It's this more than the competency factor. Any and all infrastructure projects in this area are forever bogged down with contracting bullshit. There's too much money flowing through this town so every bureaucrat comes out of the woodwork to get their chunk of cheese.
You can't build an effing dog house in this country anymore without every damn bureaucrat and lawyer in a hundred mile radius crawling up your ass. Infrastructure projects always get done in by a death of a thousand cuts, from these rent-seeking parasites.
I move enough that highway construction tends to be permanent. I'll move in somewhere, it'll be going on, and then a few years later I'll move out, and it will still be going on. Whether they ever finish or just move where they're constructing, I'll never know. But I hate seeing it start.
There’s a highway where I live (only roughly 150 miles long) that has literally had at least one section of it being “upgraded” for the last two decades. Because they deliberately do it in such a way that is never “future-proofed”, and the materials and methods they use are only ever good for 5 years or so into the future…
Subcontractors, this is, who have a cushy relationship with the state government and the local car lobby…
It’s so deliberate and blatant that it’s quite shocking, and yet, and yet, people still keep voting for the politicians who put forward this shit, as actual policy…
It’s incredibly frustrating. Especially when you have to drive on/near it, as I do occasionally…
It will literally never end, lol. They just keep bumping up immigration (mostly from Nepal and Africa, now), and then using the resulting “population growth” to justify literally whatever they want…
Where I used to live they had turnpikes that literally were under permanent construction. They'd close one lane and slow down traffic - for miles - until it was completed then they'd open it and close the other side. Then when that was finished they'd repeat the first side. Went on for years and years like that.
To be fair the completed lane was always in tip-top shape.
To be fair the completed lane was always in tip-top shape.
Not the interstate, but I feel like what they do on the side streets here is start at the end of a path and then when they "finish" just start at the other end again. I mean that probably is literally what they do since it would make sense to have crews on repaving duty all the time. They'll never run out of work to do. This ain't Arizona. roads are shit after a couple years.
I honestly never expected to see the Seattle Viaduct torn down and be able to drive through the tunnel replacing it, to the point where I went out of my way to drive through it the one time I had the opportunity to do so.
I hear they've been working on the same section of highway near the Tacoma Dome for over 20 years now. I know they were working on it back in the early 2000s, and they were still at it when I visited there a year or two ago.
For perspective, the US spent less than 4 years fighting in World War II. Millions of soldiers trained, tens of thousands of ships, aircraft, and tanks built, and they could have done it all over again fives and still it would be less time than it has taken to rebuild a couple miles of highway in Washington State.
For more perspective, the S-1 "Uranium Committee" was created in 1940, the Manhattan Project started in 1942, and the first atomic bomb tested only 3 years later in 1945. The Hiroshima bomb deployed only a month later.
There's a road near my commute that has had "road work" being done to it for the last 15 years. I never go that way, but I have to wonder what the hell they are doing that has taken that long.
It took nine years from the bond issue (1968) to completion (1977).
The estimate of 10 years to reopening is reasonable and consistent with what it took to build it originally when you take into consideration the four years of project prep-work that happened between the bond issuance and the start of construction.
Frankly, I think ten years is pessimistic. If the existing approaches can be salvaged it will take a good year or two off the construction time. They don't have to do any new geological studies to rebuild the cassions.
Is there a reason that prep-work needs to be done again? Genuinely don't know: presumably the formerly built bridge had engineer-approved plans where all the math and physics were worked out and validated.
I mean, aside from clearing the wrecked bridge so that you can build it in the same spot.
I'm no bridge engineer but if the collision caused enough stress across the entire structure to the point of causing fractures in underwater foundation blocks then I'd imagine they might have to dismantle them as well.
Lead time on orders. Old bridge was 4-5 thousand tons of steel that has to be scheduled into some (already busy) foundries, and you can't even start putting it together until you've got a lot of the pieces staged and ready.
But frankly I doubt they'll rebuild it "as it was". They might as well throw on a couple extra lanes and use a newer style. They could do something a little more grandiose, like the Rio-Antirio bridge.
