About two months ago I rode my bike to work like any other day, but on the way home a construction project seemed to have spontaneously started at one of the bridges that I pass over. Three lanes had merged into one which, for a federal highway, seemed like a poorly planned traffic pattern for a such a major construction project. As it happens, about an hour after I biked across this bridge that morning both outside sections of the bridge fell into the water. There was no other physical damage that seemed to explain why parts of a bridge on U.S. 1 would suddenly collapse.
The intriguing thing about this bridge collapse was that the outer retaining wall and about half of the sidewalk on both the northbound side and the southbound side had fallen into the water at the same time. This likely wasn’t caused by something like a boat impact, car accident, or an overweight truck. Indeed, Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) investigated the incident and found that two post tension wires that held these sections of the bridge together had failed, making it unsafe for pedestrians and bicyclists but also for any boaters below.
This bridge, like most bridges in south Florida, was built in the post-war era when Florida had just started becoming a place to live thanks to the widespread adoption of air conditioners. In the 1950s, when this bridge was first built, the population of Palm Beach County was around 100,000. Now that number is around 1.5 million. The story is the same across most of the country, where it would have been impractical to have designed for such a huge population increase. Adding to the problem is the fact that maintenance budgets that are continually cut because it’s difficult to understand that something as permanent and strong as a bridge would need to be maintained. And even that assumes that infrastructure is being thought about at all; most people don’t think about infrastructure unless there’s a failure.
It’s hard to say for sure if more maintenance would have helped this bridge, anyway. It was inspected in 2015 and deemed “safe” although its rating of 75.8 out of 100 merited a “functionally obsolete” status. The fact that major portions of the bridge fell into the water would also indicate that “functionally obsolete” may have been a better indicator of this bridge’s condition than “safe”.
This bridge isn’t one of the largest pieces of infrastructure in the United States or a bridge on a major interstate. It’s even possible to drive around this bridge with only minor inconvenience. But that’s the real problem with the looming infrastructure crisis: It’s hard for major pieces of infrastructure to get funding for repairs or replacements, let alone minor pieces of infrastructure like this unassuming bridge in North Palm Beach, Florida. There are many more bridges over small rivers and creeks (and even other roads) than there are bridges over major rivers. The infrastructure that needs the most attention is often the most overlooked. And we’ve only been focusing on bridges in this article; roads, the power grid, agriculture, water and wastewater systems, and canals get almost universally negative ratings from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).
Infrastructure Failures Throughout the U.S.
The story in Florida isn’t an isolated one, either. The city of Charleston, South Carolina floods almost every time it rains during a high tide, yet the city has been exceptionally slow to improve pumping stations and drainage around the worst-affected areas. The problem is virtually the same as the one playing out in Florida: uncontrolled growth and an unwillingness to fund necessary upgrades and maintenance are combining to form a perfect storm. Charleston’s problem is compounded by the fact that it is built on a swamp, which doesn’t lend itself to easy solutions for drainage.
There are other relatively small infrastructure problems across the country as well. A bridge serving an interstate in Atlanta collapsed recently, although this seems to have been a complication of storing construction material underneath bridges rather than a direct failure of the bridge itself. There was also an 11-hour blackout at the busiest airport in the world, also coincidentally in Atlanta, due to inadequacies in the power grid. In places of the country that aren’t Atlanta, an 80-year-old water system in a small town in Oklahoma has been on the brink of failure, and a critical (and aging) energy hub in Oregon is at risk of major damage from earthquakes.
Again, keep in mind that these problems are relatively minor in the grand scheme of American infrastructure. None of the problems mentioned here have resulted in the kind of tragedy seen in the I-35 disaster in Minnesota, for example, but these kinds of problems are widespread, often unnoticed, and permeate virtually every aspect of daily life for the people who live anywhere in the country.
