News Cut Category Archive: Bridges and roads

Live chat: What's right, what's wrong when biking?

Posted at 1:06 PM on May 14, 2009 by Bob Collins (6 Comments)
Filed under: Bridges and roads, Health, Life, Sports

Today, of course, is Bike to Work Day. If you have any pictures to share, I'd love to pass them along during the chat. Send them to me at bcollins@mpr.org.

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The other bridge

Posted at 12:20 PM on November 25, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: Bridges and roads

A legislative committee was told today that the new completion date for the Wakota Bridge has been moved up a year. The eastbound span of the bridge (it's actually two separate bridges) should open in July 2010.

The massive project began in 2002, and has ballooned by $56 million. It was originally supposed to be finished last year.

The bridge carries I-494 across the Mississippi between Newport and South St. Paul.

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There's nothing more to see here

Posted at 3:22 PM on October 1, 2008 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Bridges and roads

The I-35W bridge "viewing area" is being dismantled. The "sidewalk" on the 10th Avenue Bridge was created shortly after the bridge collapse in August 2007 to accommodate the thousands of people who wanted a look at the site of the tragedy.

Now that the new bridge is built, there's nothing more to see.

According to a city news release:

On Oct. 5, that pedestrian area will be removed and the fourth traffic lane and bicycle lane will be restored. After that time, the only pedestrian access to the bridge will be the sidewalk on the downstream side of the bridge, as it was in the past.

For the next several weeks, drivers on the 10th Avenue Bridge may encounter some temporary lane restrictions as crews carry out additional bridge inspection work. Once that work is finished, full traffic access will be restored.

The 10th Avenue Bridge will close to traffic at 6 a.m. on Sunday through late afternoon.

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Five engineering lessons of the new bridge

Posted at 8:07 AM on October 1, 2008 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Bridges and roads

By way of Ohioan Corrie Bergeron, we're alerted to a little national publicity for our fair state that doesn't involve an anemic baseball offense.

Popular Mechanics is out with a feature story today on the new I-35W bridge.

The story behind the story of this 10-lane, 504-ft bridge is one of the most impressive infrastructure projects of the decade--the complete replacement of a major bridge in little more than a year, months before a deadline that was considered incredibly ambitious. When the team of FIGG Engineering, Flatiron Constructors and Manson Construction won the bid for the project, the date for reopening was set for December 24th of this year. During a visit to the construction site in February, we at Popular Mechanics asked everyone we came across, from taxi drivers to sandwich-shop waiters, whether it seemed like a realistic goal. No one was buying it. Minneapolis winters are too cold for construction, we were told. And why should anyone have faith in U.S. infrastructure when the I-35W had been deemed structurally deficient for years--one of more than 100,000 such bridges scheduled for major overhauls or complete reconstruction?

If only getting righthanded power hitter for the Twins were so easy.

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The bridge reopens

Posted at 7:11 PM on September 17, 2008 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)
Filed under: Bridges and roads

The city of Minneapolis has sent out a list of changes to the city streets now that the I-35W bridge is reopening:

The bridge: Will you change your habits?

Posted at 9:27 AM on September 11, 2008 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Bridges and roads

Minnesota Public Radio's Public Insight Network is a conduit for you to share your expertise and thoughts on news stories before they become news stories.

By way of my colleague, Michael Caputo, here's one story they're working on now:

What happens when you ask Minnesotans to weigh in on an issue like the reopening of the I-35W Bridge? You get some pretty good stories.

For a few years now, Minnesota Public Radio news has gone out to hundreds of you and your neighbors, asking for help to report and understand issues in the news. It's called our Public Insight Network. And, by the good graces of Mr. Collins, we're going to let NewsCut followers in on the questions and some of the early answers.

We're asking a fairly straight-forward series of questions around the opening of the new bridge: How did you use the span before it collapsed... and how might you use it now? We're also trying to find out if alternate routes (or means of travel) during the construction of the new bridge have become permanent.

Add your two cents by clicking here for a short survey.

