San Francisco-based URS, an engineering consulting firm, said Thursday that in June 2006 it recommended retrofit measures for the bridge that would add redundancy and eliminate the possibility of a particular fracture. It also recommended further detailed inspections and delivered an expanded report to MnDOT in January.

MnDOT spokeswoman Jeanne Aamodt said URS’ recommendations offered three options: install reinforcement plates, perform inspections or do a combination of the two. The agency chose the inspection alternative, she said.

The Cedar Riverside bridge

Just so’s you know. I am from Minneapolis, as some of you may have gathered.

In 1969, just prior to the mining of Haiphong harbor – the construction of THIS very bridge and the accompanying federal housing to which it was INITIALLY to be terminated (HHHumphrey stadium came later) caused street rioting. The rioting erupted when the HUD (Housing and Urban Development) officials came to open the New Town in Cedar Riverside..

The University of Minnesota was the scene of full scale protests during the Vietnam war era.

The lefties started all sorts of community projects, like food coops in the neighborhood and there was a very high profile street scene in Cedar Riverside with lefties and hippies developing. It was highly artistic, much like Haight Asbury.

So the powers that be decided to tear it down. They gave a developer, Heller-Seagal federal funding to develop this “new town”. Lots were displaced, made homeless .. and the promises made to provide tons of cheap housing never fulfilled.

The highway was put in and the original plan for the ORIGINAL bridge scraped, due in large part, to the academics at the U of M business school, a place where the most conservative (federal) economist was teaching.

At the time, Hubert Humphrey, was MOST unpopular with us anti-war critics as Vice President, and we knew he was diverting TONS of development money into Minnesota. He caused the erection of many seniors’ highrises, which we labelled “death towers”, but the getting the residents in them out to vote, ensured that he got what he wanted … votes. Cedar Riverside was a mere scrap thrown into the mix of pork barreling ..

Eventually the artistic nature of Cedar Riverside was lost on the main street (Cedar Avenue) AND the further cheap housing not materialized. Then came the plans for the dome! More money for edifices, but not for people .. so much for the Feds and promises.

The bridge was slapped up quickly and we surmised and quickly, too, it WAS NOT BUILT PROPERLY.

I remember walking under the RR trestle next to it thinking . .. this is going to end badly .. when I saw the garbage on it .. just prior to its opening. It was cheap and scary.

Anyhow, the population of the neighborhood grew VERY UPSET as time came along .. and neighborhoods of NDN people were displaced to the Cedar Riverside New Town project. The arrival of the middle class and the cool wealthy people, who were “going to spend money” there never occured.

PLUS we got wind that these federal highways, I-94 and 35W were SPECIFICALLY put where they were to accommodate federal tanks should the need arise .. remember that this is the days after the Detriot riots and CONgress passed legislation to build these federal highways for “national defense”. DMZs were created around the downtown cores of many cities. All the easier to shoot them .. them RADS and poor people and people of color.

So I am sitting here now wondering — will the media even bring up the street rioting over the bridge and accompanyiing bridge construction? Will they bring up the developers and their greed? and the legacy of the democRATS ..?

Some of MY relatives could have been hurt in that accident, I am not being hard hearted here, folks . only I know certain things about this I doubt I shall ever see being reported …

I see that the Feds are all over the place denying it had anything to do with terrorism. There were terrorists alright… investors who threw up any old thing to make a buck and academics who made excuses for them, and politicos who wanted to stay IN POWER, no matter what us, the public, for god’s sake, told them.

For years I resolutely did NOT cross it .. and I lived on both sides of that bridges from 1967 to 1976 and had plenty of reason to cross the river in subsequent years. Way too scary as I knew that it was slapped up in one right hurry. Lots of other people will remember this, too, I am sure. I laugh when I read these surmises that salt was the destructive force in tearing down a concrete bridge .. I think some will resonate with the comment that flimsy construction efforts FEEL flimsy cuz they are. More laughable are the ascertions made by the internet doomsday wags — US government plants – claiming this was done by ultralow frequency weapons! But some will take that seriously, no matter how often you tell them every real tragedy inflicted will bring out the street prophets and doomsday sellers.

The bridge eventually got the HHH stadium traffic, something for which it carried traffic in and out, but had NOT been designed to hold. Further riverfront development ensured more traffic crossed than had ever been the ORIGINAL intent. We warned them about highly concentrated urban development many, many times over the years. But the price of real e$tate was right, the poor had to be moved and the jobs “created”.

