
FIU had grand plans for 'signature' bridge. But the design had a key mistake - danso
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article212571434.html
======
abraae
> But FIU's bridge was designed to mimic the dramatic look of a cable-stayed
> bridge, where the deck is suspended from cables fanning out from a tall
> mast. In FIGG's design, though, the "cables" — actually metal pipes — were
> mostly just for show. The diagonal, v-shaped struts of the truss did the
> structural work.

I've always found it useful to hone in on anything that is done purely for
aesthetic reasons.

We build a house recently. I really wanted exposed rafters, there was some
complexity around insulation, and the architect responded by proposing some
"faux" rafters. The idea was so revolting that it prompted more examination,
which identified some mistakes. In the end, a simpler, better, cheaper
solution was found that did not have faux elements in it.

~~~
crwalker
Yes! Good thing you pushed back on the architect.

I have a similar design philosophy that honesty is more aesthetically pleasing
than deception.

When designers resort to faux materials and structures, the truth still tends
to peek through, resulting in an 'uncanny valley' of forms. For example: *
Brickwork veneers bend in the wrong spots * Faux beams are placed in the wrong
locations with the wrong joints, announcing that they can't bear a load

There's certainly a place for decorative elements, just not decorative
elements pretending to be something else.

I spent several summers framing houses, so I'm looking forward to an
opportunity to design my own house - and maybe 3D printing it.

~~~
function_seven
The worst example of this are those faux shutters that seem to outnumber real
ones. They're rarely wide enough to actually cover the adjacent window!

[https://imgur.com/a/o9Nxx6c](https://imgur.com/a/o9Nxx6c)

EDIT: Added examples of fake garage door handles and hinges. I'm seeing that a
lot more and don't understand the point.

~~~
seszett
Wow, I had never seen this but that's impressive, I didn't even think this
kind of thing could exist.

------
mannykannot
It is heartrending to realize that they were given one last chance to step
back from the abyss, when cracks appeared, but they pressed on regardless. If
something happens that you don't understand, it's time to halt and reevaluate.

It bugs me that FIGG (one of the contractors) appears to be threatening the
professional licenses of the engineers who helped the Miami Herald's
investigation, by suggesting that doing so was unethical.

~~~
bsder
> It bugs me that FIGG (one of the contractors) appears to be threatening the
> professional licenses of the engineers who helped the Miami Herald's
> investigation, by suggesting that doing so was unethical.

As a licensed Professional Engineer, you have to be quite careful criticizing
other engineers. As long as the engineer signing off met "standard practices",
he is covered and saying that he is not could get you in quite hot water.

In addition, while it is certainly possible that the engineer screwed up, it
is also not impossible that the concrete may have been substandard,
installation instructions may not have been followed, etc.

For example, in the Citibank Tower, the design was incorrect for quartering
winds. However, Bethlehem Steel, the steel supplier, suggested cheaper bolted
connections which made the problem worse.

[http://www.engineersjournal.ie/2015/12/08/citicorp-centre-
to...](http://www.engineersjournal.ie/2015/12/08/citicorp-centre-tower-
failure-averted/)

Engineering failures are often a chain. That's why the NTSB has to be allowed
to do its work.

~~~
abduhl
I'm unaware of any liability that can be picked up through rendering an
opinion on a design. I have participated in forensic engineering / expert
witness cases in geostructural matters. In fact, the opinion of an engineer as
an "expert witness" is often codified in law as retaining no liability. Asking
questions and drawing conclusions is not something that presents any risks
besides you being possibly proven wrong later. If you don't stamp the design
to be constructed, then there is no liability.

I would be very interested in any law or regulation you can find that says
otherwise.

I would also add that most of the involvement of engineers during lawsuits is
to establish exactly what state of practice is in the local area. It would be
hard to do that if all these other engineers didn't have or couldn't give an
opinion.

~~~
3pt14159
I used to be a structural engineer in Canada (EIT, left before getting PENG)
and one of the projects I was involved with was analyzing a collapsed building
to determine fault.