Some in the Public Insight Network have already weighed in - and it's hardly a surprise that many plan on resuming use of I-35W when the bridge opens. Others who used the bridge before the collapse say they will pass on it now, like a Roseville law professor who will stick to her new bus routine.

Others are uneasy about the span. A Minneapolis man said he'll use the new bridge only after it's been in use for "at least a week to a month." A Minneapolis woman who was a first responder to the tragedy said she's not sure if she'll drive across it. "I cringe each time I see the work trucks on it," she told us.

Then you have your unique views. A commuter by bike and one who prefers strolling to work say they look forward to safer, saner car-less commutes as the new span reduces traffic on other roadways. Then there is a man who said he was initially inconvenienced by the detours... until he started to learn about the Twin Cities during his travels on alternate city roads. "It expanded my personal map of the Twin Cities," he said.

So what's your take? Let us know. Fill out the form and join the conversation in the comments section below.

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Bridge hindsight

Posted at 1:34 PM on September 10, 2008 by Bob Collins (5 Comments)
Filed under: Bridges and roads

The new I-35W bridge opens next week and after a pause to remember the victims of the calamity, and tip a hat or two to the people who built the new bridge in record time, it will be time to look back and ask this question: Did the state really have to throw a boatload of money at the project to get it built so fast?

After the shock of the collapsed bridge subsided, the initial reaction was that losing a major interstate bridge through the heart of the state's largest city would be a nightmare. Traffic would come to a standstill.

There were many heroes in the aftermath of bridge collapse, but some of them have gone unheralded: the engineers and transportation planners who figured out a system that ultimately would make the absence of the bridge an inconvenience to most people. (See the traffic map)

Here were the keys:

Discussion: How to celebrate the new I-35W bridge opening

Posted at 4:24 PM on September 9, 2008 by Bob Collins (13 Comments)
Filed under: Bridges and roads

How do you celebrate the year-long effort to recover from a tragedy?

The new I-35W bridge will reopen Tuesday. Now, how do officials open it? Should midnight roll around and the barriers be removed some evening? Should there be a ceremony of some sort? And how would you celebrate the incredible work of rebuilding the bridge while not minimizing the deaths of 13 people in the collapse of the I-35W structure last August?

And what do we call the new bridge? Should it have a name besides "the 35-W bridge"?

If you favor a ceremony, who would you invite? Assuming the governor is there, do you invite any of the DFL lawmakers who engineered the dismissal of his transportation commissioner over the tragedy? If there's a ribbon to be cut, who cuts it?

Discuss.

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A day at the bridge

Posted at 6:51 PM on August 17, 2008 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Bridges and roads

Attention Twin Cities reporters: Touring the new I35W bridge is not a day at the beach.

MPR's Jess Mador tells the story behind the story of Sen. Amy Klobuchar's tour of the new bridge spanning the Mississippi River today. Apparently the press corps anxious to see the senator's reaction, was not properly informed that sandals and shorts are not the de rigueur attire for such locations.

Long pants and boots or closed-toed shoes are preferred.

"We all showed up improperly dressed," Jess reports. "Most of the guys were in shorts and flip flops and i was in sandals. "There was pandemonium. After some negotiation, klobuchar's aide ended up giving me his shoes. So I wore these ridiculously huge men's shoes, a few sizes too big and looked like a clown. It was funny. he really went above and beyond!"

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Bridge anniversary events

Posted at 3:24 PM on July 15, 2008 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Bridges and roads

Gov. Pawlenty and Mayor Rybak announced the official I-35W bridge anniversary events today:

Interfaith Prayer and Memorial Service
August 1, 2008
11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
Basilica of St. Mary
88 N. 17th Street
Minneapolis

Free parking will be available in the Minneapolis Community and Technical College parking ramp just east of the Basilica.

Outdoor Memorial Ceremony
August 1, 2008
4:30 p.m. - 6:15 p.m.
Gold Medal Park
10th Avenue South and S. 2nd Street South

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The 'other' bridge project

Posted at 4:07 PM on July 7, 2008 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)
Filed under: Bridges and roads

How can anyone not be impressed by the new I-35W bridge? In relatively no time at all, construction crews have created a new bridge where the August 2007 tragedy occurred.

