35 ms·

Bridge collapse in Pittsburgh’s Frick Park

305 points by f154hfds 5y ago

mlac 5y ago
This hits close to home… I’ve run under and over that bridge many, many times. I really hope no one was on their morning run under it, but it looks like everyone who was on it got away with minor injuries. It is a main artery for connecting two neighborhoods… there are many bridges like this all over Pittsburgh, but it’s not the “big” ones over one of the three rivers. Odd timing, but Biden is also in town today. Talk about crumbling critical infrastructure…
- MisterSandman 5y ago
  It blows my mind that the richest country in the world can't afford better infrastructure. I know that's not how economies and capitalism works, but it really shouldn't be like that.
  - shadowgovt 5y ago
    The US is having a hard time making a cultural transition from a boom mindset to a sustaining mindset. We are about one generation out, maybe one and a half, since there was significant value in tooling our manufacturing and development process for territorial conquest. That tooling got a shot in the arm during World War II and a second shot in the arm during the space race that kept it going longer than it would have otherwise, but America is a coast to coast country with no more frontier, and Americans need to learn how to sustain what exists and find value in sustaining what exists rather than rewarding primarily those who create new. ... Or just be comfortable with the idea that we're going to always have shiny things that wear out faster than they should and fail when we're relying on them.
    - lanstin 5y ago
      Rise of the maintenance engineering mindset!
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    The US is the richest country because it has quite a few of the richest individuals. But the enormous amounts of money spent on armaments has reduced the amount of money available for infrastructure maintenance and other necessities.
    - philistine 5y ago
      The US is amassing through taxes a smaller percentage compared to other developed nations. The US taxes lightly. Then it's putting a ton of that money (and even more through debt) into the military. The money available is not a zero-sum game. The US could raise its taxes.
    - phkahler 5y ago
      >> But the enormous amounts of money spent on armaments has reduced the amount of money available for infrastructure maintenance and other necessities. Which is odd because (I think) part of government spending seems to be redistribution of money, which would be better achieved through maintenance of infrastructure.
  - andrew_ 5y ago
    I think you're missing a key point here: this bridge is maintained by PennDOT. That's not federal, that's state. PennDOT's own report, according the article, showed that the bridge was in poor condition. It's a failure on PennDOT, a local bureaucracy, not the entirety of the "richest country in the world." In the U.S., different pieces of infrastructure is delegated to different authorities. It's up to those authorities to maintain those pieces. They choose how to spend and where to spend. Now, the argument could be made that funding is an issue, and in some states it is. Hence the latest bill to fund more infrastructure repair. But it's not such an issue in many places in the country. Anecdotally, growing up in a Northern state, we would always complain about how much better the roads in our neighboring state to the South were. And they actually were, because the folks who ran Ohio's DOT straight up managed it better. I now live in the South, and I'm very pleased with how the State and Counties here manage and maintain roads, bridges, and rail line crossings.
    - chrisan 5y ago
      Speaking of anecdotes, I grew up in Pittsburgh, later lived in Ohio, then Michigan. Ohio roads were pothole city and I always thought Michigan roads were good. I now live in North Carolina and the roads around here are pretty crap. Shoulders either non-existent or crumbling off from rain erosion. Not many pot holes however since we don't see much freeze/thaw compared to Ohio.
    - shadowgovt 5y ago
      The failure of the richest country is a lack of methods to capture that wealth and funnel it to where it's needed. Google has offices in Pittsburgh. Want to take a guess at what percentage of Google's tax money went to maintaining a bridge its employees drive on every day? ETA: the problem in Pittsburgh in particular is compounded by the nature of the major employers in the city. Often, taxes for things like bridges in town would be paid by real estate taxes. But four of the largest employers in Pittsburgh are UPMC, Highmark / Allegheny Health Network, University of Pittsburgh, and Carnegie Mellon University. As non-profit institutions, they don't pay taxes on the real estate they use. It is not certain that a city the size of Pittsburgh with so much real estate out of the taxability space is a sustainable model in any sense.
  - bloopernova 5y ago
    (This is my subjective, personal, and probably poorly-educated take) It feels like the US has shot itself in the foot by demonizing socialism and communism. Not because those ideologies would have fixed this issue, but because so many US residents have translated "socialism is bad" into "all government spending is bad". In my town, there's a vocal group of older people who rant against using their taxes to pay for schools. Their argument is that they don't use those services, their children are older or nonexistent. They reject the "rising tide lifts all boats" argument, and reject that an educated populace improves their quality of life. They only see the short term bill of property tax. I think that attitude is present in a lot of people, encouraged by the argument against government spending and collective action. I'm not sure what the end state of this attitude will be. The selfishness that exists in our culture doesn't seem to be slowing, if anything it feels like it is accelerating. I think there's going to be a lot more bridge collapses, people stuck in snow drifts on interstates for 36 hours, a lot more disaster and suffering before anything changes. (I also don't have any solutions for this. I don't wish for disaster and doom, and human suffering is utterly awful especially in what is supposed to be an enlightened future. But I wonder if things will have to get a lot worse before society changes its course)
    - mythrwy 5y ago
      I don't think government spending is necessarily bad, but a lot of it is wastefully spent with little productive to show for it. People have been talking shovel ready jobs forever. Where are the Trump infrastructure jobs? The Obama "shovel ready" jobs? Think this time will be any different? I don't. I do agree the whole system breaking (sadly) may be requirement to return to productive and rational behavior. There is entirely too much grift and performative rather then productive behavior at many levels right now and that is very hard to displace once it becomes institutionalized.
- Proven 5y ago
- bmj 5y ago
  there are many bridges like this all over Pittsburgh This is the really scary part. Given PGH's geography, it is nearly impossible to travel through the city in an efficient way without crossing a bridge. Also, let's not forget the sinkhole incident[0]. [0] https://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2019/10/28/port-authority-bus-sinkhole-downtown-pittsburgh/ https://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2019/10/28/port-authority-bu...
- mythrwy 5y ago
  I worked as a project manager doing construction contracts for federal and state governments at one point for nearly a decade. My take is that more tax money might not necessarily get better results. At least not at a cost in proportion to value realized. It would also take capable leaders at multiple levels extremely focused on end results rather then various forms of grift, and those would be fought every step of the way by numerous and very clever trough feeders. I don't know the answer but certainly we can do a little better with what we have and eventually we will have to. Or do without. There is no free money in the end.
theandrewbailey 5y ago
Its stuff like this that scares me. Pittsburgh claims to have more bridges than any other city in the world.[0] You're driving around here, and you cross little ones without noticing. I hope I'm not ever near (or using) a collapsing one. The rivers are big here. [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/av/magazine-30187252 https://www.bbc.com/news/av/magazine-30187252 Edit: not bridge related, but a sinkhole opened downtown over 2 years ago, also swallowing a bus: https://www.post-gazette.com/news/transportation/2019/10/28/Port-Authority-falls-sinkhole-in-Downtown-Pittsburgh/stories/201910280067 https://www.post-gazette.com/news/transportation/2019/10/28/...
- throw7 5y ago
  Bridge became disjointed in Albany: https://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=130405 https://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=130405 I remember it pretty vividly because the woman who drove over it was on the local news in tears. Could have been much worse.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  Well, statistically then, this all makes sense. As these things come it could have been a lot worse. I immediately thought back to the bridge collapse in Italy not all that long ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponte_Morandi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponte_Morandi
  - mlac 5y ago
    It looked like light traffic on a morning commute. Unfortunate a bus was on there. But during rush hour, traffic is fully backed up there and stacked on the road. It could have easily been 30-40 cars + a bus instead of what was there.
    - jacquesm 5y ago
      Very, very lucky. Taking into account the kinds of vehicles you come across every day, hazardous goods, school buses and so on.
- 5y ago
jgrahamc 5y ago
Only a tiny exaggeration by the submitter there! Makes it sound like a bridge over the Monongahela collapsed, which it didn't.
- hiidrew 5y ago
  I also think the bridge is pretty high up, I'd say around 40-50 feet high. Thankfully below it was a nature trail. Could have been worse if it was one of the bridges over the rivers or highways.
  - bmj 5y ago
    Thankfully there didn't seem to be anyone on the trail! That is a heavily trafficked trail during the day, and there is a dog park in the shadow of the bridge. I use that trail all the time to access the mountain bike trails that Frick Park has.
    - hiidrew 5y ago
      Seriously! I imagine if this was the summer some would be out.
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  It's major for impact. This bridge carries a significant thoroughfare between two of the neighborhoods on the edge of town. It's a primary avenue for several bus routes. Traffic is going to be an absolute nightmare until they restore it.
  - hnrodey 5y ago
    2025
- curiousllama 5y ago
  Maybe not major for Pittsburgh, land of bridges, but sure would be major elsewhere. The thing is huge!
- 5y ago
pwned1 5y ago
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markx2 5y ago
- andrew_ 5y ago
  Always surprising when public officials slip up in speech like that. I'm frequently chastised by my wife for using "got" instead of "have" in front of the kids, something I'd wager I'd have to be coached on if I took public office.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- psyc 5y ago
  https://www.google.com/search?q=aave+"negative+concord" https://www.google.com/search?q=aave+"negative+concord"
netfl0 5y ago