Being an expert witness is completely different than being an engineer talking
to the public. Generally speaking an engineer close to the details of the
project is going to know more than you. If you have concerns, you call up the
engineer and you have a discussion. If he's dismissive you still have the
choice to escalate the matter, but it's usually to someone in the government,
not the public at large. Engineers need to be trusted by the public and
shooting your mouth off about another engineer degrades public trust.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
So basically the code of ethics says you don't get caught arguing and doubting
each other's work in public because it makes all engineers look bad. To me
that sounds like a thin blue line, just not blue.

------
Animats
A real cable-stayed pedestrian bridge, one that's both longer and cheaper, is
in Cupertino, CA, crossing I-280.[1] That was done without major disruption to
I-280 traffic. There were some lane closures and two or three late night
closures for a few hours.

FIU built a fake one that was more expensive than a real one.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Burnett_Bicycle-
Pedestrian...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Burnett_Bicycle-
Pedestrian_Bridge)

------
danso
Saw this story via an @EdwardTufte tweet:

[https://twitter.com/EdwardTufte/status/1007395311541682176](https://twitter.com/EdwardTufte/status/1007395311541682176)

> _A+ This is beautifully executed technical report by the Miami Herald, an
> instant classic of news reporting. Note that this report is a document not a
> deck. The FIU admistration loaded the bridge design down with features._

~~~
ScottBurson
Wow, I thought it seriously needed an editor to take an axe to it. I usually
like long pieces, but this just seemed repetitive.

~~~
jacobolus
The way newspaper articles work, not every reader is expected to read the
whole thing.

They are structured to put critical information up front, so that a reader can
stop whenever they lose interest without missing anything more important than
what they already read, but include additional detail below for those who are
more deeply interested.

This leads to the same main points being repeated several times, which can be
a jarring style for readers who are not used to reading newspapers. Long
magazine articles are typically structured quite differently.

~~~
oftenwrong
It's known as the "inverted pyramid" style:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid_(journalism)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid_\(journalism\))

------
lrn
The Fountainhead Chapter I; Howard Roark to the Dean

\---

"Why do you want me to think that this is great architecture?" He pointed to
the picture of the Parthenon.

"That," said the Dean, "is the Parthenon!"

"So it is."

"I haven't the time to waste on silly questions."

"All right, then." Roark got up, he took a long ruler from the desk, he walked
to the picture. "Shall I tell you what's rotten about it?"

"It’s the Parthenon!" said the Dean.

"Yes, God damn it, the Parthenon."

The ruler struck the glass over the picture.

"Look, " said Roark. "The famous flutings on the the famous columns—what are
they there for? To hide the joints in the wood—when columns were made of wood,
only these aren't, they're marble. The triglyphs, what are they? Wood. Wooden
beams, the way they had to be laid when people began to build wooden shacks.
Your Greeks took marble and they made copies of their wooden structures out of
it, because others had done it that way. Then your masters of the Renaissance
came along and made copies in plaster of copies in marble of copies in wood.
Now here we are, making copies in steel and concrete of copies in plaster of
copies in marble of copies in wood. Why?"

~~~
RcouF1uZ4gsC
Then again the Parthenon has has been around for nearly 2,500 years (finished
in 432 BC), and during that time has been considered by people from all over
the world one of the most beautiful buildings ever built.

What building by modern architects will even be around 500 years from now,
much less revered as an example of beautiful architecture?

~~~
subjectsigma
I can see La Sagrada Familia not only being around, but being celebrated, for
500 years more. It's still under construction and has been for (almost?) 100
years. Google it, the church is absolutely beautiful.

In fitting with the theme of the GP, not only is it structurally sound (to my
knowledge) because of how the pillars are constructed, but it successfully
pays homage to Gothic architecture and the oldest inspiration, Nature, while
also being new and innovative.

~~~
echotango
I agree, it is beautiful. But Ayn Rand would have hated it. That design is
steeped in European and Christian traditions and symbolism. Those things are
all anathema to her ideology.

~~~
paulie_a
But honestly who gives a shit about what Ayn Rand would have thought about it.
She was a nut and her ideology should be aggressively dismissed as simplistic
and quite frankly stupid.

