Another bad bridge and a few other sights
Posted on June 5th, 2008 – 6:05 AMBy Roadguy
Four quick things I learned on my Wednesday road trip to Winona:
1) The Giant Eraser has visited Rochester:
2) Greenery sometimes wanders the streets of Winona:
3) Winona’s City Hall has some very nice framed pictures of the now-troubled bridge when it was being built:
4) The bridge is still strong enough to support a portable toilet:
(And if you didn’t see the story I contributed to, it’s here — yes, ferries in Winona.)
15 Responses to "Another bad bridge and a few other sights"
It’s a shame that they didn’t even give a 24-hour notice to the residents so that they could prepare. I feel for the cyclist, but he’s trapped on the MN side, so it can’t be all bad.
Ferries. Now that’s some transportation that we don’t get to talk about in these parts. 
I’m sure the Winonans are simply attempting to put a plan together as best they can. I hope other cities will look at their results over the next few weeks/months so they can have “plans of action” if their bridge should suddenly not be available.
This bridge debacle has reached scandlous proportions.
Never get yourself in a situation where there is only one way from home to work.
When I lived in Virgina, a barge took out a section of the Chesapeake Bay bridge-tunnel. Some people were faced with a 200 mile commute! Took months and months to repair.
How MnDot manages to screw up so simple in such a magnificent way is a true testament to their incompetence.
I would say that such baffoonery would withstand the test of time, but, alas, MnDot will open for another business day tomorrow.
Funny how the current Governor can authorize spending hundreds of thousands on public relations for the 35W bridge reconstruction, but fails miserably at letting the people of Winona know that their bridge is shut down without any warning………
Might be a good time for Matty to invent the pontoon bike!
Seriously, I think it’s a complete knee-jerk reaction not to allow pedestrians, bikes, and even limited auto traffic (at slower speeds).
Why doesn’t the Strib investigate MnDot? This situation has grown bigger than arguing about taxes. The people at MnDot have really neglected to do a proper job.
I can see Matty now: Furiously working to perfect his mountain/pontoon bike. They will sell like hotcakes in Winona.
It seems like a knee-jerk reaction that they won’t allow pedestrians, bikes, or even limited auto traffic (say at 20 mph).
well yall i think they’re doing this to be safe than sorry…id say they learned from their mistake. They are not takin any chances…However when was the last time they inspected this bridge? wonder if the problem should have been detected then, and maybe inspections should be done more frequently.
sorry double post, but lol… Want some truck with those branches…you wouldnt believe how many extremely OVERloaded 4wheelers i see out there (4wheeler is what we call cars/pickups/etc)
Joel:
I don’t think it was inspected too long ago (around 2000 is what I read), but the problem is that gusset plates are not part of the usual inspections. It’s supposed to be Engineering 101 to overdesign your links and let the load-bearing members be the “weak” point. This serves several purposes, including the fact that it’s cheaper to beef those up, and the beams are more likely to fail “plastically” rather than “fracture.” As the load approaches the failure limit, you will see some minimal bending that is not obvious to a naked eye, but obvious with laser tools and such. That is part of what they look for in typical inspections.
It’s much harder to detect problems in gusset plates or their equivalent force transferring mechanism and you have less time to find a problem. It’s also far rarer (except in the case of MnDOT apparently) to have them be the weak point, so they are typically overlooked.
Hey, DGB, thanks for the suggestion and including all forms of transport. But, there was a previous Roadguy entry about a bridge in Minneapolis being closed because it could fail even with nothing on it.
Yah, the pedal-powered boats might be a really good idea. They got ‘em at beaches and vacation spots, but a fleet of them in Winona might work!
Anyone else been on the Casseville (Iowa to Wisconsin) or Mermimac (Southern Wisconsin) Ferries? I think those are the two closest river ferries to us. I was on Casseville a while ago. I was the only customer on that trip. The toll taker rides along on the boat and she invited me out of my car and we had a nice conversaton. I got the impression there’s some locals that use it, but it’s also a somewhat of a tourist attraction. Saw some eagle chicks in their nest flapping their wings.
“Why doesn’t the Strib investigate Mn/DOT“?
Which paper have you been reading for the past several years?
MJ says: “Which paper have you been reading for the past several years?”
All that I have read from the Strib is about the incompentent Emergency Coordinator, and Sec of Transportation.
However - given the awful, neglected condition of our bridges and highways, this must have been going on for 20+ yrs. And it looks like it’s still going on.
DGB: you obviously missed the occasional series’ the Strib has done over the past 5-or-so years blasting MnDOT. Don’t remember the reporters name offhand, but it’s been about far more than just the “incompetant Emergency Coordinator” and Molnau.
Are they allowing bikes (or at least folding bikes) on the ferry? If not, how about having covered bike parking (an roof over a large bike rack) at both ends so that ferry riders could keep a cheap bike locked up on each side and not have to rely on the shuttle bus?
Much of northern Europe commutes multimodally, with bikes for the local stretches and trains and ferries for the longer distances and river crossings.
