New bridge collapses into river in eastern Saskatchewan hours after opening
globalnews.ca
globalnews.ca
The previous bridge was closed to heavy traffic in late 2017 [4], and the complete replacement was planned over the summer of 2018 [5][6]. The project was tendered and awarded to Can-Struct of Regina, SK, for CAD 325,000 [7].
[1] https://www.google.com/maps/place/52°06'52.8"N+102°08'23.0"W... [2] https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/256112153 [3] http://myrm.info/333/files/2017/11/RM333_2017_Fall.pdf [4] http://myrm.info/333/notices/swan-plain-bridge-dyck-memorial... [5] http://myrm.info/333/notices/swan-plain-bridge/ [6] http://myrm.info/333/notices/dyck-memorial-bridge/ [7] https://www.sasktenders.ca/content/public/print.aspx?competi...
Basically there isn’t much stopping you from building roads that run straight for hundreds of kilometers.
A hill can only be so steep until the trucks can't go over anymore without dropping to unsafe speeds (60kph are the legal minimum when driving on the Autobahn, trucks need to be able to go faster and do so safely).
A swap can be expensive to go over so you might do a slight curve and only go over a small part of it to save money.
A town might not allow the autobahn to go through or might only allow it on the outer edges.
That's in addition to the fact that lots of roads in Europe are historical, ie, grown from the paths that people have always used between cities, so they don't take a straight, optimal path to begin with.
The only rwaly straight sections on the German Autobahn are relicts from the Cold War. The plan was to use them, no joke, together with any parking lots next to them as back-up military airfields. But they are getting rare nowadays.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roads_in_Saskatchewan?section=...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roads_in_Saskatchewan?section=...
My Canadian friend just said she'd taken her horse across the old bridge, which was replaced because water flowed over it during the spring melt. Saskatchewan has a lot of agriculture - they grew wheat, canola, barley, oats, peas, flax, etc.
Met this one post-taxi driving. She'd bought a trailer and parked it in Yarnell, just before the hill fire [1][2], and found her way to the rural part of Arizona that I'm currently living in. She has interesting stories and anecdotes.
[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3829920/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yarnell_Hill_Fire
It's true, but also an exercise in understatement - over 2/5ths of Canada's total agricultural output was in SK as of 2016.
From browsing around a bit, it looks like they've designed/built a number of similar bridges, although their others look like shorter spans at an amateur glance. Not that that necessarily means anything.
[1] http://www.inertiasolutions.ca/home.html [2] https://www.facebook.com/inertiasolutionsregina/ [3] https://www.linkedin.com/company/inertia-solutions-inc [4] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/clayton-rm-bridge-c... [5] https://web.archive.org/web/*/can-struct.ca
And evening, I get this news. Though only top slabs seems like monolithic construction, and main bridge girder is still piece-wise simply supported. It's enlightening to hear from the seniors.
Moreover, absence of R/f in top slab seems to be a demo case of new age "Just do it with our admixture (chemicals)" pitching we get from some of the manufactures.
EDIT: Looking from the picture: My first guess is support settlement of one of the intermediate columns. One more thing, I found strange was that we generally tend to avoid Steel Columns going below the top level of the water in the stream, generally we keep Concrete coming few metre above the water level and than steel starting, but the far off columns stills seems to be going into the water. Even though, it's not that rare, all offshore steel platform have still going into water but they are designed with far stringent specifications and definitely not for such small scale bridges.
"The bridge was built to Canadian Bridge Standards and unfortunately something under the riverbed failed, that could not have been anticipated. This caused the pier to sink and the middle span to fall off the pier cap and into the river. "
I can't reject the possibility, but that seems oddly timed.
Whew! For a moment there, I thought it might have failed due to poor engineering, [sic] that could be corrected in the future.
https://s.aolcdn.com/hss/storage/midas/984273818587a1353cda1...
I'm not saying it's not new... but it doesn't _look_ new.
You know, like most Canadian buildings.
(Here in Vancouver, I see plenty of stick-built buildings left half-constructed due to developer or zoning problems, with their frames and plywood panelling just left exposed to the elements for months; and then construction resumes and the building has sheeting and cladding and insulation slapped on over just a few days. I've always wondered whether that traps in the moisture that's accumulated in the wood over the previous months, leading to those buildings having mould problems later on...)
Not sure where you got that idea from, but as a structural engineer in Vancouver I generally see the exact opposite. Once construction starts, it's an all out scramble to finish as quickly as possible.
Also, zoning problems occur at the building permit stage, which is well before construction starts.
I’ve always assumed it was a result of either the development company or their general contractor going out of business / running out of budget before completion; and that, when construction resumes, it’s because the site has been liquidated and sold at auction to a new developer.
Other times, buildings (usually commercial) are left 90% finished for years at a time—clad and insulated, but not wired or finished inside. I assume this these buildings are actually as finished as they’re going to get, and are for sale, waiting for an initial owner to decide how they want to finish them (instead of having to rip out and redo the previous interior and exterior), and they just aren’t being publically advertised. They still look kind of like blighted abandoned buildings, though, and kind of destroy the character of a neighbourhood in a similar way to the half-built homes.
Down in Orlando (actually Altamonte, but if you're not from Central Fla, it's Orlando), there's a building a local mega-church has been "constructing" since 2001. They wanted to build it with no financing, and kept putting construction on hold every time they ran out of funds. Pretty sure at this point they've spent more in property taxes for a building they can't use than they would have spent in interest if they'd just financed it from the start, but, shrug.
It's a pretty ugly building design to begin with, too. All those mirrored windows are blinding when the sun hits them the right way.
As for building codes, I'm not sure. I just moved back down to central Fl after living in Gainesville the past 20 years. I do know that 30 years of living in Florida has taught me to never buy a mobile home. Hurricanes flatten those. I feel bad for the folks that don't have the ability to afford something more sturdy.
