes to compare the cost of
| maintenance on the bank building to the total value of the
| payments it processes.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| Most infrastructure is paid for by states and cities, not via
| federal transfers. Your quote is actively deceptive, you
| literally cut out the second part of the same source here[1]:
|
| > The federal government spent $44.8 billion on
| infrastructure in 2023 and transferred an additional $81.5
| billion to states. In 2021, state and local governments spent
| $218.5 billion on transportation and infrastructure,
| excluding federal government transfers.
|
| [1] https://usafacts.org/state-of-the-union/transportation-
| infra...
| markus_zhang wrote:
| I suspect it has less with voters but more with which pockets
| they want to fill. Ordinary people do care about road quality
| and other boring things.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > You dont see politicians "Under my administration we painted
| XX buildings...
|
| That's just bad politicking then.
|
| "Under my administration we hired hundreds of workers in
| Anytown who can proudly say they worked to maintain this city's
| infrastructure and provide a future for not only their kids but
| all of our kids. Their paychecks put food on the table and
| money into the local economy."
| throwup238 wrote:
| Bridge repair is further complicated by the United States' form
| of government. The majority of the major bridges in poor
| condition in California (and most other states, I presume) were
| built with Federal highway funds which started drying up in the
| 1970s, leaving a huge hole in the finances for maintenance.
|
| Since most income and business taxes go to the Federal
| government, states are dependent on Federal grants for a lot of
| infrastructure.
| arp242 wrote:
| Infrastructure maintenance was quite a big issue during the
| 2015 US election. I'm not sure the Trump administration
| actually did anything about it - I don't really follow US
| politics that closely. My point is: people do care.
|
| I think the bigger problem is maintenance is just one cost out
| of many. There's also education, and health care, and social
| services, and police, and firemen, and pensions, and all sorts
| of other things, and that's _also_ important. It 's relatively
| easy to "save" on maintenance because nothing is going to fall
| down immediately and no one will really notice - at least not
| for a while. In the long run you're not really saving anything
| of course.
|
| It's easy to critique this from the sidelines, but the
| pressures politicians and governments are under make it pretty
| tricky to do anything else. Saving money in other areas is
| going to be unpopular. Raising taxes even more so. A lot of
| times stuff like this is a Kobayashi Maru.
| francisofascii wrote:
| An interesting takeaway is that a simple task like cleaning the
| drainage grates and preventing them from being clogged probably
| would have saved the bridge. The bridge has a prescribed drainage
| path, and with the grates clogged the water drains and pools in
| other places, accelerating the corrosion.
| 7ep wrote:
| > No one holds a press conference and cuts a big ribbon at the
| end of a bridge inspection or structural retrofit.
|
| maybe they should. maybe we could celebrate repair like we do new
| construction. there's a comfort in knowing we've been put good
| again that's worth signifying.
| more_corn wrote:
| This is why I think nuclear power is a bad idea. Paying back a
| multibillion dollar investment takes decades. Operating costs eat
| into profits. The financial incentive is to run them as cheaply
| as possible for as long as possible. In a place where there's a
| strong work ethic and good maintenance history that might be
| fine. Look around at your infrastructure before climbing on the
| nuclear bandwagon.
| samatman wrote:
| A better comparison for nuclear power is the airplane industry.
| No one goes into the bridge running plant every day and runs
| the bridge for a living, with several people assigned to run a
| daily checklist on said bridge.
|
| But it's still not a very good comparison, because airplanes,
| due to their very nature, can't be designed to fail safe.
| Nuclear power plants can.
| glitcher wrote:
| Not an engineer, found the video on this fascinating and very
| approachable. It sounds like the NTSB report did a surprisingly
| good job of addressing the multiple mistakes and failures that
| led to the bridge collapse.
|
| But to the bigger point made near the end, without a person in
| the loop who both appreciates the meaning held within the
| inspection reports AND having the power to act on that
| information, we still remain vulnerable to the complexity of our
| own social systems becoming too inefficient to handle problems
| like this.
| gp wrote:
| I used to walk across this bridge every day. You could feel whole
| bridge shake when heavy vehicles would drive over it (Lived in
| Reagent Square 2017 - 2019). I remember one morning I was trapped
| on the bridge for an hour in traffic on my drive to school
| because the city of Pittsburgh could not afford to keep the roads
| plowed.
|
| Very thankful that nobody was hurt when it collapsed, and as
| other people have pointed out it is representative of all of the
| infrastructure that many cities have but can no longer afford to
| maintain or replace.
| cvz wrote:
| Unfortunately people were hurt, the good news is nobody died.
|
| https://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/news/completely-preventab...
| chiph wrote:
| To prevent this from happening in the future, I would give the
| inspectors the right to immediately close a bridge when it got to
| be this bad. If the owner forcibly reopened it, they would lose
| any insurance coverage on it (be totally liable for
| consequences).
| simple10 wrote:
| This seems reasonable, but there's also the concern of abuse of
| power. Like when the mob or politicians had control of local
| labor unions and inspectors on payroll. They would force
| closures of bridges, roads, building, etc to hire mob run
| construction companies to do the repairs. Maybe there are
| enough federal safeguards in place for this now at DOT
| (Department of Transportation) level.
| nickff wrote:
| Nobody would hire the 'assertive' engineers or firms, so it'd
| be a very rarely used power.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-06-19 23:01 UTC)