To further illustrate this point, at least for me, another bridge on my commute experienced a failure of sorts just this past week. The one drawbridge I pass over failed to close, and although they were able to close the bridge within the day this still impacted hundreds of drivers for one mechanical failure. The bridge was built at about the same time as the other bridge was, and if this bridge suffered a major and permanent failure it would be a major problem for everyone in the area. Also, if two out of the three bridges in a 13-mile stretch of road have had visible problems in the past five months, imagine how many other infrastructure problems are lurking under the surface, unnoticed by the civil engineers who have to solve these problems despite continual cuts to their maintenance budgets.
Canada?
He said *good* public transport.
The Netherlands
I guess that is one advantage to having everything destroyed in the 1940’s and getting over $11 billion in today’s US dollars in Marshall Plan money + loads other assistance.
Ah yes, American Aid. After staying out of the war until it would be a profitable activity it was found necessary to set up new markets for American Industry after the war stopped.
( I’m only being cynical because Regnirps was being a bit flippant, Marshal Aid was just enough to allow life to continue, go look at the Netherlands nowadays, it is 100% pure new infrastructure and a sight to see).
Yeah, it came to about $100 per person for the Netherlands. But the US did not take home all the heavy equipment. And ships provided electric power for whole cities, etc.
But the real thing is probably the infrastructure rebuild of everything from power and phone to roads done with 1950’s stuff instead of 1900 or earlier. In the US there is a lot of really old structure, like all the bridges from New Deal make-work projects.
If people are interested, this is the organisation that is tasked with taking care of most of the major infrastructure : https://www.rijkswaterstaat.nl/english/index.aspx
They have a budget of about 2B/year, which is about 124E/per person.
Next to that are the water authorities, who spend about the same per year, and Tennet, who take care of the electricity infrastructure ,who also spend abot that amount.
For the US this would mean a total amount of about 100 Billion/year to spend on mostly maintaining the stuff that is already there.
(Yes, the US is vastly different from The Netherlands)
Oh, and I can’t imagine that we have a lot of important infrastructure that was build just after WW2 still in use, things have changed massively around here since then.
No way can’t be Canada.
My city of Hamilton is falling apart so fast it not funny.
We have a small mountain about 350′ tall going threw the city.
There are 5 only roads and 2 highways going up and down in a 20 mile stretch of the city.
The retaining walls are falling down and the roads are collapsing.
And most importantly the highways have deadly accidents monthly, and 1 – 3 accidents daily.
( I really wish the people that are responsible for designing these death traps BE CHARGED with MURDER!! )
We have a hell of alot of bridges that are in need of so much repair.
So most definitely not Canada.
ahh the good ole joys of finding a way up the “mountain” in the hammer. You forgot to add that the highways to get up the “mountain” require you to make a huge detour and eventually double back to get up to the top.
For those of you not in Canada, the “mountain” being referred to is part of the escarpment that traverses through Ontario. Hamilton is also unique as it is in the crook of lake Ontario and half of the city (industrial, commercial and older residential) is located near water level while newer residential is on top of the escarpment. The other noted point is that people who live in the newer area dont normally work in Hamilton, instead they commute into Toronto and surrounding area.
In a related item, we recently (2014) had a major restoration job done to the bridge that crosses the entrance to hamilton harbour, and while they were working on it, a drunk dumptruck driver drove up the bridge with his trailer lifted and took out a bunch of the above super structure.
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/07/31/burlington-skyway-accident_n_5639291.html
Nice city it seems, not really a mountain though.. https://graphhopper.com/maps/?point=43.247094%2C-79.873325&point=43.245109%2C-79.874725&vehicle=foot&weighting=fastest&elevation=true&use_miles=false&layer=Omniscale
no this is what happens when the taxes meant for infrastructure maintenance get used for other things or “lost.”
The gas tax (many states, and federal) are not pegged to inflation and have not increased in decades. But that couldn’t possibly be an issue, could it?
Taxes were collected, funds diverted.. Repairs postponed..
