Orphan Road

New photographs suggest that the support plates on Minneapolis' I-35W bridge may have been bending as early as 2003, but the regular inspections missed it. Something to think about after last weekend's routine viaduct maintenance...

The final price tag for the Tacoma Narrows Bridge is $735 million, $114M under budget. The new Evergreen Point bridge will cost almost six times that much. Now, clearly all bridges are not created equal, but surely this disparity warrants further investigation. How did this project go so well?

Certainly one advantage was the design-build contract with Kiewit and Bechtel, which shaved two years off the process and committed the contractors to delivering a new bridge at a fixed cost.

However, the cost doesn't include finance charges. The legislature floated an $800M bond, and we'll be paying that off over the next 23 years -- plus interest -- with tolls. By contrast, a good chunk of the $4.4B cost of the new 520 bridge is the finance charges. If the proposed Lake Washington tolls do bring in the $2B or so that WSDOT expects they will, then the real cost of the 520 bridge is more like $2.4B, if we're comparing apples to apples (or bridges to bridges).

Nonetheless, even with Frank Chopp's last-minute effort to re-do the finance plan (which either saved us money or cost us money, it's not entirely clear to me) the Tacoma Narrows Bridge seems to be a runaway transporation success story in a region with too few of those.

The tragedy in Minneapolis yesterday forces us all to take a moment and evaluate our own infrastructure:

Wooten's concerns aren't too far off base -- in a 2005 study of the nation's infrastructure, the American Society of Civil Engineers found that about 26 percent of Washington's 3,000 bridges are either structurally deficient or obsolete.

And the state has had its share of major bridges collapse.

The old Tacoma Narrows Bridge -- "Galloping Gertie" as it came to be called -- fell into Puget Sound during a 1940 windstorm.

Fifty years later, a section of the Interstate 90 Mercer Island floating bridge sank to the bottom of Lake Washington during stormy weather.

In an effort to prevent more failures from happening here, engineers inspect each of the state's bridges every two years, said Jugesh Kapur, the chief bridge engineer at the state Department of Transportation.

America's infrastructure is showing its age. Most of the highways and bridges we use today were built during the 1950s and 60s. And though most are still in incredibly good shape, many are starting to fall apart. Fortunately, this is all happening at a time in which we as a society are re-evaluating the pre-eminence of the automobile. We can make better choices with this next time 'round.

In 2001, State House Speaker Frank Chopp beat back efforts to privatize new Tacoma Narrows Bridge, as Knute Berger recently recounted in Crosscut. Chop claims that the decision will save us $1.2 billion. Privatizing is in vogue, Berger notes, because it provides a dedicated revenue stream (and an effective monopoly) to the companies that manage the roads.

Today we learn that the $3 bridge toll is going farther than expected, allowing us to make all sorts of road investments in the area, including tow trucks to help with rush-hour breakdowns and state troopers to enforce the tolls and other laws.

Some folks, like Rep. Pat Lantz, are dismayed what they see as too broad a use of the public's money. But it's important to keep in mind, that if we'd privatized the bridge, all that cash would be going to shareholder profits halfway around the world. Instead it's being used right here at the source, to help make the commute easier. Which is what it was intended for.

Current Communications has a fantastic time lapse of the bridge going up. Check it out. One of them reminded me that I'm deathly afraid of hights. But if you ever wanted to know how a suspension bridge goes up, here you are.

The much-feared delays fail to materialize and drivers sail across the new bridge, toll transponders in hand:

“Everything went GREAT!” commuter Jared Pedroza wrote in an e-mail. “Transponder worked GREAT! The new bridge looked GREAT! EVERYTHING WAS GREAT! I look forward to driving to work now! ITS GREAT!”

Not all responses were quite that enthusiastic, but drivers were definitely happy.

Jane Mouatassim, another Peninsula resident, said her commute was so fast it upset her routine.

“I went through so fast,” she said, “I was almost an hour early for work at Fort Lewis.”

Of course, in a few years, people will start to make use of the new capacity and the bridge will get congested again, but for now, enjoy the easy commute!

The US. Department of Transportation has selected a Lake Washington corridor project as semi-finalists for a federal Urban Partnerships grant.

The grant is to help cities mitigate construction through four "T"s: tolling, transit, telecommuting, and technology. But the emphasis of the plan is congestion pricing. Here's a bit more from the WA State Transportation Commission's March meeting minutes (PDF):

Favorable consideration is given if the request is for the ability to toll existing interstate facilities. The partnership is a two-way street with the federal government providing funding assistance and the metropolitan area entering into the partnership must commit to pursuing an aggressive congestion management strategy that includes four elements; tolling, technology, transit and telecommuting. The program asks that that within two to three years the metropolitan area demonstrate a congestion pricing or tolling element on an existing facility that results in measurable congestion reduction. A collective proposal is being put together that will meet the qualifying guidelines

The grant would be available within the next two years. Sounds to me like they're considering congestion pricing on both 520 and I-90, possibly even before the 520 bridge is replaced.

Update: my instincts were right. The Times says $2 tolls could be implemented on the existing bridge within three years.

Excellent.

No more debating about whether it's worthwhile to double back up the hill to pick up Aurora because the Fremont Bridge is down to one lane and it's backed halfway up Fremont Ave.

Speaking of infrastructure upgrades, here's an interesting nugget from today's Times article:

The pipe that broke was installed in 1912, Mickelson said. The oldest pipe in the system was installed in 1898.

He said the break may have been the result of a flaw in the pipe that finally gave way. It's going to be difficult to replace because it's under the bridge and has a bend in it, he said.

John Hutchins, with Harbor Consulting Company, inspected the pipe today and said, "My best guess, it was an old pipe and it just washed out and broke."

WSDOT has a surprisingly well-made construction cam documenting the rebuilding of the Hood Canal Bridge.

Most of these government sites are pretty poorly designed, but this one's got a pretty slick interface. It's fun. Too bad the photos aren't very dramatic. Maybe in a few months...