35W Freeway Bridge Collapse

[goprog]

Egad. The "Secretary of Transportation" is on "The News Hour".
She made a comment about bridge "construction" materials, etc,
being on the bridge and construction companies should calculate
bearing loads. While that may be true, the aerial picture of
the bridge before the collapse showed significantly less "stuff"
on the bridge than normal rush hour traffic would be. Looks
like another attempt to divert attention from the real problem.
(IMO) She also has lots of excuses why the gas tax should not
be increased.

 

[sudsmaster]

Goprog, do you remember the 50th Anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge? They closed the bridge to traffic and let people walk the entire width and length of the bridge. Photos showed the bridge with a decided slump in the middle of the suspension span... from the weight of all those human bodies, which turned out to be far more than the weight of bumper-bumper traffic.

Similarly, it's possible that heavy construction materials stacked on the 35w bridge could be equal to or greater than that of bumper-bumper car traffic. It might even be worse if the materials were concentrated in one area, an unbalanced type of load.

Let's let the forensic engineers do their job and see just what combination of factors caused this collapse.