I’ve always been weary that we have solely relied on the incredible infrastructure investments of our ancestors. Time to build some of our own.
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  I don’t understand why maintaining local infrastructure should be a responsibility of the federal government. I certainly don’t want my bridges to depend on Congress’s ability to cooperate.
  - boringg 5y ago
    Hmm that's a tough question. I am not sure I trust most local municipalities to fund infrastructure properly. I would much rather have the Feds capabilities and funding. How do you land on trusting the municipality?
    - HideousKojima 5y ago
      If infrastructure is federally maintained and a bridge in Pittsburgh collapses, voters in Alaska, California, or Texas aren't really going to care. Or at least not care enough to push their congresscritter to actually do something about it. If Pittsburgh pays for its own infrastructure (or potentially if it's done at the state level) then voters are far more likely to care and to hold their elected representatives to task. A separate reason is that a sizeable chunk of people want their tax money to mostly go towards supporting their own city/county/state. They don't want tax money from taxpayers in Mobile, Alabama funding bridges in Vancouver, Washington or vice versa. Edit: Also if they were federally managed that would likely mean the feds giving that money for the states to manage, and that always comes with strings attached. See, for example, highway funding to states being dependent on raising the minimum drinking age to 21
      - long_time_gone 5y ago
        These seem like arguments to eliminate the federal government entirely. If the citizens don't want it and don't care about people in other states, then we aren't really a union. Meanwhile, the voter in Alaska has a huge portion of their infrastructure funded by tax payers in other states. > Also if they were federally managed that would likely mean the feds giving that money for the states to manage It is done that way today because no state collects enough gas tax to actually fund their own roads and bridges. All money comes with strings attached, it's one of the characteristics of money.
PascLeRasc 5y ago
Check out the 311 report from 2018: https://twitter.com/gpk320/status/1078885655634157569?s=21 https://twitter.com/gpk320/status/1078885655634157569?s=21
- perihelions 5y ago
  Text for anyone who can't access it: >"@Pgh311 I hope someone is keeping an eye on the underside of the Forbes Avenue bridge over Frick Park? One of the big "X" beams is rusted through entirely (and, yes, I see the cables, so it's probably not a crisis)." -Dr. G Kochanski @gpk320 >"Service Request #307260 has been created. https://qalert.me/GRea13511a408a4282815637644fd5a13a https://qalert.me/GRea13511a408a4282815637644fd5a13a" -Pittsburgh 311 Response Center @Pgh311
- joekrill 5y ago
  The article says > It was last inspected in September So hopefully that's been addressed by now?
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    "Yup, it's still about to fall down. Successfully inspected!"
- dwringer 5y ago
  The Google street view [December 2020] under the bridge appears to show a pair of cross braces entirely missing from one side of the main supports [0] (compared with the other side[1]). [0] https://www.google.com/maps/@40.4393756,-79.9003658,3a,75y,279.45h,112.94t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sAF1QipMzQnFOP7HhwQd9cefl_c9yoBzEmo6JUP_XFKXB!2e10!3e12!7i5760!8i2880 https://www.google.com/maps/@40.4393756,-79.9003658,3a,75y,2... [1] https://www.google.com/maps/@40.4393756,-79.9003658,3a,75y,85.64h,114.3t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sAF1QipMzQnFOP7HhwQd9cefl_c9yoBzEmo6JUP_XFKXB!2e10!3e12!7i5760!8i2880 https://www.google.com/maps/@40.4393756,-79.9003658,3a,75y,8...
  - XnoiVeX 5y ago
    Wow! you may be right.
clone1018 5y ago
Somewhat ironically, President Biden is scheduled to be about 3-4 miles away this afternoon to discuss the infrastructure plan focused on repairing America's infrastructure. With over 400+ bridges in the City of Pittsburgh, it feels like it's only a matter of time. This particular bridge is known as the Fern Hollow Bridge, I've driven over it probably hundreds of times and walked under it hundreds more. It always felt... temporary. Here's Google Street view of underneath the bridge: https://www.google.com/maps/@40.4394129,-79.9003702,3a,75y,244.83h,135.95t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipPGAwe1Rym06qIUusvu7tBnEb99zuGM5E2rvg17!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipPGAwe1Rym06qIUusvu7tBnEb99zuGM5E2rvg17%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-1.6476443-ya225.72565-ro3.981301-fo100!7i5760!8i2880 https://www.google.com/maps/@40.4394129,-79.9003702,3a,75y,2... Here's the bracing underneath the Fern Hollow Bridge: https://bridgehunter.com/photos/40/56/405643-M.jpg https://bridgehunter.com/photos/40/56/405643-M.jpg And here's another similar bridge in a nearby Schenley Park: http://pghbridges.com/pittsburghE/0589-4477/schenley0695.jpg http://pghbridges.com/pittsburghE/0589-4477/schenley0695.jpg
- peteradio 5y ago
  Wow what is even holding that up (well of course nothing anymore)? Its purely planer apart from those stilts, did the bridge just give out or did the stilts lose a footing?
  - clone1018 5y ago
    Check out this 2018 photo of the footing... spooky! https://twitter.com/gpk320/status/1078885655634157569?s=21 https://twitter.com/gpk320/status/1078885655634157569?s=21
    - peteradio 5y ago
      That leads to a closed incident report whose only history is its creation. You'd think the history of a closed incident might have more detail. Bridge collapse are so jarring especially when the post-mortems are like "ya we just didn't fix it while it was falling apart and now its fallen down". How often does it come down to rusty parts? I guess this is sort of a new era of learning for our generation of Engineers. "This is what a bridge looks like thats about to fall"
yohannparis 5y ago
And it started! The collapse of the US infrastructures. They need to reinvest continually, not every 20 years with big trillion dollars programs.
- Victerius 5y ago
  Bridges have been collapsing in the United States for decades. Life just goes on. You almost sound happy at the prospect that one day, thousands of bridges are going to collapse all at once.
  - yohannparis 5y ago
    I'm not happy about any of those, it's a weird claim to infer from my comment! I wish this fight against public good stopped in the USA, money spent on public services in infrastructure are good for everyone.
- Phurist 5y ago
  Midterm elections maybe
StephenSmith 5y ago
I used to live next to the bridge mentioned here by John Oliver. Pittsburgh is something. https://youtu.be/Wpzvaqypav8?t=447 https://youtu.be/Wpzvaqypav8?t=447 "One of these arch bridges actually has a structure built under it to catch falling deck ... see that structure underneath it, they actually built that to catch falling concrete." ... "They built a bridge under the bridge..." They've since repaired this one.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  A deck will be replaced several times over before the bridge is. A little bit of stuff falling onto a roadway below can cause a lot of mayhem. On boring overpasses they stick boards across the bottom flanges of the I-beams. On fancier types of bridges they have to come up with more elaborate ways to catch stuff.
pupdogg 5y ago
US is set to collect approx. $3.86 trillion in taxes this year and 18.5% ($715 billion) of it is allocated for military budget and 1.3% ($51 billion) of it will be handed-out as Foreign Aid to other nations while another 8% ($300 billion) will be used to pay interest payments on our national debt. Only 3% ($115 billion) is allocated to modernize the bridges, highways, roads, and main streets that are in most critical need of repair. Maybe the government is the largest/legal ponzi scheme after all. Edit: I provided a wrong figure earlier for Foreign Aid. As per @whatkim, the correct amount should be approx. 1.3% ($51 billion) for 2021. You can see a complete categorical breakdown here: https://datalab.usaspending.gov/americas-finance-guide/spending/categories/ https://datalab.usaspending.gov/americas-finance-guide/spend... Still, there are a few areas of concern: 1. Income Security > Other Income Security $831 billion 2. Education is 41% of the military budget! $296 billion
- nightski 5y ago
  It's usually not federal money that pays for this stuff though (at least directly).
  - brightstep 5y ago
    The argument is it could or should be. It has in the past.
    - NikolaeVarius 5y ago
      Then vote in politicians who supports your views
      - MattGaiser 5y ago
        If you ever own a condo, you will realize that an extremely large number of people won’t even vote to fund the infrastructure that supports their bedroom. Infrastructure is theoretically already popular but most would put it off for a few extra dollars.
    - nightski 5y ago
vmchale 5y ago
Lots of Chernobyl/Bhopal moments in the US lately.
- DocTomoe 5y ago
  Both Chernobyl and Bhopal were orders of magnitude more catastrophic than anything the US has seen. Now, given how the US maintains infrastructure, it's only a matter of time for that statement to become outdated.
pmayrgundter 5y ago
I just went over to the Penn DOT website to see how many other bridges around the state are in "poor" condition. Answer: 4,157. :-O. There's even more local bridges in "poor" condition than in "good" condition. Screens of the report (server is slow): https://ibb.co/YjZDSWr https://ibb.co/YjZDSWr https://ibb.co/zFCtmCp https://ibb.co/zFCtmCp Tool links: https://gis.penndot.gov/paprojects/BridgeConditionsMap.aspx# https://gis.penndot.gov/paprojects/BridgeConditionsMap.aspx# https://gis.penndot.gov/paprojects/Reports/BridgeConditionsReport.aspx?aoiType=statewide&aoiValue=42 https://gis.penndot.gov/paprojects/Reports/BridgeConditionsR...
- bmitc 5y ago
  This is the type of stuff that concerns me heavily. As I drive across bridges or walk across them, I'm always wondering about who checks up on them. I always try to convince myself that someone is and that there's followups to things. I think when I was younger, I always assumed that someone was taking care of things, and then as I get older, I found out no one really is. I wonder if there's a tipping point for American infrastructure and institutions, just like there will be with climate change. There's only so much you can push growth, tax breaks for the wealthy, corruption, etc. and not see eventual repercussions.
  - nradov 5y ago
    It turns out that sometimes no one is checking. https://apnews.com/article/business-lifestyle-681c35ee3afdd47d97978b0fdb7a448c https://apnews.com/article/business-lifestyle-681c35ee3afdd4...
- mysterydip 5y ago
  As a former resident of the Pittsburgh region, it's not surprising. It seems like the same problem as convincing business owners to invest in backup or disaster recovery solutions. No one who can do anything about it cares until the worst happens, and then it's too late.
- bpodgursky 5y ago
  I just want to throw this out as a counterpoint to the "our infrastructure is crumbling" narrative: https://www.slowboring.com/p/roads-and-bridges https://www.slowboring.com/p/roads-and-bridges (look specifically at the bridge part) Which isn't to say there aren't targeted places we should improve, but I think these discussions often boil down to "everything is awful and unmaintained" which isn't true.
NikolaeVarius 5y ago