On Saturday the final span of the northbound lane of the new 35W bridge was moved into place. The southbound lane will be completed this week. A MnDOT release today says University Avenue over I-35W will be closed Thursday from 7 p.m. to 6 a.m. Friday while the entrance and exit ramps are paved with concrete. Crews are working 24-hours a day.

The new bridge will cost an estimated $234 million. The construction company has $27 million in incentives to finish the job this year. The rapid pace (See live Webcam) has many "sidewalk superintendents" raising their eyebrows, but officials insist no corners are being cut.

Impressive, indeed.

Downstream? Not so much.

This is the eastbound lane of the "new Wakota bridge," a project that started in 2002 and won't be completed until 2010. It'll take 8 years to completely replace the aging bridge which was knocked down when the eastbound span was finally completed in 2006, four years after construction started. A design error in the new span forced some emergency repairs, a design change, and a new construction bidding process.

While an army of construction workers are scurrying around the I-35W bridge project, this afternoon only a small handful of workers were on the South St. Paul side of the bridge, driving pilings.

The cost of the entire project? When it's done -- if there are no more cost overruns -- it'll run about $300 million -- $66 million and 7 years more than its new cousin upstream.

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Water under the bridge

Posted at 10:17 AM on June 19, 2008 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Bridges and roads

In the political fallout following the collapse of the I-35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis, one of the mainstays of MnDOT's defense strategy was that inspections didn't uncover a problem with gusset plates, partly because the problem was an unknown one involving bridge design rather than condition.

A legislative report a month ago, however, said MnDOT based its bridge decisions on money, the subtext being that since MnDOT was run by Gov. Tim Pawlenty's lieutenant governor, keeping a no-new-taxes pledge was more important than fixing bridges.

Maybe. Maybe not. But documents analyzed by the Winona Daily News don't help the Pawlenty administration much.

According to today's story, the state bridge inspectors knew the Highway 43 bridge over the Mississippi River in Winona had badly rusted gusset plates two years ago. The bridge was closed last month.

In the Interstate Bridge reports inspectors noted missing rivets, rust forcing gussets apart and heavy section loss to corroded plates. Prior to that, MnDOT crews reinforced a single faulty gusset in 2000, according to the reports.

Inspectors "have been noticing corrosion and pack rust on that bridge for awhile," said MnDOT bridge inspector Eric Evens, who evaluated the Winona Bridge in 2006 and wrote one of the reports.

In the article, however, a bridge inspector says gusset plates are looked at differently now than they were before last August.

The leaders who ran MnDOT during its most troubled times are now gone. Lt. Gov. Carol Molnau was deposed as transportation commissioner earlier this year. Her #2, Bob McFarlin, has just submitted his resignation.

Some of the most strident DFLers in the political debate seem to be dismissing the political aspect of the failings of Minnesota bridges, leaving it to the new MnDOT team to determine how many rusty gussets are out there.

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Winona bridge to reopen, but not to bikes or pedestrians

Posted at 1:01 PM on June 12, 2008 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Bridges and roads

One of the frustrations vented by News Cut commentators since the Highway 43 bridge in Winona closed a week ago is: Why can't they keep it open for bicycles?

The bridge, MnDOT announced today, will reopen on Saturday for automobiles, pickups, vans, SUVs and emergency vehicles. But not to bicycles.

During repairs to the gusset plates on the bridge, the sidewalks will be closed.

The ferry service across the Mississippi River will end a week from Friday.

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Winona's bridge closing causing serious problems

Posted at 2:36 PM on June 4, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: Bridges and roads

I spent a fair amount of time last night looking for a picture of the now-closed Highway 43 bridge over the Mississippi River in Winona. I should've done what Chris Steller at Minnesota Monitor did: Search the U.S. Postal Service Web site, because Chris had a memory good enough to recall the release of a "Minnesota" stamp that featured the bridge.