Same old, same old..
Well, I think taxes on gasoline are “supposed” to pay for highways and bridges, but politicians (and their voters?) are a short sighted bunch of people. They see money “just sitting there” and they do what comes natural to a politician; buy voters!
P.s.
Another good picture by Joe Kim!
I couldn’t stop smiling when he sent it over. This one’s a ton of fun, especially when covering a topic that is a little troubling to me.
Great work Joe!
USA isn’t the only “developed” country with local government which do not understand the needs for basic living.
Below a documentary about a few million appartments build in the UK in the 80’s which have such big defficiencies that they collapse under their own weight.
(And nobody dares take any responsibility, everybody points to someone else)
Inquiry. The Great British Housing Disaster (Adam Curtis, 1984)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ch5VorymiL4
But they put nice insulation cladding on those buildings!
(laugh or cry)
Wasn’t this Bauhaus Socialist Worker Housing? Like a pre-fab slum.
Shuddered when they spoke about the potential fixes becoming fire hazards.
“While Montanans were thinking up North Dakota jokes, North Dakotans were building highways”
-ancient Sioux proverb
That was a real LOL from me!
Sadly, it’s more than this, though. It’s also a problem of not spending the money in appropriate and necessary ways, as compared to other budgets. Our military budget is astounding, and only ever grows larger (especially under war conditions). Even funding more engineers and inspectors is a lot to ask, let alone the actual work required to repair or replace vital installations.
When the George Washington Bridge in NYC was in need of repairs, it was almost like they really considered not doing it, despite it being probably the single most vital link between NYC and NJ. Even then, its supporting infrastructure like I-95 only ever grudgingly gets repairs and changes to keep traffic flowing smoothly in and out of the bridge’s traffic patterns.
It might be worth actually looking at the federal budget. Most of it is in social welfare benefits, medicare, ss, etc.
Eh, combined I guess. You still spend more on military than you do on medicare which given bullets are cheap and doctors are not likely means you’re reaching more people with the military spending than the health care. You’re getting more bang for your buck but in the one area you really do not want bang.
Also I’m aware this is a gross oversimplification and firing a missile probably costs more than the yearly salaries of 10 doctors. I just don’t like the thought of military spending that isn’t provably for self-defence or research that’ll help civilians.
Military is a federal responsibility in the US Constitution. Roads and bridges are left to States.
Massive fortunes are voted for road upkeep and it evaporates into committees, studies, environmental impact and archeological mitigation. And somehow a lot of money goes to unions before any work is done. Then a lot gets moved to general funds, and a bunch goes to sort-of-transportation projects. And of course there are the five $million a meter “light rail” choo-choo trains that cost nearly that much just to plan.
There is no shortage of money.
interesting, i am a Canadian so i went and did some digging. While more money is indeed spent on healthcare, ss, welfare etc… the amount spent on “defense” is almost 10 times that spent on transportaiton (atleast by the 2015 stats i have found)
Ref: https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-budget-101/spending/
https://media.nationalpriorities.org/uploads/mandatory_spending_pie%2C__2015_enacted.png
https://media.nationalpriorities.org/uploads/discretionary_spending_pie%2C_2015_enacted.png
That being said, it still leaves the argument that some of that defense spending would be better served by investing it into the infrastructure. that investment would help the economy by providing jobs while at the same time reducing costs to businesses. Which leads to the eventual argument, does the united states need a military force as large as it currently is and what is served by the united states acting as a world police instead of all representative countries in the UN pitching in their weight. Then all the excessive spending could be reinvested into the infrastructure and education, which from my prospective seem to be a much more worthy cause than dumping more money into your healthcare. It is just my opinion but it already seems like the United states spends enough money on healthcare to provide universal healthcare to all of its citizens, maybe if you allowed your medical professionals to negotiate lower prices with the pharmaceutical companies?
Just my 2 cents anyways, i am sure that i am missing some of the intricacies that are unique to your country.