Regardless of styling, they should definitely, definitely add on more protection for the bridge pylons, this time, particularly around that shipping lane…
You obviously know more about this than I, but that was one of the things I heard discussed, even early on, to prevent incidents like this happening again, so surely…
Frankly, I'm amazed that they weren't already, in this case.
I live in a city where a bridge collapsed (partly, different structure) in the mid-70s, in almost the exact same way. Death toll was a bit higher, too, because different time of day, less alternative options for the same route (at that point), and because a few cars drove off the gap.
As a result, now, and ever since, pilot tugs are always required, when a ship of that size enters or leaves the port, or any other large-scale industrial port, pretty much anywhere in the country, and whenever a boat of that size goes through said rebuilt bridge, the entire thing is closed to transit while it crosses, until it's clear, just to be safe...
So... I guess I just assumed that was the standard everywhere, but evidently not...
To be fair though, we had both Granville (one of the worst bridge collapses in a Western country in the last 60 years) and Westgate happen in Aus, too, which were huge losses of life, comparatively, so I guess we learned the hard way from those, umm, accidents...
yea i have a road by my house that was meant to take 1 year its been 6 and a half years and its still not finished 10 years is if anything much to optimistic.
Gotta love the fact checkers adding irrelevant and misleading information to the post.
“Including preparatory work” yeah, the 1970’s were way different and materials had a much harder time getting to the places they needed to be, also bridge design, hiring workers, etc.
Analysis, cleanup, and demolition doesn’t take 3 years, nice try though.
There are guys in the Netherlands that will have that bridge and ship removed for you in a couple of months. I saw 'em on TV. They can send equipment to any sea in the world.
They even open local offices so you can hire a "black" firm. They did so in South Africa, and they weren't the least bit shy about it.
And cost 10 times as much adjusted for inflation. Plus it's going to be made out of Chinesium like the SF Bay bridge. So they'll be rebuilding it in another 5 years.
Maybe that is why the bridge came down, because it only took 4 years to build and the building standards from the 70s are very different from the safety measures used now?
I am guessing this is going to surprise you but new bridges build protections around the pillars so that any accident like this hit the protection instead of the pillars.
And you obviously have not seen protective pillars around the main bridge pillar, this is not science fiction, hundreds of bridges around the World already have this. Anyway you will see them in 10 years if you are to lazy to use a search engine.
It's also the type of bridge, and the sheer size of that ship...
I live in a city with a massive concrete box girder bridge. When a ship probably about half that size (and I imagine, much less mass) hit a similar pylon, in the mid-70s, only two sections of it came down.
Admittedly, it sank the ship, and killed many more people, but then they just rebuilt those sections, left one less pylon, and ta-dah, she's still standing, 50 years later, so...
You're not wrong that bridge design plays a part.
However the bridge in question has massive concrete protections around the base of its pylons. Whether those were in place in 1975, I do not know (or whether they are later additions), but... It didn't seem to stop what happened.
But regardless, yeah, it's just interesting to see the same sort of situation play out here, except with an entirely different result...
Water is like, 5 times deeper, here, though. I'm not sure if that played a part, too...
Competency crisis in full effect
also a representation of how bureaucracy has evolved.
It's this more than the competency factor. Any and all infrastructure projects in this area are forever bogged down with contracting bullshit. There's too much money flowing through this town so every bureaucrat comes out of the woodwork to get their chunk of cheese.
You can't build an effing dog house in this country anymore without every damn bureaucrat and lawyer in a hundred mile radius crawling up your ass. Infrastructure projects always get done in by a death of a thousand cuts, from these rent-seeking parasites.
If they plan/budget for 10 it'll take at least 15.
I move enough that highway construction tends to be permanent. I'll move in somewhere, it'll be going on, and then a few years later I'll move out, and it will still be going on. Whether they ever finish or just move where they're constructing, I'll never know. But I hate seeing it start.
