Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse

[Not DJSapp]

OK, which maggot is a tunnel engineer ?


Sent from my iPad using TGR Forums

My profession is just building the big nasty difficult civil projects. Tunneling has come across my desk more than once. I will say with absolute certainty that a tunnel will be massively more complex and expensive than a new bridge. Probably a single order of magnitude larger, and 3x longer in duration.

See also NY 4th st subway, the big dig, Bertha SR 99 in Seattle, BART to Downtown San Jose, SF Muni central subway, Caldacot 4th bore (this one went mostly ok)

Sent from my Pixel 6 Pro using Tapatalk

[Hood26]

I have fond memories of sitting on the patio of the Veritable Quandry on sunny summer afternoons just watching the massive container ships slowly amble down the Willamette.

VQ is gone and so too are most the ships. Swan Is is about as far up as they come now and even so they aren’t as big as they once were.

Much of the industrial river areas are being developed for residential.

However, Terminal 6 of the Port of Portland on the Columbia is starting to see larger and larger ships. Also, pretty big grain ships are docking there too and they have to go under the Interstate Bridge, but even if that one were to fall into the river the feds aren’t going to help fix it; only 20years of begging from OR and WA. On that note 1,500 bridges in Oregon reached the end of their good years in 2020. Other than the Abernathy (I205 over Willamette) getting earthquake ready, I haven’t seen much real bridgework.

Fleet Week sees the most bridge lifts now and I feel good that the US Navy isn’t going to take any of them out.

Drifting like the FS with no lights, I am thinking about this again in relation to how that ship was even allowed on the water and about the sad state of our nations infrastructure.



Funny how a guy can make so much from this nation’s infrastructure and yet have to pay so fucking little. Even the robber barrens had to fork over more.

[BCMtnHound]

Bezos will be dead before the effects of his greed will impact his standard of living. What’s his incentive to change?

[skibrd]

So you boat guys maybe able to help me with this. From what I understand this boat had previously hit a bridge. It had previously had power troubles. Isn't there some sort of international sea-worthyness commission that oversees these big ass ships running around going underneath bridges that cars and trucks (and poor innocent pot hole fillers) are on top of.

First, on the tax thing, it’s cheaper to buy politicians than pay taxes, that’s why the system will never change for the top .0001%. My ex’s parents were up there and it was really interesting to see how they legally dodged taxes. They had one of “those” houses in JH yet her and her parents combined declared some tiny amount of income, still way more then I made haha. Good accounts, lawyers, and lobbyists are way cheaper than paying taxes, and you better bet the Uber rich all chip in to pay the same lobbyists.

Back to ships, garyfromtarrace, the UN has a branch called the IMO, International Maritime Organization. They over see and sets regulations for the standards ships need to be built and maintained to. From it’s a big murkey. Each maritime country has classification societies that manage and inspect, these are rarely “official” government organizations, but instead organizations that are certified by the government to manage classification of vessels. Government organizations, like the USCG also inspect vessels, but the classification societies will verify maintenance was done correctly then report to the government bodies the vessels were maintained correctly. In this case the classification society and the USCG should have been notified by the vessel as soon as power/generator issues became a vessel safety issues, if they hit a previous bridge, or a dock, or possibly lost power during a transit.

There are lots of rumors coming from the longshoreman in Baltimore about power issues keeping the reefer containers, which are HUGE money, cold during the load and unload. There are also rumors of power issues going back a year plus. If this is true, and the captain and chief engineer hid those vessel issues from the vessels classification society and government inspectors, then lied to every single pilot since they started having issues. It’s each ship’s responsibility to report casualties to equipment to be inspected. So yes there is government oversight, but the ships need to report issues to be inspected.

The issue the industry keeps running into is commercial pressure from the office to move cargo and not have delays. If you talk to the “office” they will say safety of the ship, crew, and cargo is most important, but if captains report too many issues, they seem to not have jobs next contact. Everyone one of us out here is under pressure to keep moving cargo, start moving cargo, continue moving cargo, and the office is very good about asking questions putting us in a tough spot to make decisions and if something goes wrong staying out of trouble then blaming the Mariner. The foreign unions a lot of these mariners are members of are glorified job/work boards where the union just replaces mariners if the company doesn’t like them. The US unions have backbones and back their sailors so more issues get reported.

If you want a case study look at the El Faro disaster. The captain felt pressure to leave the dock, but all the emails, texts, and phone calls the NTSB found protected the office employees. A lot of the employees in the office lost their jobs after that accident, and landed at other shipping companies pulling the same shit again.

I hope that helps?


Sent from my iPhone using TGR Forums

[skibrd]

That may not make sense it’s been a busy day at work and I got interrupted 5 times typing it out


Sent from my iPhone using TGR Forums

[garyfromterrace]

That may not make sense it’s been a busy day at work and I got interrupted 5 times typing it out


Sent from my iPhone using TGR Forums

Thanks so much for taking the time to explain skibrd. Made sense.

[Hood26]

Yeah. Nice write up Skibrd. Thanks!

