The Interstate 65 bridge across the Ohio River was closed after inspectors found “two cracks in a load-bearing structure of the bridge.” Naturally, this has generated huge traffic jams, as many people in southern Indiana use the bridge to commute to Louisville and the six-lane bridge carries 60,000 to 90,000 vehicles a day.
Flickr photo by Cindy47452.
No doubt this is going to lead to all sorts of shrill demands that Congress hastily pass a transportation bill so that plenty of federal money will flow to fix and replace structures like this. And maybe some of this will be justified; after all, the bridge, and a lot of the rest of the Interstate Highway System, is almost 50 years old.
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Flickr photo by wblo.
Still, there are many bridges that are a lot older than 50 years. Is the problem with this bridge due to poor design? Flawed construction? Inadequate maintenance? Answers to questions like these will help people decide what actions are appropriate. The Antiplanner’s position remains the same: If we really need it, we can pay for it through user fees, not taxes. For highways, that means, whenever possible, tolls, and this bridge provides an excellent opportunity for tolling. The only problem is that the wheels of government probably can’t move fast enough to implement tolling to pay for any costly repairs.
The Antiplanner wrote:
No doubt this is going to lead to all sorts of shrill demands that Congress hastily pass a transportation bill so that plenty of federal money will flow to fix and replace structures like this. And maybe some of this will be justified; after all, the bridge, and a lot of the rest of the Interstate Highway System, is almost 50 years old.
Rather like the failure of the I-35W bridge in Minnesota, I think.
Still, there are many bridges that are a lot older than 50 years.
That’s correct, though many of the bridges built as part of the Interstate system had design lives of about 50 years, and some of them (like the Woodrow Wilson Bridge in Md., Va. and D.C. have been demolished and replaced with new spans).
Is the problem with this bridge due to poor design? Flawed construction? Inadequate maintenance?
Could be any of those – or perhaps a steady stream of overweight trucks (I don’t know how strict weight enforcement is in Indiana and Kentucky).
The Antiplanner’s position remains the same: If we really need it, we can pay for it through user fees, not taxes. For highways, that means, whenever possible, tolls, and this bridge provides an excellent opportunity for tolling.
At one time, the federal motor fuel taxes (and those levied by the states) were in fact highway user fees, though as funds have increasingly been diverted to non-highway projects, starting during the Nixon Administration and even more diversion during the Reagan Administration and in the administrations after Reagan, they have become less like user fees and more like “regular” taxes.
For highways, that means, whenever possible, tolls, and this bridge provides an excellent opportunity for tolling.
Certainly a wide river like the Ohio makes tolling possible, though in my opinion all bridges in a travel market need to be tolled in order for such an approach to work.
Kentucky and Indiana are studying two new crossings of the Ohio River right now (relevant Web sites here and here), and there is apparently some discussion of tolling, though I don’t know if the discussion extends to tolling “old” bridges such as the one that’s currently shut-down.
The only problem is that the wheels of government probably can’t move fast enough to implement tolling to pay for any costly repairs.
It is possible, though apparently not especially easy (Pennsylvania tried twice to get approval to toll all of I-80, and the proposals were rejected by the Bush (43) and Obama Administrations), for states to impose tolls on currently “free” Interstate highways, provided that the tolls are collected to benefit the users of the formerly “free” Interstates. And at least at one point recently, some factions in the Republican Party majority in the U.S. House of Representatives (including Chairman John L. Mica) were very much opposed to tolling any existing Interstate highway lanes.
All these crappy ass bridges put fair ladies to shame. That bridge above does look sorta turn of the century. I’d always imagine that those all steel bridges had more surface area susceptible to rust and cracking where as concrete bridges are practically molded and have less surface area that doesn’t rust. The I-35W Mississippi River bridge was a steel bridge that was replaced by the all concrete Saint Anthony Falls Bridge. The Hoover Dam Bypass (did not replace anything other than the dam’s overpass) is also a composite bridge. How the hell did the Brooklyn Bridge last so long? Isn’t it just brick and mortar. Brooklyn Bridge still stands when many of the bridges built around the same time have vanished into history and been replaced. This is also in spite of the substitution of inferior quality wire in the cabling supplied by the contractor J. Lloyd Haigh—by the time it was discovered, it was too late to replace the cabling. Additional cables were added (the diagonal ones that give it’s spider web appearance).
Ultimately we will eventually replace the entire Interstate and there is a technology to do it cheaply.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dS9fKh2qFQ
Instead of laying roads by laying we will lay our roads the way we put down tile. You can make them in a factory ahead of time and quality test each one to ensure a good concrete batch. Simply cover with asphalt and roads can be built in half the time.
I’m all for true-cost pricing. But the fact is that this country has a large backlog of maintenance projects that we continue to delay funding for. Collecting tolls to fix this particular bridge is great, but what to do in the 10 years it will take to raise the funds?
DS
Dan wrote:
I’m all for true-cost pricing.
Even for rail transit lines?
But the fact is that this country has a large backlog of maintenance projects that we continue to delay funding for.
I strongly agree.
Collecting tolls to fix this particular bridge is great, but what to do in the 10 years it will take to raise the funds?