There’s a highway where I live (only roughly 150 miles long) that has literally had at least one section of it being “upgraded” for the last two decades. Because they deliberately do it in such a way that is never “future-proofed”, and the materials and methods they use are only ever good for 5 years or so into the future…
Subcontractors, this is, who have a cushy relationship with the state government and the local car lobby…
It’s so deliberate and blatant that it’s quite shocking, and yet, and yet, people still keep voting for the politicians who put forward this shit, as actual policy…
It’s incredibly frustrating. Especially when you have to drive on/near it, as I do occasionally…
It will literally never end, lol. They just keep bumping up immigration (mostly from Nepal and Africa, now), and then using the resulting “population growth” to justify literally whatever they want…
Absolutely wild. So I feel your pain…
Where I used to live they had turnpikes that literally were under permanent construction. They'd close one lane and slow down traffic - for miles - until it was completed then they'd open it and close the other side. Then when that was finished they'd repeat the first side. Went on for years and years like that.
To be fair the completed lane was always in tip-top shape.
Not the interstate, but I feel like what they do on the side streets here is start at the end of a path and then when they "finish" just start at the other end again. I mean that probably is literally what they do since it would make sense to have crews on repaving duty all the time. They'll never run out of work to do. This ain't Arizona. roads are shit after a couple years.
And yet 2000 year old Roman roads are still in use today, with 0 maintenance.
I honestly never expected to see the Seattle Viaduct torn down and be able to drive through the tunnel replacing it, to the point where I went out of my way to drive through it the one time I had the opportunity to do so.
I hear they've been working on the same section of highway near the Tacoma Dome for over 20 years now. I know they were working on it back in the early 2000s, and they were still at it when I visited there a year or two ago.
For perspective, the US spent less than 4 years fighting in World War II. Millions of soldiers trained, tens of thousands of ships, aircraft, and tanks built, and they could have done it all over again fives and still it would be less time than it has taken to rebuild a couple miles of highway in Washington State.
For more perspective, the S-1 "Uranium Committee" was created in 1940, the Manhattan Project started in 1942, and the first atomic bomb tested only 3 years later in 1945. The Hiroshima bomb deployed only a month later.
You are bad luck, my man
Or it just takes 4 years for the government to do any construction project, and I move every 3.
There's a road near my commute that has had "road work" being done to it for the last 15 years. I never go that way, but I have to wonder what the hell they are doing that has taken that long.
It took nine years from the bond issue (1968) to completion (1977).
The estimate of 10 years to reopening is reasonable and consistent with what it took to build it originally when you take into consideration the four years of project prep-work that happened between the bond issuance and the start of construction.
Frankly, I think ten years is pessimistic. If the existing approaches can be salvaged it will take a good year or two off the construction time. They don't have to do any new geological studies to rebuild the cassions.
Is there a reason that prep-work needs to be done again? Genuinely don't know: presumably the formerly built bridge had engineer-approved plans where all the math and physics were worked out and validated.
I mean, aside from clearing the wrecked bridge so that you can build it in the same spot.
I'm no bridge engineer but if the collision caused enough stress across the entire structure to the point of causing fractures in underwater foundation blocks then I'd imagine they might have to dismantle them as well.
Lead time on orders. Old bridge was 4-5 thousand tons of steel that has to be scheduled into some (already busy) foundries, and you can't even start putting it together until you've got a lot of the pieces staged and ready.
But frankly I doubt they'll rebuild it "as it was". They might as well throw on a couple extra lanes and use a newer style. They could do something a little more grandiose, like the Rio-Antirio bridge.
Sadly, those foundries have be relocated to (checks notes) China.
They'll also rename it to the George Floyd bridge or some shit because Francis Scott Key owned slaves.
Regardless of styling, they should definitely, definitely add on more protection for the bridge pylons, this time, particularly around that shipping lane…
You obviously know more about this than I, but that was one of the things I heard discussed, even early on, to prevent incidents like this happening again, so surely…
Nah.
I think it's more likely that the NTSB will come up with more aggressive rules on when pilot tugs are required.
I love how we all know in current year the idea of not using a bunch of diversity hires is just out of the question.
Frankly, I'm amazed that they weren't already, in this case.
I live in a city where a bridge collapsed (partly, different structure) in the mid-70s, in almost the exact same way. Death toll was a bit higher, too, because different time of day, less alternative options for the same route (at that point), and because a few cars drove off the gap.
