What Happened To the Bay Bridge?

Posted by kdawson on Saturday October 31, 2009 @06:36AM from the span-in-the-works dept.

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?"

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small by anonieuweling · 2009-10-31 06:49 · Score: 5, Insightful

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:Wrong audience by demonlapin · 2009-10-31 09:01 · Score: 5, Insightful

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