Francis Scott Key Bridge- Baltimore, destroyed

[kbasa]

Now…..different media outlets are pontificating about how “outdated bridge design” contributed to the the bridge disaster.
Has there ever been a road or road structure that wasn’t outdated by the time it was completed?
Guess they have to print something.
OM

I'd say that 50 years is an adequate amount of time for a chunk of infrastructure to get outdated. IIRC, 93 in Boston was built in the 50s and was outdated by the early 90s. The Bay Bridge in SF was built in the 30s and the quake in 89 revealed its lack of seismic preparation.

I think that in this case, you might note the difference in the protective systems around the lights as compared to the bridge. They were clearly erected later, with different standards for protection from ships. The dolphins around the bridge were made for a time when ships were smaller and the dolphins around the lights were completed more recently, with more robust protection. I think that's just one indication of how design has changed over time to accommodate changes in vessels.

The answer to your question, I think is "no" and I think the larger question should be "at what point does the old stuff need to come down or get modified to current standards because it's not current technology?"

No structure has an infinite lifespan, least of all public infrastructure. We've found out here in California what happens when a power company can't be bothered to check their transmission infrastructure - it's burned big chunks of the state down and rendered thousands without a home. And just to add insult to injury, they're now jacking our rates up to pay for it.

Infrastructure isn't ever going to be permanent, but I think the notion that it's "outdated by the time it's completed" isn't very true.

Turns out the Captain of the ship is a resident of Ukraine. The plot thickens...

Stop it. Conspiracy theories are not helpful. The ship was under control of a harbor pilot and it had a power failure and hit one of the piers holding it up. It's not complicated.

 

[Omega Man]

I'd say that 50 years is an adequate amount of time for a chunk of infrastructure to get outdated. IIRC, 93 in Boston was built in the 50s and was outdated by the early 90s. The Bay Bridge in SF was built in the 30s and the quake in 89 revealed its lack of seismic preparation.

I think that in this case, you might note the difference in the protective systems around the lights as compared to the bridge. They were clearly erected later, with different standards for protection from ships. The dolphins around the bridge were made for a time when ships were smaller and the dolphins around the lights were completed more recently, with more robust protection. I think that's just one indication of how design has changed over time to accommodate changes in vessels.

The answer to your question, I think is "no" and I think the larger question should be "at what point does the old stuff need to come down or get modified to current standards because it's not current technology?"

No structure has an infinite lifespan, least of all public infrastructure. We've found out here in California what happens when a power company can't be bothered to check their transmission infrastructure - it's burned big chunks of the state down and rendered thousands without a home. And just to add insult to injury, they're now jacking our rates up to pay for it.

Infrastructure isn't ever going to be permanent, but I think the notion that it's "outdated by the time it's completed" isn't very true.

“Outdated by the time it’s completed” is what Mass DOT has said.
As far as the bridge being obsolete, I have never heard of one being replaced that was still fully functioning.
OM

 

[kbasa]

I'm sure the channel will be cleared quickly. But it's not like they can go bridge shopping and pick out what they need at a bridge warehouse. These things take years to design and fabricate. I'm sure whatever they eventually go with will be wider and stronger and need completely different supports in the water too.

“Outdated by the time it’s completed” is what Mass DOT has said.
As far as the bridge being obsolete, I have never heard of one being replaced that was still fully functioning.
OM

It happens. The Kosciusko Bridge in NY/NJ is an example. Here in the Bay Area, they replaced the Carquinez Bridge. Both were done for capacity reasons.

Kosciuszko Bridge - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[pglaves]

Have we begun an internet conspiracy thread?
It’s not like Embry Riddle just trained them to steer…….
OM

Mostly just posts 17 and 34.

 

[riderr1150gsadv]

I doubt anyone could have predicted 50 years back that ships these days go up to 500.000 tons and 1200 ft long..... Same with roadways as the population increased, the roads became too small for the volume of vehicles. So replacement and new construction is very much an ongoing thing everywhere.

 

[dduelin]

Turns out the Captain of the ship is a resident of Ukraine. The plot thickens...

I can only guess where you get your "news" after your two comments here.

Regardless of the nationality or residency of the crew the ship was under the control of two local Port of Baltimore harbor pilots.

 

[mneblett]

I doubt anyone could have predicted 50 years back that ships these days go up to 500.000 tons and 1200 ft long..... Same with roadways as the population increased, the roads became too small for the volume of vehicles. So replacement and new construction is very much an ongoing thing everywhere.

While I generally agree, large ship size was not unforeseen -- 50 years ago the first Nimitz-class aircraft carrier under construction was already was nearly 100,000 tons and over 1,000 feet, and 250,000 ton and longer-length oil tankers already existed. But that's not what I see as the issue here.

