Longfellow Bridge update

Matthew's main point was how media will always default to cars when infrastructure gets affected unless that said infrastructure have no cars involved whatsoever.

At the same time, I can see millerm277's complaint that saying "tiny round error" implies a hostility to cars than an irritating observation.

But I think all agree that the awfulness that the bridge is delayed at another friggin 2 years. Come to think about it, the last major rehabilitation in 1959. How long did that took? While their explanation does mean it is not an equivalent, it still kinda gives some feel.
 
The Globe writes about motorists because only the motoring-generation still reads it. TV evening news has the same audience (hence all the old-people-medication ads). (and also obsess over fare evasion instead of service quality/speed)

The cranky old Herald does a better job of including T riders, it seems.
 
Arlington said:
The cranky old Herald does a better job of including T riders, it seems.
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The only plausible explanation for this is that pre-Metro and pre-smartphone, the Herald tabloid format made it the T-riders paper of choice and they have just sort of stuck with that beat?
 
statler said:
The only plausible explanation for this is that pre-Metro and pre-smartphone, the Herald tabloid format made it the T-riders paper of choice and they have just sort of stuck with that beat?
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Herald's always done better as a newspaper stand seller while Globe has always done better on home subscriptions. But that's pretty much industry-standard when talking tabloid format vs. broadsheet format. Either the chosen format sets the audience or the audience sets the chosen format.
 
Isn't it's also plausible that difference is just the article writer? The Herald assign a person commutes with the MBTA meanwhile the Globe writer always drives in from the suburbs?
 
Matthew said:
Someone's gotta pay the state trooper to sit around in his car all day at the base of bridge and occasionally get out to harass a passing bicycle rider.

Oh, and there's the other one who stands next to the Paul Dudley White path where it intersects the bridge and, I dunno, occasionally directs traffic? Probably making a mess.

Come now, Menino and other politicians (I guess this is state level) worked hard to ensure graft for police details would be part of every construction project, from the biggest to the smallest.
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I am still trying to wrap my head around this. In the initial budget they allocated $7.5 million for police costs. Assuming this project was originally supposed to take 3 years to complete (and that's what the budget is based on), that's $2.5 million a year, or over $48,000 a week!
 
It may be a hassle to follow the detour, but the result of the partial closure is fewer cars in Charles Circle. Traffic conditions have improved due to construction.
 
mass88 said:
I am still trying to wrap my head around this. In the initial budget they allocated $7.5 million for police costs. Assuming this project was originally supposed to take 3 years to complete (and that's what the budget is based on), that's $2.5 million a year, or over $48,000 a week!
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Breaking that down further. That breaks down to $215.71 an hour assuming there will be cops detailing for every hour of the week. At that amount per hour, to break the cost down person that sounds "reasonable". I would say somewhere between 6-12 cops ($215.71hr/6 cops=~$47.6/hr per cop - $215.71hr/12 cops=~$23.75)
 
Detail cops get overtime as it isn't generally their regular shift.
 
From what I heard its not the complicated construction procedures but the fact the bridge was in worse shape then they first thought meaning repairs that weren't planned.
 
ant8904 said:
Breaking that down further. That breaks down to $215.71 an hour assuming there will be cops detailing for every hour of the week. At that amount per hour, to break the cost down person that sounds "reasonable". I would say somewhere between 6-12 cops ($215.71hr/6 cops=~$47.6/hr per cop - $215.71hr/12 cops=~$23.75)
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****EDIT****

Did some research. Turns out the rate actually is about $50 / hr.
 
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matredsoxfan said:
From what I heard its not the complicated construction procedures but the fact the bridge was in worse shape then they first thought meaning repairs that weren't planned.
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Yes. And it also sounds like it took them quite a bit of time to figure out how rivets work.

(And that's not mean to be a harsh criticism - this is actually a really interesting case study in what happens when 'working knowledge' retires, even if all the right equipment is still available...that's a big problem lurking in a lot of potentially painful places in our civilization...)
 
CSTH said:
Yes. And it also sounds like it took them quite a bit of time to figure out how rivets work.

(And that's not mean to be a harsh criticism - this is actually a really interesting case study in what happens when 'working knowledge' retires, even if all the right equipment is still available...that's a big problem lurking in a lot of potentially painful places in our civilization...)
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Well, in this case it is also because the bridge repair is meant to be historically accurate reconstruction. That means that some of the skill sets retired a century ago!
 
By the way, let's not forget Ari's work on Longfellow bridge counts: http://amateurplanner.blogspot.com/2013/08/one-chart-shows-change-in-longfellow.html

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Putting the Red Line aside, there's more human-powered traffic crossing the bridge than motor-powered.
 
All you have to do is look down from a Red Line train and see open water through the exposed rebar to get a teaser of how unbelievably bad condition this bridge is in. Now actually set up scaffolding underneath and get into every tight crevice for--in some cases--the first deeply close inspection and inventory of every bolt and length of steel since the last rehab in 1959. Nooks and crannies not even the pigeons can fit in.

Yeah, it's probably going to turn up scary levels of deterioration never anticipated that send chills down a structural engineer's spine. Because it was never physically possible to poke around at every square inch without rehab scaffolding fully erected. Then throw on the historical status and need for historically accurate fabrication of such one-of-a-kind metalwork. Only now you've had to revise up the amount of steel fabrication by X% because this thing is YY% more shot than the most accurate possible pre-construction inventory could've anticipated.


It happens. BU Bridge was no picnic either, and that doesn't even rate on the same complexity scale as the Longfellow. If we want our historic signature bridges to get renewed instead of being replaced by sterile prefab replacements, this is the devil-in-the-details you have to engage. Nobody's being cheated when signing on for this challenge in the first place meant signing on for the risks of unpleasant surprises.
 
They knew it had minimal maintenance since 1959. They knew what kind of abuse the bridge takes. They knew what kind of environment the bridge exists in. They knew the original construction materials and methods. They knew how those material and methods age in specific environments under specific uses. They should have planned for and budgeted for the worst case scenario and revised up from there.
 
There's a difference in preserving the design aesthetic of the bridge using the same methods and techniques employed when the bridge was initially constructed and rebuilding the bridge with modern techniques while preserving the same exact look of the bridge.

There is absolutely no reason that the steel substructure of the bridge could not have been completely replaced in significantly less time than it is currently taking to rebuilt it using rivets. And likewise, we all understand the need and desire to to rebuild the towers with the original granite. Yet, at the same time, there had to be some way that could rebuild said towers using modern techniques with the original granite fabricated into some sort of curtain wall or surround on top of a steel substructure that would have been significantly less expensive to design and erect.
 
I just can't get over the whole "We were shocked, shocked to discover that this steel has rusted!"

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statler said:
They knew it had minimal maintenance since 1959. They knew what kind of abuse the bridge takes. They knew what kind of environment the bridge exists in. They knew the original construction materials and methods. They knew how those material and methods age in specific environments under specific uses. They should have planned for and budgeted for the worst case scenario and revised up from there.
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The capital budgeting process for infrastructure expenditures won't let you take the worst case scenario for a project like this. The budgeting process is all about spreading a fixed sum of monies around to as many pork (and real) projects as possible. Therefore each project needs to be under-scoped to make the money appear to go as far as possible.

Then, when the budget is proven to be seriously underestimated (with work well underway) you can cry poverty and request the extra funds, time, etc., because it has to be completed... The system simply does not reward you for being honest about this up front. We (the people) never want to hear that information. (You can't be serious, how many years?, how many millions? -- no way!...)
 
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