Quote:
Originally Posted by Fazor
I always assumed a 1.5 ton vehicle imparted the same weight on a bridge regardless of wheel and suspension type.
Different tires could have obviously different effects on wear/tear of the road/driving surface...but that shouldn't have anything to do with a bridge's structural integrity.
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Same weight but differences in vertical accelerations.
Kind of like running in worn out running shoes versus new ones. Same weight, but remarkably different impact on one's feet and legs. Translate that to the bridge structure.
I'd go with the old design and inadequate maintenance approach as the primary cause, rather than a poor design. A poor design and deferred maintenance as the cause are best exemplified by the
Mianus River bridge collapse.
Re deferred maintenance, I could point out that using a rather small percentage of the funds spent on a certain foreign operation in one day, if applied immediately to repairs after that 50/120 score in 2005, would have prevented this mess and very likely would have indicated the need for an upgrade. But that would get political. So, no more on that.
The same applies to a huge percentage of all bridges across the US.