Such a useless article by itself, and shows lack of engineering experience in HN. Lacking crucial details: 1) Inspection Data (When last inspection, any indications of stress fractures, etc etc) 2) Original Estimated Lifetime at expected loads 3) Real World Loading Data 4) Updated Estimated Lifetime Following Real World Loading data It almost impossible to make any judgements about failure conditions without data. 'Bridge Failed" by itself is useless
- DocTomoe 5y ago
  You could argue that the data is irrelevant for this initial discussion, because somewhere along the way, something went wrong, or the bridge wouldn't have collapsed. Someone is responsible, and I am sure the appropriate organizations will investigate the data to find out whom to blame this on.
- jaclaz 5y ago
  This is a news article, not the NTSB final report.
WaitWaitWha 5y ago
Lot of talk about the Federal government need to step into a city and manage the bridges. Cities have (often highly) paid inspectors to do just that, inspect bridges and make recommendations, and issue warnings. As noted by PascLeRasc et al. the degradation of the bridge has been reported to the city. As for funding through Federal government, my experience has always been: The resident pays their Federal tax. The Fed takes their administrative cut. Fed allocates remaining funds to the State. The State takes their administrative cut. State allocates remaining funds to the City (or county). The city takes their administrative cut. City allocates remaining funds to contractors to fix the bridges. Put it in an other way, humans value things exponentially more when their own sweat went into the things, than if it was just given to them. By coming at State level, residents have a closer connection and understanding where the money came from, and would demand higher accountability. Just my opinion.
- SQueeeeeL 5y ago
  You should look into Strong Towns, they basically make the same argument. The Federal govt providing so many grants for infrastructure projects have basically made cities spread out, overgrown and fiscally insolvent.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  Or they just oppose doing anything at all. Plenty of condos are in a similarly extremely dilapidated condition because the owners never want to pay for anything. People won’t fund the infrastructure that supports their bedroom when it comes out of their own pocket.
- ineedasername 5y ago
  Federal taxes redistribute tax money to areas where the burden exceeds the local ability to cover the cost. While PA as a whole received a bit more than it sends to the Feds, cities like Pittsburgh almost always send significantly more on both the state & federal level than they receive in return. (I could not find specific data for Pittsburgh, so it's possible this trend does not apply there.) Centers of commerce &/or industry like Pittsburgh also tend to generate more economic benefits than can easily be measure by tax dollars alone. Administrative costs for programs also don't usually to exceed more then 1-2% after accounting for Fed & State administrative costs [0] While not great, If the cost of repairing infrastructure in a given region is $500,000,000,000, then $100M in administrative costs is not going to significantly alter the what that pool of money can accomplish, and no matter the tax system can never be diminished to 0%. "Skin in the game" is also not an apt metaphor here. It implies that a sufficient number of local residents will care enough about something like this, but in reality a bridge or other piece of infrastructure 20-30 miles away that a person rarely uses is still too abstract of a thing to really feel "Hey, I'd be willing to pay more of my own money to cover its cost". If you lower their fed taxes and raise their local taxes to cover costs I still don't think they'll feel any more sense of ownership over the issue than before. For most people, most things that are just a little bit outside of their usual experience are simply too intangible to feel much skin in the game. The situation we're already in with respect to infrastructure is a case in point. [0] https://www.cbpp.org/research/romneys-charge-that-most-federal-low-income-spending-goes-for-overhead-and-bureaucrats-is https://www.cbpp.org/research/romneys-charge-that-most-feder...
daveaiello 5y ago
I believe my family and I drove over this bridge, when we were in Pittsburgh 4 years ago. I hate to say this, but the condition of bridges like this is one of the major reasons that Pennsylvania currently has one of the highest gas taxes in the country. And whatever PennDOT is spending the tax money on, this bridge-- in one of the two largest cities in our state-- collapsed anyway.
- smitty1110 5y ago
  Come on, we know they spent it on the perpetual projects on the PA Turnpike. Not sure about the eastern half of the state, but Philly probably gets more money than Pittsburgh. At least the fixed the Greenfield Bridge[1]. [1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenfield_Bridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenfield_Bridge
  - giantg2 5y ago
    The Turnpike funds itself, and is required to give the state hundreds of millions to fund other projects.
XnoiVeX 5y ago
I checked the TxDOT bridge report out of curiosity. "Out of 55,000 Bridges in Texas, Only 787 (1.4%) are in Poor Condition—much lower than the national average. https://ftp.txdot.gov/pub/txdot-info/library/reports/gov/bridge/fy20.pdf https://ftp.txdot.gov/pub/txdot-info/library/reports/gov/bri...
- version_five 5y ago
  In Montreal, all of the bridges are in terrible condition, in part because they were built by the Mafia but also because of the weather and the road salt. This is probably st least in part responsible for the difference between Pennsylvania and Texas, though the states' finances and management of course also play a role.
- tarr11 5y ago
  List of bridge conditions by state https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/bridge/nbi/no10/condition21.cfm https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/bridge/nbi/no10/condition21.cfm
- quasse 5y ago
  I notice that several people are bringing up Texas bridges in this thread for some reason. One extremely major difference between bridges located in Pittsburgh and Texas is that Texas does not need to salt its roads. Municipalities that salt their bridges are literally demolishing them with chemicals.
  - steveklabnik 5y ago
    As someone from Pittsburgh now living in Texas this thread is wild indeed. Infrastructure is not simple, and localities have different challenges. Sure, Texas may have bridges in better conditions, but when the snowstorm hit last year I didn’t go running around saying “Dang the city of Austin has only one snowplow?” (Okay, actually I did, but only as a “that makes perfect sense, no wonder this snowstorm hit so hard here even though it didn’t seem bad by my standards, we have no infrastructure or general cultural understanding of what to do, it makes sense that this is a terrible storm here even if it wouldn’t have been a big deal back home.”)
m0llusk 5y ago
Commenters in this thread are making a lot of generalizations about tax structures and so on, but it important to keep in mind this is a special case at a number of levels. Pittsburgh has an unusually large number of bridges. These bridges were built during times of relative wealth when the local steel and related industries were doing well. Since the decline of American industry Pittsburgh has scaled way back and had to rebuild itself as a medical and technology center. This recovery is mostly a success story, but the infrastructure cannot be maintained. For example, the greater Pittsburgh area has some of the first suburban areas to be completely abandoned with services withdrawn, Penn Hills being a poignant example of this. Obviously no bridges should be coming down, but there is a real problem here of how to build and maintain a modern city that is smaller than the older one that it replaces.
- jsiaajdsdaa 5y ago
  What a tragic white elephant of a gift.
- XnoiVeX 5y ago
  [flagged]
  - hokumguru 5y ago
    Not saying I disagree necessarily but fwiw the weather in Texas is quite easier on infrastructure than in PA. Texas also hasn't seen the industry woes that other states have in the past century. And just because Texas has the most bridges of any state doesn't detract from the fact that Pittsburgh still has its own high number of bridges.
    - notacoward 5y ago
      I'd also wonder about the level of diligence applied to detecting and reporting such problems in Texas. How many of the bridges in Texas are really in better than poor condition?
    - nr2x 5y ago
nemacol 5y ago
Any chance people were under there? A park bridge in the winter, I wonder if any homeless were around.
- PascLeRasc 5y ago
  There generally aren't any homeless in Frick park. Under that bridge is a dog park, but this was 7am with around 1° weather, so probably not.
dsiegel2275 5y ago
The condition of the bridge was rated "Poor" in 2017. To understand what "Poor" can mean, here's a photo taken from underneath the bridge in 2018: https://twitter.com/gpk320/status/1078885655634157569 https://twitter.com/gpk320/status/1078885655634157569
- quasse 5y ago
  Wow, I wonder if the "Service Request" that came out of that tweet being marked Closed meant they ever fixed that: https://pittsburghpa.qscend.com/311/request/view/?id=ea13511a408a4282815637644fd5a13a https://pittsburghpa.qscend.com/311/request/view/?id=ea13511... My guess is no.
  - lolpython 5y ago
    I live in Pittsburgh and it is fairly common for 311 requests to be marked Closed without any resolution or follow up communication.
HWR_14 5y ago
I'm just guessing, but it seems like the bus by itself was probably between 40% and 80% of the rated load of the bridge (buses have remarkably variable weight). Add in some snow and ice and I can see how it became overloaded.
curtis3389 5y ago
Since we're talking decaying infrastructure and Pennsylvania, it seems a good time to remind people that US dams need work, too. A collapsed bridge is nothing compared to a failed dam like the Austin Dam failure, which is worth a visit if you're ever in the area: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austin_Dam_failure_(Pennsylvania) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austin_Dam_failure_(Pennsylvan...
- myhikesorg 5y ago
  Great place to explore and it's run by an awesome group of people!
- keiferski 5y ago
  The Johnstown Flood (also caused by a failing dam) also happened nearby. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnstown_Flood https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnstown_Flood
calvinmorrison 5y ago
One block from my friends house! Holy shit glad nobody is hurt.
- jaywalk 5y ago
  Title of the article: "10 injured in bridge collapse in Pittsburgh’s Frick Park" So, 10 people were hurt. But they say none of the injuries appear life-threatening, so there's that.
stevetodd 5y ago
I was curious to see how each state was doing and Google didn’t disappoint: https://artbabridgereport.org/state/map https://artbabridgereport.org/state/map
ineedasername 5y ago
An unfortunate punctuation mark for the infrastructure speech the President is about to give in PA. For readers outside of the US, how are similar infrastructure issues?
- ModernMech 5y ago
  Unfortunate? It makes the case as to why passing the infrastructure bill was so important. It should make people think twice about reelecting those who voted no on the bill. If they had their way we'd still have a collapsed bridge and no infrastructure bill to pay for a new one.
  - WillPostForFood 5y ago
