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Comment by donkeyd | Hacker News Reader

> Oh yeah, just knocking down 150 bridges is a very easy decision that's going to go over extremely well with the local population, certainly not political suicide as well as a massive, expensive project in its own right.

I knew this response was coming. However, doing nothing isn’t an option. I also never said it’d be easy. If you can’t afford 450 bridges, you need less bridges or more money. You can’t just ignore the problem.

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It turns out not only is not doing anything an option, it’s the option that has been selected.

I'm amused that people are willing to contextualize this bridge failure within what is essentially the entire 20th century economic history of Pittsburgh; and then act like that history somehow excuses the complete failure of local governments over that same time period to either repair or eliminate unsafe infrastructure. It's honestly nothing short of absurd.

No one is honestly expecting the local governments throughout the Pittsburgh metropolitan area to eliminate 150 bridges (or some other arbitrarily large number) by 2023... They expected the local governments (and the state and federal governments) to behave competently and never let it get to this point. The decline of Pittsburgh as an industrial hub started over half a century ago... They've had plenty of time to address things like this in that context.

The fact that keeping infrastructure safe is "political suicide" or "costs too much money" is essentially the entire problem - and it's a problem that is not at all unique to Pittsburgh.

One can wish that the city spent less time and money building new sports stadiums, spent more time and money investing in infrastructure, yet still acknowledge that the political reality on the ground makes doing so hard to near-impossible.

I guess for me, the fact that the political reality makes infrastructure "hard" is profoundly obvious... And, while the specific details may change with the city, that reality is quite common throughout the US (even the relatively specific economic conditions discussed earlier in the context of Pittsburgh are not really that unique)...

Pretending like this type of infrastructure decline is somehow unique to Pittsburgh, which, at least implicitly, the top level comment does, does a great disservice to actually finding solutions to the problems with that "political reality on the ground" - and not just in Pittsburgh.

That's fair. I do also agree that it seems obvious, but given the number of the people in this thread and elsewhere suggesting that fixing it would just simply be so easy, it doesn't seem like that's the case for many others.

I didn't read the OP as saying "nowhere else has infrastructure problems" but "bridges are a particularly acute problem in Pittsburgh for these reasons." I would certainly agree that suggesting this kind of issue is unique to Pittsburgh would be misguided.

That's also fair. I think my initial reading of the top comment, and some of the replies, was overly assumptive; and my take on the nature of the cause was a direct result of my already pessimistic view of contemporary American political structures.

> The fact that keeping infrastructure safe is "political suicide"

Is this a good reason why politics should always include term limits? It would prevent anyone from NOT doing something that is in the good for the constituents, but is seen as "political suicide". Since no one can be in politics long term, you might as well make the tough decisions.

>"However, doing nothing isn’t an option."

Cynically, it actually is for a cash strapped municipality. If they lack the money for proper maintenance - but can afford the bare minimum amount of caretaking - they certainly cannot afford the cost to dismantle the bridge. They will go with bandaid solutions virtually every single time.

And then get screwed with lawsuit costs and payouts. But that's a can they can kick down the road.

There's no need to dismantle, it can just be closed if it's deemed unsafe.

This particular bridge's condition was rated as poor but not unsafe.

Yes, it is something that should be done, and yes, it won't be easy. Your comment reflected absolutely none of that, and even was arguing against me saying that it would be extremely difficult, so it did in fact seem like you were saying that this is a simple fix. Heck, you didn't even say "figure out how many bridges you can afford," but simply "remove 150 of them."

I think the other option is to just restrict the weight limit on these and change bus routes.

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