I had to go see the bridge collapse for myself yesterday. This is as close as I could get with a camera, but was able to see the entire bridge while I was driving across a nearby bridge. There are still 8 people missing.
There is a bridge that according to many that is in worse shape than the 35W bridge. The Lafayette bridge, which is 51 feet high and 3375 feet long. There are not enough structural supports on the bridge to keep it up if one of the supports goes down. There are bridges in need of repair through out the state and the country. Maybe this is our wake up call.
Here are some links to just some of the coverage by some of the great local Minnesota blogs:
35W bridge over the Mississippi River collapses in Minneapolis – the sky blue waters report
Minneapolis Bridge Collapse & Citizen Journalism – e-strategy.com’s Internet Marketing Blog
35W Bridge collapse by Living in 55404
Theresa,
Thank you. I look at you as the purveyor of all things Minnesotaish, so I’ve been waiting for a post about this from you. You were in San Francisco when it happened, and I kept waiting and waiting for you to return and say something. The picture is the perfect ‘post’, as are the additonal links.
Thanks again.
I know i am a little slow. After being gone for so many days I had to play catch up. Thanks for stopping by.
My Twin-Cities inlaws rolled into Portland the day that 35W went down. A less-than-ebullient arrival, to say the least.
If there is a silver lining, Portland residents (and politicos) are reviewing bridge crossings and their deferred maintenance issues as a result of the tragedy in Mpls.
Our thoughts and prayers are with all the fine folks in Minneapolis.
LCJoe
Teresa: Your picture is worth a thousand words, all sad. I can’t even imagine what it’s like to see it up close and personal. But knowing the spirit and tenacity of you “upper midwesterners”, I know you will get through this difficult time and, ultimately, be even stronger.
What do bridges, schools, health care, and safe city streets have in common?
Minneapolis City Pages September 5th Economy in Freefall article quoted Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty as estimating the additional costs of gas and extra miles due to the bridge collapse at $400,000 per day, or $146,000,000 over the next year.
Any accurate calculation of additional costs to drivers must include at least a fair minimum amount for the 144,000 cars per day that used this bridge each day that now must find other routes.
Forty eight cents per mile is the IRS allowance for automobile deductions and this does not include the headache factor of clogged traffic and longer commutes that I seem to be experiencing.
Assuming an average of ten additional miles for each car each way (some of us take the longer 694/494 route around town (which is depending on east or west between thirteen and eighteen additional miles bypassing the city on freeways, others drive fewer extra miles through downtown city streets or the 280 detour).
Multiplying an average ten miles each way for 144,000 cars per day equals 2.8 million miles per day times the IRS 48 cents equals $1,382,000 per day, or almost four times the governor’s estimate.
Hoping that it only takes one year to finish the bridge, multiply 1.382,000 times 365 and it adds to a little over five hundred million dollars in hard costs to drivers for these detours. Eighteen months bridge construction time would equal over seven hundred and fifty million dollars in hard driver costs.
With no extra consideration for the extra ten to twenty minutes at each end of our commute we can honestly call this the hard cost of the bridge collapse.
Add this to the approximately two hundred million dollar estimated cost of a new bridge, and the sure to be substantial lawsuit settlements for wrongful death and injury from the victims of this disaster, and some minimal value for the businesses that are failing because of their new inaccessibility, and a billion dollars becomes a realistic estimate of the total hard costs of not maintaining our bridge.
New York’s 20 year veteran bridge engineer Samuel Schwartz (NYT OP-ED 8.13.07) estimated that 178,000 dollars annual maintainance per year per bridge would keep all of his states bridges in pristine condition (“all bridges guaranteed never to collapse”, MINE).
Compare 178,000 dollars to the one billion dollars price tag of not maintaining this bridge and you can begin to see the actual cost of our anti tax policymaking that has won the hearts and minds of so many Minnesotans.
It appears to be up to five hundred times more expensive to ignore the advice of qualified people (real engineering experts paid high salaries) than it was to gamble on the small savings to be gained by ignoring their advice.
Even if we had spent $178,000 each year for twenty years, the total is $3,560,000 (996 million dollars less than a billion dollars).
Similarly, in the case of human beings it is much more cost effective to attend to the needs of a child than waiting until disaster strikes.
Trying to resurrect a criminalized juvenile or adult with ten to twenty years of serious mental health problems is extremely difficult.
I make a very similar financial calculation for failing to help children in child protection systems to receive the help they need to make it in public schools. Traumatized children cost our community a fortune when we ignore them and wait until they are mentally unstable adults to deal with them.
Experts will tell you that the time to help abused and neglected (traumatized) children is when you first have the opportunity. It is exponentially less expensive than waiting until they hurt someone.
Our bridge failed the majority of its safety inspections over the last twenty years. Early and sustained annual maintenance would have been the way to save money, lives, and trauma.
Bridges are designed to a factor of ten times their estimated strength needs. Ask any engineer about the significance of a bridge falling down. The Minneapolis bridge collapse was a monstrous failure.
It is not the engineers that ruined the bridge. It’s not the teachers that wrecked the schools, or social workers that are not taking care of children in child protection. These are the people doing their jobs with the resources and support at their disposal.
The bridge collapse was the direct result of the people that made the policies, the same people that have been ignoring the engineers and the experts that know what was needed for systems and infrastructure to stay in working order.
These are the same policy makers that are responsible for the declining conditions of our schools, transportation, courts, bridges, child protection systems and safe city streets.
Policy makers that point fingers and blame others instead of admitting their own failures and especially those that are not working for long term workable solutions to our infrastructure problems should be tarred and feathered (at least run out of office).
Would someone please print a large “YOUR GOVERNMENT AT WORK” sign and post it on the tenth avenue bridge to be seen by the thousands of us poor dumb saps as we drive by the billion dollar fiasco that to this point hasn’t been any policymaker’s fault?
We are not saving any money by letting bridges fall into the river and at risk children fall into our courts and justice system. It costs exponentially more money to let things disintegrate than it does to take care of them.
http://www.invisiblechildren.org/weblog