Hmm. Apparently Tulsa has no clue of the National Highway System legislative activity under Bill Clinton. Permit me to educate you:

"The National Highway System is a network of nationally significant roads approved by Congress as required by the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) of 1991. It includes the Interstate system, the Strategic Highway Network (STRAHNET), and over 100,000 miles of arterial and other roads nationwide. Designation of the original system was completed on November 28, 1995, when President Clinton signed the National Highway System Designation Act of 1995 (Public Law 104-59). Intermodal Connectors were added to the system in 1998 when Congress approved the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21)."

Every frickin' state transportation public information page carries this information, because it has been an important bridge between the end of the formal Federal Interstate Highway construction phase (originally intended to end in 1975, but extended well into the 80s due to the burgeoning populace and marked rate of increase in per capita highway travel in the US) and improved national highway connector routes within cities that address urban congestion problems.

NHS Intermodal Connectors are NHS roads that provide service to major intermodal terminals. Section 101 of the National Highway System Designation Act of 1995 required the Secretary of Transportation to submit NHS Intermodal Connectors to Congress for approval. Congress approved the Intermodal Connectors in 1998 with the passage of the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21).

The Transportation Equity Act requires that seven planning factors be included in regional transportation plans: the plans must: 1. support the economic vitality of the metropolitan planning area;, especially by enabling global competitiveness, productivity and efficiency 2. increase the safety and security for the transportation system for motorized and non-motorized users 3. increase the accessibility and mobility options available to people and for freight 4. protect and enhance the environment promote energy conservation and improve the quality of life, 5. enhance the integration of connectivity of the transportation system, across and between modes, for people and freight, 6. promote efficient system management and operation, 7.emphasize the efficient preservation of existing transportation system.

Factor 4 was expaned by the Safety Accountability Fairness Efficiency Transportation Equity Act (SAFETEA-LU) in 2005 and now reads: "protect and enhance the environment, promote energy conservation, improve the quality of life, and promote consistency between transportation improvements and State and local planned growth and economic development patterns".

TEA-21 authorized Federal surface transportation programs for highway monitoring, safety, and transit for the 6-year period 1998-2003. Because Congress could not agree on funding levels the Act, which had continued past 2003 by means of temporary extensions, was allowed to lapse.

The Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU), which governs United States federal surface transportation spending through 2010, was signed into law by President Bush in Montgomery, Illinois, on August 10, 2005. The $286.4 billion measure contains a host of provisions designed to improve and maintain the transportation infrastructure in the United States, especially the highway and interstate road system.

Here is more the Silver bridge was 39 years old, I-35W 40 years old. Is there a message here.

WOW! Everyone should read this one the Silver bridge I mentioned was in Ohio not Az. It collapsed in 1967 the year I-35W was built. It was a highway 35 bridge crossing the Ohio river. 46 died 9 injured. In the search window type silver bridge collapse read link #1 by Corrosion Doctor.

In the world of politics and business: It's not important until you get the bill, and someone dies.

Duane, That's about the same thing that I posted several days ago, one failure at any one point would cause a chain reaction or domino effect resulting in total collapse. Here is another one to loke at, the Silver bridge I believe it was in Arizona was a chain suspension bridge one chain link failed and the whole span collapsed. Silver was the name of the bridge.

Hey ZIPPY, Democrats fix everything????

Think again, 8 years of BJ Clinton and what did he do for the roads. The only road he worked on was the road from intern village to the oval office.

Tulsa

i meant to write, 'inefficient', but i am sure everyone realized I was not saying that our government is efficient. I don't know anybody who thinks that....

CONgress is to busy earmarking money for pet projects and not worried about silly little bridges.

DLS, it is not a simple calculation of $250K for a monitoring system. That is the cost for each bridge. This bridge that failed was not considered the worst of the bridges out there. There are literally thousands of bridges in the US that are considered in worse shape. You never know for sure which bridge will fail.

On top of this, how certain are we that the monitoring system will catch all failures before they happen? How many bridges have failed due to structural failure in the last 50 years?

It is easy to overreact and throw money at a problem. But even if a system works, it doesn't mean it is cost-effective. We can build cars so that there would almost never be any fatalities from accidents.But the cost would be extremely high and there would likely be other costs such as reduced fuel efficiency, extra maintenance costs, more hassles for the drive and maybe some more discomfort.

One reason our government is so efficient is because our government too often operates in crisis mode. They don't do anything until a crisis happens and then they jump at the nearest solution without thinking and pay a lot of money for a a partial solution at best.

A very simple technology that can be easily employed because states already use it for another purpose - road use fees.

Install vehicle weight monitoring pads with simple computer hardware to record and transmit the information daily to nearby, solar-powered data relay stations. The pads need to be mounted off bridge, a hundred feet or so from the approach ramps (and intersecting onramps, like the ones used at the north end of the I-35W bridge).

These pads provide bridge inspectors with exact information on bridge stress loads and duty cycles. And that can help the State DOTs plan and budget for maintenance repairs and replacement - just like you do for your car or truck.

I think we need to make sure everyone understands that the I-35 Interstate Corridor was expected, back in the late 90s, to carry a significant amount of the truck traffic associated with the NAFTA - estimated to be as high as 35% of the total increase in major north-south interstate commerce corridors. This is the planning document announcement, with information about a "team" that was to evaluate options for mitigating for that load increase in road improvements, creative financing, etc.

http://publications.iowa.gov/archive/00002975/01/i35study.pdf

The document doesn't say jack-squat about the most vulnerable element in that corridor - the aging bridges. So this is a heads up for the NTSB, because its probably a significant but unrecognized factor in the I-35W bridge failure. MN DOT should ante up its data from the nearest truck scales to estimate increases in truck traffic in the last 7 years.



That may have been the straw that broke the camels back.