"......Meanwhile, a state highway has been converted into a freeway in a bid to reduce commuter traffic disruption around Minneapolis following the destruction of what was the city's busiest bridge.
The timing of traffic signals has also been changed, new turn lanes have been created and access roads have been closed, while more city buses are running and car pooling is being encouraged.
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6932882.stm
I wonder how long this sort of action would take in Blighty ???
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We'd still be treating the whole area as a crime scene.
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But
- if bridge unsafe and recognised as such
- it was easy to sort the roads
Why did they not close the bridge in a planned way in 2005 to either fix or replace it?? And if no money available just close it?
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We'd still be treating the whole area as a crime scene.
>>It is a crime scene. Some chuffing builder Pink fluffy diced it up following a specification from some person following from some person following...
Just Google "bridge collapse"..It all makes me sick.
MD
attempt to defeat the swear filter deleted - PU
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Apparently they are promising a new bridge by the end of 2008.
You are right, here things really do get moving when the taxpayers are being inconvenienced. A while back a rail bridge in Chicago was destroyed by a huge fire. How long did it take to get everything back up again? Six days. That's right, a new bridge, and new track, laid and ready in less than a week.
The first thing they'd do if this happened in the UK would be to close every bridge in the country to inspect it. From what I recall, though, just about every bridge is under permanent roadworks anyway, so maybe this would not be necessary!
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You are right, here things really do get moving when the taxpayers are being inconvenienced
as is evidenced also by the speed at which they repaired the highways and bridges after the last major earthquake damage in california in 1992. compare that with how long it took to repair the brent-cross flyover after the ira bombed it in 1993.
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>the last major earthquake damage in california in 1992.
The LA Northridge quake was in Jan. 1994 - I was in Austin and expected to be in LA a few days after the quake hit.
One of the freeways that collapsed was I10, the Santa Monica freeway that carries over 350,000 vehicles per day.
The contract to rebuild the overpass was awarded to C.C. Meyers Inc on a fixed price contract with overrun penalties of $205K per day and $200k per day early completion incentive. They were allowed 140 days to complete the work.
66 days after signing the contract the freeway was reopened - 74 days early!
tinyurl.com/2hl5xp
In contrast, Hants County Council have taken 10 months (Oct. 2006 to Aug. 2007) to almost complete 'improvements' to the A33/A339 intersection. They were scheduled to finish in May but seem to have forgotten that.
The 'improvements' to Wade Road were also due to finish in May but that seems to have slipped their mind also.
Kevin...
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>>The first thing they'd do if this happened in the UK would be to close every bridge in the country to inspect it.
Guess what? Thats what they are doing anyway (though they arn't closing them for the inspections, thankfully.
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Guess what?
Yes, bridge inspections are an obvious part of a sensible protocol to respond to this kind of situation. Imagine the headlines if the inspections weren't carried out and a bridge failed in the UK!
Another part of such a protocol might be a review of the least redundant structures, possibly leading to a revision of the bridge inspection procedures or inspection frequencies for the most at risk structures.
I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that some of the civil consultanicies like Arups or Atkins working on such a project for clients like Network Rail, or the Highways agency right now.
Number_Cruncher
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I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that some of the civil consultanicies like Arups or Atkins ..
someone with more current up to date knowledge of network-rail may be able to correct me, but it was not so long ago that graduate civil-engineers recruited by network-rail used to find themselves working full-time continuosly on nothing but bridge inspections (just think of the thousands of small bridges all over the country that are involved) , a bit like painting the forth rail bridge - the job never ends.
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Yes, if the stories told to me by colleagues who were doing a lot of guaging work for Railtrack were true, just before its demise, there wasn't even a complete list of the structural assets which had to be managed, and among the first tasks to be taken on before meaningful inspections could begin was to build a comprehensive bridge and civil structure database.
