9 ms·

Google Maps has removed the collapsed I-5 bridge in WA

54 points by tkone 13y ago

tkone 13y ago
News story: http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Interstate-5-bridge-collapses-over-Skagit-River-4544826.php http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Interstate-5-bridge-c...
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
Petefine 13y ago
strangely, it's currently still there if you zoom in a bit though.
- doorhammer 13y ago
  I noticed this as well. At the default level of zoom my browser was at with the link, the bridge was there. When I zoomed out one level or more, it wasn't.
  - allwein 13y ago
    If you zoom in a little further, you'll notice that the road is actually outlined in a dotted line and notated as "planned". So it's there just as a placeholder.
spuz 13y ago
Interestingly, it still provides directions over the bridge: http://goo.gl/maps/J2mVS http://goo.gl/maps/J2mVS
- albertzeyer 13y ago
  Well, it says: "This road will be temporarily closed starting on 24 May." :)
raimue 13y ago
OpenStreetMap still has it: http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=48.4451&lon=-122.34063&zoom=16 http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=48.4451&lon=-122.34063... I tried to mark it as closed, but did not find any option for that in potlatch. Can someone else with more experience with OSM help out?
- dbaupp 13y ago
  If editing is too complicated/time consuming, then you can use the fancy new "notes" feature to add a marker that someone else can come and fix. It's the "Add a note" link in the bottom right corner. (The bridge has been removed now, by the way.)
- milliams 13y ago
  I had look at this history and someone marked the roads as closed some time last night. The bridge itself was later removed by another user. Later still, another user (from Turkey) seems to have completely replaced everything back to normal for some reason. We need a local user to make the correct changes and make sure they're kept that way. http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/changesets?bbox=-122.345719%2C48.443027%2C-122.336417%2C48.446568 http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/changesets?bbox=-122.345...
- chippy 13y ago
  Fixed. http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=48.4451&lon=-122.34063&zoom=16 http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=48.4451&lon=-122.34063...
general_failure 13y ago
I won't ask if apple maps still has it.
- metavida 13y ago
  Bridge is still visible on Apple Maps, though at least they added little warning/info indicators: http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3706/8813508276_05c689345b_o.png http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3706/8813508276_05c689345b_o.p...
mach5 13y ago
it's off of waze too
skriticos2 13y ago
So what's next? A camera drone quadrocopter flies out and updates street view once something notable changes? That would be classy.
- pekk 13y ago
  Sensors in the bridge to tell when it's in a dangerous state; Google et al. consume the feed to update routing
  - devrelm 13y ago
    Interesting problem. How do Google's self-driving cars react to road problems such as bridge-collapses and sinkholes? Scanning for objects and avoiding objects which extend above the road level is obvious, but what about when the road cuts off? These things rarely happen, but it would be terrifying to be in a self-driving car in that moment when the bridge ahead of you collapses and the car continues to drive as if there is nothing wrong. I actually had a similar thought yesterday when thinking about how the cars would handle object-avoidance. Say a deer hops out in front of the car. The car is constantly aware of its environment for 100+ feet in all directions, so it could tell if there are no cars in a neighboring lane and swerve to miss the deer. But what if there _are_ cars in neighboring lanes and the only available direction is to go onto the shoulder or into the ditch? If the ditch is fairly level with the road, then this could be the safest option. But if the ditch is steep, then it would be more dangerous than simply hitting the brakes and hoping you don't hit the deer too hard.
    - maxerickson 13y ago
      I would think that road integrity would be on the long list of things covered in any licensing process (you and I can think of it in a few moments, ergo). I would also guess it is important for the system to be able to estimate an appropriate speed even when external data is not available. For the deer, I would expect the programmed response to be to brake as much as possible given traffic. Hitting a deer is unlikely to result in anything but damage to the vehicle. Swerving is less predictable than that.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
hackmiester 13y ago
If I zoom out, I don't see it: http://puu.sh/3081u.png http://puu.sh/3081u.png But at the default zoom level, I do see it: http://puu.sh/30828.png http://puu.sh/30828.png
- claudius 13y ago
  If you zoom it, it appears somewhat dotted/dashed. Maybe for ‘planned’/‘currently being built’?
  - devrelm 13y ago
    This is correct. When I scrolled south towards the nearest on/off ramps, I could see "(planned)" over the road.
- frankydp 13y ago
