Wednesday, June 5, 2013

149th Street bridge saga drags on


From Eyewitness News:

As the Eyewitness News Investigators reported in April, a bridge in Queens is so riddled with cracks, the city has kept it closed to traffic.

Not only is this bridge still closed more than a year after a complete overhaul, but there appears to be no real fix short of starting all over again.

Now the city blames the engineer and the engineer faults the city.

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yup! And if NYC DOT isn't willing to live with the cracks, which is a design they approved, they will have thrown away $3.7 million of our tax payer dollars in addition to the appx $4.5-$5+ million it will cost to do the "Traditional Method" and not the "Isotropic or Empirical Method" design with full amount of steel. And an addition 18 months, minimum, of a closed street/bridge, after construction actually gets started. That's in addition to the current 37 months its been closed so far.

Anonymous said...

Does anyone ever get fired from these city jobs?

Not that the private sector is anything to write home about (never was, and especially sucks nowadays), at least there I've witnessed some degree of accountability - at least in the tech arena.

How do these city jobs work? Just show up, fuck up, and walk away with an inflated pension? Sure looks that way.

The garbage men can't even fully empty the pails!

Anonymous said...

To Anonym #2: that's partly why I use bags. I stopped using cans or pales yrs ago ~.

Anonymous said...

Have to agree with #2. If this was a standard bridge design and it got messed up like this, the engineer on staff is fired and loses his licence.

But on the city end, the guy who thought it would be super cool to use 30% less steel likely got a promotion for "innovative cost savings"

Anonymous said...

Speaking from experience as a Mechanical Engineer, every project that I was involved in had to go through Value Engineering. I am not surprised that 30% less steel was used since it was probably a suggestion from the Value Engineering team.

Anonymous said...

um where is the community board, the local press, and your city councilman.

unless they get involved no one cares...

Anonymous said...

City too focused on building bike lanes instead!

Anonymous said...

Yup! And if NYC DOT isn't willing to live with the cracks, which is a design they approved, they will have thrown away $3.7 million of our tax payer dollars in addition to the appx $4.5-$5+ million it will cost to do the "Traditional Method" and not the "Isotropic or Empirical Method" design with full amount of steel. And an addition 18 months, minimum, of a closed street/bridge, after construction actually gets started. That's in addition to the current 37 months its been closed so far.
=================================================================
Excellent comment...and worthy of a second look!

Anonymous said...

So AGAIN, with this waste and inconvenience, where in the hell is the local political leadership?

Why are they silent?

Anonymous said...

Who's the city councilman? Koo?

Anonymous said...

The fact of the matter is that without royal privilege from your little local elected, you are an invisible serf.

I guess the big question is why they do not seem to be concerned about this - for until they do - you can go hang.

BTW, what ARE they interested in?

Anonymous said...

When the bridge eventually collapses upon the LIRR tracks below, then Councilman Koo will get involved.

He lives in Port Washington, Nassau County, and that would interrupt his commute.

Is that illegal...to represent Flushing but live out in Nassau?

It's SOP in political circles to establish a bogus district residency to comply with the law.

The Staviskys have lived out of district for decades.

Anonymous said...

Koo is out to lunch 24/7 at some local dim sum parlor.

He don't care squat about shit unless someone like his Oriental buddy Michael Lee wants to build Flushing Commons.

Blood is thicker than water among these shady Taiwanese.

A cracked bridge wouldn't be tolerated further east,
but this is the Asiatic section of town...so things move along at a snail's pace like a slow boat to China.

Anonymous said...

Nobody can understand a word that Peter Koo says anyway. His Chingrish is awful!