Posted on 03/31/2008 7:56:56 AM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
If the British and French can design and build spectacular bridges at a modest or at least reasonable cost, why can’t we? Or maybe we can, but we haven’t tried it lately, at least not in Oregon.
The question comes up because Peter DeFazio, our man in Washington, is chairman of the highways and transit subcommittee in the U.S. House. His committee will write the next highway bill, probably by the end of 2009. And when DeFazio led his colleagues on a fact-finding trip to Europe, he saw the viaduct at Millau.
It’s the most spectacular bridge he has ever seen. At about 2.5 kilometers long, it spans the Tarn valley in the Central Massif, carrying the main road from Paris to the south of France and Barcelona, the A75.
In the summer, when most of the people in Paris sensibly take about a month off, the road to the south used to have terrible traffic jams near the small town of Millau, where some roads come together.
To solve the congestion, The road authorities decided to bridge the valley, from one plateau to the other. They got a celebrated British architect to design the thing. What he designed looks like something out of a dream, hugely tall but so slender as to appear ephemeral.
The tallest of the seven steel and concrete pillars reaches nearly 1,000 feet into the clouds from the valley below. The four-lane deck — two lanes each way — hangs from a series of cable stays, making it the largest cable-stayed bridge in Europe.
More important from the standpoint of highway planners, DeFazio says the bridge was built in three years at a cost of about $700 million.
A report available online says the cost was 400 million euros, which at the time of construction (December 2001 through December 2004) would have been even less than the figure DeFazio was given.
The cost was modest when you consider what we are paying for routine freeway bridges. And it was cheap compared to the astronomical estimate —$4.2 billion — for a new bridge across the Columbia River in Portland.
The viaduct is designed to reassure drivers, who are charged a toll of about $5.60 for a trip across. It is slightly curved to keep drivers from feeling they are floating off into the sky.
A beautiful structure, useful and quickly built at a reasonable cost — let’s see if the highway subcommittee chairman can encourage such a thing here.
If we just imitating their beautiful bridges, I think that’s fine. Here’s a picture of the bridge mentioned: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/179/466149693_4cc446f8d8_o.jpg
Nice! And to think, we can build that in only six years at only twice the cost!
My recommendation:
Build the bridge with 4 to 6 lanes going each way. Charge a $1 each way or $2 toll to go into the City. Restrict the trucking traffic to the right two lanes.
Create two HOV lanes each way that allow the following at no charge:
buses
emergency vehicles
tow trucks
motorcycles
Vehicles with more than one person
Allow the use of transponder tolls for vehicles that are willing to pay $5 to use the HOV lanes with only one person. Establish a bus line to run over the bridge if there is not already one in existence.
Build the two center HOV lanes with enough structural support to retro fit a light rail should the city decide for that option in the future.
HOV lanes and light rail are both rips.
I disagree with the premise of the article. Of course we (there’s that infamous we again) could do this. It is a lack of imagination among the bureaucrats we give the power to make these decisions. Or else it is because the bureaucrats have incentives to make safe, ugly decisions.
(2) The Millau Viaduct was finished overbudget and behind schedule. Partway through construction they revised the budget and the schedule and it came in slightly ahead of the revised schedule.
Europe is not funding a stupid as* war like we are. Funny what you can do with your infrastructure when you have an extra trillion dollars.
I’m curious, what is the difference between a viaduct and a bridge?
Wow, how amazingly beautiful. If you have to have a man-made structure spanning a valley, those are spectacular. Most bridges are terribly ugly.
So the real cost of the viaduct was far higher than the $700M the builder was paid: the builder got an upfront payment of $700M plus toll rights worth several times that amount.
A viaduct is over land. A bridge is over water.
Cheaper. How do we know that?
Actually, our allies are spending plenty of money. Apparently cowardice and math skills don't go hand in hand.
Funny what you can do with your infrastructure when you have an extra trillion dollars.
Our intervention in Iraq has cost nowhere near that number.
No funds that were earmarked for infrastructure were ever diverted for the intervention.
Do you have any other silly Democrat talking points that I can explode?
I agree with you. Let's bring the war on terrorism to our own shores. That way, we'll be able to view the remains of some of our women and children. I like a lot of blood and guts and especially the blood and guts of innocent women and children. /s
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