~~~
echotango
I totally agree. I was pointing out that church isn't really modern
architechture as Rand saw it.

------
nkoren
> The FIU bridge was meant to mimic the look of a cable-stayed bridge. But the
> 'cables' were actually steel pipes that didn't play a structural role

I spent 13 years, in various capacities, studying architecture and working as
an architect.

Bullshit like this reminds me why I don't miss it. Vapid pasted-on
"signifiers" that are not merely devoid of sensibility, but aggressively
hostile towards it. Engineers fighting to coerce the pastiche into something
that won't kill people.

If you're not an architect and you're feeling generous -- like, maybe you're
just having your daily dose of Dunning Kruger, and that maybe the architecture
profession is like this for a good reason -- don't bother. It's genuinely as
idiotic as you think.

------
pseingatl
1\. Typical Miami. Form over substance. 2\. They wouldn't have built such an
elaborate bridge if the Federal government wasn't throwing money at them.
Forget the deficit. 3\. It's South Florida. See #1. Follow the money.

------
ebikelaw
The article barely touches on the subject, but the bridge was really
unnecessary, or necessitated only by the nonsensical urban design surrounding
the university. The student housing is not only on the opposite side of a
gigantic road from the campus, but it's further separated by a canal and then
acre after acre of parking. If any attention had been paid, at all, ever, to
the built environment this bridge would not have been needed in the first
place.

~~~
jessaustin
You have to put the acres of parking next to the buildings! Otherwise the
drivers would have to walk!!1!

------
ceejayoz
> "This structure should function as more than just a path for circulation; it
> should be a place to be and a place to be experienced, and the FIU campus
> and its students must be proud of it," the document's introduction reads.
> "It should be a destination in its own right where community members might
> linger, gather, and create an urban social space — a linear park."

This reads a lot like every startup that tries to convince themselves that
their run-of-the-mill CRUD app is "changing the world".

~~~
JohnJamesRambo
“Hey guys let’s go hang out on the bridge over the highway.” It is like a
plaza, but a bridge! Ignore the fumes and deafening roar of traffic.

~~~
PebblesRox
A successful example of this is the I-670 cap bridge in Columbus, OH. The
bridge is lined with buildings so it’s hard to tell you’re even on a bridge.
It has the advantage of being over a sunken highway, so there’s no grade
change to deal with.
[https://www.google.com/search?q=the+cap+at+union+station&lr=...](https://www.google.com/search?q=the+cap+at+union+station&lr=&hl=en&prmd=minv&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwie1aul0NTbAhWszlkKHe1LBj4Q_AUIEigC&biw=1024&bih=653#imgrc=DGkhBEXptBzdmM):

~~~
pseingatl
Or the Rialto.

------
peterwwillis
So many concrete bridges fail for so many reasons, it's kind of crazy that we
keep building them. It's _much_ easier to inspect and repair steel than
concrete, and it fails more gracefully.

Also, I'm not even an engineer and I can tell you that uneven strut design
would give you uneven loading on the span. Christ. Why didn't they just build
a damn cable stayed bridge?! If traffic was a concern, they could have built
it half cantilever, half guyed. No formwork, strong, still visually appealing,
no stupid truss design, and no concrete.

~~~
yardie
It was a cable stayed bridge. The bridge span was just put up. The tower and
the cables were to be installed over the next few weeks. They allowed traffic
under an incomplete bridge because money.

~~~
hrunt
It specifically was NOT a cable-stayed bridge. It was a non-redundant truss
bridge with a tower and faux stays that contributed nothing to the structural
capabilities of the bridge. The arrangement of the truss structure mimiced the
stay angles purely for aesthetics, not for any other reason. The choice to use
a single truss structure rather than a more traditional redundant set of
trusses was due to the desire for a striking design.

Adding the tower or cables would have done nothing to strengthen the bridge.
The engineers in the article suggest that the second shorter section of the
bridge to be built afterwards may have alleviated some of the stresses on the
north truss beam, but the truss itself was unorthodox, so they cannot say
anything for certain.

~~~
tropo
The stays were real. They were needed for hurricanes and large crowds.

The worst case would be a marching parade, on just one side, during a
hurricane.

