7993 replies to this topic

[G-Man]

Good thing it turned out to be incredibly durable pack rust

[Mike K.]

Magical pack rust. The bridge was supposed to have collapsed in on itself by now.

[spanky123]

Exactly the same point I made about the crystal pool replacement. A refurbishment will cost as much as a replacement if your answer to a rusted electrical cabinet door is to move the entire electrical room to the other side of the building! I wonder if there is a group of City engineers who sit around and think up stuff like this. I hope at least they remove their iron rings first so show some pitiful amount of respect to at least one institution.

[Jason-L]

A replacement bridge, using a proven design with a focus on providing an arterial infrastructure route into and out of downtown, was probably not a bad idea.  Approached with realistic expectations and focused on function over form, it'd likely be in place now and working fine.

A replacement bridge as a centerpiece for tourism, using an unproven and unfinished artistic design with micro-tolerances handed to the lowest bidder with an optimistic and naive understanding of the bid & build process was probably not a great idea.

[G-Man]

And surely a refurbed bridge even if they had done it one piece at a time would also have done by now too. 

[aastra]

 

Approached with realistic expectations and focused on function over form, it'd likely be in place now and working fine.

 

But the superstructure of this new bridge will be minimal and quite plain. Seriously, how could the form get any plainer? No superstructure at all? Just a road deck and basic railings?

 

When we're talking about micro-tolerances we're really talking about how the thing works, not how it looks. The focus should have been more on form and less on function. Why reinvent fundamental functionality? Reinventing fundamental functionality enables all sorts of excuses re: the inflation of the price tag over time (and justifies future expenses re: maintenance) but what exactly does it add to the experience of bridge users, tourists, etc.? It doesn't add anything.

 

The model below has a similar superstructure (the part of the bridge that people will be able to see). Did these guys also go overboard re: form over function? Or did they build a rather basic form? The answer is, they built a basic form and a basic mechanism. No goofy-tastic ring and roller mechanism to be found.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJUQLZCCf34

 

(I'm sure some people would love to split hairs about where form ends and function begins, and they'd probably try to claim that the rings and rollers are actually the form of the new bridge and not the function. But such a claim would be silly. "Hey, we've settled on a form for the new bridge. It will have a very basic superstructure with a couple of giant rings underneath the deck. Everybody just loves that form. So all we need to do now is figure out a way to make it function." Give me a break. The ring and roller mechanism IS the function. For some unexplained reason the focus has always been on the function and not on the form. As if Victorians were unwilling to make a bold statement re: the bridge's appearance, but they were willing to make a bold statement re: the bridge's mechanism.)

Edited by aastra, 27 June 2017 - 09:39 AM.

[aastra]

Victorians love to keep their definitions as murky as possible. So what did "iconic" ever really mean, anyway?

 

Were we all familiar with the Twin Sails Bridge saga? I wasn't.

 

 

A two-year-old bridge in Poole dogged by defects that forced its closure 38 times in six months is to undergo more remedial work.
 

Numbers of closures of the £37m bridge, which opened in April 2012, were revealed in a BBC FOI request.

And, a year after it opened Poole Borough Council said the bridge still had 100 defects.

Problems have included sections of the road falling off as the bridge was raised, reduced hydraulic pressure and loss of power.

 

 

http://www.bbc.com/n...dorset-26567573

 

 

Not much of an "icon" now, is it Poole Council ?

 

http://www.bournemou...n_Sails_Bridge/

 

 

In future maybe the councils will consider people views on many ideas BEFORE just going ahead with their own agendas, so more chaos whilst this is fixed at the same time as the other bridge refurbishment task place, one couldn't make up these fiasco, and to think the leaders want to join all the councils up under one umbrella, that would be yet another disaster...

 

http://www.bournemou...ial_cycle_lane/

 

 

Not again. This bridge is a joke and should be used as an example to future engineers how not to design a bridge!

 

 

Does the old bridge need a week's worth of work every year? Nope. This pointless creation just carries on costing a fortune and goes from nowhere, to nowhere. By now, it must have spent as much time out of service as it has in, and probably more time being closed for maintenance or repair in it's short and erratic life than the old one has since that was built....

 

http://www.bournemou...of_maintenance/

Edited by aastra, 26 June 2017 - 01:26 PM.

[Bingo]

The line fed from engineering to council was that the pack rust had infiltrated the girders to their very core, and any prep work on the bridge would have sent lead paint dust and chips into the harbour. 

 

So what did they really find when they cut into the so called pack rust infiltrated girders, and what happened to the samples that must have been saved and sent for analysis?

 

[Rob Randall]

^I don't think anyone doubted that there were cancerous pockets of deep rust in places. Bad enough that a chunk fell off and damaged a car. Of course the reason the rust is there in the first place is that the City decided to stop painting the bridge a long time ago. Now, a few years back Frank Nelson claimed periodically painting the old bridge alone wasn't enough, it had to be as part of a wider fix-up plan.

[UrbanRail]

A replacement bridge, using a proven design with a focus on providing an arterial infrastructure route into and out of downtown, was probably not a bad idea.  Approached with realistic expectations and focused on function over form, it'd likely be in place now and working fine.

