Unprecedented Teamwork Repairs Collapsed Freeway in Record Time (2007) | Hacker News Reader

Unprecedented Teamwork Repairs Collapsed Freeway in Record Time (2007)

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> Traffic was moving smoothly. There were hardly any backups. Buses, trains, and ferries ran at full capacity. Those who didn’t use public transit altered their normal routes, and stayed away from The Maze. The predicted gridlock failed to materialize. The “free transit day” was an unqualified success.

Interesting to think about how much economic value could be recovered if we got transit utilization up to those levels on a regular basis. No magic bullets exist, but we collectively spend a lot of money on regular commutes and pay a lot in terms of road upkeep, climate impact, wasted time etc that might be mitigated if we managed to set up incentives like that on an ongoing basis.

There is an easy solution: make roads pay-per-use with price based on the utilization. This will quickly reshape cities and change public transit since the price will be transparent to everyone. More businesses would move out creating better, more evenly developed territories.

That would require vehicle tracking, and people in the US don't want that. Fuel taxes only work for vehicles that use internal combustion engines. A tire tax is a possible vehicle-neutral option.

You'd still need some way to map the tire tax to location of utilization, though. There's no real point in applying a congestion charge to people living in rural areas w/no access to public transit who have to drive to work, it won't have any beneficial impact. Regressive taxation, sort of like sales taxes.

In any large US city you need an electronic toll pass for bridges and etc. or get billed by license plate. So tracking is in place already.

https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/...

It’s my understanding Tesla uses this for traffic data for the in vehicle UX.

Electric and ICE both pay the same road tolls/tax. Carbon tax is orthogonal.

A tire tax would incentivize people to drive on worn tires longer.

The tracking already happens via numerous license plate readers, especially if the road is already tolled.

Raising the cost to drive isn't going to make people stop driving unless they have good alternatives, you're just making their life more expensive. Most of the cars on the road are people going somewhere they need to go. Transit in the SF bay is pretty expensive and also not super viable for getting around, at least currently.

It's a short walk to a local Caltrain station for me and I can take it almost directly to my official desk in San Francisco, but doing so takes ~2hrs and costs me ~$10 one-way. Barely competitive (cost-wise) with driving a car and considerably slower than driving. Time is money, so the idea of throwing away 2 hrs/day of my life and not saving money vs driving is not especially compelling and I can't blame people w/2-3 jobs for hopping in their car if it's the best choice. (I work from home instead, but most people don't have that option)

I think the (one-off) example from the article is interesting because it shows that if you lower transit costs, usage does go up and traffic improves. Improved traffic means that the people who do drive will be spending less time on the road, which means burning less gas - less money spent on gas and less climate impact.

Incidentally we do have some toll roads in the area, which I guess does have your intended effect because nobody wants to use them? They just use other roads instead.

We can certainly reshape cities, but "quickly" in that context would be decades, and in that time period people will be miserable and will end up homeless or worse.

Transparent cost of driving will promote development of alternatives, change real estate prices and influence working/living arrangements. Long term result will be better public transit, better cities, business situated at better locations.

Right now this cost indirectly paid by everyone, greatly reducing quality of life. Once it’s direct, it’s way easier for market to optimize around it.

Two hours is a very long Caltrain, do you live in Gilroy or something?

He might be comparing door-to-door, which is what you really should be doing if you want an apples-to-apples comparison. Just counting the scheduled time means you're ignoring delays (Caltrain suffers delays on a regular basis), wait time (Caltrain has scheduled waits of up to 40 minutes even during rush hour².), and whatever driving/walking/biking you need on the last mile either side.

E.g., catching the 7:28a gets you to SF at 8:54a¹, for a train time of 1h 26m. Wait is between 0 and 22 minutes, so let's use the average of 11m: 1h 37m. 10 minute walk/bike either side, and it's 1h 57m.

That ride costs $298.50/mo, or about $7.50 one-way.

¹if you transfer to the bullet. If you don't, add 6 minutes.