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It is a bit like painting the forth bridge. As an ex-bridge inspector I thought it may be of some interest to people to know the following:
All highway bridge structures in the UK are inspected every 2 years in what is called a General Inspection which looks at all parts of the bridge accessible by foot. Every 6 years structures are given a Principal Inspection which requires every part of the bridge (but excluding anything buried) to be inspected within touching distance, i.e you need to use ladders, scaffold, cherry pickers.
Historically there is a large backlog of Principal Inspections. In the last 10 years all highway structures have been assessed for capacity, part of which includes a Principal Inspection of the strucutres - which is probably why there was a time when people were employed full time to inspect bridges.
Back to the orignal issue of the Minesota bridge - collapses of bridges in the UK is very rare. Having spent a number years refurbishing, assessing and upgrading bridges, it can be more of a headache to carry out than designing and building a brand new bridge. If a structure (on a main route) like the one in Minesota collapsed in the UK I am confident that it would be replaced very quickly.
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If a structure (on a main route) like the one in Minesota collapsedin the UK I am confident that it would be replaced very quickly.
I'm not so sure. It took them I think from 1992-1995 to widen the M25 by adding an extra lane from J7 to J8 near the M23. Three years to widen a couple of miles of road.
Does anybody know how long it took them to do the Thelwall Viaduct work? It seemed to me that took several years too, as every time I went that far up the M6, it was being dug up.
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The Thelwall Viaduct is now actually two viaducts. The original one which carries the north bound traffic (opened '63) and the newer one carrying southbound traffic (opened '95). In 2002 a failed roller-bearing was discovered on the northbound viaduct resulting in all but one lane closed. It took until 2005 to replace all 148 roller-bearings and it cost £52m.
Bet it didn't take as long to build the southbound viaduct as it did to repair the older northbound one!
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Just remembered that they had to jack up the viaduct each time they replaced a roller-bearing. That's jacking up the deck of the viaduct 148 times! But all this work went on underneath so you saw only the cones.
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My council has a brilliant way of fixing bridges. When there was a planning application requiring coal trucks to use a 17 ton restricted bridge over a main line railway, they inspected the bridge and removed the weight restriction!
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I'd have a bit more admiration for the Americans if the bridge had not fallen down in the first place. This on top of the steam pipe which blew a hole in the road in New York the other week and killed a woman and scalded a few other people. Apparently (according to Radio 4) they have now discovered some other bridges which are in a poor condition.
A lot of typical Brit-bashing, but those that think we're rubbish at everything should note that a lot of our infrastructure is much older than in the US (by a hundred or more years in some cases) and by-and-large it is much more intensively used.
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in my town a high sided vehicle knocked a chunk of concrete the size of a matchbox off of a fly over near the town centre, the flyover was closed for about a fortnight!!!!!!
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in my town a high sided vehicle knocked a chunk of concrete the size of a matchbox off of a fly over near the town centre the flyover was closed for about a fortnight!!!!!!
Hmm - a bit of exaggeration there I suspect, milkyjoe!
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I'm not so sure. It took them I think from 1992-1995 to widen the M25 by adding an extra lane from J7 to J8 near the M23. Three years to widen a couple of miles of road.
Surely part of the reason for that work taking longer is that the road remained open. I imagine that the work could have been done in a fraction of the time if the road had been closed.
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I was emailed a copy of the last inspection which took place of the collapsed bridge (I am assuming its genuine and not some wind up). Its quite a long document, which I haven't had time to read properly. But from a quick skim though it looks like the structure was in need of some major work to the steel deck underneath. Missing bolts, fatigue cracking to steel etc.. The sort of defects which would cause me some concern. There is a bit in the report recommending that the structure is re-decked. If the report is genuine, I would suspect heads will roll. Hopefully it'll be the right heads.
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It wasn't the decking that collapsed though VR6, but the structure. Don't forget the thing was a spidery steel arch... it was very obviously something low down that gave way.
I bet it used to shake noticeably at rush hour even when it was new.
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But if recommended a re-deck then top (i.e. road) removed and attention possible below. Academic now :-(
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