~~~
gamblor956
No, the article is pretty clear that the stays were fake, and intended solely
to dampen vibrations. They provided no structural support whatsoever.

~~~
burfog
If it is "to dampen vibrations" then obviously it isn't "fake". Vibrations are
serious business; many bridges have collapsed due to vibrations, and many more
(Millennium Bridge for example) have had severe trouble. Humans are
particularly prone to causing vibrations because humans react to bridge
movement in a way that amplifies the movement.

Technical description of the bridge from the engineering firm:

[https://facilities.fiu.edu/projects/BT_904/MCM_FIGG_Proposal...](https://facilities.fiu.edu/projects/BT_904/MCM_FIGG_Proposal_for_FIU_Pedestrian_Bridge_9-30-2015.pdf)

Page 3: "The stay cable pipes increase stiffness for pedestrian loads."

Page 18: "The stays and pylon provide the required structural design to meet
the pedestrian loads for harmonic conditions of natural frequencies"

Page 64: "HORIZONTAL FREQUENCY In the lateral direction, the fundamental
frequency of the pedestrian bridge shall be greater than 1.3 hertz. VERTICAL
FREQUENCY The fundamental frequency in a vertical mode shall be greater than
3.0 hertz to avoid the first harmonic."

Page 65: "The pylon stiffness was designed to provide significant benefit to
the overall stiffness of the structure."

~~~
gamblor956
You're reading from the proposal, which is not the bridge that was built.

The bridge that they built did not use the stays as structural elements, and
any vibration dampening would have been minimal, i.e., a side-effect of
stiffening the bridge rather than the reason for including them.

~~~
burfog
Got an as-built engineering document which contradicts the engineering
proposal document? An article written by a journalist doesn't count.

Unless you can find such a document: the stays were structural elements.

------
WalterBright
"But they suggested that over-reliance on the computer models, a common
pitfall in the profession, may have played into it."

It's very easy to be seduced into assuming a computer model's results are
correct. Computer models of critical bits should always be double-checked by a
separate independent calculation.

For this bridge, a simple analysis of static forces should have been
sufficient for a cross-check, despite the article repeatedly implying this was
a difficult/tricky computation. It is not.

~~~
Mtinie
Static force analysis only works when the materials being modeled are well
known. Titanium dioxide concrete is a novel material—and, from the article’s
text and subsequent research—appears to have a narrow effective range before
integrity issues appear.

~~~
WalterBright
Knowing the strength of materials is pretty darn basic.

~~~
my_username_is_
I would disagree. System failure modes can be quite complex. Yes you may have
a good approximation of a material's Ultimate Tensile Strength through lab
testing (although it isn't a single number and can be affected by a lot of
variables, so it's usually designated as a range). But if your material
yielded in a way that didn't account for, it could affect the loading on a
different member, and trigger an issue with an entirely different part. Real
world systems are more complex than your freshman year Statics assignments

~~~
WalterBright
Actually, I worked for Boeing on gearbox design. So I am fairly aware of
strength of materials and did a lot of such computations. If you're unsure of
the strength, you use the minimum guaranteed value. You don't use materials
for critical pieces for which you don't have any data. That would be
incredible incompetence.

Again, what I am talking about is using statics to determine the minimum
loadings to check against the computer models, which should predict higher
values or they are wrong.

This is not difficult.

------
cagenut
This is a really good article. Amazing how a dozen+ different things combined
to produce the unfortunate result. Perfect case study in there being no such
thing as a singular 'root cause'.

~~~
Shank
I concur on the quality of the article, but I would say it goes further: The
Miami Herald is even suing to get public records requests filled in the
interest of journalism. They’re doing an exceedingly good job at trying to get
answers to tough questions.

~~~
JauntyHatAngle
I am ignorant as to this whole story, but out of interest, why is it a bad
thing to wait for the NTSB report?

Often it is good to wait for an entire report to nail down the facts before
the witch hunt should begin, is there something in this case that means this
isn't the best idea?