I am going to mention this, too. My family built bridges in Minnesota and so I knew something about the fact it should be done PROPERLY. You can google “mendota bridge” and see what a marvel that was … so much mitigated against the building of this bridge. It is a city and area of BRIDGES. There was no excuse for shoddy construction and what’s more .. Minnesota stopped using Minnesota engineers to plan and construct them!

This is an extreme example of development taking precedence over people, and we, the citizens – mislabled as “commies”, RADICALS!!, NDNs, pot-smoking hippies, POOR people — warned them about possible consequences …

Yes, I wrote hard and long about this bridge and urban development misplans for years and was part of the business community shut out of the planning; we just couldn’t afford the high-rent, newly constructed artistic centers wanted to charge even though we had been Cedar Riverside business tenants. I batted heads with Heller Seagal on many occasions. We ran a movie theatre …

The bridge has been a tragedy since Day One.

I truly hope someone in the media investigates enough to find out how much money Heller Seagal got, how much the bridge contractors received, and digs deeply into the situation, rather than accepting some statements from some more white guys/gals in suits .. this is a REAL investigative story, and work really needs to commence on it. It’s all a matter of PUBLIC record.
And this is why I am so adamant about stopping the Security and Prosperity Agreement: This is a set up for the most profound of all human tragedy, the loss of our children to PROFIT$ made in the (secret) crossroads of miltarist$, politico$ and bu$inezz types ..

historians do take note of who had great ideas and who foiled their implementation.

Maybe, but they sure don’t look at things like Party Platforms which amount to much the same thing in the end.

And who is reading the historians anyway?

It wasn’t after the Tampa Bay disaster (or name any other, including Bay Bridge mishap during the earthquake). It goes down, it gets repaired or replaced (Sunshine Skyway; trendy rather than sensible and elegant East Span for San Francisco). Crumbling infrastructure is a recurrent gripe, but little else. We can’t have this threaten entitlements, for example…

Failed artists are revaluad as the geniuses of the age.
Church fathers threatening early scientists are judged harshly by later generations..

A plan’s worth does not depend on it’s acceptance by political contemporaties..

Clinton ran on an $80 billion infrastructure repair plan

Yes, but that was a four year plan, or $20 billion a year, and how much of that would have gone to augment what was to be spent on transportation already is unclear. (As all things are that are “proposed” but never come to pass.)

You could probably find similar “plans” in every successful AND failed Presidential bid of the last 30+ years.

BTW, I don’t see Shaun’t post as being partisan; in the Dem/Rep sense; it’s anti-war, On this question, I do wory what the war has cost, not just in dollars, but in monopolizing attention and care. I feel that the ordinary people who try to deal wih ordinary lives in our Homeland have become invisible. Certainly invisible are the housing many can’t afford and the health care many can’t afford, much less the roads and bridges they travel on.

What is really crumbling is the fabric of our society. that sense of shared problems and shared solutions.

Oh, and who needs terrorists? Our infrastructure is falling apart around us just fine on its own, thank you.

It sounds trite and a little demeaning to the poor people affected by the bridge collapse, BUT squeaky wheels do get the grease. Bridge safety (and infrastructure in general) is NOW a very squeaky wheel. It is very sad, but very true to say it wasn’t last week.

Give your partisan bent, would you say the bridge collapse was Democratic, Republican or it being Minnesota, possibly Libertarian or Populist?

Right?

Next month if there is an outbreak of bird flu everyone will scream about our not spending $400 billion on that. And the month after that it will be a hurricane or an earthquake or something else again. Yes, every bad thing that ever happens might have been avoided or mitigated by throwing $400 billion at it. But it was NEVER going to happen.

The point is, Federal Aid to highways has more than doubled in the last 10 years. The point is you cannot show that one cent less has been allocated to the FHWA than would have been without Iraq.

If you can ascertain that $40 billion — heck, even $80 billion — is sufficient to deal with the worst of the worst U.S. infrastructure problems, then I will go quietly into the night.

If you can ascertain that not a cent of that $400-plus billion could have been put to other uses, say wratcheting up that FHA federal-to-state matching grant to $80 billion, then I will crawl quietly into the night.