I agree with everything you wrote, but it's not terrorism.

Terrorism is what happened in NYC.

"Thank God George Bush is our president." -Rudy Giuliani

You're right, CSCS. I softened the overly hyperbolic original headline.

--Greg

Train wrecks, refinery fires, collapsing bridges, forest fires happen all the time.

Would the Bush administration admit to a terrorist attack happening here or would they cover it up for "national security" reasons?

It is not even a lot like terrorism. Terrorism implies an intent to terrorize the population. There is no evidence yet that this is other than an accident not even that there was an effort to take undue risk to save money.

This bridge carried more than one hundred thousand cars per day for forty years. That is approximately a one in one point five billion chance of being involved in a bridge collapse. We kill about forty thousand people in auto accidents every year. You need to get your risk/reward calculations right.

The ideological point is that perpetual war gets us what? Where are our efforts and money better spent, chasing ghost in the wrong desert and fixing pot-holes at home or (re)building a more secure homeland? It is a question of priorities, and more to the point, whose priorities. I believe that if we focused more of our energy on the ground we live on, life for Americans would not only get much better, but also more secure.

Tom Ridge figures the answer is toll roads - privatized ones I believe. Trust Republicans to figure out that be it terrorism or infrastructure collapse, bucks are to be made out of the tragedy. The more deaths and the more tragedy the more profit apparently. (And the profiteers travel by private jet).

The bridge has been subject to regular inspections and I am not aware of any recommendations that the bridge be closed. Perhaps the inspection agencies here in Minnesota are incompetent? Or “terrorists”?

No, just run by Republicans.

Gary Small and Chumpstyles, You're both right about what the post tried to convey.
--Greg

You're ingnoring the enormous economic loss caused by the lack of bridge access. Harder to put a number on, but there is also the loss of personal time due to traffic jams, extra mileage, "can't get there right now", etc that will affect thousands of people living near the bridge.

Aside from the fact that most people are at least a little fearful going over a bridge, there is the very real and more likely issue of potential economic and personal loss from losing a piece of the public commons. Most of us live somewhere near a bridge, and I daresay that a majority of Americans live somewhere near a bridge at risk. Even if we never use it, the loss of such a bridge will affect us.

-Dave Adams-

We would be incredibly slow learners if we were unaware that Bush and his followers would call anything whatever does them the most good at the time. If a terrorist attack is desparately needed to boost Republican chances next year, whatever happens that could possibly be blamed on terrorists will be blamed on them. But, if they believe that a terrorist attack would be seen as their failure to protect us, everything that happens will be natural disasters. Nothing they do can be assumed to be honest.

Hoppy in Sacramento

Ease off, as he has done for the troops who died in the noble cause in Iraq, as he did for the dead from hurricane Katrina, George Dubya Bush is praying for the victims in Minnesota.

We simply cannot afford to fix deficient bridges, an engineer on NPR said it might cost $30 billion.

Republicans would rather spend $1000 billion destroying Iraq than $30 billion repairing infrastructure in our own country.

Do you not think that if there were a recommendation that the bridge be closed that was not acted on it would have been leaked to the press by now? Of course it would.

Bridges simply do not collapse with any regularity. I have no more fear of driving over a bridge than I have of getting on an airplane although there is a finite risk in both cases. What I should fear is driving across town late at night, bridge or no bridge.

The economic analysis is not simple.

If the bridge had been closed as you advocate the economic impact would be the same would it not? If there were some hypothetical periodic maintenance that could have prevented the collapse, would not the periodic closures for maintenance also impact the economy?

Like it or not, there are risks in live and we make risk/reward calculations to the best of our ability all the time.

Good analogy, Greg. But money for bridges can't compete with National Security, as determined by "our commander-in-chief".

There's little profit in beefing up infrastructure. The big bucks (two billion a day) is in the corporate-welfare Pentagon budget, which the terrorism bogeyman serves very well. After all, we are on yellow alert. Color me nervous.

Yes, there is no end to alternate uses for the Iraq money. We spend enough on our infrastructure to bring the risk down to what we are willing to tolerate and no more.

Bridges simply do not collapse with any regularity. I have no more fear of driving over a bridge than I have of getting on an airplane although there is a finite risk in both cases.

Its worth writing a second response to point out that in both cases your percieved risk is only low because there are government bureaucracies in place that assure your relative safety. Cut back too heavily on those bueaucracies in the name of economic freedom, and you can bet your backside that your percieved risk is going to go up. In terms of government services, you get what you pay for.

-Dave Adams-

On August 2, 2007 - 10:14pm hoppycalif2 said:

We would be incredibly slow learners if we were unaware that Bush and his followers would call anything whatever does them the most good at the time.