~~~
danso
I imagine the Herald doesn't believe that the NTSB (or any authority)
necessarily has the canonical and final word on things, and thus the Herald
sees itself as providing an independent viewpoint/assessment.

One of the undercurrent themes of this story is that, according to the herald,
the construction company and FIU officials are well-connected politically.
Possibly related to this is the fact that the Herald is suing the state for
records related to the bridge [0]. These records were determined to be public
but have so far been withheld from public release.

[0]
[http://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/article212489364.html](http://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/article212489364.html)

~~~
JauntyHatAngle
So the prevailing thought is that the NTSB is delaying the documents to
protect FIU officials, and not to prevent undue influence of the public before
the release of the report?

It certainly doesn't look good from this quoted paragraph...

"Public records made and received by the Department from February 20 until the
bridge collapsed on March 15 obviously were not obtained by the Department
during an investigation because there had been no accident, much less an
investigation into an accident,'' he wrote in a response to the FDOT motion to
dismiss the lawsuit.

"Florida law is clear that if an agency’s record is a public record at the
time it is made or received, then that document does not lose its character as
a public record if the document is later given to an investigative agency in
the course of a subsequently initiated investigation."

Still could be to prevent a public outcry before the facts are in, but that
does seem mighty fishy...

~~~
ajdlinux
> So the prevailing thought is that the NTSB is delaying the documents to
> protect FIU officials, and not to prevent undue influence of the public
> before the release of the report?

I'd suggest that it's not an issue of bad faith regarding the NTSB, but rather
that the NTSB doesn't (and shouldn't!) care about the political fallout from
this, whereas a newspaper very much has an interest in uncovering the
political side of this.

------
matthberg
AvE (a rather vulgar engineer on youtube) did a good review of what he thinks
went wrong, right after it collapsed:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioC61QW7SHQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioC61QW7SHQ)

Not with all of the facts, yet interesting to see the conjecture and reasoning
of trying to figure out what went wrong.

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
> At least one said that if so, it constitutes an avoidable mistake on a
> bridge that should never have been so complicated.

>“This is not a big project," Beck said. "It’s a darn pedestrian bridge.”

There is something to be said about not over-complicating designs, whether it
be in actual construction or in software.

~~~
bsder
Many people said the same thing about the Eiffel Tower ...

~~~
paulie_a
Which was built for the world's fair and was supposed to be torn down after.

------
ams6110
There are some parallels with software. Encryption for example. Don't deviate
from standard implementations unless you really know what you're doing. And
even then, review it and review it again. Preferably by a separate expert.

~~~
otakucode
The parallels do not go very far, unfortunately. When software fails, and
kills people, it is rarely investigated. It's development is rarely
investigated. When that is done, however, the differences widen even further.
There is no degree to which software development can be done incompetently
that criminal negligence charges can succeed. We saw this proven within the
past decade when some of Toyotas cars engaged in "unintended acceleration."
Despite the developers being denied even tools as basic as a bug tracker, and
despite following only 4 out of over 90 'required' or 'suggested' coding
practices advised by the automotive industry, the courts ruled that because no
actual standards exist for software development, the management of the company
could not be held criminally liable for the deaths they caused.

This problem will re-appear. When a bridge collapses, if they found out the
company building it hired the cheapest engineers right out of school, denied
them access to tools or training needed to do their job, kept them removed
from decisions about scheduling, ignored any concerns voiced about needing
more time for proper development and testing, multiple people (the ones who
wear suits) would go to prison and the company would likely be destroyed. If a
few executives were put in prison over shoddily made software rushed to
market, I imagine we would see changes in how software is developed of
monumental proportions. But not until then, apparently. And that day doesn't
seem to be coming soon. Perhaps self-driving cars will herald such a wake-up
call. I know I'm certainly not trusting one until things change drastically.

