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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

#111

Post by keiferski »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #37
keiferski wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

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

#112

Post by bpodgursky »

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…

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...

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

#113

Post by bcrosby95 »

michaelt wrote: post #107
AdamN wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> 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 hal…

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.

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

#114

Post by bombcar »

hi-v-rocknroll wrote: post #33

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 brid…

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.

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

#115

Post by glitcher »

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.

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

#116

Post by djbusby »

bombcar wrote: post #114
hi-v-rocknroll wrote: post #33

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 brid…

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 repercus…

Deficiency Rating + Load Volume. Address the worst bug affecting the most users first?

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

#117

Post by joncp »

bombcar wrote: post #114
hi-v-rocknroll wrote: post #33

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 brid…

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 repercus…

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.

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

#118

Post by sandworm101 »

bombcar wrote: post #114
hi-v-rocknroll wrote: post #33

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 brid…

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 repercus…

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.

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

#119

Post by ak217 »

FredPret wrote: post #99
mc32 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 dep…

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.

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

#120

Post by dmoy »

greggsy wrote: post #80
hi-v-rocknroll wrote: post #33

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 brid…

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...

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.
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