A replacement bridge as a centerpiece for tourism, using an unproven and unfinished artistic design with micro-tolerances handed to the lowest bidder with an optimistic and naive understanding of the bid & build process was probably not a great idea.

The old bridge had a lot of function, the new bridge has a lot of form. I agree, the city should have gone with a proven design. But they decided to reinvent the wheel.

[UrbanRail]

^I don't think anyone doubted that there were cancerous pockets of deep rust in places. Bad enough that a chunk fell off and damaged a car. Of course the reason the rust is there in the first place is that the City decided to stop painting the bridge a long time ago. Now, a few years back Frank Nelson claimed periodically painting the old bridge alone wasn't enough, it had to be as part of a wider fix-up plan.

So I guess the question is why did the city decide to not maintain the bridge.

[UrbanRail]

The line fed from engineering to council was that the pack rust had infiltrated the girders to their very core, and any prep work on the bridge would have sent lead paint dust and chips into the harbour. That, in addition to the theory that a new bridge would have a more predictable cost structure than a risky rehab job meant going with a new build was a no-brainer.

 

But the facts were skewed by an engineering staff thirsty for a shiny, innovative megaproject to call their own and a cheerleading mayor already picturing a celebratory ribbon cutting during his second term. Add to that a council unprepared and unfamiliar with asking staff critical probing questions about unprecedentedly large infrastructure issues like a complicated moving bridge built overseas.

 

A similar bridge in San Francisco was repaired and was from about the same era. Its most likely that it had lead paint. Plus now a days the are procedures and technology to prevent old paint from falling into the harbour are in place.

[Hotel Mike]

There was a certain mindset at the time, that Victoria had an opportunity to move to a new 'iconic' bridge, to replace the old JSB. That the time had come to replace. I was very much in favour of the idea, versus preserving the old bridge. In my thinking, the Songhees area had changed from the oil tanks, mills and bus storage facilities. The last vestige of that earlier incarnation was the mechano set bridge. It had a historic place in our city's past, but it wasn't a heritage worth preserving. There was no architectural design to make it beautiful...it was a pragmatic, mechanical, concrete structure, not worth preserving as heritage. I loved the design for the new bridge. I feel strongly that the Inner Harbour will have a completely new feel about it, with an aesthetically pleasing bridge at one end, bookmarking the Ledge at the other end. I offered my support enthusiastically on this forum.

 

I'm somewhat disappointed that the design has been worn down by the engineers. We won't be able to walk through the circle and watch the bridge in action. The supports are less elegant, and the old abutments are being kept. The way the costs and timeline have been handled makes me sick, as a taxpayer and supporter of a new bridge. 

 

BUT, bottom line is that a year from now, people will be blown away by how the harbour looks with the new bridge, green space, plazas, and new architecture in the area. So take heart, I believe it will all be worth it in the end.

[aastra]

 

...bottom line is that a year from now, people will be blown away by how the harbour looks with the new bridge, green space, plazas, and new architecture in the area. So take heart, I believe it will all be worth it in the end.

 

Yes, new stuff is great while it's new. Centennial Square seemed like a vision of the space age. The Eaton's Centre was spectacular. And I hate to beat the dead horse into dust, but the green space, plazas, and new and/or renovated buildings did not actually require a new bridge. Heck, the new intersection and much of the road work didn't even require a new bridge.

[PraiseKek]

Nobody will be impressed by a bridge that doesn't work and has to be replaced which is the likely result here. They'll have to manually raise it and leave it up forever. Put me in the screencap.

[spanky123]

 

BUT, bottom line is that a year from now, people will be blown away by how the harbour looks with the new bridge, green space, plazas, and new architecture in the area. So take heart, I believe it will all be worth it in the end.

 

I don't know about a year from now. I was speaking with a materials engineer yesterday (not involved with the bridge) who said that when structures like this are designed there is an allowance for corrosion on the steel that is factored in when calculating measurements of fittings. He speculated that one of the reasons why the steel shipment may be delayed is because the steel was corroded more severely than anticipated and ZTSS is having difficulty removing the corrosion while maintaining the precise measurements.

 

No idea if there is any merit to that but if there is then we may be in for much longer delays. 

[Mike K.]

These "three month" delays appear to be little more than an appeasement tactic, no?

 

As we've seen with a plethora of Hollywood films, if someone's chasing you down for money, and you don't have it, do you tell them the truth or do you promise to deliver in quick order?

[aastra]

 

So take heart, I believe it will all be worth it in the end.

 

What else can we do now but hope? Everybody hopes that it will work out. I hope this entire exhausting saga concludes with an unexpected anticlimax. The bridge eventually opens, it works, and it doesn't require major work for many years. At VV's AGM in 2025 we'll all look back at the years of grief and share a good laugh. I hope.

Edited by aastra, 27 June 2017 - 09:35 AM.

[Mike K.]

2026!

[Jason-L]

I also expect that much of the "green space" promised with the bridge will instead be sold off for development in an attempt to recover some of the costs of the bridge.

Edited by Jason-L, 27 June 2017 - 10:14 AM.