~~~
carapace
I think part of the problem with software is that it's effectively invisible
to most people. Most of our software would look like Rube Goldberg Machines if
we somehow made it physically manifest, and a lot of the problems would then
be pretty obvious even to the proverbial untrained eye.

~~~
LyndsySimon
> Most of our software would look like Rube Goldberg Machines if we somehow
> made it physically manifest

Now this is an interesting idea. I wonder if one write a static analysis tool
that output a printable 3D model...

~~~
carapace
Hmm! Maybe print out layer: ASM on the bottom, and above it the C code
structures (or whatever language.)

If you included _all_ the software that ran just to service a key press, the
OS, drivers, etc...

Thinking about it, I do believe that would be an ugly machine.

------
oftenwrong
This was to be the location of the bridge:

[https://www.google.com/maps/place/Sweetwater,+FL/@25.7618825...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Sweetwater,+FL/@25.7618825,-80.3745506,171a,35y,111.14h,44.97t/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x88d9bf29221788f3:0x89dc17217f9115ee!8m2!3d25.7634334!4d-80.3731086)

You can see some remnants of the construction on street view.

~~~
burfog
That isn't remnants. That is the bridge being built. The lower portion (deck)
is there, and formwork is being built to create the middle.

The satellite view is slightly newer, with a near-completed span about ready
to be moved into place.

------
darepublic
I think the design of this website also had some mistakes as after a while
scrolling became very laggy.

------
m0llusk
Odd that there is no mention of the analysis on AvE YouTube. The support
structure used was substantially different from the one planned and it was the
post tensioning process that triggered the failure. It is possible that using
the planned supports might have allowed the structure to endure the post
tensioning procedure.

~~~
timpattinson
AvE might work in engineering, but I don't think he's a structural PE.

~~~
m0llusk
What has that got to do with anything? He got input from a range of sources
including claimed structural engineers and correctly identified the point of
failure during postensioning.

------
candiodari
Baffling how this is ... wrong. I mean it's technically correct, but it's also
not. It's like saying the drunk would not have crashed into that building if
he took the turn in a different way. It's true ... but it's hardly the cause
of something going wrong. You're just pointing out something that could have
been done differently.

They did the obvious thing to design the bridge, given that a hangbridge was
requested. They started from a standard hang bridge and then eliminated the
parts above the bridge itself, realizing that if you can just pull the cables
inward the bridge will support itself like a hang bridge would.

But the installable part did not look like a hangbridge, and so the contractor
treated it like a non-hangbridge, that only needs support at the sides.

Then, total idiocy struck. They mismeasured. The support could not actually be
placed where it was planned when the bridge was designed. It needed to move
~2m to the left. And they did that, put the bridge over it, and left.

So let's go over that last part again. They had a bridge that hung from a pole
(the pole was just cut off at a certain point, and a horizontal tension
structure put into it's place. Actually pretty cool. Also: despite the
article's claims, that definitely works). Then the contractors removed the
structure that supported the pole, placing a different support ... at a
different place. So they interrupted the foundation of the bridge, making it
discontinuous.

(in their defense, with 99.9% of bridges you can do that without causing a
problem, which is probably why this mistake was made)

This is like interrupting a building's foundation, and having everything from
the 1st floor up supported by a window. The window has some strength, of
course, to hold itself up, to hold the side wall up, and generally to not be
too easy to destroy, so this will work ... for a short while.

And the of course the predictable thing happens : the bridge breaks in half,
at almost exactly the point where the support SHOULD have been, but wasn't ...
(and let's just ignore that there would have been loud cracking for a double-
digit amount of seconds before the collapse, which clearly was not judged a
good reason for the contractors to stop what they were doing).

Who's at fault ? Well the original mistake is mismeasuring where the support
should have been. I would not place blame on the designer, because he was
working from faulty data. And yes, there were some different designs that
would not have had this problem, but the sponsor explicitly asked for this
design. Then there were a LOT of opportunities to detect this mistake, all of
which were missed. And then there is the fatal decision, made by the
contractors installing the bridge as far as I can tell. Oh we can't place the
support here, let's just move it a bit. What could go wrong ? And they did
move it. Then the bridge showed obvious signs of stress (cracks), right in
front of them. Again, somehow this was missed (despite camera footage showing
some worker pointing it out to some guy that looks important). They ignored
those signs and just left after cleaning things up.

And then ... tiny little shock overloads the weak component (which is the
concrete surrounding that cable/beam thing they show, obviously NOT that cable
itself). And boom.

If you analyze the blame, it seems like somebody really wants the contractor's
decision to just place the bridge on different supports (which, again, is not
a problem with 99.9% of bridges) to be the right call. If you force that
decision to be reasonable, then there's little choice but to blame the design
for not allowing for that. It seems unlikely in the extreme that the design
firm hadn't warned the contractors about this though.

------
scarejunba
Maybe this will put paid to the nonsense people constantly spout about "real
engineering". Turns out doing new things is hard.

But also let's be real, you're not going to cross a 10-lane stroad, bridge or
no bridge and feel like you're in 'a college town'. It was never gonna happen.

------
ndespres
> And in order to pull off the aesthetic, the bridge's designers had to make
> the diagonal supports beneath them a variety of different shapes and sizes.
> That complication may have led the designers to miss a crucial error,
> independent engineers who've examined the bridge's plans believe: One of the
> supports was not strong enough.

They aren't joking about the "variety of different shapes and sizes" for the
diagonal supports. It's really incredibly ugly. In my view any "aesthetics"
gained from the fake cables on the bridge are far outweighed by how goofy the
whole thing looks when viewed from the side. It's really jarring, and I
imagine that it would look rather cobbled together when walking over it.

I also was shocked by the reported "2000 pages of calculations" that 3
different structural engineers signed off on. I have a hard time imagining
that none of these experts might have said at some point, "this is a bad
bridge that should not be built!" even if mathematically it could have
survived magnitude 10 earthquake. Which it clearly couldn't. I'm not an
engineer but it ought to be outside the ethics of an engineer's role in
approving a bridge design that _appears_ to have redundancy (the cable stays
AND the diagonal supports) when the cable stays are merely a foolish aesthetic
choice. Doesn't seem much different than selling a car with an airbag icon on
the steering wheel when no such airbag exists. It's a false claim to
structural integrity.

One final thought- the PURPOSE for this bridge seems ill-conceived in the
first place. Why is the campus divided by a highway to begin with?? But that's
neither here nor there.

