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Fern Hollow Bridge should have been closed years before it collapsed

practical.engineering

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Re: Fern Hollow Bridge should have been closed years before it collapsed

#61

Post by 1992spacemovie »

AdamN wrote: post #31
arethuza wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Most people would accept that level of risk" I wouldn't and I definitely wouldn't if I had other people in the car.

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?

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).

Re: Fern Hollow Bridge should have been closed years before it collapsed

#62

Post by tiagod »

bboygravity wrote: post #38
m2f2 wrote: post #8

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…

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.

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).

Re: Fern Hollow Bridge should have been closed years before it collapsed

#63

Post by rileymat2 »

Aerroon wrote: post #55
ThinkBeat wrote: post #50

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 nee…

"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…

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?

Re: Fern Hollow Bridge should have been closed years before it collapsed

#64

Post by tiagod »

dscottboggs wrote: post #43
bboygravity wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Bridges do move some normally, yes. It may depend on the type of bridge though? Certainly suspension bridges do.

It's a suspension bridge. And a solid one :) Takes 6 lanes of traffic and whole trains on the bottom.

Re: Fern Hollow Bridge should have been closed years before it collapsed

#65

Post by mc32 »

Aerroon wrote: post #55
ThinkBeat wrote: post #50

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 nee…

"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…

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.

Re: Fern Hollow Bridge should have been closed years before it collapsed

#66

Post by carols10cents »

loeg wrote: post #3
augustl wrote: post #2

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!)

> 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, t…

It's the Charles Anderson Bridge. https://engage.pittsburghpa.gov/charles-anderson-bridge

Re: Fern Hollow Bridge should have been closed years before it collapsed

#67

Post by jessriedel »

Aerroon wrote: post #55
ThinkBeat wrote: post #50

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 nee…

"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…

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.

Re: Fern Hollow Bridge should have been closed years before it collapsed

#68

Post by Panzer04 »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #35
beAbU wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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?

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.

Re: Fern Hollow Bridge should have been closed years before it collapsed

#69

Post by rob74 »

tiagod wrote: post #62
bboygravity wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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).

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...

Re: Fern Hollow Bridge should have been closed years before it collapsed

#70

Post by gumby »

mc32 wrote: post #65
Aerroon wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

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.

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).

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