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?"

Comments

small

[anonieuweling]

The USA is small. Think bigger than just the 250k people. The whole infrastructure in the USA is lagging in maintenance, care, repairs and/or replacements. The USA needs trillions to fix this problem but other shenanigans of course have higher priorities. P

Re:small

[Grishnakh]

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:small

[moosesocks]

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.

Lets see here...

[Darkness404]

Lets see, when you have a pretty much bankrupt state (California), a bridge that is too necessary to fully replace without inconveniencing many people, the fact that it isn't exactly in a stable environment, with wind, rain and corrosion everywhere is it any surprise that a bridge that has been up for over 70 years needs some emergency repairs?

Re:There simply isn't anything "wrong".

[The MAZZTer]

As far as I'm concerned, if a piece of a bridge that has active traffic on it falls off, putting people on the bridge in danger, something went wrong SOMEWHERE.

Don't blame the three caltrans employees

[nick_davison]

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:Meanwhile, in Segovia....

[WCguru42]

Not to take anything away from the impressive feat of engineering that the Roman aqueducts are but there is a big difference between carrying water and carrying 250,000 vehicles ranging between 1 and 50+ tons. Also, the Romans didn't really have to worry about costs seeing as the aqueducts were more than likely built by slave labor.

Re:still dead!

[CharlyFoxtrot]

    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:Wrong audience

[demonlapin]

They did withstand airplane impact. What they did not withstand was hours of several-thousand-degree fire.

Re:Meanwhile, in Segovia....

[photonic]

Note that there is a large selection bias in the example you cite. The Romans were great engineers, but I am pretty sure they also built a lot of shitty bridges and aqueducts. It is a sort of natural selection, the ones that are still standing today happen to be the good ones.