Correct in that the U.S. DoD spending is very complex and can be the most politically-charged of all the executive departments of the U.S. government. Used to work for the Dept of Navy (civ) test lab. During my 10 years of federal employment, noted that approximately 1/3 of all test projects were not on any DoD budget request; that is, it was a system that was foisted on the DoD by congress. Recently, the USMC has decided to eliminate one of the infantry MOSs (0351) to make room for more technical billets (cyber security, et al). Also, the number of marines deployed in MEUs and BLTs will have less infantry embarked to increase number of technicians and sophisticated weapons systems. So the DoD continues to embrace technology and is becoming more ‘corporate’ and less warrior.
This leads to a side-effect – mitigation of the reduction, or lack of, science and infrastructure funding. DoD research makes up for some of this, unlike NSA and CIA stuff, general DoD stuff tends to find its way into the commercial sector. Much of the sensor technology we can buy for a few $USD resulted from DoD-funded research. Synthetic aperture radar, as used today, did not come from NASA research, but from DoD projects. Image processing, speech synthesis, and other cool hardware originated by DoD research is stuff that is now mundane working technology.
As others have mentioned, infrastructure is largely a function of state and local governments. State and local governments tend to be overtly political, nepotistic, inefficient, and incompetent.
@Brian You give the military too much credit, sure they have funded some good pure research but sadly there is often a lot of work left to make it work in the civilian market.
A canal towpath near me completely collapsed during the winter of 2015/2016 and still has yet to be fixed: http://madcyclelanesofmanchester.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/irwell-towpath-closed-in-ordsall.html
Sure there alternate routes, but none that don’t involve a significant detour, departing from tarmac, or riding alongside cars. The crumbling infrastructure problem is not unique to the US, but a bridge serving a million people failing is certainly a bigger problem than this tow path.
Well, reading this it almost seems that I should be glad that there is hardly any bridge at German autobahns that is not in the state of being repaired or where at least half the lanes are closed to reduce the load on the bridge (though not the blood-pressure of the drivers).
I even have withnessed one such construction/repair site to be finished after a few years. So maybe there is actual hope, given that I still have about 40 years of life expectancy ahead…
B^)
Says you! Here in Bayern we have a ton of bridges which were built ten years ago with sub-standard concrete and all had to be rebuilt last year (and may still be ongoing this year). Very expensive cost-cutting.
If it’s anything like southern California by the time they finish with the construction it’s time to rebuild it.
You misspelled Chicago…
Germany keeps the Autobahn in good repair, but there’s almost always repair underway somewhere on it. I read an article by a guy who drove the whole route to see how fast he could average. While some stretches were open and clear so he could put his foot to the floor, there was a lot of construction where traffic was slowed to a crawl.
The result was a paltry 65 MPH average.
You have a valid point, but HaD also needs clicks and comments for income.
B^)
Our advertisers are clearly interested in having their ads seen. Comments are just for fun.
Here’s a 2000 report [PDF] on the post tension cable problem in Florida – it’s been known about for quite a while.
http://bit.ly/2ARfn46
The progression seems to be about the same as @Paul video above; slapdash construction, poor assembly and no working supervision.
FEATURED: N O T A H A C K
That’s what you get when people complain about literal hacks not being hacks. It doesn’t matter what is posted, complaints will rain regardless, so you can post whatever you want.
Hackers are engineers. Engineers are (or at least, should be) all about learning from failure, in order to make the “next one” better.
Thus, this is appropriate material. And very interesting.
IMO hackers are not necessarily engineers. Hacking is about observing fundamental properties and principles, then applying all those in a new and unexpected way.
Naive example: A hammer was design to hit with it, but if I realize that a hammer is also a heavy object, then I can use it as paperweight so the wind won’t spread away my (paper) floor plans. Using a hammer as a paperweight is a hack.
