Here's a quick synopsis of what I've heard happened to the bridge. One of the gusset plates was designed too thin which caused a member to shear out from the plate leading to a failure. The truss design of the bridge didn't have sufficient redundancy structure so that failure translated throughout the structure. The original designer has been dead for decades and the original design firm was bought out a while ago by another firm and in that time many of the original drawings were lost so it hasn't been fully determined if the contractor made a mistake or if the plate was designed wrong from the begining. What evidence there is is that this problem was in the original design. Adding to this problem was that later MNDOT engineers weren't aware of this flaw and the bridge deck was subsequently expanded and resurfaced increasing the load beyond what tolerances that plate could take. The day the bridge collapsed there was a construction crew on it doing resurfacing along with a a lot of concrete being mixed and rushhour traffic. That combination overloaded the structure leading to the collapse. As you noted there had been reports pointing out problems with corrosion on the bridge and lack of maintanence. After the collapse it was quickly determined that a gusset plate had failed and initially it was thought that the gusset plate had corroded but once more investigation was done and the plate recovered it looks like it was undersized. FYI the new bridge is a concrete beam design.
Beaumont is lobbying for these projects from the stimulus: - Amtrack train stop - $750,000 - Block grant reinvestment zone housing - $5 Million - Landfill hydrogen project - $5 Million - Public Safety Headquarters - $272,000 - Bus stop rehabilitaion - $1 Million The current Amtrack station in Beaumont is a slab, because it gets no passengers. It's near my office, and I see the train stop there when it does in the afternoon. They could triple their ridership and still not get passengers on every stop. But it has nothing to do with new riders. The mayor's justification was, "We want to move it to a nicer area so when the train stops in Beaumont, the passengers get a better view." She has called this her highest priority for stimulus money. I have no clue whether housing block grants are needed, but it seems that every city asks for them every time Federal money is offered. The landfill hydrogen project is a cool project. They reform the methane as it comes off the landfill and sell the hydrogen to local refineries. This project is already funded and will go forward without Federal funds. They're just asking for subsidies because they might be available. I don't know anything about the Public Safety Headquarters. From the funds request, I think they're going to build a house for the Police Chief. Bus stop rehabilitation is the only project of the bunch that is a good idea and not currently being progressed. Most Beaumont bus stops are just benches, and I often see people waiting for the bus out in the pouring rain.
I'm quickly revising my estimation of Obama. I think we are doomed. As proof, I offer this report from Bush's flight back to Texas... NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!
Thanks for that. There are a number of unusual things about that description, but that’s usually the case when you have failures like this. I’m not a structural engineer, I should point out, but as you probably know yourself from your work in architecture, steel structures typically should not suffer sudden, catastrophic, failure like this. Steel undergoes strain hardening, and that means that as it begins to fail and deform it actually gets stronger before it ultimately fails. This is why you often hear of large cracks opening in steel structured buildings before they fail. This is a very important safety feature of the material, and if you should ever happen to be in or on a steel structure and notice big cracks starting to open up, or significant deflections starting to occur, GET OFF THE STRUCTURE! This is a sign of impending doom, but you would normally still have time to get off the structure. In the case of the I-35W Bridge, however, sudden catastrophic failure occurred, and that is usually not supposed to happen under any circumstances. Failures are not supposed to happen in the first place, of course, but when they do normal steel structures are designed to deflect and deform well before failure to give people early warning, but that did not happen in this case. There are a number of things that can cause this kind of brittle failure, as opposed to the normal ductile failure, such as faulty materials and metal fatigue. I just did a search and found this paper the I-35W bridge failure. You may already be aware of it, but if not you may find it interesting. http://www.ce.berkeley.edu/~astaneh...Paper-Steel_Bridges_June-2008-color-Final.pdf
The Alaska legislature wanted much more than that. She cut hundreds of millions out of the the state budget.
Also from the same article: By contrast, in two budget cycles, Palin has vetoed a total of only $2.6 million in spending requests for the state's now $8.1 billion annual operating budget, which, according to an analysis by the legislative finance office, has increased about 30 percent in two years. That's a pretty low bar you've set for her in keeping government growth down.