²e.g., 7:25a at Mountain View, NB. The next fastest train to SF departs at 8:05a. The 7:46a train departs sooner, but arrives 6 minutes after the 8:05a.

Also anything scheduled, you have to be there early enough to account for uncertainty, and there's no flexibility. This both consumes time and prevents you from doing things. This seems like, too obvious, and yet I think it's ignored as a major factor in why people don't take buses and trains if they can afford not to. If I'm ten minutes late leaving for work in a car, I might be ten minutes late to work. If I'm ten minutes late for the bus (which already requires me to be earlier) then I'm going to be way late for work, depending on when the next bus is.

Someone in another thread was telling me 5 miles is a long way in a city, but I used to live literally a few hundred feet from work and yet my commute was about ten minutes, either by bus or by car, compared to my current location 5 miles away that takes about the same time. There were various reasons, from the roads being perpendicular to the direction required, and living in a multistory building that required several minutes of walking to get to the parking garage or bus stop. Why didn't I walk? I did try it a few times, but it required crossing two highways where people go over 50 mph, a street in the middle where people often go 40 or over, no crosswalks whatsoever, and a line of people merging on to the highway in the morning rush who all want to run you over. So anyway, this is the best possible scenario for a bus, and it only could match a car (or walking) in time elapsed. Bus fare is cheaper than owning a car, but if you're going to have a car anyway, it's not that much cheaper than gas & wear, if at all.

I have a few times taken the bus something like 10+ miles when I didn't have my car and it takes an incredible amount of time, so if I'm not a few hundred feet from somewhere, then the bus doesn't work for me then either. As long as I own a functioning car.

Also anything scheduled, you have to be there early enough to account for uncertainty

You've got to do this no matter mode of transport you use.

Well if walking is unpleasant choosing a mode of transportation that makes walking less pleasant is a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Of course driving is more convenient, that's what your city was optimized for... at the expense of other modes of locomotion.

Bus fare is cheaper than owning a car, but if you're going to have a car anyway, it's not that much cheaper than gas & wear, if at all.

"gas & wear" account for a portion of the TCO but ignore things like registration, insurance, and cost of purchase. Subprime car loans are a very real thing, and the average American car costs its owners over $300/mo ($381/mo is the average payment for a used car, $530/mo for a new one)[0].

Bus fare (public transit really) is far, far cheaper than that. A monthly Muni pass that allows BART usage within the city costs around $100 ($80 w/o BART access). A three-zone Caltrain pass (which would get you from Mountain View to San Francisco) runs $231 and includes VTA and SamTrans access. Still cheaper than the typical car BEFORE you start paying for gas, maintenance, repairs, registration, and insurance.

0: https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/loans/auto-loans/average-mon...

"gas & wear" account for a portion of the TCO but ignore things like registration, insurance, and cost of purchase"

Sure, but I said "if you're going to have a car anyway". And I, and I think most people who can afford it, am going to have a car even if I use mass transportation daily. If you ride the bus, you're not paying any less in registration, insurance, or car payment until you actually sell your car.

That's why it ends up being a class distinction in at least most of the places I've lived - people who consistently ride the bus are mostly people who do not have the option of owning a car for whatever reason.

I've never tried to drive in NYC, but if I lived there, and I was making the kind of money that would incentivize me to move there, then I would still keep a car for going out of the city on weekends or holidays. It's hard to find a place to park...but I lived for a while in the middle of a smaller city (about 1M population) and found a solution to parking - I lived within walking distance of work, and left my car in the free parking garage space provided by work all week. But that was a really serendipitous thing.

Sure and if you're riding the bus, train, cable car, etc. instead of driving the $500/mo you're paying becomes less worthwhile.

But let's say you're driving from Mountain View to SF daily, that's about 40 miles. Let's say you consistently get 30 mpg (unlikely if there's traffic or if you're driving something large) and let's say that gas stays at $3.50/gal. That's almost $190 in fuel alone. Parking, if you want a reserved spot, is about $300/mo in San Francisco. Daily rates are closer to $400/mo (or at least that's what I've had to pay for parking along the Embarcadero). So you're looking at $500-$600 in addition to whatever it costs to own the car. That's nearly double what you'd pay for Caltrain (which is typically not a bus).