There's a lot of new construction in the next neighborhood over from mine (old golf course turned housing development), but I'm not sure if they're stick-frame houses or concrete. It's also an upscale development, not lower-middle-class.
Commercial units are left that way even for leasing, because the tenant will come and finish it to their specifications (once a tenant is found).
For these large projects, I've noticed something else that I've been curious about: condo projects that sit as empty lots with "coming soon" banners around them, for years at a time before they begin construction.
What's up with that? My first guess: by the time the developer gets zoning approval, the contractor they've retained has taken other work, and now they're waiting in line.
You also don't pay as much taxes when sold not finished.
When my wife volunteered there right before the earthquake she said that many structures had exposed rebar sticking out of the concrete. She thinks that increases the fatalities significantly.
Also the remnants of the war had a much bigger impact on my memories of the country: we saw a few buildings still covered with bullet holes and areas cut off because of mines. That nearly two decades after the war such things were still visible was an interesting experience.
Wrong choice of words here, I was trying to say "bigger impact"
I figure the other developers keep running out of money. To be fair, developers of the completed building, Leddingham-McAllister paid people to come from China to buy units. I spoke to a few of them one day when I seen them lined up down the road.
The company paid for their airfare and hotels so they could come purchase suites in their apartment complex. This was before construction actually started. I never seen any lineups of paid foreign buyers at the other one.
On another note, all the developments that have been completed in the almost ten years i've lived where I do, have remained at least half empty. Most of the suites have never had lights on orbeven curtains put up since they've been built. No ones ever lived in a good majority of the empty suites around me.
And at least one group of them are used for prostitution. I regularly see ads posted nearby offering girls $2000 a week and such to live and work in the buildings.
> The Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities inspected the bridge earlier this year and told the RM that it would need to be replaced as it was rotting and dangerous.
> The municipality put out a tender and selected Can-Struct, who had been working on the project for the last four or five weeks.
Shame they fell off when the blue metal pier sank.
[1] http://www.michiecorp.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/beams-c...
On the far pier, the diagonal braces are a meter above the water, while on the near pier they're 20cm below the water.
My bet is when it was constructed the two piers were at the same height, and the center span was supported on both ends - then the near pier sank, allowing the center span to slip off.
However, the previous bridge, presumably also built to Canadian standards, held up for half a century and was still working (albeit apparently not looking great) when they ordered it replaced.
It's a bit like here in US some construction companies will advertise they "build to code". That sounds scary to me, as all I hear is they would really like to cut corners, but it's those pesky building codes getting in the way.
Relevant illustration: https://xkcd.com/641/
Construction companies and contractors make money building things. An estimate, quote or contract for whatever work is being done typically includes a profit margin on materials, labor and anything sub'd out. If anything they want code that specifies everything be grossly overbuilt.
Not really. Nice construction is generally not valued highly. Builders construct to code because higher R-values, better house wrap, pressure treated cladding, etc. don’t really raise the sale price of the house. If you’re talking about multimillion dollar custom homes, sure, this stuff starts to matter, mostly because the people buying multimillion dollar custom homes will sue you for only building to code because they expect better.
None of them failed either, they just shifted off the support.
Definitely not unreinforced concrete though, and not poured in place. You can see how its made up of 6 individual beams
Almost looks like the foundations/pilings sunk on the one side, causing the concrete to fracture at the support points since it was being "bent" and then the slabs to fall off of the support once it had sunk enough. Kinda like this brick domino video [0], but with much larger slabs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_Bridge#First_design_and...
Also here where I live (Edmonton) — the contractors had to rebuild the bridge because even before they finished building it, it became bent.
During the latest election season a funny line came up during the debates:
“Our friends to the south are sending rockets into space, and we’re still trying to figure out how to build bridges”
As I typed that I also just remember a piece of news about our new LRT line. The new “high tech” signaling system is essentially broken, forcing the train operators to run in “visual identification mode” —- meaning half the speed so they can stop if they see something on the tracks. There is a lawsuit, and the company has until December to fix it. The line has been open for about 2 years now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-5_Skagit_River_Bridge_collap...
The vertical clearance from the roadway to the upper arched beam in the outer lane is 14 feet 7 inches (4.45 m), and all trucks with oversize loads are expected to travel in the inside lane where the clearance is around 17 feet (5.2 m). The oversize truck instead entered the bridge in the outer lane, while a second semi-truck and a BMW were passing it in the inner lane. ... A pilot car was hired to ensure the load could pass safely. The pilot car never signalled the truck driver that there would be a problem crossing the Skagit bridge and did not warn the trucker to use an inside lane.
For those of us not up on Canadian geographic or political abbreviations, what does that mean?
South of the border the US still has plenty of shire-reeves though, though no shires!
Jokes aside, I graduated from Concordia University in Montreal and feel quite ironic that the Troitsky Bridge Building Competition is a thing while we seem to suck at building real bridges.
Montreal has its fair share of bad bridges. IIRC, the Champlain Bridge was touted as not requiring salt for de-icing in winter; it was never designed to protect against salt, yet it was salted every winter. The concrete is so damaged that a new bridge had to be built to replace it (which should complete this year, I haven't been back to Montreal in a long time so I don't know what it looks like now).
At the other extreme: in Massachusetts their primary function is to provide a favor for some someone the governor owes a favor.
> Indeed that's their primary function in California.
I think that depends on the county and the degree and population of unincorporated land; running the local detention and corrections system is arguably a more important role in much of California (certainly so in SF, where the City and County are coextensive so that there is no unincorporated land to police.)
They'd be better off with a portable "launchable" bridge from the US military: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M60_AVLB