As a result, now, and ever since, pilot tugs are always required, when a ship of that size enters or leaves the port, or any other large-scale industrial port, pretty much anywhere in the country, and whenever a boat of that size goes through said rebuilt bridge, the entire thing is closed to transit while it crosses, until it's clear, just to be safe...
So... I guess I just assumed that was the standard everywhere, but evidently not...
To be fair though, we had both Granville (one of the worst bridge collapses in a Western country in the last 60 years) and Westgate happen in Aus, too, which were huge losses of life, comparatively, so I guess we learned the hard way from those, umm, accidents...
In the US a lot of that is left to the discretion of the individual army corps of engineers districts to figure out for themselves.
In Green Bay, lake freighters can pass under the I-43 bridge and through downtown drawbridges without escort.
But just an hour north at Sturgeon Bay, they have to be met by a tug at Sherwood Point and guided in the last three miles.
Why can't you just participate in the circle jerk?
yea i have a road by my house that was meant to take 1 year its been 6 and a half years and its still not finished 10 years is if anything much to optimistic.
Gotta love the fact checkers adding irrelevant and misleading information to the post.
“Including preparatory work” yeah, the 1970’s were way different and materials had a much harder time getting to the places they needed to be, also bridge design, hiring workers, etc.
Analysis, cleanup, and demolition doesn’t take 3 years, nice try though.
It may take years to find a minority or women owned contractor who they can pretend is capable of building it.
There are guys in the Netherlands that will have that bridge and ship removed for you in a couple of months. I saw 'em on TV. They can send equipment to any sea in the world.
They even open local offices so you can hire a "black" firm. They did so in South Africa, and they weren't the least bit shy about it.
In the hopes you'll he ones that call them out on theyre political lies.
And cost 10 times as much adjusted for inflation. Plus it's going to be made out of Chinesium like the SF Bay bridge. So they'll be rebuilding it in another 5 years.
Gotta get those construction contracts to the
rightcorrect people,launderdiversify as much money as possible!It's the
Chineseprogressive way!DEI labor takes longer and costs more.
By a factor of 2.5.
Cat avatar: posts news without comment
Gay Furry Dog avatar: comments significant, factual, historical context that paints news as total bullshit
And the people said to the mountains "fall on us!" and to the hills "cover us!".
Maybe that is why the bridge came down, because it only took 4 years to build and the building standards from the 70s are very different from the safety measures used now?
Did you miss the part where a cargo ship hit it?
I am guessing this is going to surprise you but new bridges build protections around the pillars so that any accident like this hit the protection instead of the pillars.
Do you understand the kinetic forces involved in that kind of impact?
And you obviously have not seen protective pillars around the main bridge pillar, this is not science fiction, hundreds of bridges around the World already have this. Anyway you will see them in 10 years if you are to lazy to use a search engine.
N
It's also the type of bridge, and the sheer size of that ship...
I live in a city with a massive concrete box girder bridge. When a ship probably about half that size (and I imagine, much less mass) hit a similar pylon, in the mid-70s, only two sections of it came down.
Admittedly, it sank the ship, and killed many more people, but then they just rebuilt those sections, left one less pylon, and ta-dah, she's still standing, 50 years later, so...
You're not wrong that bridge design plays a part.
However the bridge in question has massive concrete protections around the base of its pylons. Whether those were in place in 1975, I do not know (or whether they are later additions), but... It didn't seem to stop what happened.
But regardless, yeah, it's just interesting to see the same sort of situation play out here, except with an entirely different result...
Water is like, 5 times deeper, here, though. I'm not sure if that played a part, too...
I was gonna say build another bridge next to it so you can start right away. It will take a while to remove that superstructure and ship.
How many years will the incompetently made replacement last, before it collapses under its own weight?
It's all the women engineers they need to hire. They haven't started high school yet. Too busy getting OF ready.
Why bother then? In 10 years we will all be in flying cars or teleporting
bureaucracy or "for every action there is an equal and opposite government program"
The standards have gotten more strict.
so the government has made things worse
Meetings to schedule meetings has always made me bitchy. That's how government works.
no, it doesn't work.
Not working by design.