This bridge closing may affect travelers more than others, because the alternatives are so far away -- a half-hour in each direction. That's a big chunk of time and, at $4 a gallon for gasoline, money. But as it turns out, this bridge -- like others -- appears to have been designed improperly and we've been cheating death on a daily basis to cross it.

Today, Winona's mayor suggested it could be 2-3 weeks before it's reopened.

And that might be optimistic. According to the Winona Daily News, officials met with business owners to brief them on the woes today. The bridge will be open to emergency traffic and if the bridge needs significant repairs, it could remain closed for a bit. Officials are looking to open it to pedestrian and bicycle traffic earlier, however.

Tearing the bridge down and building a new one is also an option.

While driving into work today, I thought, "why not start up a ferry service?" But according to a commenter on the Winona Daily News Web site, that idea gets no traction at all:

"Do not try and have a paid shuttle service privately. I heard from a cousin that someone tried to do that and was shut down because of Coast Guard regulations. They are working on trying to get licensed boats for this purpose and I suggested the Julia Bell Swain or the Island Princess from TI. Lets see what happens. "

Still, it's an intriguing idea for an enterprising person and a smart commuter with a spare car. Leave it on one side of the bridge, live on the other, and take a $1-a-ride ferry with Fisherman Joe every morning. It's not as if ferry service doesn't exist elsewhere on the river.

Someone in the newsroom asked today, "why can't the military just put up a barge bridge as they did during World War II," and the most obvious answer is that that solution would close the river to barge navigation.

Coincidentally, the Army Corps of Engineers displayed its bridge-building prowess last month on the Ohio River. But those skills, apparently, would only come in handy if Wisconsin and Minnesota go to war and we need to get tanks across the river in a hurry.

Whatever your idea for a solution is, the city of Winona wants to hear it. It's set up a survey on the city Web site, though at the moment it's clearly leaning toward setting up a bus shuttle.

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The bridge report

Posted at 12:51 PM on May 21, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: Bridges and roads

The firm hired by the Legislature to investigate MnDOT decisions leading to the collapse of the I-35W bridge has released its report.

Here's the full version, although you can build a new bridge in the time it takes to download it.

"Financial considerations, we believe, did play a part in the decision-making" on bridge maintenance, Robert Stein, one of the attorneys, told lawmakers during a briefing. "Sometimes it's easier just to take the least expensive alternative or just commission another study."

Of course, things make more sense with the benefit of hindsight, but financial considerations are a fact of life and balancing those considerations with the possibilities and probabilities resulting from each decision is the hard part.

According to the Associated Press account:

Tom Johnson, another attorney who worked on the report, told legislators the maintenance work wasn't sufficient. The bridge was rated in "serious to poor" condition for 17 consecutive years by the National Bridge Inventory Standards.

Seventeen years is a little different than what MnDOT claims. In its bridge fact sheet, MnDOT reported, "Deficiencies were acknowledged in inspection reports dating back to 1997. Mn/DOT had taken several steps to address these deficiencies. Some cracking in the approach spans was repaired or was being monitored."

So, how long should a state allow a bridge rated in "serious to poor condition" to stand?

It's a good question, given that in Minnesota, 1,097 bridges that are considered structurally deficient, and 3 percent of them are considered in "poor" condition, according to the Office of Legislative Auditor.

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What's next?

Posted at 11:32 AM on May 2, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: Bridges and roads

Lindsay Petterson, whose story I profiled here last month, is happy that the Legislature has finally reached a deal on compensation for victims of the I-35W bridge collapse last August... and maybe a little hesitant about what's next.

She posted on her Caring Bridge Web site today:

I will be curious to see how my emotions play out in the next few months. For so long, I was able to focus on the legislative stuff when I felt hopeless and helpless. At least I could do something to make a difference. I'll just have to wait and see how things play out at least.