~~~
21
> It's a false claim to structural integrity.

That's a weird claim to make. False claim to who? Joe on the street?

~~~
jessaustin
Joe may be as dumb as you assume, but if he sees a truss bridge with one set
of struts he might well wonder how safe that is compared to all the other
truss bridges he has seen. If he sees another truss bridge with only one set
of struts, but with cable stays as well, he might well think that is a safer
bridge than the first. He believed the bridge's implicit claim about cable
stays, which was false.

~~~
21
Well, it was only yesterday that I learned that having a single set of struts
is less stable. I always assumed they were two because they wanted to keep the
middle of the bridge clear for the road.

This was my exact point: as a Joe on the street you just have to assume that
the engineers got it right. A two set strutted bridge can still fail if the
struts are two thin, or not of the right kind of steel/concrete. Do you really
evaluate all buildings when you enter them, especially the modern weird and
unstable looking ones? Have you ever avoided entering a building just because
it has a crazy unstable looking design?

~~~
jessaustin
Maybe my image of this "Joe" upon whom you would look down was a little more
knowledgeable than it should have been... Did you never play with an erector
set as a kid?

~~~
21
My point is that if I know a bit about a subject, I don't fall into the trap
of believing that I can point to "an obvious mistake" which was signed off by
multiple professional people working in that area, especially in an area like
civil engineering where you have criminal liability for "an obvious mistake".

Sure, I would never cross that bridge if I saw those fake stayed cables
damaged after a storm, because again, I am in no position to judge the design
of the bridge, but it is obviously damaged and I must assume that it is
unsafe. Maybe a structural engineer would immediately spot that those stayed
cables are fake and wouldn't worry about cross it. But if the bridge looks
intact, I would just assume that the engineers knew what they were doing.

