Free Republic

HOUSTON - The Harris County Toll Road Authority now has an expensive plan to fix design flaws in its billion-dollar replacement of the Ship Channel Bridge. The original structure was finished in 1982. But, with just two lanes in each direction and no shoulder for emergencies, construction on a replacement was started in 2018. HCTRA’s Executive Director Roberto Trevino was hired after flaws were discovered in the design, and he says the danger could have been catastrophic. "It could have collapsed," he says. Trevino says the county wanted the new bridge to be sleek and iconic, resembling the Fred Hartman...

HOUSTON — Harris County Commissioners voted unanimously Tuesday night to change the engineer of record on the Sam Houston Tollway Ship Channel Bridge after a review found one portion that had not yet been built contained a potential design flaw. The Harris County Toll Road Authority hired an independent consultant, COWI North America, Inc., to review the design of the bridge. HCTRA deputy director John Tyler told KHOU 11 in January that COWI found the possible weakness in December 2019. The design comes from FIGG Bridge Engineers, Inc., the same company behind a Florida pedestrian bridge that collapsed in 2018,...

The Harris County Toll Road Authority plans to take a three-week pause in construction on the new Houston Ship Channel Bridge along the Sam Houston Tollway so engineers can agree on a solution to a possible design flaw found nearly 20 months into the project. The $1 billion bridge — the costliest infrastructure project in the county’s history — was designed by the Dallas office of FIGG Bridge Group. The company, based in Florida, came under scrutiny when its Tallahassee office designed a pedestrian bridge that collapsed in February 2018 at Florida International University, killing six. FIGG and its consultants...

HOUSTON – Following 20 months of construction of the new Ship Channel Bridge along the Beltway 8, the county has issued a pause. Harris County Commissioner Adrian Garcia said the decision was made following the discovery of a design flaw with part of the bridge. “I want to make sure that we are doing everything on behalf of public safety to ensure that everything is well,” Garcia said. “This was obviously concerning and alarming for me." John Tyler, the deputy director of engineering with the Harris County Toll Road Authority and in charge of the project, said the flaw was...

The last time the National Transportation Safety Board came down hard on engineering and construction was in 2007. That year, the board delivered reports on the collapse of the I-35 Highway Bridge in Minneapolis that killed 13 people, and on a ceiling collapse in a Boston Central Artery tunnel that killed one motorist. Both involved completed structures. With its final investigation findings, the board also made recommendations for new standards and procedures and quality control. NTSB's report on last year’s Miami bridge collapse at Florida International University in mid-construction, which killed five motorists and one construction worker, has similar recommendations....

A bridge-building disaster should be incomprehensible in today’s technical world. Humans have been building bridges for centuries. The science should be well sorted out by now — and for the most part, it is. But the National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation of the March 2018 collapse of the FIU pedestrian bridge highlighted basic design flaws and a complete lack of oversight by every single party that had responsibility to either identify the design errors or stop work once it was clear that there was a massive internal failure. We all know “what happened” here. But the “why” is more elusive....