  There is some interesting stuff going on there. The vector generated tile at the higher zoom has been redrawn while the tile below has not been redrawn yet, I would assume the redraw rate would be less frequent the more you zoom in do to decreased demand for the tiles. The second interesting thing is that even though the raster tiles have had the bridge removed from the draw instruction the vector data for the click map on the map is still intact. That is interesting because that means that the vector data used to render tiles is operating at a different version than the vector data that is draw on the map. Which could lead to all kinds of weird scenarios.
  - frankydp 13y ago
    Actually, the answer may be more simple. Guessing, that gmaps switches to drawing vector data at a certain zoom instead of rendering the road line vector data to the TMS tile. This simply means that the version of the vector data used to draw at the increased zoom is the older version but is actually being used to draw the roads on the browser instead of rendered into the tile before transfer.
tobinfricke 13y ago
This is a more popular story than the fact that the bridge collapsed in the first place?
- freehunter 13y ago
  I hadn't heard this story previously, so I was not sure what happened. I guess we're on the wrong site to get general news, of course a tech story would be ranked higher :)
  - epochwolf 13y ago
    There's a link further down. The bridge had section collapsed last night after a truck hit an overhead beam. Edit: http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Interstate-5-bridge-collapses-over-Skagit-River-4544826.php http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Interstate-5-bridge-c...
  - stephengillie 13y ago
    I didn't post about it last night because: If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. Here's the Reddit thread a FB friend linked: http://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/1ey32g/i5_bridge_in_burlington_has_collapsed_infoupdate/ http://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/1ey32g/i5_bridge_in...
- willyt 13y ago
  Further to this, it's a pretty interesting technical problem to think about why the bridge collapsed. A compression member or node at the top of the truss that forms the main span seems to have failed for some reason. The news story linked in another comment below says the truck hit something. This[0] secondary(tertiary?) truss looks like it might have taken a hit? It forms part of the horizontal truss above the carriageways which resists shear in the horizontal plane and therefore provides torsional stability; the bridge is effectively a braced tube, I think. Maybe the hit on that pulled the main compression member out of alignment enough for it to buckle? I'm not an engineer, but I'm pretty interested in engineering, I'd be interested to know if anyone with better knowledge can spot an obvious reason for the collapse. [0] http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Interstate-5-bridge-collapses-over-Skagit-River-4544826.php#next http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Interstate-5-bridge-c...
ankit84 13y ago
I am a mapmaker editor and I have seen my changes instantaneously get published to prod/GoogleMaps for everyone to consume over Internet. I think this depends on how mature the editor is. Btw, there are plenty of nerdy ppl to correct the web. Ref: http://xkcd.com/386/ http://xkcd.com/386/
michaelochurch 13y ago
Apparently Google is quick to respond to infrastructural failures. So why didn't it remove calibration scores, and convert the Perf Room to something fun like an arcade (well, it already is a casino, so maybe something else) many years ago?
- VikingCoder 13y ago
  Well, they got you to leave. (For the record, I feel bad saying this... but I'm also just returning snark with snark, so... oh well.)
  - michaelochurch 13y ago
    There's a difference. You know very little about me and where I come from and why I see things the way I do. Do I bring a lot of negativity into these discussions? Sure, but that's needed because I don't want thousands of people to repeat mistakes that I did. If bringing a realistic or even slightly pessimistic tone to this often out-of-touch startup discussion is the cost to prevent a thousand young kids from wrecking their careers, then good. However, I've articulated deep managerial problems with Google that the company refuses to solve, and many of those can be fixed easily and for free. So there's no comparison between what I say and what you said.
    - MichaelApproved 13y ago
      What are you guys talking about? What is a Perf Room?
      - michaelochurch 13y ago
        Don't worry about it if you don't work at Google. Every quarter, managers get together to horse-trade "performance points" (or "calibration scores") and generate a company-wide stack ranking of all engineers. If you end up in the bottom 5% (which sometimes happens to people just because their managers don't show up) then you end up on a PIP and your career at Google is over. That monstrosity is called Perf. The "Perf Room" is a metaphor on most campuses because most of the smaller ones don't actually have a dedicated room "where it happens" for calibration. "Take you into the Perf Room" is a common managerial threat, but actually everyone is calibrated and the meeting happens in secret (most engineers never learn their scores) so people don't actually literally get taken "into the Perf Room". It's just an expression for a bad review.
chippy 13y ago
It's more accurately mapped in OpenStreetMap http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=48.4451&lon=-122.34063&zoom=16 http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=48.4451&lon=-122.34063...
- C1D 13y ago
  Thanks for posting that link. That site is actually very interesting.
outside1234 13y ago
I'm just surprised that nobody has blamed Canada yet.