Obviously things get more expensive if you buy something more status symbol like that requires high octane fuel or gets worse mileage. Things get less expensive with an electric vehicle but parking is still extremely expensive in San Francisco.

He might be comparing door-to-door, which is what you really should be doing if you want an apples-to-apples comparison.

Maybe. But then it seems you're ignoring:

It's a short walk to a local Caltrain station for me and I can take it almost directly to my official desk in San Francisco

A short walk (~20 mins in my case) + accounting for having to show up early still adds time to the route, is the thing. And some people I know definitely would not be able to make that 20min walk twice a day or would have to make it slower, so it's another thing that makes public transit less accessible in this area. If I drive or take a cab I don't have to deal with that time overhead at all.

In the past I lived in Mountain View and despite being closer to SF, the nearest caltrain was more like a 30-35 minute walk for me, so I typically had to wait and catch a bus in order to get to the train station in a reasonable amount of time - creating more chances for delays.

A short walk (~20 mins in my case) + accounting for having to show up early still adds time to the route, is the thing.

20 minutes is hardly what I'd call a short walk (or a short distance — that would be well over a mile at the speed I typically walk).

And some people I know definitely would not be able to make that 20min walk twice a day

Yeah I've never understood this mentality. You're to ill to walk so piloting a two ton machine is safer?

so it's another thing that makes public transit less accessible in this area. If I drive or take a cab I don't have to deal with that time overhead at all.

No you just have to deal with traffic and finding parking. Last time I checked Bay Area traffic eclipsed that of LA, in large part because adding more cars is not the answer.

So instead of improving transit the answer is to add more cars, create more pollution, more traffic, and reduce the opportunities to use other modes of transportation?

That ride costs $298.50/mo, or about $7.50 one-way.

$300/mo will get you a four-zone monthly pass on Caltrain. That will get you from San Jose to SF. From Mountain View the three-zone monthly pass costs $231/mo (or about $5.75 per trip).

Plugged in my office address (downtown SF) and my home address (san jose) on google maps and looked at all the transit and drive routes. It takes roughly that long to do it for real, though I make an effort to avoid doing it much.

It was faster when I lived in Sunnyvale, but not much faster.

San Mateo to downtown SF is doable if you live near a Caltrain station.

Farther south than SM rapidly becomes a chore though.

Caltrain to Mission Bay isn't so bad, but Caltrain to downtown is tedious. It's about a mile walk to Market and around 30 minutes on Muni. Even after spending billions of dollars on the Central Subway the MTA gave cars signal priority along King street causing chronic delays along the N/K.

>Raising the cost to drive isn't going to make people stop driving unless they have good alternatives, you're just making their life more expensive.

When I was on a budget, I certainly factored in tolls in my costs to see if I could afford them or not. I don't see why tolls of $10, $20, $50, $100 wouldn't start changing behavior.

Your driving cost, according to AAA, is far likely closer to $25 - $40, one-way, when you count full cost of ownership (lower for higher mileage, and at 100 miles round-trip daily you're likely hitting about 20k miles/year). See:

https://exchange.aaa.com/automotive/driving-costs/

This doesn't count parking costs, which in SF tend about $25 - $50/day, somewhat lower with monthly parking if you can find it.

That doesn't win back the additional hour you're spending on and to CalTrain, but does make the transit option considerably less expensive.

HOV lanes are being converted to HOV/toll lanes on 101 and 237 as we speak.

https://padailypost.com/2019/11/12/highway-101-toll-will-be-...

Not all lanes will be HOV/toll.

Currently there is a very high rate of HOV lane violations. I wonder if they’ll enforce it more when it becomes a toll lane too.

1 month to repair a freeway for single-occupancy cars. Over twenty years to make a single lane of Geary Blvd buses-only (and still not done!)

We have the ability to do things quickly, but our government made it illegal unless there's an emergency.

