The tragic collapse of the bridge and the loss of life leaves me saddened. My heart and sincere sympathies goes out to all those affected. The early reports are that the bridge collapse was due to mechanical failure but official determinations wont be available for many weeks to possibly months and years. Having been a in the bridge construction business and a certified AWS D1.5 qualified inspector many years back, it hits me especially hard. Before my Autodesk life I used to be involved in the most critical of bridge projects with components specified as fracture critical which means that the components failure could cause the complete failure of the structure. Not many companies are certified and do this critical D1.5 fracture critical bridge component work as it takes a great deal of testing, overhead, training, and standards. I got to work on parts of the Golden Gate Bridge for the seismic retrofit of the North and South towers in the nineties, the worlds second largest double leaf bascule in Seattle, and many other large bridges around the United States but none in Minnesota.
I often wonder about the age of our infrastructure in the US as a great deal of our infrastructure like bridges, freeways, and utilities were built over 40 years ago and in need of review, repair, regular maintenance, or rebuilding. The costs are large but consider over 35% of all US bridges are over 50 years old. I worked with an Engineer almost 20 years ago involved in doing bridge reviews and back then many bridges were in poor health due to age and corrosion. I personally think that infrastructure investment should be in the top 5 priorities of state and federal budgets. We are fast at building new stadiums and other large public projects but must not forget about the existing and aging infrastructure.
-Shaan
I don’t think the age of bridge infrastructure in the US is significant. Modern bridges should be able to remain in use for 100+ years with normal maintenance. In Europe, much of the bridge stock is considerably older and again presents few risks where well-maintained. From my perspective (as a UK bridge engineer), I remember being very surprised on a visit to New York about 6 years ago at just how decrepit many of the bridges were, with considerable and obvious concrete deterioration, loss of surface coatings etc. While I’ve no idea whether lack of maintenance contributed to the Minnesota collapse, it did seem to me that maintenance in the US must be under-funded.
Brian,
Thank you for your feedback and opinion. The age of the bridge can be secondary if the maintenance is not kept up and that is very true. Many of the bridges were not designed for the current traffic levels nor maintained to the levels they should have been in my opinion. There are some differences in bridge construction but we have much more traffic, larger vehicles, and not the same focus on maintenance that some countries in Europe has although there are some older bridges in Europe I wondered about when crossing. In some poor countries I have even see the aluminum safety railings stolen by thieves and even some areas the bridge support steel was cut into and stolen for sale as scrap metal.
In the U.S. I could tell stories of bridge inspections and the problem always goes to funding and perhaps a lack of priority. I think that has changed now but it took a tragedy to gather the focus.
Shaan