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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 everyon

by 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.

by mlac 5y ago

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.