Also, learning from mistakes is not engineer specific. Any human can do that, some animals can do that, too. IMO engineering is about designing while optimizing compromises, so the end product will be good enough for its goals and its specifications. Engineering is all about finding the best, but inside given boundaries and with _limited_ resources.
Leaving all that aside, what exactly was I supposed to be learning about from this article (from either the engineer or the hacker standpoint)? I might be missing something, but all I could find was a rant about bridges, negligence and bad administration, all combined with random facts and events. OK for daily journalism, but offtopic for HaD.
I think the ‘learning’ was more an exercise in beancounter bashing. Not thet they don’t deserve it, because they do.
I suppose it is a bit like buying a ticket on a cheap airline – you take a risk the plane is gonna drop from the sky because of a poor maintainence schedule. The difference is YOU are making the choice for yourself (and your family), and not some beaurocrat that wouldn’t dare to set foot on the plane… but has no qualms about putting you on it.
Substitute plane for bridge, tall building, high-voltage power line…
Glorious fallout from the cold war spending binges much? Add in really pathetic long term planning and this is what happens.
You really want to be told what to do by government long-term planners?
No this is what happens when you go with the cheapest bids.
And the people responsible for building them are not accountable for there stupidity.
Like I Said earlyer. The people that are responsible for the construction be accountable for there actions of and lack of.
And it should go for the politicians as well. They should not act like 3 year olds when in session.]
They should be charged.
“Go With The Cheapest Bid”..
A typical “lack of knowledge” management kludge. I worked my 20 with a “County” district, run by “engineers”. Real engineers almost always were hired by private industry, leaving the kids that just managed to slide by for the county to hire. The design group would sketch out some “Pie In The Sky” plan and put it out for bid. It was always a crap plan, as the “Senior” designers would assign the work to “The New Guy” just out of school.
The real construction companies always bid low, knowing that the plans were so poorly detailed that many hundred thousands of dollars in “Change Orders” would be charged and paid.
It was sad except it was also funny..
You are right this is not a hack.
BUT, Sometimes you have to change the subjects to make life interesting.
I feel like this is on the same level as the cell station article earlier, or the articles about the grid that aren’t hacks but some other informative subject. It’s not EE and it’s not “maker” related but easily within the purview of STEM.
How about “job security”? Anyway you all want to make it about the doing, how about a series of the technology of infrastructure building? Certainly there’s some developments going on there, and all this isn’t being done with mules, and a wheelbarrow.
Maybe we need a change in attitude. We don’t value trades and upkeep as we should. A public figure could lead the charge to fix infrastructure and focus on improving quality of life.
What I’m saying is Mario should put down the mushrooms and pick up a wrench to go back to fixing plumbing.
Management seldom values the trades. Upkeep is just another can to kick down the road.
Nothing to see here, move along..
High taxes only don’t guarantee good infrastructure. It’s only working when accompanied by decent government putting priorities on the right things.
Look at Belgium. ;)
That is not fair: In Belgium they need French and Flemish speaking roads.
:-)
:0D
The roads speak French and Flemish? Am very impressed. What do these roads typically discuss?
Nothing. Because they refuse to speak and understand each others language. ;)
They communicate with Danny the Street as intermediary.
While the article makes a good point that infrastructure maintenance is important I cringe whenever I see it brought up. It seems like every so often this becomes a hot issue for a while and some grants come down from the fed to the states or states to counties or something like that and the “construction” starts.
The thing is that you can’t solve any problem by only throwing money at it. At the very least it is necessary to put some careful planning into how that money is going to be spent. The state of Michigan for example.. I don’t think they should have ANY money at all for road repair until they completely clean house and replace the people who direct where that money goes. All they do is spend every infrastructure dime they get on the same limited set of roads whether they need it or not. They pay their cronies in the construction industry by the day for every “active” construction site. Usually this means dozens of roads with lanes closed, orange cones and lowered speed limits lying completely untouched for every one site that is actually being worked on. I’ve seen orange construction barrels fade to yellow blocking the same un-touched and otherwise perfectly usable lanes for multiple years before any work finally begins. This happens in the same places repeatedly even if it isn’t needed while roads that haven’t even had a pothole filled in decades rot away.
