Pittsburgh Bridge Collapse
31st January 2022
The Antiplanner pointedly refrains from saying I Told You So.
Just when the infrastructure issue seemed to be settled for awhile, the failure of the 52-year-old Fern Hollow bridge in Pittsburgh has reawakened it, especially as the collapse took place just a few hours before President Biden was scheduled to speak in Pittsburgh. “I hope it’s a wake-up call to the nation that we need to make these infrastructure investments,” Pennsylvania Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman told local reporters.
No one yet knows why the bridge collapsed, but numerous media reports say that it was rated to be in poor condition. Inspection reports reveal, however, that the part of the bridge in poor condition was its superstructure while its substructure was considered “satisfactory.” Bad substructure may cause a bridge to collapse, but not, generally, bad superstructure. A 2017 inspection concluded that the bridge “meets minimum tolerable limits to be left in place as is.” As a result, the bridge wasn’t scheduled to be repaired or replaced under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
The bridge collapsed between 6 am and 7 am on Friday as it was being crossed by an articulated 60-seat bus. These buses weigh a little more than 20 tons, which should not have been enough to collapse the bridge. The good new is hardly anyone rides transit anymore, so this 56-seat bus was occupied by just two passengers and the driver. Several automobiles were also on the bridge when it collapsed. A few people were hospitalized, but none with life-threatening injuries.
January 31st, 2022 at 06:48
under Bronco Bama we paid trillions of dollars for ‘infrastructure’ and later Obama said, I guess there weren’t really any shovel ready jobs. Where did that money go?
January 31st, 2022 at 07:20
Democrat pockets.