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A part of the job

Posted at 7:04 PM on April 9, 2008 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Bridges and roads, Media

Nobody, for the most part, likes to go into a room and be the person nobody wants to see. Newspeople, as far as I know, learn to accept it and we tell ourselves it's part of the job and a small price to pay for preserving truth and democracy and whatever other blather we come up with.

But the real truth? People in my business need to stop rationalizing traumatizing innocent people over some fictitious justification. And they need to figure out a way to do that while still being able to tell people what the heck is going on.

At the conference in Brooklyn Park on Wednesday (see several entries below), public safety and behavioral health professionals analyzed the I-35W bridge tragedy and planned for the next big disaster, considering challenges such as counseling, food, shelter, medicine, rescue equipment, organizing volunteers and cooperation among the dozens of entities that are involved in these sorts of things.

The I-35W bridge disaster brought out the best in these emergency workers of all stripes, especially given the bureaucratic nightmare of it all. "It was a federally-owned bridge, operated and maintained by the state, which fell into a river controlled by the county, and the riverbanks were owned by the city," said conference organizer Jonathan Bundt .

But a common theme emerged among many speakers on the psychological footprint of disaster -- the trauma inflicted by reporters.

Granted public safety folks and journalists have always had an adversarial relationship, and there's usually a good reason for that. But when a bridge falls down, and families are in unimaginable pain, we -- the media -- shouldn't be making it worse.

"The media has got to fill the time," said Bundt, "but every time they'd report something, we'd get inundated by the families and 75 to 80 percent of the time, the information was inaccurate."

Bundt said the real problem last August with the family assistance center he set up, is that it was set up at the Holiday Inn, near the bridge, a site too accessible to the public and reporters.

"All the families had to walk through the lobby to get to the room," Bundt said, invoking an image of a gauntlet of reporters anxious to know what it feels like to think your loved one may be dead. The public has a right to know, one supposes. But doesn't the public already know the answer to that question?

So in addition to the other challenges the behavioral health specialists faced that August night, among the biggest was the psychological trauma inflicted by reporters.

"The news people are never, ever on your side," Rev. Jeffrey Stewart told the attendees on Wednesday, as he described racing the media to be the first to tell a woman that her husband was dead. (See post)

Leesa Dentinger, whose cousin, Christina Sacorafas died in the collapse, told the group that among the best things the family assistance center did, was "keeping the media away from us."

A Minneapolis police official, the group was told, surreptitiously arranged a secret visit to the bridge site for family members, so that they could look over the side of the 10th Street Bridge and not worry about the media. She said he got in trouble for that.

Another person told me a reporter posed as someone who was related to a bridge victim to try to get into the area where the families were.

To be sure, not every journalist was -- or is -- a jerk. Bundt said many gave him their business cards, and he put them on a wall with a sign for the families that if they wanted to talk, they could take their pick. "Some people need to tell their story," he said. It was a remarkably civilized and effective way to get a story, and perhaps it should be part of planning for the next disaster.

Behind the scenes, Bundt was dealing with the "diversity" of the families. Not just ethnic and racial, but rural people who didn't understand the city; and families of divorce coming together in a not-always-pleasant way. "When trauma hits, you can't hold it in," he said, noting that often family members had to get away from other family members.

It's a long-standing dilemma for journalists: how to cover a story and not make it worse. Before leveling the criticism on Wednesday, each person prefaced it with "the media was just doing its job, but...." And perhaps that's the first step journalists can take to prepare for the next disaster: getting it through our heads -- and yours -- that making things worse isn't part of the job.

"I hope you didn't take my comments personally," Rev. Stewart said to me afterwards. I did... but not for the reason he thinks.

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The psychological footprint of a disaster

Posted at 5:32 PM on April 9, 2008 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: Bridges and roads

It's been almost nine months since Lindsay Petterson rode her car from the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis into the water of the Mississippi River. She says people are losing "their understanding nature" and thinking she and other bridge victims "should be over it by now."

She's not over it by a longshot. "It's just begun," she said.

Pettersen told her story today to a conference of public safety and medical professionals, examining the psychological aspect of mass disaster.