54 points by tkone 13y ago

tkone 13y ago

News story: http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Interstate-5-bridge-collapses-over-Skagit-River-4544826.php http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Interstate-5-bridge-c...

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

Petefine 13y ago

strangely, it's currently still there if you zoom in a bit though.

doorhammer 13y ago
I noticed this as well. At the default level of zoom my browser was at with the link, the bridge was there. When I zoomed out one level or more, it wasn't.
- allwein 13y ago
  If you zoom in a little further, you'll notice that the road is actually outlined in a dotted line and notated as "planned". So it's there just as a placeholder.

spuz 13y ago

Interestingly, it still provides directions over the bridge: http://goo.gl/maps/J2mVS http://goo.gl/maps/J2mVS

albertzeyer 13y ago
Well, it says: "This road will be temporarily closed starting on 24 May." :)

raimue 13y ago

OpenStreetMap still has it: http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=48.4451&lon=-122.34063&zoom=16 http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=48.4451&lon=-122.34063... I tried to mark it as closed, but did not find any option for that in potlatch. Can someone else with more experience with OSM help out?

dbaupp 13y ago
If editing is too complicated/time consuming, then you can use the fancy new "notes" feature to add a marker that someone else can come and fix. It's the "Add a note" link in the bottom right corner. (The bridge has been removed now, by the way.)
milliams 13y ago
I had look at this history and someone marked the roads as closed some time last night. The bridge itself was later removed by another user. Later still, another user (from Turkey) seems to have completely replaced everything back to normal for some reason. We need a local user to make the correct changes and make sure they're kept that way. http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/changesets?bbox=-122.345719%2C48.443027%2C-122.336417%2C48.446568 http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/changesets?bbox=-122.345...
chippy 13y ago
Fixed. http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=48.4451&lon=-122.34063&zoom=16 http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=48.4451&lon=-122.34063...

general_failure 13y ago

I won't ask if apple maps still has it.

metavida 13y ago
Bridge is still visible on Apple Maps, though at least they added little warning/info indicators: http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3706/8813508276_05c689345b_o.png http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3706/8813508276_05c689345b_o.p...

mach5 13y ago

it's off of waze too

skriticos2 13y ago

So what's next? A camera drone quadrocopter flies out and updates street view once something notable changes? That would be classy.

pekk 13y ago
Sensors in the bridge to tell when it's in a dangerous state; Google et al. consume the feed to update routing
- devrelm 13y ago
  Interesting problem. How do Google's self-driving cars react to road problems such as bridge-collapses and sinkholes? Scanning for objects and avoiding objects which extend above the road level is obvious, but what about when the road cuts off? These things rarely happen, but it would be terrifying to be in a self-driving car in that moment when the bridge ahead of you collapses and the car continues to drive as if there is nothing wrong. I actually had a similar thought yesterday when thinking about how the cars would handle object-avoidance. Say a deer hops out in front of the car. The car is constantly aware of its environment for 100+ feet in all directions, so it could tell if there are no cars in a neighboring lane and swerve to miss the deer. But what if there _are_ cars in neighboring lanes and the only available direction is to go onto the shoulder or into the ditch? If the ditch is fairly level with the road, then this could be the safest option. But if the ditch is steep, then it would be more dangerous than simply hitting the brakes and hoping you don't hit the deer too hard.
  - maxerickson 13y ago
    I would think that road integrity would be on the long list of things covered in any licensing process (you and I can think of it in a few moments, ergo). I would also guess it is important for the system to be able to estimate an appropriate speed even when external data is not available. For the deer, I would expect the programmed response to be to brake as much as possible given traffic. Hitting a deer is unlikely to result in anything but damage to the vehicle. Swerving is less predictable than that.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

hackmiester 13y ago

If I zoom out, I don't see it: http://puu.sh/3081u.png http://puu.sh/3081u.png But at the default zoom level, I do see it: http://puu.sh/30828.png http://puu.sh/30828.png

claudius 13y ago
If you zoom it, it appears somewhat dotted/dashed. Maybe for ‘planned’/‘currently being built’?
- devrelm 13y ago
  This is correct. When I scrolled south towards the nearest on/off ramps, I could see "(planned)" over the road.
frankydp 13y ago
There is some interesting stuff going on there. The vector generated tile at the higher zoom has been redrawn while the tile below has not been redrawn yet, I would assume the redraw rate would be less frequent the more you zoom in do to decreased demand for the tiles. The second interesting thing is that even though the raster tiles have had the bridge removed from the draw instruction the vector data for the click map on the map is still intact. That is interesting because that means that the vector data used to render tiles is operating at a different version than the vector data that is draw on the map. Which could lead to all kinds of weird scenarios.
- frankydp 13y ago
  Actually, the answer may be more simple. Guessing, that gmaps switches to drawing vector data at a certain zoom instead of rendering the road line vector data to the TMS tile. This simply means that the version of the vector data used to draw at the increased zoom is the older version but is actually being used to draw the roads on the browser instead of rendered into the tile before transfer.

