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The issue is not unique to Pittsburgh, even if the location has its own specific challenges. More than 30% of US bridges are in need of repair or preservation
by ineedasername 5y ago
The issue is not unique to Pittsburgh, even if the location has its own specific challenges.
More than 30% of US bridges are in need of repair or preservation work, and on rating bridges in either "good" or "fair" condition, the total bridge population has fewer than 50% rated as "good". [0] About 7-8% are rated poor.
[0] https://infrastructurereportcard.org/cat-item/bridges/ https://infrastructurereportcard.org/cat-item/bridges/
- mmazing 5y agoDo you happen to know if their dataset is available to the public?
- steveklabnik 5y agoThe issue isn’t unique to Pittsburgh, but the scale is. At ~450 bridges, it has one of the highest amounts in the world, especially for its size. (I am from Pittsburgh originally and used to bike over this bridge quite often.)
- ineedasername 5y agoI couldn't find ratings specific to Pittsburgh to determine what proportion of them fit into the Good/Fair/Poor categories. That's what would really be needed to assess the scale of the problem for Pittsburgh relative to the rest of the country. Although knowing what I do about the area I wouldn't be surprised if it is disproportionately worse: It's only somewhat recently that it's made a bit of an economic comeback from its downtrodden rustbelt days. I just wanted to clarify that, as much as Pittsburgh may be particularly problematic, its infrastructure issues were still replicated across most of the US.
- steveklabnik 5y agoSo, I actually did look this up four days ago, but it seems that PennDOT changed their website? https://www.penndot.gov/ProjectAndPrograms/Bridges/Pages/default.aspx https://www.penndot.gov/ProjectAndPrograms/Bridges/Pages/def... Those excel spreadsheets don't seem to do anything when I click on them. The note I took was "There are 25,437 bridges in PA. 9.59% of them were rated in “poor” condition last month, with only 34.37% of them being “good”". The original sheet was broken out by county, with Allegheny County basically being the same as the city of Pittsburgh in this regard. > I just wanted to clarify that, as much as Pittsburgh may be particularly problematic, its infrastructure issues were still replicated across most of the US. Absolutely, it is an issue everywhere for sure.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- JohnHaugeland 5y agoThe bus was over bridge weight. Before you go trying to fix the bridges, take the time to figure out what the problem was.
- brewdad 5y agoCitation needed. Are you saying the bus driver deviated from the usual route? Did the driver allow more passengers to board than is normally allowed? Perhaps a passenger boarded with their collection of lead figurines. I don't see how the bus could have been overweight without someone knowing the risks. It's not an Uber, they know where that bus will be traveling every time it leaves the station.
- steveklabnik 5y agoHard agree that this is "citation needed." It is the normal route for that bus: https://www.portauthority.org/pdfs/112016/61B.pdf https://www.portauthority.org/pdfs/112016/61B.pdf (you can check the map at the bottom) They run pretty often.
- neuronexmachina 5y agoOh wow, it was the 61B? I used to ride that bus route all the time (and 61A/61C) when I was in undergrad.
- steveklabnik 5y agoyep https://storage.googleapis.com/afs-prod/media/7e467cc904ea471088b91c6d11e6f3a7/1000.jpeg https://storage.googleapis.com/afs-prod/media/7e467cc904ea47... (from the AP story: https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-business-pittsburgh-bridge-collapses-b91476e4d1dc1c7839bd0c39e7be186e https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-business-pittsburgh-bri...)
- bombcar 5y agoI mean in a sense it's clear, there's a collapsed bridge with a bus on it ... https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1986/11/26 https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1986/11/26 But if it was actually over the posted weight limit, that'll come out shortly.
- donkeyd 5y agoThis seems like an easy excuse for what happened here. If you can't maintain those 450 bridges, then don't keep 450 bridges. Remove 150 of them and maintain the other 300. You can't just ignore 450 bridges and hope nothing goes wrong because you can't afford to maintain 450 bridges.
- steveklabnik 5y agoOh yeah, just knocking down 150 bridges is a very easy decision that's going to go over extremely well with the local population, certainly not political suicide as well as a massive, expensive project in its own right. It's not like all those bridges existed for good reason, and just getting rid of them wouldn't have massive impact on an extremely large number of things about the city. They absolutely need better maintenance. It's been a safety hazard for most of my life. But the solutions are not easy.
- recursive 5y agoIt could well be better to knock some down in an organized way. If the alternative is to have committees and referendums and posturing until nature decides which ones to take.
- steveklabnik 5y agoThe devil is in the details. What's "an organized way" if not "committees and referendums"? Even just the traffic impact studies alone to figure out what would happen when taking out each bridge, let alone that very often they'd impact each other and so you'd also need to figure out what happens with traffic for combinations of bridges, seems like a daunting and expensive task to me.
- FireBeyond 5y agoPhase it. You don't have to nominate every bridge and start simultaneously. Like you say. Choose a few, remove those, then re-evaluate what traffic looks like now.
- twic 5y ago> At ~450 bridges, it has one of the highest amounts in the world This factoid is repeated on many websites - but some hero has done the work, and maybe not: https://nolongerslowblog.blogspot.com/2014/02/what-city-has-most-bridges-and-why-is.html https://nolongerslowblog.blogspot.com/2014/02/what-city-has-... > especially for its size Okay maybe.
- steveklabnik 5y agoBeing fourth in total size still counts as "one of the highest amounts in the world."
- jyounker 5y agoYour link shows Pittsburg as number 4, which completely validates the statement "At ~450 bridges, it has one of the highest amounts in the world."
- bombcar 5y agoIt points out an issue, which is "defining bridge". If a walking path bridge in Venice collapses it likely will barely be news in Venice, whereas this one is bigger news because it's a bigger bridge.
- BurningFrog 5y agoWithout knowing anything, "needs some repair" and "unexpectedly collapses in broad daylight" are very different things.
- missedthecue 5y agoWorth noting that these figures are according to the American Road and Transportation Builder’s Association, a lobbying and advocacy group for the construction and civil engineering industry.
- cardiffspaceman 5y agoThe optics of minimizing their input aren't going to be good, even if normal "don't ask the barber if you need a haircut" skepticism is applicable.
- missedthecue 5y agoYep. There's a balance to be found here. On one hand, a group of construction groups and civil engineers likely know what they're talking about more than most people, on the other hand, massive infrastructure spending that they advocate for directly lines their pockets. It's like when you hear all the engineers and geologists at the American Petroleum Institute talk about fracking. Maybe we should keep a grain of salt.
- coredog64 5y agoThe American Society for Civil Engineers publishes this report. I’m sure they’re all great people, but I take with a grain of salt any information that comes from an interested party.