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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

#171

Post by tiagod »

rob74 wrote: post #69
tiagod wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I agree, and it's a very common misconception among locals that it's related to the Golden Gate bridge

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

#172

Post by kube-system »

quesera wrote: post #161
kube-system wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

"rust belt" is often used collectively to describe all of the decay in the region, not just the decrease in industry. As industry pulled out of the region, a lot of infrastructure deteriorated with it.

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

#173

Post by kube-system »

pintxo wrote: post #129
kube-system wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isn't an uncommon sight around Pittsburgh. Whether or not it is an imminent structural issue depends on where the holes are.

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.

Check out a few of the bridges rated poor on this map:

https://gis.penndot.gov/paprojects/BridgeConditionsMap.aspx

... and find some that pass over other roads, and you can find other instances:

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.4562613,-79.9736136,3a,52.6y...

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

#174

Post by wyldfire »

jldugger wrote: post #159
jon_richards wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> Texas averages ... 2 inches of snow each year. Really? That does not comport with my experience growing up there.

Where is "there"? Texas is a fairly large state, spanning ~11 degrees of latitude.

The climate in Houston differs from that in Arlington, for example.

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

#175

Post by ruszki »

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…

> Norway has to be among the worst.

That strange to hear. Why do you have this feeling? After visiting Porto and Italy around and below Napoli, I cannot imagine that there are any place in Nordic countries which has even just similar tolerance to not maintain something. But I don’t know too much about Norway specifically.

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

#176

Post by [deleted] »

bobthepanda wrote: post #166
buildbot wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless it’s a floating bridge…

there will be a rail link across a floating bridge in seattle opening in 2025. it was supposed to open earlier, but the contractor messed up the concrete pour and is fixing it at their own cost. but that doesn't have much to do with the fundamentals of the floating bridge itself.

[deleted]

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

#177

Post by Aerroon »

bpodgursky wrote: post #112
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…

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…

That's true, but states collect a lot of tax revenue themselves. In 2022 they collected $3.66 trillion.[0] the federal government collected $4.97 trillion in the same timeframe.[1]

Also note (a few rows down the table)[2] that the US government spends more than it collects in taxes. In 2022 the expenditures added up to $9.64 trillion.

Sure, it's not 2%. It's 3.6% instead.

[0] https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/20240607/html/f10...

[1] https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/20240607/html/f10...

[2] https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/20240607/html/f10...

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

#178

Post by barryrandall »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #87
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…

> 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."

Can you point to any candidates who run on that platform and routinely win elections?

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

#179

Post by barryrandall »

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.

Only if the cities are barred from encroaching upon or demanding access to bypass highways.

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

#180

Post by DangitBobby »

naasking wrote: post #153
DangitBobby wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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…

Negligence means everything would have been fine if everyone involved did their duty. So I gave cases where people did their duty, got it wrong, and weren't negligent. You can imagine scenarios where they were negligent because they didn't do their duties, but I can assure you they were not since these were my imagined scenarios. In the case of these scientists who did their duty to the best of their abilities, this wasn't negligence, full stop.
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