In places like that it would be better to just invest the tax money in education while the residents buy Jeeps.
Right on the money. They block the road for weeks, but only do work on Mondays for example.
Las Vegas is much worse.. The city yard is too small to hold all the K-Rail and cones, so they leave them out on the freeway..
The term “functionally obsolete” in no way describes structural deficits, it is a term of art from traffic planning to note the traffic count has surpassed the design objectives of the conveyance. I.e, it’s too damn small, not that it’s falling apart. Get a clue.
Way to make a point. I can see why there’s a problem with people like you whining about unimportant details while infrastructure crumbles around us.
Good to know. Thanks for clarifying that.
Or how about the old order of work mixup: They pave the road, and then in a month they decide they need to replace the underground pipes, and destroy the road surface again.
Take that, optimizing algorithms!
That has happened with remarkable regularity here in London.
I’m pretty sure the same section of the North Circular (3-lane inner-city highway) has been constantly repaved for the last year or so.
:) The end result is always that the road is covered with holes 90% of the time.
Yup. That happens all over the place. Completely rip up the road surface, dig up and re-lay the gravel mix beneath then lay down tow layers of fresh asphalt. Then about six months later they’re cutting trenches across to install power, water, sewer, phone lines etc. WTH didn’t they toss in some big conduits here and there so that pits could be dug on either side to access the conduits to run stuff through?
In the late 90’s there was one of the big infrastructure rebuilding pushes. I was living in Grangeville, ID at the time. The town got a grant to rebuilt main street and install new sewer line etc and sidewalks there too.
So the town decided to do one side of the street at a time. Sawed the old paving down the middle and ripped out half then dug down to remove the old pipes and put in the new. After the pipework on the north side was done and the new asphalt laid *then* the old sidewalk was ripped out and replaced. But since the old sidewalks had been put in piecemeal and some replaced over many years, the road edge of the gutters were uneven. Thus the edge of the new paving was uneven and the new gutters were poured in to match. Yes, it looked terrible.
Then the same backasswards process was repeated on the south side.
It got worse. The town had switched construction companies partway through the job. One reason was because they had a compactor operator who was a bit over enthusiastic and was crushing the new plastic sewer pipe.
Not long after the whole job was done, they had to cut across the new paving in several places because the idiots forgot to connect several businesses to the new sewer line.
Meanwhile, while Grangeville was screwing up by the numbers, a similar size town farther south on I-95 (IIRC it was Riggins) got a similar grant. What they did was develop a comprehensive plan covering *everything* they could possibly think of that would be going underneath their new main street which unlike Grangeville’s is actually a section of I-95. Then they *ripped out all of it at once*. No sidewalks, no pavement. Constantly shifting and rough dirt and gravel as the construction moved around while still allowing traffic through. Once the underground stuff was all finished, they poured the sidewalks and gutters then applied the asphalt – and IIRC it took less time than Grangeville’s mess, plus they didn’t have to hack up the new road to fix things they screwed up, needed to add, or just plain forgot to do.
Looks like my home town
Take it easy bro, chillax. Blockchain will surely solve all of these problems and more. And if it doesn’t, I’m sure quantum computing will, or graphene, or big data, or nanoparticles. Just put your trust in the suits.
Here in Australia we seem to get maintanence right. We dont generally have bridges falling into rivers (unless you get record levels of flooding caused by the tail end of a cyclone in which case even the best maintained bridge can still collapse :)
You don’t live in NSW. Our local ‘council’ is 80 Million behind on road maintenance… but can’t account for the cash it was given for that purpose…
Considering that in NSW road bridges, main roads and highways are the state government’s responsibility, the local council is very often are forced to sit back and wait for RMS (Roads and Maritime Service) to “pull their finger out” to even resurface roads.