Last August 1, she was on her way home from her job in Shoreview, where she worked in a group setting with children with mental health issues. "I heard the most distinct sound like a beam cracking in half, and my world changed forever," she said. "I was in freefall. I don't remember the fall, but I remember thinking 'there's no way I'm going to survive this.'"

Her car sank and filled with water immediately. Somehow, although she doesn't remember how, she broke a window and surfaced, but not before "I changed my thought process to accepting this is how I was going to die."

Pulled to safety by one of the construction workers who rode the bridge to the water, she ended up in the hospital with a fractured vertebrae for five days. Her physical injuries healed; her post-trauma stress has not. Not completely.

"I have a problem being in man-made structures. I walk into elevators and back out," she said. "This roof as I'm speaking is making noises and it's freaking me out. I have nightmares of falling that are as real as it was that day. I fear death. There was a tornado warning in my town, and I was sure it was going to come right down on my apartment building, and I would be the only one to die."

Petterson says she's sometimes angry, but mostly she's sad. "It's the most lonely feeling I've ever had in my life. I know that this sad person is not who I was. I know it's not who I will be. But it's who I am now."

She's unemployed now because she started thinking that maybe, if she made one of the kids mad at work, they'd hurt her. "I worked in a group home and I tried to help the kids but it was at a time when I needed help, too." She says she's hoping for the perfect job to come along.

In the meantime, she wants people to be nicer, and be more understanding about the psychological impact of the disaster. She pointed to comments that are attached to news sites' articles. "There's a lot of mean people who have a lot of mean things to say. It's just not helpful," she said.

She writes occasionally on a section of the Caring Bridge Web site. In her last entry -- last week -- she wrote:

I was also asked to speak on a panel at a conference next week about Disaster Response. I'm very honored that I will be able to share my story, both on that day and since. I think I'm going to go find a nice spot to enjoy the sunshine and do some reading. Thanks for putting up with my griping...

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The bearers of bad news

Posted at 3:25 PM on April 9, 2008 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Bridges and roads, The jobs we do

If there is one job that most people probably don't want, it may well be Rev. Jeffrey Stewart's, the director of the Minneapolis Police Chaplain Corps. His job is to tell people their loved one is dead.

"It's not for everybody," he told me during a break in a conference in Brooklyn Center today, exploring the psychological footprints of disaster. He and chaplain Linda Koelman were the people who broke the bad news to the families of the I-35W bridge collapse, the focus of much of the conference. "One of the things that we look for in chaplains and the type of chaplain that we've been able to get in Minneapolis is people who have a genuine calling for working with people in crisis and who have a belief that because we're there, this terrible situation will be better because we spent the time to talk to them, to make the notification in person, to help put them in touch with the resources they need."

"We see ourselves as the ones that walk the families through the valley of the shadow of death," he said. And after a relative is told of the death, he said notifiers should have nothing to ever do with the family again. "Like a smell that might take you back to your mother's kitchen, we remind people of the death of their loved one and the healing process can't begin. We get hugs sometimes. We get handshakes and then people say 'thank you. I hope I never see you again.'"

Stewart says he doesn't deviate from a standard procedure. "We ask the person if they know someone named (name of deceased), and they'll say something like, 'yes, he's my son.' We never want to notify the wrong person, so we have to establish the identity of who we're talking to. And then I'll say, 'I have some very bad news. Your son is dead.' We don't say how he died and we don't use colloquialisms, and then we let them ask questions."

Stewart and Koelman were a constant presence at the family assistance center for the I-35W collapse. The center closed 10 days after the disaster, but before the last body was recovered. In cases involving mass casualties, he said, "everyone is afraid they'll be the last family there." When the center closed, Stewart and Koelman kept in touch with families of the missing two to three times a day. When the last body was recovered, he was already heading for the home of the victim. "We had a race against the media," he said. "It was a huge sigh of relief for the victim's spouse and we beat the media by 18 minutes. We were happy on the way home."

Listen to the comments of Rev. Jeffrey Stewart