It has been my experience that my fellow engineers are very committed to designing things to the very best of their ability. But no one can anticipate everything, and nothing engineered by man should ever be expected to be failure-proof.

HOWEVER, people CAN learn from later-observed issues and upgrade a design to be able to handle a later-discovered vulnerability. In this case, only five years after the FSK bridge was built a cargo ship did exactly the same thing to a bay-spanning bridge: the 1980 ship-caused collapse of the Tampa-area Sunshine Skyway bridge.

That was a clarion call, but in 40+ years since then no funding and construction of protection barriers for FSK happened. I can forgive structural failures that occur from later-arising *unanticipated* causes. But here the State of Maryland -- either an agency or the legislature or both -- failed for decades to address this "later-learned" lesson,* despite the risk.** That is inexcusable IMO.

I recognize that all the above is 100% hindsight, but at least preliminarily in my view the State is responsible for this *preventable* disaster.***


* Without more information, we're not in a position to judge in hindsight whether it would have been obvious that a protection scheme was needed at the time of construction. On the other hand, the Sunshine Skyway collapse wasn't the first time a vessel had hit a bridge -- just sayin'.

** Risk = probability x consequences. While the probability of a bridge strike was relatively low, the consequences were potentially catastrophic, i.e., the risk was too high to ignore.

*** Not the vessel impact, but everything that has/will come after -- the deaths during the collapse, the shut down of a vital port (apparently the largest car import port in the U.S.) and the associated port, shipper and customer economic losses, the inevitable large number of layoffs of relatively-low income dockworkers (it takes a lot of drivers to unload/load car carriers and a lot of others to unload/load/send/receive shipping containers, plus the now-idled people at the local businesses that support the port).

 

[mikegalbicka]

I would agree with you that a port of this size and importance should have learned from the disaster down here and taken steps to improve the dolphins so they could protect the bridge from these larger vessels. It was only a matter of time before this tragedy happened again.

 

[Omega Man]

Unfortunately, I find “those” in charge, not interested in doing much proactively. I do see a large helping of waiting for a predicted, possible problem to occur so they can enter the “woah is us” mode.
An easy test of this will be to see if all shipping ports with similar danger to infrastructure are required to now have tugboat assistance until the ship is in clear/open water.
OM

 

[Omega Man]

The Chesapeake 1000 is now on scene-



OM

 

[bigjohnsd]

Unfortunately, I find “those” in charge, not interested in doing much proactively. I do see a large helping of waiting for a predicted, possible problem to occur so they can enter the “woah is us” mode.
An easy test of this will be to see if all shipping ports with similar danger to infrastructure are required to now have tugboat assistance until the ship is in clear/open water.
OM

Define "Clear and Open Water" - Tugboat(s) are not cheap and are in limited supply. Adding a requirement like this will significantly increase transportation costs. It will also significantly increase the requirement for Tugs and Crews. How does a "Risk reward" calculation get applied to this scenario?

 

[bigjohnsd]

Turns out the Captain of the ship is a resident of Ukraine. The plot thickens...

This report turned out to be BS

 

[Omega Man]

Define "Clear and Open Water" - Tugboat(s) are not cheap and are in limited supply. Adding a requirement like this will significantly increase transportation costs. It will also significantly increase the requirement for Tugs and Crews. How does a "Risk reward" calculation get applied to this scenario?

That’s why it’s not being done all along. Nobody wants to pay for the extra safety until there is a problem that it would have solved. I would guess that this is a five or six billion dollar problem- all in.
If it was, or becomes a requirement as a result of this, there will be more tugboats.
OM

 

[kbasa]

I doubt anyone could have predicted 50 years back that ships these days go up to 500.000 tons and 1200 ft long..... Same with roadways as the population increased, the roads became too small for the volume of vehicles. So replacement and new construction is very much an ongoing thing everywhere.

I've lived here in NorCal for 25 years. When we were in Marin, they widened 101 a couple of times. Now, they've moved north into Sonoma County and most of the road has been widened from 2 to 3 lanes with just one section left to complete to make it three lanes all the way. They're most of the way through it and I think we're going to see completion today.

Related: they've been rebuilding many of the smaller bridges here on the secondary roads. Not from seismic activity or anything, but because they're often pretty old and unable to carry the weight of the farm trucks (dairy, grape pressings, hay, you name it) so they're getting updated and/or replaced.

I think your point is spot on. When they designed the Panama Canal, who could have imagined a hundred years ago that we'd have vessels of the size and capacity we do now?

When I was a kid, we had about 200 million people in the country. We're now at 330M and as a result, plenty of our infrastructure just won't meet current usage capacity. That's why we put I93 underground in Boston, added lanes here in the Bay Area and have added capacity around the country to our bridges and highways.