    Of the $1.2 trillion, less than half ($550 billion) is even intended for infrastructure at all. Of the $550 billion, only $110 billion is for actual roads, bridges, and major infrastructure projects. That we have to spend $1.2 trillion to get $110 billion in possible improvements is exactly why our infrastructure is in terrible shape, and still will be in terrible shape after this grift is distributed. The infrastructure bill just highlights the problem, and puts us further into debt. https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/28/politics/infrastructure-bill-explained/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/28/politics/infrastructure-bill-...
    - evan_ 5y ago
      > Of the $1.2 trillion, less than half ($550 billion) is even intended for infrastructure at all. Citation needed
      - ineedasername 5y ago
        See my sibling comment-- it is actually all infrastructure, there's some idiosyncracy over how previous plans are only now being funded.
    - ineedasername 5y ago
      No, it's all infrastructure. The rest of the money is funding previously authorized plans. I'm not sure why that bill was necessary to find them separately from the original auhorization, but it's all still infrastructure. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2021/11/15/everything-in-the-12-trillion-infrastructure-bill-biden-just-signed-new-roads-electric-school-buses-and-more/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanpo...
jshprentz 5y ago
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette [1] provides many more photos and in-depth reporting. [1] https://www.post-gazette.com/local/city/2022/01/28/pittsburgh-bridge-collapse-forbes-braddock-avenue-point-breeze-squirrel-hill/stories/202201280075 https://www.post-gazette.com/local/city/2022/01/28/pittsburg...
rwmj 5y ago
The BBC recently had a programme about the Genoa bridge collapse: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0007mxm https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0007mxm
jrlocke 5y ago
Unbelievable photo of the decrepit state three years ago: https://twitter.com/gpk320/status/1078885655634157569 https://twitter.com/gpk320/status/1078885655634157569
lbriner 5y ago
There was an article posted on HN about a year ago, which said that most/all urban areas in the US (and I suspect in many other countries) cannot afford to maintain their infrastructure and are just buying time before major problems with water/sewerage/roads etc. I can honestly imagine that any local authority who might apply for e.g. $50M to build a bridge do not make sure they can either amortize that cost over 50 years to replace it or otherwise add a reasonable amount of yearly expenditure to make repairs as needed. Concrete seems particularly bad since it is very hard to "repair" and the knowledge of how to build it properly only 50 years ago was poor. Lots of major concrete structures have not lasted long.
myhikesorg 5y ago
I remember hiking under this bridge - it's a nice park but often this area was super crowded on nice days during warm weather. Lots of people with their dogs. In the years I lived in PGH I always thought about how it was just a matter of time before a bridge would collapse - there's an insane amount of bridges throughout the city and just by the looks of some of them, gravity was going to win sooner than later. It's amazing that no one was killed, glad it wasn't the middle of the Summer when Frick Park is full, it could have been a lot worse.
e_commerce 5y ago
horsefeathers 5y ago
ada1981 5y ago
Curious on liability here. If a bridge collapses is the municipality liable for repairs to your car / medical? Do you assume this risk when you drive that infrastructure failure is your liability?
- giantg2 5y ago
  Interesting question. I would think the courts would come into play. I assume failure to maintain or close the bridge when they knew of the poor rating would constitute negligence on the part of the city. I think we would have to know what the weights of the other vehicles are to see if the weight limit was exceeded.
  - ada1981 5y ago
    Even if it was just failure and they didn’t know, I feel like the city needs to have insurance for these things no? Would seem insane for the city to just put it on the individual using it.
renewiltord 5y ago
Chinese people: we can build so fast Americans: Well, that’s because you don’t build it to not fall down. That’s why we build slowly. Americans: our shit falls down anyway
WalterBright 5y ago
A bridge in Kenmore (near Seattle) collapsed two years ago. They've been rebuilding it constantly for 2 years now. For perspective, the first transcontinental railroad was built by hand in 6 years, for 1900 miles, including a large number of bridges.
- voakbasda 5y ago
  For further perspective, over a thousand individuals died during the construction of the transcontinental railroad. OSHA might have reduced the death count, but that comes at the expense of efficiency. Compound the endless other regulations implemented since that time, and it's surprising that anything gets built at all anymore.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    20,000 people died on the Oregon Trail, it's predecessor. The thousand deaths is a claim that has never been verified. https://www.iccsafe.org/building-safety-journal/bsj-dives/the-human-cost-of-construction-an-inside-look-at-the-worlds-most-notable-and-deadliest-construction-projects/ https://www.iccsafe.org/building-safety-journal/bsj-dives/th... I couldn't find a reference to how many people worked on the railroad, other than 20,000 Chinese. I suppose it was likely on the order of 50,000 people. When you have 50,000 people for 6 years, some of them are going to die no matter what. Disease was common and untreatable, and medical care was poor, too, in those days. In other words, without context, saying 1000 people died is meaningless.
    - voakbasda 5y ago
      The context was that one single new bridge that has taken a full one-third of the time that it took to build a railroad across the majority of this country. Given the standards put forth by OSHA, I strongly suspect that construction of that new bridge has not been the proximate cause of even one death.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
giantg2 5y ago
If you live in the state, this is not a surprising story. Residents are well aware of huge number of bridges rated as poor or requiring maintenance. Not to mention the terrible condition of many roads. Granted PA is one of the states with the most miles of roads. One would think that one of the highest gas taxes and hundreds of millions in funding from the turnpike would be sufficient...
- exhilaration 5y ago
  As a PA resident, I've been hearing one of many reasons for the poor infrastructure is that a fairly big chunk of the road and bridge maintenance budget is being redirected to the State Police: https://www.lehighvalleylive.com/lehigh-county/2019/04/42-billion-diverted-from-penndot-road-and-bridge-repairs-to-fund-state-police-new-audit-reveals.html https://www.lehighvalleylive.com/lehigh-county/2019/04/42-bi... What happens in town after town is that the anti-tax folks decide that there's no need to fund a local police department when the PA State Police is obligated to take over policing. There's currently no mechanism for the state to charge these towns for this service and their state reps fight any effort to put one in place. So year after year the State Police's budget grows out of control and infrastructure funds are an easy way to cover the costs.
  - giantg2 5y ago
    True, they need to figure out state police funding. I wonder how much they pay out in law suits. I don't like the per capita fee structure proposed. PSP routinely operate in municipalities that already have police forces. If they want to make it more "fair", they should charge municipalities based on the number and/or type of call, regardless of whether they have a police force. There seem to be many of these funding oddities in the state. For example, dept ag complains that they can't fund dog wardens, so they want to increase license costs. Yet the law caps the amount of funding they can get from enforcement (I think the rest goes to the general fund). It would make sense to uncap the amount they get from enforcement. They would likely still need to increase license cost. But maybe they would actually do their job. We had a problem with a dog and found out it wasn't even licensed ($300 fine; the other party was the one who wanted to get the law involved, yet they didn't have a license). When I reported it to the dog warden, they laughed and didn't care. That's your job and you laugh. WTF do you actually do?
tomohawk 5y ago
Pennsylvania DOT is one of the more corrupt agencies related to transportation. As but one example: https://www.attorneygeneral.gov/taking-action/former-penndot-executive-charged-with-felony-for-accepting-bribes/ https://www.attorneygeneral.gov/taking-action/former-penndot...
blunte 5y ago
Like other short term focused decisions made by the baby boomer generation, the US bridge situation is dire. Within 20 years this will be a common news story. Unfortunately, spending on infrastructure which benefits most people (including the business owners who vote against it) is now equated with socialism as a dirty word and something which only the evil liberals want, because they want to take your hard work and money and distribute it to people who don’t want to work. At least, that’s almost verbatim what I’m hearing right now on my Texan parents’ Fox tv while I visit. The US is headed for a very dismal half century, and fighting or even trying to debate appears to not be an option. I see no solution except to call it dead and move to more progressive countries. Unfortunately, some of the smarter more educated other countries are now being brainwashed by the same tactics that allowed Fox News and conservative radio hosts to lead masses to vote aggressively against their own interests.
8bitsrule 5y ago
NYTimes story had a telling quote: [https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/28/us/pittsburgh-bridge-collapse-biden.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/28/us/pittsburgh-bridge-coll...] " Greg Kochanski, a software engineer, was walking his dog under the bridge about three years ago when he noticed that one of the X beams that stabilized the bridge was so rusted that it had disconnected from the column to which it had been attached. "He reported this to the city in a tweet and, several weeks later, he said, noticed that the rusted beam had been removed."
sometimesweenie 5y ago
I've been across this bridge probably a hundred or so times since childhood... scary stuff. Our geography is pretty prohibitive to population increase for a larger tax base to support the infrastructure. Lots of plateaus and rivers are the reason for the large number of bridges and tunnels. Even as a local, Pittsburgh is really difficult to get around. The T doesn't go to many places around the city. Buses have the same problems as cars. The inclines stopped being useful. Have fun getting hit by a car while cycling (you'll have the strongest calves to make up for it). The roads are hard to navigate and there isn't enough space for the innovative roundabout. There are some benefits from the geography like culturally distinct neighborhoods but the infrastructure issue really needs addressed. Fortunately, we have our best civil engineers working on the problem [0] [0] https://www.theonion.com/urban-planner-stuck-in-traffic-of-own-design-1819567293 https://www.theonion.com/urban-planner-stuck-in-traffic-of-o...