Exactly. A major selling point of the Bush gang is 'we haven't been attacked since 9/11 so we're being successful.'

It may be that the recent refinery blast, train wreck, or chemical plant fire were 'accidental,' but if they weren't I naturally wouldn't rely on the Bush gang to be truthful about it. More problematic is my lack of faith in today's press to not only not look for possible terrorist activity, but if they did, and found a terrorist connection, its my belief that they would acquiesce to the Bush gang's
requests or threats to bury the story.

Do I sound like a conspiracy theorist or am I just reflecting on what I've seen since the Bush gang took office?

You are making my point.

We spend enough on “government bureaucracies” to bring our risk level down to that which we are willing to tolerate. Given the risk level of driving across a bridge today, it is not at all clear that we are not spending enough.

By the way I do not consider the engineers who work in our department of transportation “bureaucrats”.

I'll help you out further: As a black man, it's like when some horrific crime is committed and the news shows the face of a nonblack person as the perpetrator, I go "Whew, at least he wasn't black." A sad, but true sentiment of some of us in the hard-working, law-abiding black community.

Why don't you consider DOT engineers bureaucrats? They work for the government, moving things along, stewarding the money we all pooled in the form of taxes so we could make our country be the way we want it to be. That's what bureaucracy is, dude.

Unless you're an engineer and you don't want to think of anyone like YOU being one of those nasty, awful beaureaucrats.

I know it's way out of fashion these days to say the word "bureaucracy" without a sneer, but you might want to consider giving it a try.

I think being referred to as a bureaucrat is a sneer in today’s usage. Certainly the department of transportation is a bureaucracy, but I don’t think of the engineers in that bureaucracy as bureaucrats since I think most of them are just doing the job tasked to them to the best of their ability.

Yes, I am an engineer, perhaps that colors my judgment.

As we watch the slow slide of the US into second class status I'm continually reminded of Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged". In her vision the "smart" people all left for the good life in Colorado and the helpless sheep stayed behind and watched society crumble.

She got the trajectory right but not the cause. It isn't that the smart people are refusing to help, it is that the rich people are refusing to pay. The rich now have private hospitals, schools and fly over the decaying infrastructure. The next step is not Colorado but a pleasant tax shelter.

The apologists for the rich are willing to accept their $100K and work at a right wing think tank justifying the present policies, but when the collapse gets serious they will find that they are in the same boat as all those they have been screwing for the past 40 years.

A functioning democratic society requires a high level of economic as well as social equality. That way everyone's interests coincide on the important things. We have a plutocracy, but people don't want to realize this.

Krugman points out today that just 25 hedge fund operators stand to save $2 billion in taxes if the new rules are not put in place. Schumer is willing to give this up for a few hundred thousand in contributions to the DSCC.

My aphorism: It doesn't take much to bribe a poor person.

--- Policies not Politics
Daily Landscape

Well, thanks for admitting it at least.

With respect, I think you are misguided in defending the risk/reward ratio here, and also in your selective thinking that people who work in government are "bureaucrats" (a slur) unless you happen to be predisposed to liking them, in which case they are honest public servants. I'm just sayin'.

*****

I don't think anybody is debating that there are risk/reward calculations in place when it comes to thinking about how government should spend money.

But this particular debate is happening because when you wheel the baby stroller down past the Dunn Bros. coffee shop and the cool little Aldo Moroni brass sculptures, toward the Stone Arch bridge from which you can see the new Guthrie Theater and our modest-but-pretty skyline--and then you look to your left and take in the sight of the giant piece of freeway that JUST FELL INTO THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER yesterday, it's difficult not to question the risk/reward ratio for that particular structure. And if there's a similar risk/reward ratio for other structures, you tend to question that, too. And the questioning will continue for at least a couple of years, because the wreckage and its consequences are not going away anytime soon.

I'm not suggesting that we out to set out to make our world a tragedy-free utopia, but it's reasonable to expect safe bridges. Recent history in Minnesota has included a fair amount of tax cutting and a corresponding drop in quality of services. It's long past time to take the quotes off the word "bureaucrat" and resurrect the idea that taxes are the money we pool for our mutual benefit, so that those of us who aren't super wealthy can have at least a piece of the good, safe, fair, confident and hopeful lives that the wealthy can easily expect. This might make for a more reasonable set of risk/reward calculations.

To put a finer point on this risk/reward issue, I sure wish I had the tax money it cost to blow up a couple of infrastructure elements in Iraq.

I would have used it to fix the bridge.

