Slashdot Mirror
What Happened To the Bay Bridge?
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?"
Cal Trans designed and Chinese built. nuff said.
Yeah, but there is also a big "shit happens" component to the whole thing. Sometimes, shit just happens-- even if everybody does their job to the best of their ability, even if everything works exactly as designed, sometimes shit just happens.
Of course, being an American, you have to instantly assign blame and sue somebody, God knows.
Comment of the year
I suspect that California educated engineers had a lot to do with the problem. A panel had to decide how to fix the problem. The panel was composed, by law, of one gay, one lesbian, one transvestite, one Mormon, one Moslem, one Black, one Hispanic - the list goes on and on. And, among the engineers, the various engineering disciplines had representation, including the Doctors of Basketweaving from Berkeley.
Its not hard to understand why the bridge is falling apart.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Given that the bridge essentially spans the distance between Berkeley (perhaps the most liberal city in the country) and San Francisco (which happens to be the home of Nancy Pelosi and a reliably democratic district. They had an initiative on the ballot to name a sewage treatment plant after George Bush), it seems silly to say it has anything to do with 'liberals' or 'conservatives' and everything to do with politicians wanting to spend every cent they can.
To turn it the other way, if San Francisco hadn't decided to provide sex-change surgery for any city employee who wants one, they may have had money to fix their bridge.
It was nice when Bush was in office to have democrats talking about fiscal responsibility, but now that they have power, they seem determined to spend just as much as he did, if not more.
Qxe4
You've never worked in government have you... Government are sheep, they're dumb, and have no thoughts of their own... If they don't have pretty pictures, and 'feel good' presentations, along with environmental, and doomsday studies, they don't approve anything. Politicians are dumb, in order to get anything approved you have to make them feel smart, but giving them pretty pictures, they feel smart, and are willing to dump money into them