305 points by f154hfds 5y ago

mlac 5y ago

This hits close to home… I’ve run under and over that bridge many, many times. I really hope no one was on their morning run under it, but it looks like everyone who was on it got away with minor injuries. It is a main artery for connecting two neighborhoods… there are many bridges like this all over Pittsburgh, but it’s not the “big” ones over one of the three rivers. Odd timing, but Biden is also in town today. Talk about crumbling critical infrastructure…

MisterSandman 5y ago
It blows my mind that the richest country in the world can't afford better infrastructure. I know that's not how economies and capitalism works, but it really shouldn't be like that.
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  The US is having a hard time making a cultural transition from a boom mindset to a sustaining mindset. We are about one generation out, maybe one and a half, since there was significant value in tooling our manufacturing and development process for territorial conquest. That tooling got a shot in the arm during World War II and a second shot in the arm during the space race that kept it going longer than it would have otherwise, but America is a coast to coast country with no more frontier, and Americans need to learn how to sustain what exists and find value in sustaining what exists rather than rewarding primarily those who create new. ... Or just be comfortable with the idea that we're going to always have shiny things that wear out faster than they should and fail when we're relying on them.
  - lanstin 5y ago
    Rise of the maintenance engineering mindset!
- jacquesm 5y ago
  The US is the richest country because it has quite a few of the richest individuals. But the enormous amounts of money spent on armaments has reduced the amount of money available for infrastructure maintenance and other necessities.
  - philistine 5y ago
    The US is amassing through taxes a smaller percentage compared to other developed nations. The US taxes lightly. Then it's putting a ton of that money (and even more through debt) into the military. The money available is not a zero-sum game. The US could raise its taxes.
  - phkahler 5y ago
    >> But the enormous amounts of money spent on armaments has reduced the amount of money available for infrastructure maintenance and other necessities. Which is odd because (I think) part of government spending seems to be redistribution of money, which would be better achieved through maintenance of infrastructure.
- andrew_ 5y ago
  I think you're missing a key point here: this bridge is maintained by PennDOT. That's not federal, that's state. PennDOT's own report, according the article, showed that the bridge was in poor condition. It's a failure on PennDOT, a local bureaucracy, not the entirety of the "richest country in the world." In the U.S., different pieces of infrastructure is delegated to different authorities. It's up to those authorities to maintain those pieces. They choose how to spend and where to spend. Now, the argument could be made that funding is an issue, and in some states it is. Hence the latest bill to fund more infrastructure repair. But it's not such an issue in many places in the country. Anecdotally, growing up in a Northern state, we would always complain about how much better the roads in our neighboring state to the South were. And they actually were, because the folks who ran Ohio's DOT straight up managed it better. I now live in the South, and I'm very pleased with how the State and Counties here manage and maintain roads, bridges, and rail line crossings.
  - chrisan 5y ago
    Speaking of anecdotes, I grew up in Pittsburgh, later lived in Ohio, then Michigan. Ohio roads were pothole city and I always thought Michigan roads were good. I now live in North Carolina and the roads around here are pretty crap. Shoulders either non-existent or crumbling off from rain erosion. Not many pot holes however since we don't see much freeze/thaw compared to Ohio.
  - shadowgovt 5y ago
    The failure of the richest country is a lack of methods to capture that wealth and funnel it to where it's needed. Google has offices in Pittsburgh. Want to take a guess at what percentage of Google's tax money went to maintaining a bridge its employees drive on every day? ETA: the problem in Pittsburgh in particular is compounded by the nature of the major employers in the city. Often, taxes for things like bridges in town would be paid by real estate taxes. But four of the largest employers in Pittsburgh are UPMC, Highmark / Allegheny Health Network, University of Pittsburgh, and Carnegie Mellon University. As non-profit institutions, they don't pay taxes on the real estate they use. It is not certain that a city the size of Pittsburgh with so much real estate out of the taxability space is a sustainable model in any sense.
- bloopernova 5y ago
  (This is my subjective, personal, and probably poorly-educated take) It feels like the US has shot itself in the foot by demonizing socialism and communism. Not because those ideologies would have fixed this issue, but because so many US residents have translated "socialism is bad" into "all government spending is bad". In my town, there's a vocal group of older people who rant against using their taxes to pay for schools. Their argument is that they don't use those services, their children are older or nonexistent. They reject the "rising tide lifts all boats" argument, and reject that an educated populace improves their quality of life. They only see the short term bill of property tax. I think that attitude is present in a lot of people, encouraged by the argument against government spending and collective action. I'm not sure what the end state of this attitude will be. The selfishness that exists in our culture doesn't seem to be slowing, if anything it feels like it is accelerating. I think there's going to be a lot more bridge collapses, people stuck in snow drifts on interstates for 36 hours, a lot more disaster and suffering before anything changes. (I also don't have any solutions for this. I don't wish for disaster and doom, and human suffering is utterly awful especially in what is supposed to be an enlightened future. But I wonder if things will have to get a lot worse before society changes its course)
  - mythrwy 5y ago
    I don't think government spending is necessarily bad, but a lot of it is wastefully spent with little productive to show for it. People have been talking shovel ready jobs forever. Where are the Trump infrastructure jobs? The Obama "shovel ready" jobs? Think this time will be any different? I don't. I do agree the whole system breaking (sadly) may be requirement to return to productive and rational behavior. There is entirely too much grift and performative rather then productive behavior at many levels right now and that is very hard to displace once it becomes institutionalized.
Proven 5y ago
bmj 5y ago
there are many bridges like this all over Pittsburgh This is the really scary part. Given PGH's geography, it is nearly impossible to travel through the city in an efficient way without crossing a bridge. Also, let's not forget the sinkhole incident[0]. [0] https://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2019/10/28/port-authority-bus-sinkhole-downtown-pittsburgh/ https://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2019/10/28/port-authority-bu...
mythrwy 5y ago
I worked as a project manager doing construction contracts for federal and state governments at one point for nearly a decade. My take is that more tax money might not necessarily get better results. At least not at a cost in proportion to value realized. It would also take capable leaders at multiple levels extremely focused on end results rather then various forms of grift, and those would be fought every step of the way by numerous and very clever trough feeders. I don't know the answer but certainly we can do a little better with what we have and eventually we will have to. Or do without. There is no free money in the end.

theandrewbailey 5y ago

Its stuff like this that scares me. Pittsburgh claims to have more bridges than any other city in the world.[0] You're driving around here, and you cross little ones without noticing. I hope I'm not ever near (or using) a collapsing one. The rivers are big here. [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/av/magazine-30187252 https://www.bbc.com/news/av/magazine-30187252 Edit: not bridge related, but a sinkhole opened downtown over 2 years ago, also swallowing a bus: https://www.post-gazette.com/news/transportation/2019/10/28/Port-Authority-falls-sinkhole-in-Downtown-Pittsburgh/stories/201910280067 https://www.post-gazette.com/news/transportation/2019/10/28/...

throw7 5y ago
Bridge became disjointed in Albany: https://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=130405 https://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=130405 I remember it pretty vividly because the woman who drove over it was on the local news in tears. Could have been much worse.
jacquesm 5y ago
Well, statistically then, this all makes sense. As these things come it could have been a lot worse. I immediately thought back to the bridge collapse in Italy not all that long ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponte_Morandi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponte_Morandi
- mlac 5y ago
  It looked like light traffic on a morning commute. Unfortunate a bus was on there. But during rush hour, traffic is fully backed up there and stacked on the road. It could have easily been 30-40 cars + a bus instead of what was there.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    Very, very lucky. Taking into account the kinds of vehicles you come across every day, hazardous goods, school buses and so on.
5y ago

jgrahamc 5y ago

Only a tiny exaggeration by the submitter there! Makes it sound like a bridge over the Monongahela collapsed, which it didn't.

hiidrew 5y ago
I also think the bridge is pretty high up, I'd say around 40-50 feet high. Thankfully below it was a nature trail. Could have been worse if it was one of the bridges over the rivers or highways.
- bmj 5y ago
  Thankfully there didn't seem to be anyone on the trail! That is a heavily trafficked trail during the day, and there is a dog park in the shadow of the bridge. I use that trail all the time to access the mountain bike trails that Frick Park has.
  - hiidrew 5y ago
    Seriously! I imagine if this was the summer some would be out.
shadowgovt 5y ago
It's major for impact. This bridge carries a significant thoroughfare between two of the neighborhoods on the edge of town. It's a primary avenue for several bus routes. Traffic is going to be an absolute nightmare until they restore it.
- hnrodey 5y ago
  2025
curiousllama 5y ago
Maybe not major for Pittsburgh, land of bridges, but sure would be major elsewhere. The thing is huge!
5y ago

pwned1 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

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markx2 5y ago

andrew_ 5y ago
Always surprising when public officials slip up in speech like that. I'm frequently chastised by my wife for using "got" instead of "have" in front of the kids, something I'd wager I'd have to be coached on if I took public office.
deleted 5y ago
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psyc 5y ago
https://www.google.com/search?q=aave+"negative+concord" https://www.google.com/search?q=aave+"negative+concord"

netfl0 5y ago

I’ve always been weary that we have solely relied on the incredible infrastructure investments of our ancestors. Time to build some of our own.

throwaway894345 5y ago
I don’t understand why maintaining local infrastructure should be a responsibility of the federal government. I certainly don’t want my bridges to depend on Congress’s ability to cooperate.
- boringg 5y ago
  Hmm that's a tough question. I am not sure I trust most local municipalities to fund infrastructure properly. I would much rather have the Feds capabilities and funding. How do you land on trusting the municipality?
  - HideousKojima 5y ago
    If infrastructure is federally maintained and a bridge in Pittsburgh collapses, voters in Alaska, California, or Texas aren't really going to care. Or at least not care enough to push their congresscritter to actually do something about it. If Pittsburgh pays for its own infrastructure (or potentially if it's done at the state level) then voters are far more likely to care and to hold their elected representatives to task. A separate reason is that a sizeable chunk of people want their tax money to mostly go towards supporting their own city/county/state. They don't want tax money from taxpayers in Mobile, Alabama funding bridges in Vancouver, Washington or vice versa. Edit: Also if they were federally managed that would likely mean the feds giving that money for the states to manage, and that always comes with strings attached. See, for example, highway funding to states being dependent on raising the minimum drinking age to 21
    - long_time_gone 5y ago
      These seem like arguments to eliminate the federal government entirely. If the citizens don't want it and don't care about people in other states, then we aren't really a union. Meanwhile, the voter in Alaska has a huge portion of their infrastructure funded by tax payers in other states. > Also if they were federally managed that would likely mean the feds giving that money for the states to manage It is done that way today because no state collects enough gas tax to actually fund their own roads and bridges. All money comes with strings attached, it's one of the characteristics of money.