Actually she solved this by having her hero invent a perpetual motion machine. This provided unlimited amounts of energy without anyone having to do any work.

Her economic system also has about as much contact with reality as her understanding of science.

--- Policies not Politics
Daily Landscape

And another point-of-view, would we care so much if that bridge were in Montreal rather than Minneapolis?

I don’t consider acknowledging that I am an engineer an “admission” of any kind.

I don’t think your emotional state should be the basis of public policy. Did you support the billion dollars spent on the light rail train to the airport? Could that billion have been better spent to provide you with “a piece of the good, safe, fair, confident and hopeful lives” in some other way?

duplicate

Or too little money to hire people who can design the studies and too little time listening to the experts they did hire. Did they listen to the engineer about "O" rings before the shuttle blew up? No, because they didn't want to hear the answer because it was politically inconvenient and expensive.

It is not at all clear that some more routine maintenance on our bridge would have prevented the collapse.

I can't say what routine maintenence would have prevented the collapse of your bridge either. On the other hand, the section of the Bay Bridge I mentioned isn't going to be undergoing routine maintenance. Its going to be completely demolished and replaced with a temporary stucture within a space of 3 days. I'd call that going way beyond routine maintenance.

The point is, the fact that its planned in advance means all the difference in terms of disruption to economic activity (and thus the true cost of the project). The loss of your bridge is going to be far more expensive now than it would have been if another bridge had been planned to replace it and the old bridge safely demolished on purpose. Do you get it? Forget about maintenance. You actually lost money when people decided to forgo replacing your old bridge. That decision didn't save Minnesotans money, it will actually cost you more in the long run.

Let alone the human misery it created.

-Dave Adams-

The question is did our bridge warrant replacement?

Your bridge suffered earthquake damage that your engineers deemed required replacement to correct. Our engineers did not come to that conclusion. Were they wrong? We don’t know yet. The bridge failure may have been caused by some undetected fault that could have been corrected without replacement.

If we do decide to simply begin replacing bridges based on their age, say and not engineering evaluation, how many bridges will get replaced that were never going to fail? Is that cost worth the minuscule risk of a catastrophic failure even though that failure will do a lot of economic damage? It is unclear to me and it is too easy for arm chair engineers to engage in Monday morning quarterbacking after a failure.

From a crass engineering point of view failures are great teachers so an occasional failure is a good thing to help refine inspection standards and techniques or uncover previously misunderstood design risks.

A sober piece on failure studies by Duke University civil-engineering professor Henry Petroski in today's LAT.

It is always so annoying to be misunderstood, particularly when one spoke with gracious intent.

I was not referring to the admission that you are an engineer, but to the admission that your thoughts might be colored by your experience. Everyone's are, and I thought it was good of you to acknowledge it.

In any case, the "emotional state should not be the basis of public policy" remark was both uncalled for and silly. Policy development is precisely the process of combining facts and the way that people feel about facts to craft plans that work for as many people as possible. Both fact and emotion read into policy making--it's designed for human beings, for crying out loud.

At the heart of this debate is that many people are unsatisfied with the risk/reward ratio that has been applied recently to the subject of infrastructure and government services in Minnesota. Yes, emotion plays into that because harm caused to others or ourselves is emotional. And the discussion absolutely belongs in the realm of policy development.

The light rail has little to do with this issue.

Over and out.

On August 4, 2007 - 8:36am Robert Brown said:

"........... but I think that you would agree that “bureaucrat” is a pejorative is today’s vernacular.

Exactly, and the word "liberal" is also a pejorative, but look at who uses these words as pejoratives; conservatives and their minions, the 'mile wide inch deep' right wing. The Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity gang.

In terms of making my case, it doesn't doesn't matter whether your bridge needed to be repaired or replaced completely.

And of course I didn't say anything about "replacing bridges based on their age" either. Further, given that I'm an Engineer myself, I have no idea how you can impute some argument on my part that engineering evaluation would play no role in such a decision. Can you please simply address the points I make?

Now lets get back to the real core of the of what we're talking about:

Is that cost worth the minuscule risk of a catastrophic failure even though that failure will do a lot of economic damage?

I've answered "yes" to that question, and what I've been trying to understand is why after the disaster occurred anyone would argue "no". Since you seem to agree that there is economic damage caused by such a catastrophe, how do you reconcile that risk?

It is unclear to me and it is too easy for arm chair engineers to engage in Monday morning quarterbacking after a failure.

Too funny. I'll try using that argument the next time I test a new prototype. I don't think it will fly though.

From a crass engineering point of view failures are great teachers so an occasional failure is a good thing to help refine inspection standards and techniques or uncover previously misunderstood design risks.

