What Happened To the Bay Bridge? 407
farnsworth writes "Tony Alfrey has put together a fascinating page with some history, analysis, and possible explanations for what ultimately went wrong with the recent emergency repair of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. The bridge has been closed for days and is not scheduled to open for days to come, hugely inconveniencing more than 250,000 people a day. His analysis touches on possibly poor welding, a possibly flawed temporary fix, and the absence of a long-term fix or adequate follow-up by Caltrans, the agency responsible for the bridge. Slashdot is a great engineering community; what other insights do you have on the bridge situation?"
Rushed (Score:2, Insightful)
Sure the commuters will have to wait a little bit longer while repairs are done, but it sure beats the mess they're in now.
small (Score:5, Insightful)
Duh (Score:1, Insightful)
That's what a bridge IS. Alexander did it the expensive way when he went to Tyre, and every single bridge since then is an attempt to connect two places further apart, or more cheaply, or, often, both.
Lets see here... (Score:4, Insightful)
Lack of redundancy (Score:1, Insightful)
San France should have two bridges (or a secondary tunnel), so if one fails or needs repair, the second can still be used. In Baltimore we have two tunnels and one bridge over the harbor, so if one fails the traffic can be diverted on the other two routes. Redundancy.
In between D.C. and Baltimore we even have three parallel highways - I-95 and 295 and US-1. One might be closed but the other two will still be usable.
Re:There simply isn't anything "wrong". (Score:4, Insightful)
MY insight, as an engineer (Score:3, Insightful)
The real problem is that we should recognize that bridges, and especially landmark bridges, stay standing indefinitely and should therefore quit designing the damn things with puny 50-year design lives!
Meanwhile, in Segovia.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Meanwhile, in Segovia (Spain), the Roman aqueduct is still up & running :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqueduct_of_Segovia [wikipedia.org]
Without mortar, with just granite blocks on top of each other, it is more than 2000 years old.
I can't help but wonder when mankind began to suck at building anything that should last more than a few years....
Don't blame the three caltrans employees (Score:3, Insightful)
It took me a while to figure out but then I realized: CALTRANS only actually employes three guys.
Driving the 15 in San Diego, I wondered why there were all these construction sites with absolutely no one working. Eventually I pieced it together... CALTRANS only employs three guys and one of those has to hold the sign.
Sure, they could just do one tiny little roadwork at a time. But that'd completely give away the hundreds of millions CALTRANS budget is being spent on three construction workers with the rest going to hookers and blow. Instead, they dump cones everywhere, dig holes everywhere, then quickly move on to the next site. Sure, you'll never actually see a CALTRANS guy working but it sure as hell looks like they must have a lot of people doing the work if they can dig up that much crap and have roadworks every couple of hundred yards.
So, when judging the bridge collapse, try not to blame the three overworked guys. They're doing the best they can. Their job was to put up some cones, slap on some duct tape in the two minutes they had assigned, then get on to making somewhere else look busy. If you want to blame someone, figure out who spends the other 99.9% on those hookers and that blow. Imagine how much could be achieved if his habit went to pay for actual workers instead.
Re:small (Score:1, Insightful)
Like dealing with the aftermath of Libertarian Wealth Redistribution brought to you by Ayn Rand loving Alan Greenspan and his Investment Bankster Cronies, AKA "The Roving Cavaliers of Credit"...
Re:And where did the retro-fit funds go? (Score:3, Insightful)
Where did they go? Elsewhere.
Children have been pulling this scam since money existed and they were given money. Give them some lunch money and watch them go and spend it on something non-lunch related, then come back and cry to their parents saying they don't have lunch money. So you can be a heartless parent and make them go hungry and get laughed at by their friends but learn their lesson, or you can give them some more money so that their behavior is reinforced.
Obviously a child being hungry for one day is somewhat less on the 'bad things' scale than thousands of people having to drive an hour away to get across the bay. We can't throw all of these civilians to the wolves and fuck up their lives for years to come, but we can't reward the behavior by just giving them more money. Perhaps the governator needs to install an oversight group to make sure that earmarked funds are used for exactly what they're earmarked for.
Re:Meanwhile, in Segovia.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Meanwhile, in Segovia.... (Score:3, Insightful)
The Segovia aqueduct needs maintenance too, unfortunately.
Re:small (Score:3, Insightful)
well your off in a lot of ways.
he USA is 300 million people in a land area the size of Europe who has a population of 700 million plus.
So not only are you off to start with you are making random assumptions. Sure there is a lot of engineering work that the USA needs to update. however since we have a fraction of the population that most land areas have we have to do more with less.
Besides having been through europe. The american system is at least 3 centuries more advanced than some of the roads, and bridges in europe where it is common for one vehicle to use it at a time s they are designed for horses not people.
Re:Welders are a scapegoat (Score:1, Insightful)
I've seen the steal break many a time before the welds do.. Depending on what you're welding, what you're welding with, most welds are far stronger than the material they are welding together...
