Posted on 02/05/2023 4:03:33 AM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
The completion of the Fern Hollow Bridge construction in under a year and at a cost of $25 million is truly a feat that should be applauded by one and all. But it also points out the utter failure of our government to function on an expeditious and cost-conscious manner daily (“Editorial: Fern Hollow failure,” Jan. 29).
Tom Wolf declared at the bridge opening ceremony, “This is the power of government that works for the people.” “Under normal circumstances this bridge would have taken 5 years to complete,” said Kate Thomson of the United States Department of Transportation. “This is a model of unprecedented intergovernmental cooperation.”
This is an amazing admission from our elected officials that it takes a crisis for our government to act in a timely manner. The only way that this bridge could have been rebuilt in a year is that government had to get out of the way. Why isn’t this th standard operating procedure for every project?
This time, thank goodness they did. PennDot awarded design and construction contracts within a week of the collapse. The normal bureaucratic red tape, duplicate regulations, numerous studies, etc., would have slowed this project to a snail’s pace and probably taken 5 more years. And just think what the cost would have been if the government had subjected the construction to all of their unnecessary bells and whistles. The $25 million final cost would be doubled or tripled.
(Excerpt) Read more at post-gazette.com ...
PING.
Our tax money is being wasted by the trillions and because the people do not rise up, the ruling class gets more bold and more wasteful, ensuring their own wealth at the hands of hard working citizens.
Guess that means the “Big Guy” only got $2.5 million.
There’s nothing “unprecedented” about it. In fact, this is far less impressive than the replacement project for the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis after it collapsed in 2007.
What these projects have in common was that the government was legally empowered to waive all kinds of planning, design and environmental review requirements that would usually drag the project on for years. This only works when you’re doing an in-kind replacement of a bridge after a catastrophic loss.
I’m guessing they had a separate pot of money outside the normal capital funding process to do this bridge, too … probably COVID relief funds.
Living here in minnesocold my thoughts immediately went to the I-35W St. Anthony Falls Bridge bridge collapse and replacement. Roughly 13 months from the day it collapsed to the day it was open to the public to use again.
Road construction nowadays seems to be a generational long term commitment. A one mile stretch of road near me is on year 5 of work, asinine. There’s another section probably 5 miles that’s going from 2 to 4 lanes. I expect I’ll be dead before that gets finished and I’m hoping for another 15 years or so.
Had to go check it out...
The first Fern Hollow Bridge opened in 1901 as a steel deck arch, and was demolished in 1972 while the second bridge was being built. The second bridge opened in 1973 and collapsed on January 28, 2022. Construction of the third bridge began on May 9, 2022, and the third bridge was dedicated on December 20, 2022.
From some personal experience, even fairly basic road projects now take about 4 years. There’s a year of planning/funding/design, a year of right of way acquisition, a year of utility relocation, and a year of the actual road construction. I watched this play out on multiple projects over a period of close to 10 years.
Interstate I-70 from New Stanton, PA to the Ohio border is less than 60 miles, but construction/rebuild has gone on at some section of that road for over 47 years.
A heavy equipment operator just recently retired and he never worked on any other job except I-70 between Exit 58 and Exit 1.
Think there is any graft/padding in this "project" ?
The entire section of roadway is a total fraud, rip it up, move it from side to side, add a different entrance/exit, replace the replacement.
Any local resident that travels that section of road can verify what I just posted, in the words of senile joe, "No joke, man".
No longer live there, but I’m in my 50s and it seems like I-77 south of Cleveland has been under construction virtually my entire driving life.
It sounds like if we are replacing a bridge or road, we eliminate 2 years right off the bat as right of way acquisition and utility relocations have already been done.
Then here, they managed to collapse the year for design and funding and the year for construction into one year.
Los Angeles earthquake 1994, santa monica freeway.
CalTrans said YEARS to repair, government got out of the way and it was done in 45 days
A prime example (quite possibly THE prime example, the "Poster Child") of this dynamic is "The Big Dig" in Boston.
From an engineering standpoint, what they accomplished is astonishing, and it certainly changed the city for the better, but the Boston political system, run by scumbags like Ted Kennedy and Tip O'Neil, in concert with douchebag corrupt unions and Leftists of various stripes made this unique.
They shamefully extracted funds for this project from taxpayers all over the United States and funneled the money of American who would never see or utilize the benefits of this into a horribly corrupt Leftist Massachusetts machine.
From a NASA related website:
Boston’s Central Artery/Tunnel Project, commonly known as the Big Dig, was the largest, most complex, and most technically challenging highway project in American history.
The Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge, part of the Big Dig project in Boston, is the widest cable-stayed bridge in the world.
Larger than the Panama Canal, the Hoover Dam, and the Alaska Pipeline projects, it was built through the heart of one of the nation’s oldest cities. Its list of engineering firsts include the deepest underwater connection and the largest slurry-wall application in North America, unprecedented ground freezing, extensive deep-soil mixing programs to stabilize Boston’s soils, the world’s widest cable-stayed bridge, and the largest tunnel-ventilation system in the world.
The Big Dig is also famous for cost increases. Its initial estimated cost was $2.56 billion. Estimates increased to $7.74 billion in 1992, to $10.4 billion in 1994, and, finally, $14.8 billion in 2007—more than five times the original estimate. The reported reasons for the cost escalation included inflation, the failure to assess unknown subsurface conditions, environmental and mitigation costs, and expanded scope. Mitigation alone required 1,500 unanticipated, separate agreements.
This project was completely inundated with graft and corruption.
But it wasn't just the graft and corruption that caused it to be 200% higher cost than was originally estimated. There is just one example that stuck out at me that blew my mind.
The Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge (named after a typical Massachusetts Leftist political activist Leonard Zakim) was the widest cable-stayed bridge in the world at the time it was completed, which alone indicates how expensive it might have been.
They had to completely redesign the span of the bridge in mid-construction to do "environmental mitigation" to protect a species of migrating fish known as "Alewife" because it was thought the shadow of the bridge on the water would inhibit the upstream migration of the fish in the Charles River in Cambridge, a leftist bastion.
In mid construction, they had to redesign the span at extensive cost to include narrow rectangles that would allow sunlight to get through to the water.
I remember that and they received a bonus for it and it still was less than estimated.
The earthquake damaged Los Angeles area freeways were repaired in record time because govt got out of the way. They can do it when there’s enough motivation.
I routinely drive I-70 between Baltimore and some place in Indiana. It is ALWAYS under construction somewhere.
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