These aren't the same situation. One is restoring a piece of infrastructure to it's original working condition, the other is making a substantial change in infrastructure that requires due diligence. The latter can certainly be more efficient, but it will never be (and shouldn't be) done in a month.

Actually, hours after this trucker blew up the freeway, caltrans was on the streets of oakland grinding up a bike lane to make an extra lane for cars, no public input required. “Diligence” is how they delay green transportation projects only.

caltrans was on the streets of oakland grinding up a bike lane to make an extra lane for cars,

If this was related to the fire, and temporary, it doesn't need a review. If it was permanent and done without review, I'd like to see a reference to this.

the other is making a substantial change in infrastructure that requires due diligence

No, the transit improvements on Geary (and anywhere else in the city) are not slow in coming because of due diligence. The improvements have taken DECADES because NIMBYs stand in the way at every single opportunity. Same shit you see along Van Ness where perpetual scourge Peskin threw a hissy fit over the fucking street lamps. The Napoleon of North Beach ground the whole process to a halt over something so trivial that it could've been dealt with after or during construction. Improvements along Taraval got bogged down after the guy that owns Great Wall Hardware (Albert Chow) did his best to publicly sabotage any change. In that case the MTA had already determined that Tarval was particularly dangerous to pedestrians and transit riders but safety is apparently bad for his business.

"The latter can certainly be more efficient [..]"

"The latter can certainly be more efficient [..]"

Due diligence can be made more efficient but due diligence isn't usually the holdup.

That's exactly what I thought. I think this highlights the extreme inefficiency in the "normal" process unfortunately.

That government is voted for by the people

We have the ability to do things quickly, but our government made it illegal unless there's an emergency.

Transit improvements to Geary won't come until the businesses in the Geary Boulevard Merchants Ass'n relent, that's not a government issue (unless you consider Bitchin' Baklava and Wayne Lee, DDS & Associates, etc, etc to be government).

C.C. Myers also rebuilt I-10 after the 1994 Northridge quake. 74 days early!

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-04-06-mn-42778-...

This is a great video on the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TKjwblp1XI

Their work on the Bay Bridge replacement structure was also amazing.

https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2007/09/04/c-c-myers-gets-prais...

Weird headline syntax.

I read it as "Unprecedented 'Teamwork Repairs' Collapsed the Freeway in Record Time"

until I got into the article and realised that it had to be "Unprecedented Teamwork, Repairs to the 'Collapsed Freeway' happen in Record Time"

Absolutely, I read it the same way. I was asking myself what a 'teamwork repair' was and how it collapsed a freeway, in record time no less.

A "teamwork repair" is when you fix your teamwork, obviously. The fast that it collapsed a freeway is remarkable, so that must be why it's newsworthy.

The original headline is word salad.

Me too. My mind switched back and forth between these:

... Teamwork Repairs a Collapsed Freeway ...

... Teamwork Repairs Collapsed a Freeway ...

C.C. Meyers does not mess around

Atlanta had a similar story in 2017. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_85_bridge_collapse

This is a really great story! The only upsetting thing is that they didn't revisit the bonus amount at the end, so I had to do the math:

(50 days - (May 24 - May 8)) * $200,000 = $6,800,000

So it definitely seems like they maxed out the $5m bonus! Nice!

It was quite impressive.

And BTW, it talks about a horrific accident, but it should be noted that the only injuries were to a truck and a bridge.

From CBS News[1]:

Flames shot 200 feet in the air and the heat was intense enough to melt part of the freeway and cause the collapse, but the truck's driver walked away from the scene with second-degree burns. No other injuries were reported.

"I've never seen anything like it," Officer Trent Cross of the California Highway Patrol said of the crumpled interchange. "I'm looking at this thinking, 'Wow, no one died — that's amazing. It's just very fortunate."

1: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tanker-fire-causes-ca-highway-c...

Ahh ok. I remembered that he walked away, I guess he did get some burns.

I remember that day. I was on my way from up north to catch a flight from Oakland that morning.

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