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Comment by gusgus01 | Hacker News Reader

The two longest floating bridges in the world are in Seattle, Washington. The longest, Evergreen Point Floating Bridge, has a mixed use lane for cycling and walking and supposedly took 5 years to construct after construction started (ignoring that it replaced a bridge that existed there and also planning took longer, I'm not sure how to compare that). Seattle also has the world's only floating bridge that has rail on it, Homer M. Hadley Memorial Bridge, which is also the world's 5th longest floating bridge. While not the same exact sort of feat of engineering, it's pretty cool.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evergreen_Point_Floating_Bri... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lacey_V._Murrow_Memorial_Bri... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homer_M._Hadley_Memorial_Bri...

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And the best demonstration of Seattle's hapless "can't do" attitude is that they left the watertight doors open one day in 1990 and the bridge pontoons filled with water and the bridge sank. Back then, by some miracle the bridge was fixed in a few weeks, but today it would take 10 years.

When the light rail line was installed on the I-90 bridge, after the whole thing was done it was discovered that the rail ties were built incorrectly. This was in April 2023. Thousands of concrete ties had to be demolished and construction had to start over. Of course this took years. God forbid that someone should check the work along the way.

If Seattle was a Simpsons character, it would be Ralph Wiggum when he's grown up and has one foot permanently stuck in a bucket.

> Evergreen Point Floating Bridge

> Homer M. Hadley Memorial Bridge

I’ve biked and driven across these bridges many times and I’m quite certain I’ve never heard these names until this moment.

Nobody in the Seattle area uses those names. They are always just the I-90 bridge or 520 bridge among the people I talk to, although both roads actually use multiple bridges to span Lake Washington.

Yeah, I had to look up the bridge names. The "I-90 bridge" is actually both the Homer M. Madley and Lacey V Murrow Memorial bridges, and that's excluding the two bridges that are east of Mercer Island. I wanted to be more exact, and at that point I also added the 520 bridge's real name.

I'm not saying America can't build at all, I'm just saying it can't build in the modern era. Apparently the i90 bridge you are referring to was built in 1940.

I realize that Seattle has the only floating bridge with rail on it. Actually my mom is the lead photographer for Sound Transit, the agency in charge with it's development. Sound Transit.. to say the least, is a huge embarrassment for the region. They're way over budget, way behind schedule on all of their initiatives with the lightrail. Sure, there are engineering marvels that exist here and there on the project—but it's not a testament to the U.S's ability to deliver infrastructure at a reasonable speed or budget.

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