tobinfricke 13y ago

This is a more popular story than the fact that the bridge collapsed in the first place?

freehunter 13y ago
I hadn't heard this story previously, so I was not sure what happened. I guess we're on the wrong site to get general news, of course a tech story would be ranked higher :)
- epochwolf 13y ago
  There's a link further down. The bridge had section collapsed last night after a truck hit an overhead beam. Edit: http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Interstate-5-bridge-collapses-over-Skagit-River-4544826.php http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Interstate-5-bridge-c...
- stephengillie 13y ago
  I didn't post about it last night because: If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. Here's the Reddit thread a FB friend linked: http://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/1ey32g/i5_bridge_in_burlington_has_collapsed_infoupdate/ http://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/1ey32g/i5_bridge_in...
willyt 13y ago
Further to this, it's a pretty interesting technical problem to think about why the bridge collapsed. A compression member or node at the top of the truss that forms the main span seems to have failed for some reason. The news story linked in another comment below says the truck hit something. This[0] secondary(tertiary?) truss looks like it might have taken a hit? It forms part of the horizontal truss above the carriageways which resists shear in the horizontal plane and therefore provides torsional stability; the bridge is effectively a braced tube, I think. Maybe the hit on that pulled the main compression member out of alignment enough for it to buckle? I'm not an engineer, but I'm pretty interested in engineering, I'd be interested to know if anyone with better knowledge can spot an obvious reason for the collapse. [0] http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Interstate-5-bridge-collapses-over-Skagit-River-4544826.php#next http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Interstate-5-bridge-c...

ankit84 13y ago

I am a mapmaker editor and I have seen my changes instantaneously get published to prod/GoogleMaps for everyone to consume over Internet. I think this depends on how mature the editor is. Btw, there are plenty of nerdy ppl to correct the web. Ref: http://xkcd.com/386/ http://xkcd.com/386/

michaelochurch 13y ago

Apparently Google is quick to respond to infrastructural failures. So why didn't it remove calibration scores, and convert the Perf Room to something fun like an arcade (well, it already is a casino, so maybe something else) many years ago?

VikingCoder 13y ago
Well, they got you to leave. (For the record, I feel bad saying this... but I'm also just returning snark with snark, so... oh well.)
- michaelochurch 13y ago
  There's a difference. You know very little about me and where I come from and why I see things the way I do. Do I bring a lot of negativity into these discussions? Sure, but that's needed because I don't want thousands of people to repeat mistakes that I did. If bringing a realistic or even slightly pessimistic tone to this often out-of-touch startup discussion is the cost to prevent a thousand young kids from wrecking their careers, then good. However, I've articulated deep managerial problems with Google that the company refuses to solve, and many of those can be fixed easily and for free. So there's no comparison between what I say and what you said.
  - MichaelApproved 13y ago
    What are you guys talking about? What is a Perf Room?
    - michaelochurch 13y ago
      Don't worry about it if you don't work at Google. Every quarter, managers get together to horse-trade "performance points" (or "calibration scores") and generate a company-wide stack ranking of all engineers. If you end up in the bottom 5% (which sometimes happens to people just because their managers don't show up) then you end up on a PIP and your career at Google is over. That monstrosity is called Perf. The "Perf Room" is a metaphor on most campuses because most of the smaller ones don't actually have a dedicated room "where it happens" for calibration. "Take you into the Perf Room" is a common managerial threat, but actually everyone is calibrated and the meeting happens in secret (most engineers never learn their scores) so people don't actually literally get taken "into the Perf Room". It's just an expression for a bad review.

chippy 13y ago

It's more accurately mapped in OpenStreetMap http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=48.4451&lon=-122.34063&zoom=16 http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=48.4451&lon=-122.34063...

C1D 13y ago
Thanks for posting that link. That site is actually very interesting.

outside1234 13y ago

I'm just surprised that nobody has blamed Canada yet.