I suggested above that all of the nearby crossings of the Ohio River would need to be tolled if the decision was made to toll this (currently closed) crossing (and including one, two or maybe three new bridges – one of which is a replacement for an older span). The two entirely new crossings would complete a beltway around greater Louisville.
The nearest crossing (away from Louisville) of the Ohio River upstream is between Madison, Ind. and Milton, Ky. (U.S. 421), a 2-lane bridge about 60 miles distant by road. Downstream, it’s the Matthew E. Welsh Bridge (Ind. 135/Ky. 79) between Mauckport, Ind. and Brandenburg, Ky., about 50 miles away by road.
Answering your question, above, there are financial instruments called toll revenue bonds which can be issued by an entity (public or private) authorized to collect tolls from users of toll crossings and toll roads.
Is there enough traffic to sell bonds to make the needed repairs to this bridge and build new crossings? I don’t know the answer to that, but there are consultants in this world who do that sort of thing for a living.
Even for rail transit lines?
All of it, phased in: water, pollution, energy, waste, transport, logging, all that. It would solve most of our problems, provided information was available and society was equitable.
DS
Well to get it replaced residents on both sides of the river have to embrace Light Rail, Smart Growth Development, Congestion and Land use planning because OBVIOUSLY to many people are driving. Government mandates and the bureaucracy will not react until many people die because of the mismanagement of our gas tax dollars.
Dan; All of it, phased in: water, pollution, energy, waste, transport, logging, all that. It would solve most of our problems, provided information was available and society was equitable.
THWM: Well that’s easier said then done.
Roads are there by default, so already the deck is loaded.
If there was 1 mile of rail line for every 10 miles of road that would be great in it self, but that’s not how it is in America.
Dan wrote:
All of it, phased in: water, pollution, energy, waste, transport, logging, all that. It would solve most of our problems, provided information was available and society was equitable.
Water pollution (runoff) from highways is a problem, though I believe that such problems can be mitigated – we’ll see how Maryland’s ICC does (it has a very extensive and very expensive system of stormwater runoff controls engineered in).
Energy consumption need not pollute, and use of some fuels (including petroleum) pollute a lot less than they once did. But since we are discussing it, pollution from coal-fired electric generating stations is a problem, yet some of the usual suspects keep promoting “clean electric” rail transit projects, even when the electricity to power the trains comes from coal.
Waste of all sorts is a problem, though less of one than some used to think. Most municipal trash can be (and should be) incinerated to generate electric power. Metals (especially aluminum) should be recycled.
Logging is needed in some cases to clear a path for a transportation corridor. Certainly there was extensive harvesting of trees along Maryland’s ICC, but the logs were put to good use in lumber mills or paper mills.
Randall:
Bridges on both roads and railroads are typically inspected once per year. Why wasn’t it caught earlier? Probably because the cracks developed during that one year period. That wouldn’t be atypical of a fatigue problem in steel.
It is expected that over time, the bridge will eventually fall apart due to fatigue of the steel under flexure from the loading received from traffic, especially heavy trucks and buses. That is why such structures eventually need to be replaced or undergo very expensive reconstructions like what was recently done to the Williamsburg and Manhattan bridges in NYC.
Is replacement of the bridge justified? We could expect the cost of such a long and large span to be on the order of $1 billion +/-. With traffic of 75,000 cars per day, a toll of something like $2 per vehicle is needed to amortize the construction cost with interest over a 50 year period. We also need money to run the toll operation and inspect and maintain the bridge. That sounds like a $5 one-way toll to me with a free return. I know that works in places like Maryland and New Jersey, but I don’t know what the reaction of Hoosiers and Kentuckians would be to the sudden imposition of $1500 in annual costs just for crossing the river on a daily commute where the cost was zilch before. I suspect that the politican proposing that would not win the next election given the average annual incomes around Louisville. This isn’t surprising given the propensity of flyover country to whine about taxes while mooching off the productive parts of the country like the northeast, upper midwest, and California with vast quantities of government largesse.
“Bridges on both roads and railroads are typically inspected once per year. Why wasn’t it caught earlier? Probably because the cracks developed during that one year period. That wouldn’t be atypical of a fatigue problem in steel.” – Andrew
Don’t forget that inspections aren’t perfect. IIRC with 35W inspections hadn’t caught the cracks in the gusset plates because they were covered in bird poo. It wasn’t that verbatim but something similar. Bridge inspections are far too human dependent. For high traffic bridges, we need designs from the start that can conduct regular, automated self diagnosis. That of course is a lot easier to say than execute.
CPZ; Water pollution (runoff) from highways is a problem, though I believe that such problems can be mitigated – we’ll see how Maryland’s ICC does (it has a very extensive and very expensive system of stormwater runoff controls engineered in).
THWM: The ICC project screwed up with even making bike paths!
Energy consumption need not pollute, and use of some fuels (including petroleum) pollute a lot less than they once did. But since we are discussing it, pollution from coal-fired electric generating stations is a problem, yet some of the usual suspects keep promoting “clean electric†rail transit projects, even when the electricity to power the trains comes from coal.
THWM: The very same power plants that are powering your computer right now, though electricty is produced from more things than burning coal.