PascLeRasc 5y ago

Check out the 311 report from 2018: https://twitter.com/gpk320/status/1078885655634157569?s=21 https://twitter.com/gpk320/status/1078885655634157569?s=21

perihelions 5y ago
Text for anyone who can't access it: >"@Pgh311 I hope someone is keeping an eye on the underside of the Forbes Avenue bridge over Frick Park? One of the big "X" beams is rusted through entirely (and, yes, I see the cables, so it's probably not a crisis)." -Dr. G Kochanski @gpk320 >"Service Request #307260 has been created. https://qalert.me/GRea13511a408a4282815637644fd5a13a https://qalert.me/GRea13511a408a4282815637644fd5a13a" -Pittsburgh 311 Response Center @Pgh311
joekrill 5y ago
The article says > It was last inspected in September So hopefully that's been addressed by now?
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  "Yup, it's still about to fall down. Successfully inspected!"
dwringer 5y ago
The Google street view [December 2020] under the bridge appears to show a pair of cross braces entirely missing from one side of the main supports [0] (compared with the other side[1]). [0] https://www.google.com/maps/@40.4393756,-79.9003658,3a,75y,279.45h,112.94t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sAF1QipMzQnFOP7HhwQd9cefl_c9yoBzEmo6JUP_XFKXB!2e10!3e12!7i5760!8i2880 https://www.google.com/maps/@40.4393756,-79.9003658,3a,75y,2... [1] https://www.google.com/maps/@40.4393756,-79.9003658,3a,75y,85.64h,114.3t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sAF1QipMzQnFOP7HhwQd9cefl_c9yoBzEmo6JUP_XFKXB!2e10!3e12!7i5760!8i2880 https://www.google.com/maps/@40.4393756,-79.9003658,3a,75y,8...
- XnoiVeX 5y ago
  Wow! you may be right.

clone1018 5y ago

Somewhat ironically, President Biden is scheduled to be about 3-4 miles away this afternoon to discuss the infrastructure plan focused on repairing America's infrastructure. With over 400+ bridges in the City of Pittsburgh, it feels like it's only a matter of time. This particular bridge is known as the Fern Hollow Bridge, I've driven over it probably hundreds of times and walked under it hundreds more. It always felt... temporary. Here's Google Street view of underneath the bridge: https://www.google.com/maps/@40.4394129,-79.9003702,3a,75y,244.83h,135.95t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipPGAwe1Rym06qIUusvu7tBnEb99zuGM5E2rvg17!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipPGAwe1Rym06qIUusvu7tBnEb99zuGM5E2rvg17%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-1.6476443-ya225.72565-ro3.981301-fo100!7i5760!8i2880 https://www.google.com/maps/@40.4394129,-79.9003702,3a,75y,2... Here's the bracing underneath the Fern Hollow Bridge: https://bridgehunter.com/photos/40/56/405643-M.jpg https://bridgehunter.com/photos/40/56/405643-M.jpg And here's another similar bridge in a nearby Schenley Park: http://pghbridges.com/pittsburghE/0589-4477/schenley0695.jpg http://pghbridges.com/pittsburghE/0589-4477/schenley0695.jpg

peteradio 5y ago
Wow what is even holding that up (well of course nothing anymore)? Its purely planer apart from those stilts, did the bridge just give out or did the stilts lose a footing?
- clone1018 5y ago
  Check out this 2018 photo of the footing... spooky! https://twitter.com/gpk320/status/1078885655634157569?s=21 https://twitter.com/gpk320/status/1078885655634157569?s=21
  - peteradio 5y ago
    That leads to a closed incident report whose only history is its creation. You'd think the history of a closed incident might have more detail. Bridge collapse are so jarring especially when the post-mortems are like "ya we just didn't fix it while it was falling apart and now its fallen down". How often does it come down to rusty parts? I guess this is sort of a new era of learning for our generation of Engineers. "This is what a bridge looks like thats about to fall"

yohannparis 5y ago

And it started! The collapse of the US infrastructures. They need to reinvest continually, not every 20 years with big trillion dollars programs.

Victerius 5y ago
Bridges have been collapsing in the United States for decades. Life just goes on. You almost sound happy at the prospect that one day, thousands of bridges are going to collapse all at once.
- yohannparis 5y ago
  I'm not happy about any of those, it's a weird claim to infer from my comment! I wish this fight against public good stopped in the USA, money spent on public services in infrastructure are good for everyone.
Phurist 5y ago
Midterm elections maybe

StephenSmith 5y ago

I used to live next to the bridge mentioned here by John Oliver. Pittsburgh is something. https://youtu.be/Wpzvaqypav8?t=447 https://youtu.be/Wpzvaqypav8?t=447 "One of these arch bridges actually has a structure built under it to catch falling deck ... see that structure underneath it, they actually built that to catch falling concrete." ... "They built a bridge under the bridge..." They've since repaired this one.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago
A deck will be replaced several times over before the bridge is. A little bit of stuff falling onto a roadway below can cause a lot of mayhem. On boring overpasses they stick boards across the bottom flanges of the I-beams. On fancier types of bridges they have to come up with more elaborate ways to catch stuff.

pupdogg 5y ago

US is set to collect approx. $3.86 trillion in taxes this year and 18.5% ($715 billion) of it is allocated for military budget and 1.3% ($51 billion) of it will be handed-out as Foreign Aid to other nations while another 8% ($300 billion) will be used to pay interest payments on our national debt. Only 3% ($115 billion) is allocated to modernize the bridges, highways, roads, and main streets that are in most critical need of repair. Maybe the government is the largest/legal ponzi scheme after all. Edit: I provided a wrong figure earlier for Foreign Aid. As per @whatkim, the correct amount should be approx. 1.3% ($51 billion) for 2021. You can see a complete categorical breakdown here: https://datalab.usaspending.gov/americas-finance-guide/spending/categories/ https://datalab.usaspending.gov/americas-finance-guide/spend... Still, there are a few areas of concern: 1. Income Security > Other Income Security $831 billion 2. Education is 41% of the military budget! $296 billion

nightski 5y ago
It's usually not federal money that pays for this stuff though (at least directly).
- brightstep 5y ago
  The argument is it could or should be. It has in the past.
  - NikolaeVarius 5y ago
    Then vote in politicians who supports your views
    - MattGaiser 5y ago
      If you ever own a condo, you will realize that an extremely large number of people won’t even vote to fund the infrastructure that supports their bedroom. Infrastructure is theoretically already popular but most would put it off for a few extra dollars.
  - nightski 5y ago

vmchale 5y ago

Lots of Chernobyl/Bhopal moments in the US lately.

DocTomoe 5y ago
Both Chernobyl and Bhopal were orders of magnitude more catastrophic than anything the US has seen. Now, given how the US maintains infrastructure, it's only a matter of time for that statement to become outdated.

pmayrgundter 5y ago

I just went over to the Penn DOT website to see how many other bridges around the state are in "poor" condition. Answer: 4,157. :-O. There's even more local bridges in "poor" condition than in "good" condition. Screens of the report (server is slow): https://ibb.co/YjZDSWr https://ibb.co/YjZDSWr https://ibb.co/zFCtmCp https://ibb.co/zFCtmCp Tool links: https://gis.penndot.gov/paprojects/BridgeConditionsMap.aspx# https://gis.penndot.gov/paprojects/BridgeConditionsMap.aspx# https://gis.penndot.gov/paprojects/Reports/BridgeConditionsReport.aspx?aoiType=statewide&aoiValue=42 https://gis.penndot.gov/paprojects/Reports/BridgeConditionsR...

bmitc 5y ago
This is the type of stuff that concerns me heavily. As I drive across bridges or walk across them, I'm always wondering about who checks up on them. I always try to convince myself that someone is and that there's followups to things. I think when I was younger, I always assumed that someone was taking care of things, and then as I get older, I found out no one really is. I wonder if there's a tipping point for American infrastructure and institutions, just like there will be with climate change. There's only so much you can push growth, tax breaks for the wealthy, corruption, etc. and not see eventual repercussions.
- nradov 5y ago
  It turns out that sometimes no one is checking. https://apnews.com/article/business-lifestyle-681c35ee3afdd47d97978b0fdb7a448c https://apnews.com/article/business-lifestyle-681c35ee3afdd4...
mysterydip 5y ago
As a former resident of the Pittsburgh region, it's not surprising. It seems like the same problem as convincing business owners to invest in backup or disaster recovery solutions. No one who can do anything about it cares until the worst happens, and then it's too late.
bpodgursky 5y ago
I just want to throw this out as a counterpoint to the "our infrastructure is crumbling" narrative: https://www.slowboring.com/p/roads-and-bridges https://www.slowboring.com/p/roads-and-bridges (look specifically at the bridge part) Which isn't to say there aren't targeted places we should improve, but I think these discussions often boil down to "everything is awful and unmaintained" which isn't true.

