politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
The problem was the boat. It has done this kind of shit before in 2016.
... and the bridge. Evidently there's no safety structure around the support that would have prevented a ship from hitting the bridge.
They thought about installing bumpers but decided it was too expensive. Gotta wonder how the cost compares to replacing the whole fucking bridge.
Remember everything seems obvious in hindsight. I’m sure there’s a significant number of bridges with no bumpers have operated without incident for their lifetimes.
A significant number of bridges that would block a major port if they collapsed? I doubt it.
Pretty sure the HRBT down in Hampton roads could cause such a blockage. We live in a capitalistic society, why spend a dollar to protect for a risk that could only happen once every couple hundred thousand ships tends to be the usual thought process unfortunately.
That's actually exactly why it (and the MMBT and the CBBT) is a bridge tunnel, so that a failure cannot block the port, military base, and shipyards
I always figured parts of it collapsing would still block access due to large debris being in the way
...this is a joke, right? I don't know anything about bridge engineering or shipping, but what kind of bumper could stop a couple-million-pound ship, even if it was unpowered?
Probably a large fender system designed to get the ship to slow down by breaking apart to absorb the energy.
Do you understand HOW BIG it needs to be and how deep the anchoring need to be to do that? It would be more expensive than building the bridge to not have single points of failure
It will be a very big system, but it will be cheaper than building double the piers as you described.
And it is still common today to design bridges with single points of failure today. You just increase the factor of safety for it.
There are methods that doesn't just involve double the piers, and also 5-10x the material is not likely cheaper at all
A pier collapsed which took down a three span bridge. It is really hard to have a bridge standing when you've taken out a pier.
Also, 5 to 10 times the material of the pier doesn't sound right, since you can design the fender system to outright fail as a way to absorb energy.
Every bridge in the SF Bay Area has fenders and the Bay Bridge had a container ship hit the fenders. The bridge was unaffected but the ship had a hole torn in it which led to a huge oil spill (Cosco-Busan oil spill). Repairing the fender itself only took 1 month and $1.5 million. IMO any bridge that ships pass under it needs appropriately sized fenders for those ships.
Now compare the mass of the two ships
The Costco Busan had a gross tonnage of 65,000 tons and The Dali has a gross tonnage of 95,000 tons. The Dali is heavier, but according to Cal trans, the fenders of the Bay Bridge can handle impacts like the one in Baltimore.
Presumably it would mostly redirect any ship, rather than try to just stop it. Or if it’s possibly to build shallows around it, you can use the weight of the ship against it
The fenders on the SF Bay Bridge have successfully prevented damage to the bridge twice so far. Every bridge in the SF Bay Area has fenders to prevent exactly what happened in Baltimore. They work.
Wow, TIL. That's amazing!
It was a 70's bridge built to take collisions from 70's boats of 1/3 the weight.
Bridges can and should be retrofitted as their use and environment change.
Well, that’s also a problem, yes