Re:still dead! (Score:5, Insightful)
Aw, everyone knows Slashdot is full of experts. Even if we don't know what we're talking about, we'll still pretend to be experts. Well, until a real expert speaks up and makes us look stupid. :)
Pshuh, I don't need an expert to make ME look stupid !
Re:Meanwhile, in Segovia.... (Score:1, Insightful)
I can't help but wonder when mankind began to suck at building anything that should last more than a few years....
Simple answer: it began when man realized that, by building something intended to last only a few years, he could guarantee himself (or his children/other successors) job security when that thing needed to be replaced.
As a typical example, the Fort Steuben Bridge [bridgehunter.com] in Ohio. Built in 1928, last rehabilitated in 1972. Now considered (by publically-available inspection reports) to be "structurally deficient" and have a "poor" superstructure condition rating, it has thus has been scheduled for demolition by OhioDOT. The nearby Veterans Memorial Bridge [bridgehunter.com] was built in 1990 and yet, at approximately one-fourth the age of the Fort Steuben Bridge (or one-half the age of the newest repairs to that bridge), it has already attained the same "structurally deficient" and "poor" superstructure condition ratings as the older structure.
(As an aside, in much the same way that lawmakers can justify nearly anything by putting a "national security" or "think of the children!" slant on it, state DOTs can do the same by calling their projects the "Veterans [Blank]". A quick check on Wikipedia shows at least 20 bridges named "Veterans Bridge" or "Veterans Memorial Bridge". But hey, who cares if you're squandering money on something unlikely to last 25 years without needing serious repairs... it's not *your* money, after all, and those taxpayers are loaded!)
Re:Wrong audience (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wrong audience (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:small (Score:4, Insightful)
It was George Washington that sent U.S. Marines into northern Africa for the first foreign war. Please explain why anything more recent is any different than that action?
I believe that was Thomas Jefferson, not Washington. The Barbary Wars were in the early 1800s, after Washington had already finished his two terms.
However, I'll tell you exactly what's different between these wars.
1) Back then, the Barbary Pirates were attacking American vessels with American crews, and demanding payments. Iraq never attacked America. Yes, Saddam was violating some UN rules and not being terribly cooperative, but that could have been fixed with some cruise missiles and bombs, not an all-out invasion, for much less money and without distracting us from the task in Afghanistan. And Afghanistan never attacked us either, though Al-Qaeda did. That could have been taken care of by attacking Al-Qaeda directly in their caves and training camps, without having to take over the entire country.
2) More importantly, back in the 1800s, when we went to war, we fought to win, and didn't worry about civilian casualties. When America attacked the Barbary Pirates, they attacked them in their port cities like Tripoli, by bombarding the cities. They didn't worry about civilians, because the civilians were guilty of allowing the Pirates to stay there and run the place. In WWII, we also didn't worry much about civilians. We happily dropped tons of bombs on cities and killed civilians by the hundreds of thousands. It was their fault for allowing an evil dictator to take power over them, and we certainly didn't worry about them turning into terrorists later. We crushed them, and they became quite compliant afterwards. Now, we worry far too much about civilian deaths, which just makes it impossible to win a war.
Re:Meanwhile, in Segovia.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:small (Score:5, Insightful)
That's only if you count Alaska, which is disingenuous at best, given that it's huge, and almost completely unoccupied. Continental Europe occupies 3.9 million square miles, while the 48 contiguous US states occupy 2.9 million square miles. However, the population density of Europe is indeed approximately double that of the "lower 48" (181 people/mi^2 in Europe vs. 94.5 people/mi^2 in the US)
If we're only talking about the coastal regions, you'll find that the US East coast is almost continuously urban from Boston all the way down to Richmond. Europe has nothing that can compare to that sort of density.
The west coast is a bit more sparse, although California follows population patterns very similar to what you'd see in a typical European country.
Re:small (Score:3, Insightful)
Please explain why anything more recent is any different than that action?
Please explain why George Washington doing it (or any other president for that matter) makes it 'right' in all instances?
Re:Meanwhile, in Segovia.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Great, they built a big stone bridge... now pass a container ship under it.
You dipshit - the bridges are funded by tolls (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps if the state...
Perhaps if you know what the fuck you were talking about. This is why it is pointless to listen to anobody on Slashhdot, 99% of the comments are bullshit.
All the bay bridges, except the Golden Gate, are managed be the Bay Area Toll Authority and funded by tolls. Educate yourself.
http://bata.mtc.ca.gov/ [ca.gov]
Re:Wrong audience (Score:3, Insightful)
More likely, you just personally have gotten smarter and wiser.
Slashdot has always been filled with bogosity passing as "insight", it's always had karma-whoring (since moderation started), and it's always had trolls having a nice laugh at everyone's expense. If you were to criticize Slashdot for anything, it's not that it's gotten worse, but that its is going into middle-age without getting any better. It is stuck in that same mid-1990s adolescent "Windows drools, Linux rools, Gimmie warez" state forever and ever.
Although I will agree with you that the moderation system is fundamentally flawed and they just don't care.