Unfortunately, I find “those” in charge, not interested in doing much proactively. I do see a large helping of waiting for a predicted, possible problem to occur so they can enter the “woah is us” mode.
An easy test of this will be to see if all shipping ports with similar danger to infrastructure are required to now have tugboat assistance until the ship is in clear/open water.
OM

Or, perhaps, we're so focused on not spending any money on anything as a national policy that we have to wait until these kind of tragedies for infrastructure to be taken seriously.

I feel like we have finally begun to rebuild our nation, but we have decades of remediation ahead of us. The Key bridge is just one example of the issues we have. Look at our rail systems. Ohio knows how bad they are. Look at things like bridges falling down in the Twin Cities.

We have to stop living in this country like we're renters and won't invest in where we live. If we want to be competitive on the global stage, we have to begin to view infrastructure not as an expense, as we have since the early 80s and more like an investment in ourselves and the future of our nation.

I may be in the minority, but I view paying taxes as my patriotic duty.

 

[tsconver]

I've lived here in NorCal for 25 years. When we were in Marin, they widened 101 a couple of times. Now, they've moved north into Sonoma County and most of the road has been widened from 2 to 3 lanes with just one section left to complete to make it three lanes all the way. They're most of the way through it and I think we're going to see completion today.

Related: they've been rebuilding many of the smaller bridges here on the secondary roads. Not from seismic activity or anything, but because they're often pretty old and unable to carry the weight of the farm trucks (dairy, grape pressings, hay, you name it) so they're getting updated and/or replaced.

I think your point is spot on. When they designed the Panama Canal, who could have imagined a hundred years ago that we'd have vessels of the size and capacity we do now?

When I was a kid, we had about 200 million people in the country. We're now at 330M and as a result, plenty of our infrastructure just won't meet current usage capacity. That's why we put I93 underground in Boston, added lanes here in the Bay Area and have added capacity around the country to our bridges and highways.

Or, perhaps, we're so focused on not spending any money on anything as a national policy that we have to wait until these kind of tragedies for infrastructure to be taken seriously.

I feel like we have finally begun to rebuild our nation, but we have decades of remediation ahead of us. The Key bridge is just one example of the issues we have. Look at our rail systems. Ohio knows how bad they are. Look at things like bridges falling down in the Twin Cities.

We have to stop living in this country like we're renters and won't invest in where we live. If we want to be competitive on the global stage, we have to begin to view infrastructure not as an expense, as we have since the early 80s and more like an investment in ourselves and the future of our nation.

I may be in the minority, but I view paying taxes as my patriotic duty.

Constitution says nothing about providing infrastructure. It is wasted tax payer money. The states should be the ones doing it and raising the money for it. That would be fiscally reaponsible and probably cheaper in the long run. The feds only know how to waste money.

 

[jandhumphreyme]

That’s why it’s not being done all along. Nobody wants to pay for the extra safety until there is a problem that it would have solved. I would guess that this is a five or six billion dollar problem- all in.
If it was, or becomes a requirement as a result of this, there will be more tugboats.
OM

Your powers of hindsight are impeccable. I would suggest it was not being done because it decided it was not necessary by the very people responsible for harbor safety. These ships are routinely inspected by not only US Coast Guard but also insurers, these types of failures are not common, I and my company have a long history stretching back to the 70's working with MDDot and Maryland Port Authority, they are competent, safety oriented professionals. Catastrophic failures do happen, in engineering we have 100 year events that we design for, the risk being only 1% that they will be equaled or exceeded in any given year, there are trade offs made in every design as well as mistakes, but almost 50 years of no incidentes is a pretty good track record.

 

[classicvw]

Constitution says nothing about providing infrastructure. It is wasted tax payer money. The states should be the ones doing it and raising the money for it. That would be fiscally reaponsible and probably cheaper in the long run. The feds only know how to waste money.

Tell us you’ve never read the Constitution without saying you’ve never read the Constitution.

 

[kbasa]

Constitution says nothing about providing infrastructure. It is wasted tax payer money. The states should be the ones doing it and raising the money for it. That would be fiscally reaponsible and probably cheaper in the long run. The feds only know how to waste money.

We're not going to agree on that and your understanding of the Constitution isn't very complete. Not trying to be insulting, but I think you're way off base here.

Article 1, Section 8 provides the pertinent comments.

 

[tsconver]

Tell us you’ve never read the Constitution without saying you’ve never read the Constitution.

Enlighten me what article says the Feds will provide infrastructure?

Infrastructure is a huge thing and has gone way past "Post Roads" as specified in the constitution.

Again wasting tax payer dollars.

 

[mneblett]

And the inevitable descent into politics has begun ...