Saturday, September 20, 2008
The new bridge
We drove over the new 35W bridge today. It smells new. Really. Like wet concrete. It's an odd experience to drive on it because it doesn't seem anything like a bridge. It's hard to describe why exactly. For one thing, from the inner lanes, you cannot see the river at all thanks to a high centerwall. It's thoroughly integrated with the road on the ends of the bridge so that you have no sense of the beginning of the bridge. You cross the river without ever realizing you've gone up in the air. I suppose it was a design objective that we have no sense of it being a bridge to minimize our morbid thoughts, so we're not thinking on every pass, "what must it have been like to have been here when the bridge fell".
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4 comments:
I find your first impressions of the bridge very interesting. I'm a student of Civil Engineering, and have had some exposure to the design criteria. Most bridges these days are supposed to blend with the approaches, so that you don't know the bridge starts. Though some older ones, and some less the ideal newer ones, miss the mark on that. I think its neat that your perspective is from the lanes farthest from the edge. The guard rail on the water side is shorter than normal, and is intended to allow a view of the river when your in the lanes near the river. The questionable thing is that they are shorter than most, and some wonder if there enough for an out of control truck. Not that we have many of those. My first time across was on the river side, and I actually enjoyed being able to see the water. It will be nice in a few more weeks when all of the work is done.
Vithar -- thanks so much for your comment! I'll try the outside lanes next time for a different experience.
http://hotair.com/archives/2008/10/01/the-first-lesson-from-the-bridge-collapse-rebuild/
I think all such contracts include incentives for finishing early, don't they? I suspect the difference here was the budget. They had all the money they needed to have 24 hour crew for the entire building period. And the reason the budget was so massive was because of the dramatic end of the previous bridge and being on the national news which generated cover for massive federal spending.
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