NikolaeVarius 5y ago

Such a useless article by itself, and shows lack of engineering experience in HN. Lacking crucial details: 1) Inspection Data (When last inspection, any indications of stress fractures, etc etc) 2) Original Estimated Lifetime at expected loads 3) Real World Loading Data 4) Updated Estimated Lifetime Following Real World Loading data It almost impossible to make any judgements about failure conditions without data. 'Bridge Failed" by itself is useless

DocTomoe 5y ago
You could argue that the data is irrelevant for this initial discussion, because somewhere along the way, something went wrong, or the bridge wouldn't have collapsed. Someone is responsible, and I am sure the appropriate organizations will investigate the data to find out whom to blame this on.
jaclaz 5y ago
This is a news article, not the NTSB final report.

WaitWaitWha 5y ago

Lot of talk about the Federal government need to step into a city and manage the bridges. Cities have (often highly) paid inspectors to do just that, inspect bridges and make recommendations, and issue warnings. As noted by PascLeRasc et al. the degradation of the bridge has been reported to the city. As for funding through Federal government, my experience has always been: The resident pays their Federal tax. The Fed takes their administrative cut. Fed allocates remaining funds to the State. The State takes their administrative cut. State allocates remaining funds to the City (or county). The city takes their administrative cut. City allocates remaining funds to contractors to fix the bridges. Put it in an other way, humans value things exponentially more when their own sweat went into the things, than if it was just given to them. By coming at State level, residents have a closer connection and understanding where the money came from, and would demand higher accountability. Just my opinion.

SQueeeeeL 5y ago
You should look into Strong Towns, they basically make the same argument. The Federal govt providing so many grants for infrastructure projects have basically made cities spread out, overgrown and fiscally insolvent.
MattGaiser 5y ago
Or they just oppose doing anything at all. Plenty of condos are in a similarly extremely dilapidated condition because the owners never want to pay for anything. People won’t fund the infrastructure that supports their bedroom when it comes out of their own pocket.
ineedasername 5y ago
Federal taxes redistribute tax money to areas where the burden exceeds the local ability to cover the cost. While PA as a whole received a bit more than it sends to the Feds, cities like Pittsburgh almost always send significantly more on both the state & federal level than they receive in return. (I could not find specific data for Pittsburgh, so it's possible this trend does not apply there.) Centers of commerce &/or industry like Pittsburgh also tend to generate more economic benefits than can easily be measure by tax dollars alone. Administrative costs for programs also don't usually to exceed more then 1-2% after accounting for Fed & State administrative costs [0] While not great, If the cost of repairing infrastructure in a given region is $500,000,000,000, then $100M in administrative costs is not going to significantly alter the what that pool of money can accomplish, and no matter the tax system can never be diminished to 0%. "Skin in the game" is also not an apt metaphor here. It implies that a sufficient number of local residents will care enough about something like this, but in reality a bridge or other piece of infrastructure 20-30 miles away that a person rarely uses is still too abstract of a thing to really feel "Hey, I'd be willing to pay more of my own money to cover its cost". If you lower their fed taxes and raise their local taxes to cover costs I still don't think they'll feel any more sense of ownership over the issue than before. For most people, most things that are just a little bit outside of their usual experience are simply too intangible to feel much skin in the game. The situation we're already in with respect to infrastructure is a case in point. [0] https://www.cbpp.org/research/romneys-charge-that-most-federal-low-income-spending-goes-for-overhead-and-bureaucrats-is https://www.cbpp.org/research/romneys-charge-that-most-feder...

daveaiello 5y ago

I believe my family and I drove over this bridge, when we were in Pittsburgh 4 years ago. I hate to say this, but the condition of bridges like this is one of the major reasons that Pennsylvania currently has one of the highest gas taxes in the country. And whatever PennDOT is spending the tax money on, this bridge-- in one of the two largest cities in our state-- collapsed anyway.

smitty1110 5y ago
Come on, we know they spent it on the perpetual projects on the PA Turnpike. Not sure about the eastern half of the state, but Philly probably gets more money than Pittsburgh. At least the fixed the Greenfield Bridge[1]. [1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenfield_Bridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenfield_Bridge
- giantg2 5y ago
  The Turnpike funds itself, and is required to give the state hundreds of millions to fund other projects.

XnoiVeX 5y ago

I checked the TxDOT bridge report out of curiosity. "Out of 55,000 Bridges in Texas, Only 787 (1.4%) are in Poor Condition—much lower than the national average. https://ftp.txdot.gov/pub/txdot-info/library/reports/gov/bridge/fy20.pdf https://ftp.txdot.gov/pub/txdot-info/library/reports/gov/bri...

version_five 5y ago
In Montreal, all of the bridges are in terrible condition, in part because they were built by the Mafia but also because of the weather and the road salt. This is probably st least in part responsible for the difference between Pennsylvania and Texas, though the states' finances and management of course also play a role.
tarr11 5y ago
List of bridge conditions by state https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/bridge/nbi/no10/condition21.cfm https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/bridge/nbi/no10/condition21.cfm
quasse 5y ago
I notice that several people are bringing up Texas bridges in this thread for some reason. One extremely major difference between bridges located in Pittsburgh and Texas is that Texas does not need to salt its roads. Municipalities that salt their bridges are literally demolishing them with chemicals.
- steveklabnik 5y ago
  As someone from Pittsburgh now living in Texas this thread is wild indeed. Infrastructure is not simple, and localities have different challenges. Sure, Texas may have bridges in better conditions, but when the snowstorm hit last year I didn’t go running around saying “Dang the city of Austin has only one snowplow?” (Okay, actually I did, but only as a “that makes perfect sense, no wonder this snowstorm hit so hard here even though it didn’t seem bad by my standards, we have no infrastructure or general cultural understanding of what to do, it makes sense that this is a terrible storm here even if it wouldn’t have been a big deal back home.”)

m0llusk 5y ago

Commenters in this thread are making a lot of generalizations about tax structures and so on, but it important to keep in mind this is a special case at a number of levels. Pittsburgh has an unusually large number of bridges. These bridges were built during times of relative wealth when the local steel and related industries were doing well. Since the decline of American industry Pittsburgh has scaled way back and had to rebuild itself as a medical and technology center. This recovery is mostly a success story, but the infrastructure cannot be maintained. For example, the greater Pittsburgh area has some of the first suburban areas to be completely abandoned with services withdrawn, Penn Hills being a poignant example of this. Obviously no bridges should be coming down, but there is a real problem here of how to build and maintain a modern city that is smaller than the older one that it replaces.

jsiaajdsdaa 5y ago
What a tragic white elephant of a gift.
XnoiVeX 5y ago
[flagged]
- hokumguru 5y ago
  Not saying I disagree necessarily but fwiw the weather in Texas is quite easier on infrastructure than in PA. Texas also hasn't seen the industry woes that other states have in the past century. And just because Texas has the most bridges of any state doesn't detract from the fact that Pittsburgh still has its own high number of bridges.
  - notacoward 5y ago
    I'd also wonder about the level of diligence applied to detecting and reporting such problems in Texas. How many of the bridges in Texas are really in better than poor condition?
  - nr2x 5y ago

nemacol 5y ago

Any chance people were under there? A park bridge in the winter, I wonder if any homeless were around.

PascLeRasc 5y ago
There generally aren't any homeless in Frick park. Under that bridge is a dog park, but this was 7am with around 1° weather, so probably not.

dsiegel2275 5y ago

The condition of the bridge was rated "Poor" in 2017. To understand what "Poor" can mean, here's a photo taken from underneath the bridge in 2018: https://twitter.com/gpk320/status/1078885655634157569 https://twitter.com/gpk320/status/1078885655634157569

quasse 5y ago
Wow, I wonder if the "Service Request" that came out of that tweet being marked Closed meant they ever fixed that: https://pittsburghpa.qscend.com/311/request/view/?id=ea13511a408a4282815637644fd5a13a https://pittsburghpa.qscend.com/311/request/view/?id=ea13511... My guess is no.
- lolpython 5y ago
  I live in Pittsburgh and it is fairly common for 311 requests to be marked Closed without any resolution or follow up communication.

HWR_14 5y ago

I'm just guessing, but it seems like the bus by itself was probably between 40% and 80% of the rated load of the bridge (buses have remarkably variable weight). Add in some snow and ice and I can see how it became overloaded.

curtis3389 5y ago

Since we're talking decaying infrastructure and Pennsylvania, it seems a good time to remind people that US dams need work, too. A collapsed bridge is nothing compared to a failed dam like the Austin Dam failure, which is worth a visit if you're ever in the area: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austin_Dam_failure_(Pennsylvania) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austin_Dam_failure_(Pennsylvan...

myhikesorg 5y ago
Great place to explore and it's run by an awesome group of people!
keiferski 5y ago
The Johnstown Flood (also caused by a failing dam) also happened nearby. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnstown_Flood https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnstown_Flood

calvinmorrison 5y ago

One block from my friends house! Holy shit glad nobody is hurt.

jaywalk 5y ago
Title of the article: "10 injured in bridge collapse in Pittsburgh’s Frick Park" So, 10 people were hurt. But they say none of the injuries appear life-threatening, so there's that.

stevetodd 5y ago

I was curious to see how each state was doing and Google didn’t disappoint: https://artbabridgereport.org/state/map https://artbabridgereport.org/state/map

ineedasername 5y ago

An unfortunate punctuation mark for the infrastructure speech the President is about to give in PA. For readers outside of the US, how are similar infrastructure issues?