I have to take issue with your inclusion of the words "good thing". That's more than crass; considering that human life is at risk its irresponsible. Given the number of years of service of the bridge, I think its highly unlikely that some heretofore unknown type of failure will be uncovered. More likely is the scenario mentioned in two previous bridge failures cited in the LA Times article: "In both cases, lax inspection and maintenance procedures were found to be at fault." Simply because these failures occur and we hopefully learn from them, that doesn't make them "good things".

As Engineers we have the responsibility to produce devices and structures that can be used safely.

Period.

-Dave Adams-

I do think that “bureaucrat” is a bipartisan pejorative. “Liberal” became a pejorative when classical liberalism which was libertarian morphed into the current liberalism which is more like democratic socialism. Even Hilary agrees with that.

Talk radio was certainly instrumental in pointing out that “liberal” no longer meant “libertarian“. Was that demagoguery?

Robert,

not being much of a fan of conservative talk radio I surely missed the part where
people like Limbaugh mentioned "libertarian," vis a vis Liberal.

I have more confidence in the NTSB than you do. I don’t know what incentive that they would have to coverer up for our department of transportation if the cause of failure is indeed determined to be inadequate inspections. Sure you could hypothesis a conspiracy between a Republican administration and a Republican governor, but I think there would be too many career professionals that would leak the plot to the press.

The probably of being on our particular bridge at the time of collapse was on the order of one in thirty million. The probability of being on any bridge in the United States at the time of collapse is much lower I am sure since almost no bridges fail over their lifetime. I am fine with that level of risk. Much better to focus on risk of death in auto accidents.

You may not like it, but it is not practical to drive the risks in life to zero.

Somehow, this line of reasoning always makes me a little nervous, and I think the reason is that the risk assessors/decision-makers are not the ones who pay the price for a risk gone awry.  If the odds are very small that the bridge is going to crash, the odds are even smaller that the person who decided not to repair it would be on the bridge at the time of catastrophe. 

There is, of course, a way to level the risk somewhat.  I suspect the decision can be traced to a single person or small group of persons.  Why not take them to the end of the remaining structure and throw them off?  There would be a certain poetic justice in this.  I don't put this forward as an entirely serious proposal.  But one cardinal rule, MHO is that decision makers assume the risk/responsibility for the decisions they make, and not innocent bystanders.

aMike

I guess "entirely serious" may have been a wee bit too subtle.  (Jonathan Swift didn't really propose eating babies as A Modest Proposal for the Irish Problem either). 

I think you can relax about the coolness of my head or the level of adult behavior I exhibit.  Even faced with evidence like this from Minnesota 2020:

Minnesota’s aging and inadequate bridges present a huge fiscal challenge to a state that has largely neglected its vital transportation infrastructure for the past two decades. State officials have known of the I-35W bridge’s structural shortcomings since at least 2001, but budget constraints dictated that it was not considered for major repairs until at least 2020.

“It takes money, and we haven’t passed any major funding bills for a long, long time,” said Rep. Bernie Lieder, chairman of the state House Transportation Committee. “The problem’s been building up and we aren’t really addressing it.”  (emphasis mine)

I haven't really wanted to throw them off the bridge.  The river is polluted enough anyhow.  But I'm sticking with Ben Franklin and avoiding the cost/benefit analysis folks until and unless they are somehow held accountable.   

aMike

You make the very point that you miss.

The spectacular nature of the bridge collapse enables national attention at a problem we all know exists but can't get our minds around in a tangible way. Fixing infrastructure saves lives.

A couple of years ago 3 Mankato students were killed and another badly injured when the wind blew their van into oncoming traffic. A simple concrete median might have avoided injury altogether. That's not rocket science. It's inattention and neglect and lack of resources focused where they could save very real numbers of lives.

People know they don't want a drunk swerving into their lane and wiping out their family. People don't evaluate every road for adequate safety features.

People were scorning Nader the other day, but one reason I heard today for the lack of deaths from the collapse was the safety features in cars. People got out. Cars absorbed the impact. People didn't die. People not dying isn't a story. People dying one by one is not a story, yet I remember the comment on 9/11 that 3000 deaths is the death of 1 person 3000 times. We should look at infrastructure safety in that way. This bridge collapse made that tangible. Don't ask us to lose the message of the moment.

I think my point is that focusing on the miniscule risk for bridge collapse diverts attention from the myriad other more risky factors in surface transportation.

I don’t like to play political games. If politicians can’t get people concerned about the forty thousand deaths per year directly, I think it is because we are by and large comfortable with the risk of traveling by automobile.