Railfan & Railroad magazine reports that BNSF Railway is building a new bridge over the Mississippi River at Burlington, IA. Reportedly, the old bridge has been hit by barge traffic ninety two (92)times in the last ten years!!! What are these barge pushers doing? Drinking bilge water from fermented grain? Why do we taxpayers have to subsidize them? What oversight does the silly Army Corps of Engineers (mostly civilians) and the Coast Guard exercise over the fools? Scary business!
I presume you are an experienced barge hand and know that these people are incompetent, or that the USACE or USCG or both are incompetent at administering river navigation.
It’s a narrow channel, long barge tows, fast and unpredictable currents. That is why the bridge is a hazard to navigation.
The taxpayers are not subsidizing the barge operators, they are subsidizing the producers and consumers of grain, petroleum, aggregates, coal, and other commodities that use the Mississippi River system. I have no idea if the U.S. is a net beneficiary or net loser for the subsidy, and it would be complicated to figure that out.
The current project will replace the swing span with a lift span, more than doubling the width of the navigable channel. A future project will replace the approach spans, which are more than 100 years old. The current project is funded under the Truman-Hobbes Act, which uses federal money to remove hazards to navigation. The T-H Act creates the vehicle for funding, but does not commit any funds; the funding typically is a line item for each specific project in a funding bill such as the surface transportation bill.
Build a bridge over a navigable waterway and it will be hit by traffic on the waterway…it is a fact of live.
And as the Sunset Limited derailment at Bayou Cannot proved, barges can hit bridges that span water that is no longer considered commercially navigable.
Even in still water with no wind, handling a ship – or a river tow, which may easily be as long as a Panamax ship – isn’t all that easy. Add in the current and wind, and it becomes very very difficult indeed. The wonder to me has always been that ships and tows don’t hit things more often – not that they hit things now and then.
Downstream a few miles is the BNSF Transcon route (former Santa Fe) bridge at Ft. Madison which has been hit numerous times through the years. It is also a swing span which was the ‘state of the art’ when built in the 1920’s. This bridge also has an upper deck which is for rubber tired vehicles.
The evolvement of barge traffic has increased exponentially since the 1920’s and without the regulatory control which RR’s and other transportations methods have been subjected. The sometimes less than qualified barge operators have little financial ability to compensate RR’s, or the Coast Guard who regulate them, when these accidents occur.
This is just one more example of how our Congress has allowed this disparity to continue because of the $$$ they receive through whatever means is available. Another example which my judgement says we should limit both the Senate and House members to 12 years ol serving, without the ability to switch from one body to the other.
I’ve been lucky enough (?) to have been on the swing span of a drawbridge when a tug was pushing a couple of barges through the relatively narrow channel. Before he was past the bridge, he had to start steering to get into his docking area, and the clearance was pretty tight. I was impressed (if that’s the term for holding on for dear life), but the bridgetender was unruffled.
I wish I could see a picture of what’s planned for the UP’s crossing of the river at Clinton. It’s supposed to be a fixed span, which suggests something pretty high, and I doubt that it would leave a channel narrower than the new BNSF bridge at Burlington. It would almost have to be reminiscent of the bridges below St. Louis, or many of the railroad bridges over the Ohio River.
Swing bridges are especially prone to getting hit since they sit right in the middle of the navigation channel. A lot of bridges also leave little margin for error in that they barely clear the channel. I’ve known of at least three bridges inside the Chicago city limits that got hit, all by salt-water freighters on the Calumet River with tugs fore and aft to help control them.
Complicated? I believe it would be a near imposibility.
And that’s one reason why the government shouldn’t be subsidizing freight transportation be it by barge, railroad, truck, or pack mule. The money spent in this barge user subsidy has to be taken from some other use. If the government can’t even firgure out if they’re helping or hurting with this “taking” by force of law they need to find an alternative, especially when a very good funding alternative is feasible.
Establishing a toll system for commercial navigation on the river system would create a cost-benefit link that would allow evaluation of expenditures. If we ever did have money to waste on projects that could not be evaluated, we certainly don’t have that money to waste now. We need to link costs and benifits and only spend when the benefits are greater than the costs.
Segment the river system, establish the costs of maintaining each segment for commercial navigation, and toll each barge using that segmen
I can’t find it again for the life of me so it may just be my imagination…but I could have sworn there was consideration of building an entirely new span on a new alignment to eliminate the curve entering the yard. I assume it was just an early design option that got eliminated-or was it just someone’s speculation/pipe dream?
A side note: I was on one of the first eastbound California Zephyrs to cross at Burlington last May (?) after it had been closed because a barge got stuck under it (darn! I was hoping to add some detour mileage to the trip.) As we approached the river, I could see a half submerged barge near the east end, on the upstream side. As we passed by, it appeared that the barge was half sunk under the span and there were two towboats right next to the downstream side of the bridge with their engines running full tilt. It almost looked like they were pushing against the bridge (I can’t imagine it open for traffic if that was what was going on)-but it was more up close & personal than I really wanted to be!
Today’s Railway Age news summary says that the new bridge has hit a snag–they can’t reach bedrock in the river where they want to, on account of rocks and steel sheeting that apparently was dumped there eons ago. I hope (and expect) that this is only a temporary setback.