[riser4]

VQ is gone and so too are most the ships. Swan Is is about as far up as they come now and even so they aren’t as big as they once were.

Much of the industrial river areas are being developed for residential.

However, Terminal 6 of the Port of Portland on the Columbia is starting to see larger and larger ships. Also, pretty big grain ships are docking there too and they have to go under the Interstate Bridge, but even if that one were to fall into the river the feds aren’t going to help fix it; only 20years of begging from OR and WA. On that note 1,500 bridges in Oregon reached the end of their good years in 2020. Other than the Abernathy (I205 over Willamette) getting earthquake ready, I haven’t seen much real bridgework.

Fleet Week sees the most bridge lifts now and I feel good that the US Navy isn’t going to take any of them out.

Drifting like the FS with no lights, I am thinking about this again in relation to how that ship was even allowed on the water and about the sad state of our nations infrastructure.



Funny how a guy can make so much from this nation’s infrastructure and yet have to pay so fucking little. Even the robber barrens had to fork over more.

Ooh, you just illustrated the number one issue I have with the ultra ultra rich not paying enough in taxes. Bunch of takers. Totally unwilling pay for the infrastructure that creates a functioning society and economy from which they extract their wealth. Nevermind all the other stuff they don't want to pay for. Income tax is the best way to get them to pay their share because use taxes are just passed onto the consumer. Which keeps use taxes from being high enough to cover infrastructure.

[CHAIR_97]

My profession is just building the big nasty difficult civil projects. Tunneling has come across my desk more than once. I will say with absolute certainty that a tunnel will be massively more complex and expensive than a new bridge. Probably a single order of magnitude larger, and 3x longer in duration.

See also NY 4th st subway, the big dig, Bertha SR 99 in Seattle, BART to Downtown San Jose, SF Muni central subway, Caldacot 4th bore (this one went mostly ok)

Sent from my Pixel 6 Pro using Tapatalk

But yet most of the NY subway was built in 4 years for 35 million $ in 1900s



Sent from my SM-S916U using Tapatalk

[jackattack]

But yet most of the NY subway was built in 4 years for 35 million $ in 1900s



Sent from my SM-S916U using Tapatalk

How many lives and limbs were lost?

Worker safety has improved a lot in 125 years but it does have a cost.

[Cisco Kid]

Total apples to elephants comparison. One tunnel is not like the other. The Erie Canal was hand dug and it cost 1500+ lives.

[Conundrum]

People seemed to be cheaper back then.

[Flounder]

People seemed to be cheaper back then.

Don’t worry. States are rolling back worker protections. Texas eliminated the requirements for a water break and Florida is making it legal to work children for longer hours. Soon our corporate overlords will be able to work us to death more easily.

[Conundrum]

And tunnels will be cheaper. There's a bigger picture here.

[jackattack]

Make Lives Cheap Again

[NW_SKIER]

How many lives and limbs were lost?

Worker safety has improved a lot in 125 years but it does have a cost.

The secret to speedy construction is OSHA violations.

[Not DJSapp]

The secret to speedy construction is OSHA violations.

Not even remotely close.

The reality of why construction is so slow these days is government. Too much CYA. No person will ever say yes, or that's ok without going through a 3 month review. If you try to provide a material that is slightly different because what the designer specified doesn't exist in the market, nobody can say yes.

They don't want to put their pensions at risk by making a decision and possibly being wrong about it. If a decision is made that could be seen as anything less than the best value for the public, they are fired and possibly imprisoned. So they make no decisions. And projects get delayed and run wildly over budget because of this.

Tunneling isn't the 7 dwarves with pickaxes anymore. It's an operated multimillion dollar computer controlled machine run by highly skilled operators. When something stops that machine (like an unknown well casing in the case of Bertha), the delay costs are in the range of tens of thousands per day. And then it takes 6 months to make a decision.

Sent from my Pixel 6 Pro using Tapatalk

[NW_SKIER]

It's a joke, guy.

[fomofo]

Can't believe Elon hasn't entered the chat yet.

[Not DJSapp]

It's a joke, guy.

Sorry, the sarcasm detector must need a tune up.

There are a lot of people in the world who do actually hold that opinion.

Sent from my Pixel 6 Pro using Tapatalk

[Thesystemsplit]

Can't believe Elon hasn't entered the chat yet.

was about to say the same... he did the vegas one lickety split

[CHAIR_97]

How many lives and limbs were lost?

Worker safety has improved a lot in 125 years but it does have a cost.

3 dead 125 injured

Sent from my SM-S916U using Tapatalk

[east or bust]

When I graduated in 2016 my boss had been the field engineer on the drill machine for the Queens Bored Tunnels & Structures project. He had some amazing stories. IIRC that was a home run job for us (by margin). Whether that was because everything went right or we cashed in on change orders I don't know. Probably a bit of both if I had to guess.

For some insight into current tunneling costs check out NY's gateway tunnel project... $16.1B... Definitely cheaper to build a bridge.

[fomofo]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transbay_Tube

[Cisco Kid]

3 dead 125 injured

Sent from my SM-S916U using Tapatalk

16 died in one 6 mile section. But they were Irish.