This leads to city councils (like Sydney City) having almost no responsibility for the roads running through them, as they are all main roads, tunnels, or freeways/highways and being unable by law to fix even minor problems themselves. Even the (apparently much maligned) disjointed cycle lanes built by SCC through parts of Sydney CBD had to be done with the permission of RMS, despite being one of the few road alteration projects paid for by council rate payers.
Then there is the boondoggle of Westconnex, a freeway tunnel being built by the NSW state government which nobody seems to have wanted (except the civil construction companies) or has even bee fully designed (Where does it really go? How does it interchange with surrounding roads?) before construction began, making it seem (to the cynical) like a probable way for government money to be cycled back into the ruling political party via donations from the construction companies involved.
I believe that cold be better described as rivers falling into bridges. :-)
South Australia here – where, on a windy day, the power transmission towers lie down for a nap.
Our solution was to buy a massive Duracell battery off Elon Musk.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsTTbB6w1VU
Hey don’t knock it. Some pay good money for that kind of experience. :-D
Im fairly sure these people did aswell, in the garage the next day.
They left the lane open??? Must be some of those ambulance chasers maintaining the road. That’s a death waiting to happen.
This could have been before they had crews out to fix the issue, Road buckling happens a lot in Wisconsin and Minnesota due to the temperatures, In the summer if we have days nearing 100+ for several days the roads will start to buckle, and in the winter if we have several days of below zero it can also happen., and road crews will try and fix it as soon as they can but it depends how long it goes un noticed (usually an accident is what notifies them
I live near there. That one was on a weekend, so traffic wasn’t so bad. Normally the lanes get closed and patched pretty quickly. This was caught by a traffic control camera… it’s not like someone went out there to film it.
It’s really fun in the dark, or with a little ice, although the winter ones are generally not as extreme as this one.
Or maybe people who own mechanics shops as that has to be breaking things on the suspension of the cars passing over.
I so wanted to see that tailgater bite it at 0:40. @ssh0l3!
That leads t the waste of good beer.
Not only bridges; roads are also the victim in budget slashes.
This is an interesting old (2001) article from Time Magazine about the difference between highway construction in the US and Europe. Europe
“In Europe, by contrast, maintenance and repair work begin before damage is even visible. During a 1990 study trip to Europe, a group of U.S. civilian and government experts was amazed to see maintenance work under way on highways considered to be in superb condition by American standards.”
http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,159579,00.html
Of course, we don’t fear to pay taxes as much as North-Americans.
It depends on the road, as long as you are not going to have to redo the whole road it’s actually cheaper to do preventive repairs/reinforcements.
There is something to be said for over engineered bridges built 100-200 years ago. Where the numbers were worked out and then tripped or quadrupled just to be sure.
Well they could not be 100% certain about the strength of the materials being used so they were very conservative but their engineering generally stood the test of time so maybe we need to go back to making bridges that way.
Unfortunately, safety doesn’t work like that. If you overbuild bridges by a factor of 5 instead of a factor of 2, your costs go up by about the same ratio, so you’ll only be able to build 2/5 the number of bridges for the same amount of tax money. Your politicians and governments will be unhappy because their constituents want more bridges, so they’ll hire engineers who will say things like “yeah, 2x is good enough.” You’ll go bankrupt, and they’ll laugh their way to the bank (until the next bridge collapse happens, at which point the same crop of politicians wrings their hands nervously and blame everyone else for the failures.)
Of course, as long as you’re overbuilding you’ll get some absolutely beautiful structures like the Forth Bridge (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forth_Bridge). So in the end it’s worth it to overbuild anyway!
Downside of economics is it puts a limit on the influence of merit as a design factor.
Oh, the super slow update of the website made me wonder if this article was posted at all. Sorry for the dup.
(AND ADD THAT EDIT BUTTON, PLEASE!)
