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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

#141

Post by simple10 »

dmurray wrote: post #12

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 s…

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.

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

#142

Post by wazoox »

em-bee wrote: post #72
wazoox wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 o…

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.

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

#143

Post by rcxdude »

michaelt wrote: post #139
francisofascii wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be mentioned that structurally deficient does not mean unsafe.

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…

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)

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

#144

Post by beowulfey »

fh973 wrote: post #6

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.

I would argue that he did not miss the point at all actually--he deliberately mentions it at the end.

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

#145

Post by stefantalpalaru »

DangitBobby wrote: post #121
naasking wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they were jailed because they reassured the population that there was no risk of earthquake, when there absolutely was. That's very different.

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-judg…

[dead]

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

#146

Post by stefantalpalaru »

buildbot wrote: post #131
rapsey wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet Italy spent years trying to put Adrian Newey in jail for building an f1 car involved in a fatal crash.

Yeah don’t get involved in the Italian “justice” system. For another example, the still ongoing prosecution of Amanda Knox.

[dead]

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

#147

Post by gumby »

tim333 wrote: post #90
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…

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.

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.

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

#148

Post by gumby »

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…

> 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.

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

#149

Post by jon_richards »

jldugger wrote: post #130
jon_richards wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Annual Rainfall per square inch seems like a relevant factor though.

Texas averages 36 inches of rain and 2 inches of snow each year. Ohio gets 40 inches of rain and 28 inches of snow.

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

#150

Post by rileymat2 »

immibis wrote: post #76
rileymat2 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Only if the city has the right to bar travelers from passing through.

Yes, that’s fair, but we know the vast majority of trips are local outside of certain exceptions.
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