I’m not suggesting that no one will be asking for money for projects that don’t deserve it. Think of this like managing a large petrochemical plant. If the owner’s representative comes around and says that they’re ready to do some upgrading, and he asks all of the various managers for a list of potential projects, you can be sure that all of them will include not only their must-have items, but also all of their should-have and would-be-nice items. This is where good management comes in. Good managers pick the right projects to do, and more importantly they find good ways of determining what the right projects are. The Obama administration will most certainly need to do this as well, and this will be something to watch for. As I’m sure you know, however, even the best managers sometimes make mistakes, and you can be sure there will be some made, but generally you can tell when management is motivated to make the right decisions, and is employing sound strategies for making those decisions. You can be just as sure that Fox news and other likeminded bottom feeders will jump on every mistake and try to characterize the Obama administration by them, but with your experience you will be able to look below the surface and see whether they are approaching this in a proper way or not. The job of the objective media in all of this will be to report honestly and explain what’s happening and why, and they will have to do it again, and again, and again. I think that there is truly a high level shift in thinking that's going on, and it will take quite a while for the general public to really catch on to it.
You are being deliberately misleading. She cut $268 Million out of a $2.7 Billion Capital budget in the same year. http://www.adn.com/legislature/story/415749.html
So, again, your bar for her reining in the growth of government is that she vetoed 10% of the capital budget and basically 0% of the operating budget, with a total government spending increase of 30%?
When a government tries use infrastructure projects for stimulus, to spend this much infrastructure money this fast, with so few necessary projects that have any real chance of getting done quickly, most of it goes to unnecessary projects that can be done quickly. See Japan.
If I had ever seen another executive do better with such a tax windfall, I might have higher standards.
I would suggest Bill Clinton and the GOP Congress did a better job. They substantially reined in government growth while seeing much higher revenues coming in. Getting a 40% tax increase (made this number up) while growing government 30% is fairly easy. You can at least mostly satisfy just about everyone by giving everyone something. Having increased tax revenues while actually having to reduce the usual rate of government growth is far more challenging. Palin's renewable energy thing is great - but it wasn't made possible because she reined in government. It was made possible because they got a massive tax windfall over the last few years (partially in part due to her tax increase).
This is a very good point. I agree with Grizzled that we have an infrastructure problem but is the government going to be able to target funds to the most needed projects and the ones with the most potential return? I think everyone in DC concedes that a lot of money is going to have to be spent by the government to salvage the economy but the real challenge for Obama is how to manage that spending and the track record so far for either party hasn't been good.
A lot of us are behind you on this issue wes. We would love for Palin to be the next Republican nominee for president. Please...
Not me. The Republican Party needs to shuck off the people who have run it into the ground and become a national party again, preferably one based on some realistic ideas about America, the World, and governing.
Let me re-quote something I posted just 1 page back in this thread. Even if only the most critical top half of this work was approved it would lead to over 1.2 million jobs starting up in the next 6 months, and remember that the housing industry is largely dormant now, so there are a lot of people with general construction and worksite experience out of work right now who would be available for these projects. In that time other long term projects could be chosen and orders for materials and equipment could begin to be placed. And don’t forget that working people make their mortgage payments, and perhaps some even buy houses that are currently on the market. They also buy gas, and vehicles, and they eat in restaurants. As long as the projects are ones that needed to be done anyway, and there is no doubt that there are a huge number of projects now that do, then this is nothing but good for the economy, and the country. I don’t mean to keep repeating this, but I think your deep rooted dislike of governments, and by extension democracy itself, prevents you from really internalizing and processing some of these facts. Yes, the Obama administration needs to do a good job of choosing projects and managing this work, but good management is not impossible to do. It is also true that we have just come through 8 years of the worst presidency in the history of the US, but you have to separate that administration from the office itself. Just like in the private sector there are good managers and there are bad managers. The Bush administration was almost unimaginably bad. Correction, never mind the almost, but the Obama administration shows every sign of being very capable and very well motivated. At the very least, if you believe in democracy at all you have to give them a chance.
This is something that gets lost in this at times. Even if the thing doesn't function as an effective stimulus, if the infrastructure has to be built eventually anyway, then doing it in a recession is the ideal time from a cost perspective. The government can get much better prices right now than they would in a boom, both due to less wage pressure and lower prices for the actual materials.
