Posted on 03/15/2018 11:32:16 AM PDT by Red Badger
MIAMI (CBSMiami) — Florida International University’s massive new pedestrian bridge collapsed Thursday afternoon in West Miami-Dade.
The bridge, located at 109th Ave and 8th Street, collapsed on a number of cars.
There are reports of numerous people injured in the collapse. At least one person was taken as a trauma alert to the hospital, according to Miami-Dade Fire Rescue.
The 950-ton bridge went up on Saturday. It was then lowered into its final position, just west of 109th Avenue that day.
The main span was built next to Southwest 8th Street.
All that overkill is a good idea in California where bridges have to resist earthquakes. For that Miami bridge I would have designed it with center pillars at the highway median strip. But TPTB wanted something nicer and to make a statement with the FREE “tiger grant” Federal money they got.
https://reason.com/blog/2018/03/15/collapsed-fiu-bridge-was-funded-by-feder
Collapsed FIU Bridge Was Funded by Federal Grant Program Criticized for Shoddy, Politicized Review Process
The TIGER grant program has come under fire for putting politics ahead of technical concerns.
Christian Britschgi|Mar. 15, 2018 5:05 pm
The pedestrian bridge that collapsed at Florida International University’s Miami-Dade campus today, killing several people, was funded with $11.4 million from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Transportation Investments Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) program. The TIGER program has come under repeated fire for awarding money based on politics rather than merit.
Eight vehicles were reportedly crushed when the 174-foot, 950-ton pedestrian bridge, installed Saturday over Southwest Eighth Street in Miami, collapsed this afternoon. The bridge was supposed to demonstrate methods developed by FIU’s Accelerated Bridge Construction University Transportation Center (ABC-UTC), whose work is also funded by U.S. DOT grants.
“This project is an outstanding example of the ABC method,” said Atorod Azizinamini, the center’s director, in a press release on Saturday. “This bridge is the result of great support from our congressional delegation and the U.S. Department of Transportation,” said FIU CFO Kenneth Jessell in the same press release. “FIU and our surrounding community will benefit from this project for generations to come.”
In 2013, the FIU was awarded $11.4 million in TIGER money for its University City Prosperity Project, which included the pedestrian bridge. Some 52 projects were awarded $458 million in that round of TIGER grants—known as TIGER V—using methodology that was later criticized by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) for violating DOT’s own standards.
DOT staff are tasked with evaluating all applications to the TIGER program for how closely they adhere to several “desired long-term transportation outcomes,” including economic competitiveness, state of good repair, livability, environmental sustainability, and safety. Each project is assigned a rating that ranges from acceptable to highly recommended.
In 2014, the GAO released a report that was highly critical of how DOT handled the TIGER V grants, which included money for the FIU pedestrian bridge project. The report said DOT advanced projects with lower technical ratings in lieu of those with higher technical ratings and upgraded the technical rating of 19 projects from acceptable or recommended to highly recommended without documenting a justification. It is unclear from the GAO report whether the FIU bridge project was advanced over more qualified projects or if its technical rating was subsequently upgraded, since the report does not give project-by-project detail.
TIGER, which Reason has covered here, here and here, was created as an economic stimulus measure under President Barack Obama and morphed into a permanent program. It has awarded $5.6 billion in nine rounds of grants since 2009
That is a very good question. Bet someone with juice had a cow about traffic and/or parking. If so, there's probably a comms trail that's being shredded and/or deleted as we type. Or the contractor/s could've promised that this was no biggie and traffic could roll. Hopefully an honest and thorough investigation will sort it all out.
Wow, hadn’t heard of the “TIGER” program before. That description is absolutely sickening, isn’t it? They are playing politics with our federal tax dollars and killing innocent people. Damn, that makes me boiling mad.
“TIGER...was created as an economic stimulus measure under President Barack Obama and morphed into a permanent program. It has awarded $5.6 billion in nine rounds of grants since 2009.”
It was one of O’Bastard’s “stimulus” measures and somehow morphed into a permanent entitlement.
Even MORE boiling mad now!
Security camera footage of walkway collapsing, as reported and shown on Miami Herald web story:
https://twitter.com/OfficialJoelF/status/974477515594059776
>>>Should have left a small jacking system just in the median strip to act as a center pillar until the suspension cables were installed<<<
Shoulda, coulda, woulda, DIDN’T!
I watched it flatten out for the 50th anniversery .
Pretty scary I thought with all those people on it
But you know, this whole splinter thread is really irrelevant.
You all seem to be assuming a woman caused all this.
That is BS, even if her company is culpable. Does not make her automatically culpable.
Sorry, but there have been a few of us women engineering for a while. It’s not simply being a woman that means failure.
Yup, I take umbrage.
Golden-gate was closed to vehicular traffic for the 50th anniversary celebration. So many people crowded onto the bridge that the span sagged seven feet. Wall-to-wall people were a larger load than stalled rush hour traffic.
You mean they expressed sorrow they got caught doing shoddy workmanship!
Same with us, friend. My wife and I get nervous under an overpass, look for a way out if it should collapse. In 1989, one day before the Loma Prieta Quake, we had driven on the same freeway overpass in Oakland that collapsed and squashed cars. The what-if scared the heck out of us, but for one day difference. We try to stop short of overpasses, then scoot through quickly. As you say, extremely remote chance, but it's human nature to think of what could happen.
The lamestream media certainly didn’t waste much (any?) time exposing this waste, fraud and abuse.
My wife heard that on Fox News.
Does that mean she's a wise Latina?
That’s something I don’t even think about in Maryland. Then again, what earthquakes we do get are typically around a 3 or less.
Agreed. This explains why the Obamas never got their law licenses. I took national boards for my vet license followed a few years later with another 8 hour exam board to be certified in veterinary toxicology. Once I passed national boards for my vet license I made damn sure never to let it lapse. Annual CE credits are required to keep it. By comparison, most state boards are far less rigorous.
As it turns out (although I haven't read the specs or the contract) it appears the span was assembled "immediately adjacent" to the erection point with components fabricated offsite "some time ago". That would suggest sufficient cure time; however, if significant concrete was added just prior to erection, somebody may have jumped the gun.
I am beginning to agree with others above that erection itself may have compromised integrity of the span in a way that overwhelmed the post-tensioning. Erection was tricky, but nothing unusual. One would imagine they had multiple lasers attached to this 175'(+-) single-span structure during that erection.
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