ModernMech 5y ago
Unfortunate? It makes the case as to why passing the infrastructure bill was so important. It should make people think twice about reelecting those who voted no on the bill. If they had their way we'd still have a collapsed bridge and no infrastructure bill to pay for a new one.
- WillPostForFood 5y ago
  Of the $1.2 trillion, less than half ($550 billion) is even intended for infrastructure at all. Of the $550 billion, only $110 billion is for actual roads, bridges, and major infrastructure projects. That we have to spend $1.2 trillion to get $110 billion in possible improvements is exactly why our infrastructure is in terrible shape, and still will be in terrible shape after this grift is distributed. The infrastructure bill just highlights the problem, and puts us further into debt. https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/28/politics/infrastructure-bill-explained/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/28/politics/infrastructure-bill-...
  - evan_ 5y ago
    > Of the $1.2 trillion, less than half ($550 billion) is even intended for infrastructure at all. Citation needed
    - ineedasername 5y ago
      See my sibling comment-- it is actually all infrastructure, there's some idiosyncracy over how previous plans are only now being funded.
  - ineedasername 5y ago
    No, it's all infrastructure. The rest of the money is funding previously authorized plans. I'm not sure why that bill was necessary to find them separately from the original auhorization, but it's all still infrastructure. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2021/11/15/everything-in-the-12-trillion-infrastructure-bill-biden-just-signed-new-roads-electric-school-buses-and-more/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanpo...

jshprentz 5y ago

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette [1] provides many more photos and in-depth reporting. [1] https://www.post-gazette.com/local/city/2022/01/28/pittsburgh-bridge-collapse-forbes-braddock-avenue-point-breeze-squirrel-hill/stories/202201280075 https://www.post-gazette.com/local/city/2022/01/28/pittsburg...

rwmj 5y ago

The BBC recently had a programme about the Genoa bridge collapse: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0007mxm https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0007mxm

jrlocke 5y ago

Unbelievable photo of the decrepit state three years ago: https://twitter.com/gpk320/status/1078885655634157569 https://twitter.com/gpk320/status/1078885655634157569

lbriner 5y ago

There was an article posted on HN about a year ago, which said that most/all urban areas in the US (and I suspect in many other countries) cannot afford to maintain their infrastructure and are just buying time before major problems with water/sewerage/roads etc. I can honestly imagine that any local authority who might apply for e.g. $50M to build a bridge do not make sure they can either amortize that cost over 50 years to replace it or otherwise add a reasonable amount of yearly expenditure to make repairs as needed. Concrete seems particularly bad since it is very hard to "repair" and the knowledge of how to build it properly only 50 years ago was poor. Lots of major concrete structures have not lasted long.

myhikesorg 5y ago

I remember hiking under this bridge - it's a nice park but often this area was super crowded on nice days during warm weather. Lots of people with their dogs. In the years I lived in PGH I always thought about how it was just a matter of time before a bridge would collapse - there's an insane amount of bridges throughout the city and just by the looks of some of them, gravity was going to win sooner than later. It's amazing that no one was killed, glad it wasn't the middle of the Summer when Frick Park is full, it could have been a lot worse.

e_commerce 5y ago

horsefeathers 5y ago

ada1981 5y ago

Curious on liability here. If a bridge collapses is the municipality liable for repairs to your car / medical? Do you assume this risk when you drive that infrastructure failure is your liability?

giantg2 5y ago
Interesting question. I would think the courts would come into play. I assume failure to maintain or close the bridge when they knew of the poor rating would constitute negligence on the part of the city. I think we would have to know what the weights of the other vehicles are to see if the weight limit was exceeded.
- ada1981 5y ago
  Even if it was just failure and they didn’t know, I feel like the city needs to have insurance for these things no? Would seem insane for the city to just put it on the individual using it.

renewiltord 5y ago

Chinese people: we can build so fast Americans: Well, that’s because you don’t build it to not fall down. That’s why we build slowly. Americans: our shit falls down anyway

WalterBright 5y ago

A bridge in Kenmore (near Seattle) collapsed two years ago. They've been rebuilding it constantly for 2 years now. For perspective, the first transcontinental railroad was built by hand in 6 years, for 1900 miles, including a large number of bridges.

voakbasda 5y ago
For further perspective, over a thousand individuals died during the construction of the transcontinental railroad. OSHA might have reduced the death count, but that comes at the expense of efficiency. Compound the endless other regulations implemented since that time, and it's surprising that anything gets built at all anymore.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  20,000 people died on the Oregon Trail, it's predecessor. The thousand deaths is a claim that has never been verified. https://www.iccsafe.org/building-safety-journal/bsj-dives/the-human-cost-of-construction-an-inside-look-at-the-worlds-most-notable-and-deadliest-construction-projects/ https://www.iccsafe.org/building-safety-journal/bsj-dives/th... I couldn't find a reference to how many people worked on the railroad, other than 20,000 Chinese. I suppose it was likely on the order of 50,000 people. When you have 50,000 people for 6 years, some of them are going to die no matter what. Disease was common and untreatable, and medical care was poor, too, in those days. In other words, without context, saying 1000 people died is meaningless.
  - voakbasda 5y ago
    The context was that one single new bridge that has taken a full one-third of the time that it took to build a railroad across the majority of this country. Given the standards put forth by OSHA, I strongly suspect that construction of that new bridge has not been the proximate cause of even one death.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]

giantg2 5y ago

If you live in the state, this is not a surprising story. Residents are well aware of huge number of bridges rated as poor or requiring maintenance. Not to mention the terrible condition of many roads. Granted PA is one of the states with the most miles of roads. One would think that one of the highest gas taxes and hundreds of millions in funding from the turnpike would be sufficient...

exhilaration 5y ago
As a PA resident, I've been hearing one of many reasons for the poor infrastructure is that a fairly big chunk of the road and bridge maintenance budget is being redirected to the State Police: https://www.lehighvalleylive.com/lehigh-county/2019/04/42-billion-diverted-from-penndot-road-and-bridge-repairs-to-fund-state-police-new-audit-reveals.html https://www.lehighvalleylive.com/lehigh-county/2019/04/42-bi... What happens in town after town is that the anti-tax folks decide that there's no need to fund a local police department when the PA State Police is obligated to take over policing. There's currently no mechanism for the state to charge these towns for this service and their state reps fight any effort to put one in place. So year after year the State Police's budget grows out of control and infrastructure funds are an easy way to cover the costs.
- giantg2 5y ago
  True, they need to figure out state police funding. I wonder how much they pay out in law suits. I don't like the per capita fee structure proposed. PSP routinely operate in municipalities that already have police forces. If they want to make it more "fair", they should charge municipalities based on the number and/or type of call, regardless of whether they have a police force. There seem to be many of these funding oddities in the state. For example, dept ag complains that they can't fund dog wardens, so they want to increase license costs. Yet the law caps the amount of funding they can get from enforcement (I think the rest goes to the general fund). It would make sense to uncap the amount they get from enforcement. They would likely still need to increase license cost. But maybe they would actually do their job. We had a problem with a dog and found out it wasn't even licensed ($300 fine; the other party was the one who wanted to get the law involved, yet they didn't have a license). When I reported it to the dog warden, they laughed and didn't care. That's your job and you laugh. WTF do you actually do?

tomohawk 5y ago

Pennsylvania DOT is one of the more corrupt agencies related to transportation. As but one example: https://www.attorneygeneral.gov/taking-action/former-penndot-executive-charged-with-felony-for-accepting-bribes/ https://www.attorneygeneral.gov/taking-action/former-penndot...

blunte 5y ago

Like other short term focused decisions made by the baby boomer generation, the US bridge situation is dire. Within 20 years this will be a common news story. Unfortunately, spending on infrastructure which benefits most people (including the business owners who vote against it) is now equated with socialism as a dirty word and something which only the evil liberals want, because they want to take your hard work and money and distribute it to people who don’t want to work. At least, that’s almost verbatim what I’m hearing right now on my Texan parents’ Fox tv while I visit. The US is headed for a very dismal half century, and fighting or even trying to debate appears to not be an option. I see no solution except to call it dead and move to more progressive countries. Unfortunately, some of the smarter more educated other countries are now being brainwashed by the same tactics that allowed Fox News and conservative radio hosts to lead masses to vote aggressively against their own interests.

8bitsrule 5y ago

NYTimes story had a telling quote: [https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/28/us/pittsburgh-bridge-collapse-biden.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/28/us/pittsburgh-bridge-coll...] " Greg Kochanski, a software engineer, was walking his dog under the bridge about three years ago when he noticed that one of the X beams that stabilized the bridge was so rusted that it had disconnected from the column to which it had been attached. "He reported this to the city in a tweet and, several weeks later, he said, noticed that the rusted beam had been removed."

sometimesweenie 5y ago

I've been across this bridge probably a hundred or so times since childhood... scary stuff. Our geography is pretty prohibitive to population increase for a larger tax base to support the infrastructure. Lots of plateaus and rivers are the reason for the large number of bridges and tunnels. Even as a local, Pittsburgh is really difficult to get around. The T doesn't go to many places around the city. Buses have the same problems as cars. The inclines stopped being useful. Have fun getting hit by a car while cycling (you'll have the strongest calves to make up for it). The roads are hard to navigate and there isn't enough space for the innovative roundabout. There are some benefits from the geography like culturally distinct neighborhoods but the infrastructure issue really needs addressed. Fortunately, we have our best civil engineers working on the problem [0] [0] https://www.theonion.com/urban-planner-stuck-in-traffic-of-own-design-1819567293 https://www.theonion.com/urban-planner-stuck-in-traffic-of-o...