…Looks like a job for U P engineers…Last nights devastating fire at the freeway bridge complex near Oakland, Ca. now is reported will be out of use for up to 6 months…
What was it…just a month or so ago on the U P trestle…1300’ rebuilt in weeks…!! California highway officials better get in touch with those fellows.
Depends how you do it, down here after the Northridge quake, we lost three key freeway arteries where bridges collapsed. when they put the project out to private contractor bid they used an incentives and penalties clause to motivate the contractor. Incentives, extra cash for every day they finished ahead of time and not over budget, and penalties, hefty payments for every day they were past the due date or overbudget. Guess which they somehow managed to do, yep! ahead of ahead of schedule and on budget, got the bridges replaced in 6 months, not 6 years like Caltrans would take.
Just HOW long has the new Bay Bridge project been going on???
UP has a standard trestle design and had an inventory of parts for the summer maintenance plan to repair the Sacramento bridge. The MacArthur Maze is a very custom piece of work and CalDOT does not have any spare maze parts. Sorry - I don’t think even UP could help this one.
dd
…Perhaps this experience should be a learning curve for future designs…Standardizing designs, etc…Estimate of up to 6 mos…Surely someone can do better than that. We’re discussing several hundred feet at best of bridge replacement. Multiple levels.
Don’t think you want to weld a bunch of flatcar carbodies that high in the air. (CalTrans built a temporary bridge on I-5 with ex-SP flatcars after the 89 World Series Quake that carried traffic for almost a year while they rebuilt a series of quake damaged bridges. No room here either for a similar shoofly.)
6 months?
5 months for the environmental impact study…1 month to rebuild.
All I can say is …
Thank God nobody was hurt.
I don’t have to travel that road!
sitting in traffic [censored] makes my blood boil [censored]
You may have said that in jest, but it is very close to reflecting reality.[banghead]
…Why is replacing a damaged bridge required to have an environmental impact study…Isn’t that why the U P folks were able to get right on the problem…They were just replacing…not creating someting “new”…hence, no impact study required…??
I know exactly where this overpass is, to give you an idea of how BAD traffic was BEFORE all this…
I was up their in November, did some weekday driving in the region,
Driving time: Berkeley to Sacramento: 1 hr 35 min. - 77miles
including stops for toll bridges
Driving time: Berkeley to San Francisco, 2hrs 10min -13 miles
via this freeway and the Bay Bridge: get the picture?
This is going to be a big headache for a loooooong time…
The difference is who is doing it. RR = private money = less oversight. Highway = public money = federal oversight = more hoops to avoid environmental lawsuits and other considerations. State highways are averse to lawsuits, hence they can’t do anything without reviewing it 5 times before construction. Every driver is a potential lawsuit for neglegnece, pain & suffering if a potential problem is overlooked during design and construction. Whereas on the railroad, if the wheels come off, the railroad pays the shipper for lost lading and maybe the consignee gets something for lost production.
…Yea, that makes sense. Understand your thoughts. No wonder somethings take for ever to accomplish.
While standardized designs serve a purpose, they work best in standard areas. For the most part geography and various specific local characteristics require custom engineering for local structures. One size doesn’t fit all geographies.
…When special situations present an engineering challange…Why not engineer a backup plan…Plan B. With an important location such as this having possibilities of being damaged, it should be standard to design replaceable segments to get it up and running again. Not something that will have to go and process through whatever it is that adds {5}, months to try to get it up and going again.
6 months for a location such as this is unacceptable.
More thought needed when design is approved…on how it quickly can be repaired.