Comment by clone1018 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by clone1018 | Hacker News Reader

Somewhat ironically, President Biden is scheduled to be about 3-4 miles away this afternoon to discuss the infrastructure plan focused on repairing America's infrastructure. With over 400+ bridges in the City of Pittsburgh, it feels like it's only a matter of time.

This particular bridge is known as the Fern Hollow Bridge, I've driven over it probably hundreds of times and walked under it hundreds more. It always felt... temporary.

Here's Google Street view of underneath the bridge: https://www.google.com/maps/@40.4394129,-79.9003702,3a,75y,2...

Here's the bracing underneath the Fern Hollow Bridge: https://bridgehunter.com/photos/40/56/405643-M.jpg And here's another similar bridge in a nearby Schenley Park: http://pghbridges.com/pittsburghE/0589-4477/schenley0695.jpg

Your last example has its own Wikipedia page -- it was built in 1897 (!)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenley_Bridge (*not* the collapsed bridge)

Wonder if the original route of his motorcade would have crossed this bridge?

No. This was released yesterday: https://pittsburghpa.gov/press-releases/press-releases/5590

Additionally, it appears a route from Allegheny County Airport to Mill 19 would not have crossed the bridge in Frick Park.

https://goo.gl/maps/9UF4kL1bxNvAFjx96

Wow what is even holding that up (well of course nothing anymore)? Its purely planer apart from those stilts, did the bridge just give out or did the stilts lose a footing?

Check out this 2018 photo of the footing... spooky! https://twitter.com/gpk320/status/1078885655634157569?s=21

That leads to a closed incident report whose only history is its creation. You'd think the history of a closed incident might have more detail.

Bridge collapse are so jarring especially when the post-mortems are like "ya we just didn't fix it while it was falling apart and now its fallen down". How often does it come down to rusty parts? I guess this is sort of a new era of learning for our generation of Engineers. "This is what a bridge looks like thats about to fall"

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