Monday, September 16, 2013

Lots of bridges falling apart

From the CBS New York:

More than 2,000 New York state bridges, including the Brooklyn Bridge, have been deemed structurally deficient and in dire need of repairs by the federal government.

An Associated Press review of 607,380 bridges in the federal government’s National Bridge Inventory found that 65,605 of them are structurally deficient. New York state leads the pack.

A bridge deemed structurally deficient is considered to be in need of rehabilitation or replacement because at least one major component of the span has advanced deterioration or other problems that lead inspectors to deem its condition “poor” or worse. According to the most recent data, 20,808 bridges are deemed “fracture critical,” meaning they don’t have redundant protections and are at risk of collapse if a single, vital component fails.

Some 7,795 bridges nationwide fall into both categories — a combination of red flags that experts say is particularly problematic.

More than 400 of these are in New York state.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Keep wasting money on building bike lanes...

Anonymous said...

nah, we'll waste it on tax cuts instead.

Anonymous said...

This sounds like some kind of government boondoggle. All of a sudden bridges all over the country are in danger of falling down! Lots and lots of public money to spend. The politicians love it, the unions love it and the big business owners love it. Who really gets screwed, guess who!

Alen said...

they need to toll all the bridges to pay for this. i pay for the subway. i pay to use the tunnels sometimes. no reason people shouldn't pay for using a bridge.

Anonymous said...

actually tolls are not a bad idea, at least everyone would see what it is costing in real time. Maybe they would then start recalling a lot of the crooks and con artists being elected to public office. Won't be long the toll bridges in NY will be up to $10 one way. Just watch.

Anonymous said...


Keep wasting money on building bike lanes..

Or on estimated travel time networks for highways, because those are so essential.

Anonymous said...

Or eliminate tolls like CT, and raise the car registration fees, better for the environment too....

Anonymous said...

hey alan people that drive do pay for and at a big cost every gallon of gas that is sold has taxes built into it to pay for roads, we pay registration for the car we drive , we pay tolls , we pay insurance and taxes are built into the insurance policy to help fund transportation . i think that he subway fairs should be raised instead of using toll dollars to fund the subway, also when you buy a car you pay taxes on that add it up the bridges where neglected for years and the money was used to balance budgets and overspending on other bs instead of maintaing the bridges

Anonymous said...

How old are the steel cables holding up the Brooklyn, Manhattan bridge roadways. Over 100 years in a hostile acid and salt environment ?
These cables are covered up and capped over so its impossible to correctly see what going on inside unless a MAJOR failure starts tearing open.
A good cat 4 or 5 hurricane may take them all out. It seems nobody from the city wants to talk about this as if its Taboo to say something.
1000s can die and millions wont be able to get to work for years. The Sept 11th aftermath has nothing on a East river bridge failing