At least in some of the european countries
We like infrastructure stuff, and so do a ton of our readers if you believe the numbers. You are in the minority here.
You probably should also avoid reading this post about a video tour of cell phone infrastructure. :P
Who among us hasn’t wondered how X around us in the world works? It’s like our little hacky endeavors, except written large and with serious consequences.
This story must be fake news. Obama spent a trillion dollars on infrastructure. A literal TRILLION that is a million millions. There can’t be any broken down roads any more.
Only 27.5 billion of the stimulus when to fixing the highways.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/44th_president/stimulus
I do know of one way to get the money to fix the infrastructure but it’ll involve stepping on the toes of a lot of fat cats and closing down a lot of gravy trains
First forget about the Mexico wall most illegal don’t enter that way they just over stay their visa and disappear ,end the war on drugs,disband the DEA,disband DHS esp the TSA airport go back to private baggage checkers but have them tested regularly,get rid of private prisons as they actually turned out to cost more and even try to make such people they release end up getting arrested again, legalize pot federally and tax it.
Sorry, that’s just too sensible.
“There was also an 11-hour blackout at the busiest airport in the world, also coincidentally in Atlanta, due to inadequacies in the power grid.”
You can’t blame that one on “the” power grid, it was the fault of “the airports” power grid. They had a single point of failure and didn’t know it. At work I’ve had to deal with isolating critical systems physically, not just having redundancy. There was probably never a design requirement for it at Atlanta, or any other airport. Usually its just the cheapest power distribution system that’s designed.
An airport should have it’s own backup generators.
I haven’t confirmed that ATL has any, but given they seem to have their own water treatment facility, there isn’t much chance that they don’t have some back up generators. The issue, i’m guessing, is a single point of failure in some sort of switch gear to allow power to flow to the airport from either the generators or the utility power. If that single point of failure broke (as in needed replacement) then yes it could take 11 hours to figure out what is broken and get it replaced.
If i take georgia powers statement as true, then it seems like a fire may have caused some switchgear to fail, and due to close physical proximity the backups were also impacted. The work to fix seems to also have been delayed by inadequate smoke purge capacity from the vent fans.
Anyways, these sorts of long outages, are almost always double or triple failures, or cascade failures on systems that are not routinely tested. Testing a hot transfer from utility to generators on the full airport simultaneously isn’t something anyone really wants to do ever, as there will always be some impact.
This is a political issue. Unless people actively want to do something about it, and vote accordingly, nothing will change.
Prague city center, together with much of the infrastructure, was crippled by 2002 floods. It took years of political action. But now the city works better than ever before.
My point is: you know what the problem is. NOW DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.
I guess Obama didn’t fix all that stuff and left it for the next guy.
MAGA? remember, great countries have great infrastructure. Tick-tock…
Louisana is even worse off. our state is over a billion dollars in debt–partially due to our old governer who has no idea where the money went *wink*–and we need a new bridge into our capital. Of the two that we currently have, one is over 75 years old and has cracks running through it’s support pylons (made worse by the fact that it’s the only railroad bearing bride for miles on the mississippi river), and the other is becoming unstable due to the river overflowing so much in recent years, and foundational issues. If those bridges go, the city will essentially grind to a halt, and the loss of life will be catastrophic (both are heavily trafficed).
If we don’t get our act together, crumbling infrastructure is gonna be the death of this country.
[quote] If we don’t get our act together, crumbling infrastructure is gonna be the death of this country.[/quote]
Perfect storm is that and some other things coming together overwhelming a society’s systems that weren’t designed for it. Problem with handing everything to the future is when the bill comes due.
Not to shoot down a good article, but isnt this like, old news? I hear this every few months on the news in central Europe, America doesn’t spend nearly enough money on their infrastructure, and lately they’ve been paying the price (as sinkholes are on the rise & bridges keep falling, not to mention things like New Orleans..)