That Sinking Feeling (Chapters LV to LXII): D'oh!!!!! (infrastructure)

[marmar]

From OurFuture.org:


That Sinking Feeling (Chapters LV to LXII): D'oh!!!!!
Submitted by Rick Perlstein on July 30, 2007 - 12:29pm.

With the explosion in Manhattan twelve days ago, several radio programs had me on to connect the dots: to explain how it was merely the most dramatic symptom of the rotting of America's infrastructure, and how it was all the conservatives' fault.

Basking in the media glow, I neglected to mention these less dramatic symptoms:

The ground opened up beneath a horse stall in Phoenix. An eighty year old sewer line collapsed in St. Cloud. In Tyler, Texas, the sinkhole was caused by crumbling drainage pipes. In San Antonio, "big chunks of rocks were falling off into into the abyss that used to be a street." In Vallejo, California, the pit split an underground gas line (no danger in that). In San Jose, a water main ruptured beneath a high school ("the water may appear dirty," officials assured residents, "but it is safe to drink"). In Sunnyvale, the burst pipe buckled 300 feet of road surface. In Greensboro the sinkhole swallowed a car ("Randy Delano Wood has seen a lot of accidents int he 20 years he has driven for a living. 'But the road falling out from under you is something you never expect,' Wood said.")

The good folks in Greensboro are fortunate enough to have a newspaper editorial writer who connects the dots: "It's like one of those Parade Magazine brain teasers. What do these have in common? Hurricane Katrina. Flight delays nationwide. A blast of steam in New York. A traffic-stopping sinkhole on Wendover Avenue. The answer is actually a no-brainer. Aging infrastructure. And far from being a secret, the nation's civil engineers have been warning about it for years to little response." Good for them. Let's hope they don't render themselves poor public stewards by subsequently endorsing conservative Republicans infected with tax-cut mania.

Oh and by the way, let's not forget Springfield: "After Homer adopts a pig and uses its feces to pollute the river, President Arnold Schwarzenegger (Harry Shearer) approves a plan from an aide to enclose the town in a clear dome. Homer and his family are declared pariahs, but they escape through a sinkhole in their yard and move to Alaska, where Bart (Nancy Cartwright) and Marge (Julie Kavner) decide they're fed up with Homer and head back to Springfield to save the town."

http://commonsense.ourfuture.org/sinking_feeling_chapters_lv_lxii_doh?tx=3

[PetrusMonsFormicarum]

1. Don't forget

Portland, Oregon's Sellwood Bridge, more than 80 years old and the only Willamette River crossing for four miles one way and 8 the other, recently BANNED trucks and buses. what good is that ban when traffic backs up all the way across the bridge--we're talking standstill here! I guess the city fathers are just waiting for an "event".

[tech3149]

2. I think the big difference is that even if 100 cars outweigh a truck

with a full load (or more), the load is distributed over a larger area. The total load limit of any structure is (should be) far in excess of what any section can endure. One nice feature of suspension bridges is that the load can be balanced by the support lines. Sellwood is a nice trussed structure and could probably last another 20 years with proper maintenance. The big problem is if the maintenance had been done since it was built, there would be no reason for cutting down weight restrictions.

If that's a bridge you have to cross regularly, don't worry about it going down. Engineers in that day usually doubled the fudge factor for tolerances and load limits to cover their butt.