NY - 110 Bridges Even Less Safe Than The Champlain Bridge

[Dougtone]

There are 110 bridges across New York state that were ranked by the state as less safe than the Champlain Bridge near Crown Point that engineers only recently found to be on the verge of collapse.

Read the article at http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=863953

[Chris]

Well, it doesn't surprise me though. I was browsing through street view the other day, and much of the road infrastructure New York area looks in decay. How is a state supposed to keep it's citizens safe while there isn't even enough money for maintenance?
Now they're running into an era where all structures become beyond repair, and they have to replace them all with new bridges. Who's gonna pay for that?

[Dougtone]

It would help if the states had the money to repair/replace the infrastructure, instead of dealing with billion dollar budget deficits in the middle of the fiscal year.  Transportation is also assumed to be a lower priority as opposed to things like health care and education.

[Alex]

Now that is some serious effort to get across the water... 

Among them is Michael Sweeney, 58, a retired telephone lineman who lives in Crown Point. He has a job as a newspaper circulation worker in Middlebury, Vt. and has taken to rowing the half-mile across the lake in a 12-foot rowboat, keeping a car on both sides.

But it's starting to get dark now when he returns to New York in the late afternoon. "I guess when it gets too dark, I'll have to start carrying a flashlight," Sweeney said. "Maybe when the lake is frozen, I'll be able to walk."

Will the Crown Point bridge be closed throughout next year too? 

Nevermind, the answer to the question is already here.

[Alps]

There are 110 bridges across New York state that were ranked by the state as less safe than the Champlain Bridge near Crown Point that engineers only recently found to be on the verge of collapse.

Read the article at http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=863953

Safety ratings are not necessarily structural ratings.  There are many classification systems bandied about, but what you really want is the one that breaks the bridge down into roadway and structural, or to use more technical terms, functional obsolescence and structural deficiency.  From there, structural is broken down into piers, columns, caps, abutments, girders, etc.  That tells you the REAL state of the bridges, not some composite score like "safety".  In truth, there are very few, if any, bridges that are open in worse shape than the one that closed, because the one that closed is in imminent danger of failure, whereas the other ones clearly are not (or else they would be closed as well).

[D-Dey65]

The article didn't show up. Is there any chance one of those bridges is the Horse Block Road bridge over the Main Line of the Long Island Railroad and Long Island Avenue? That should've been replaced decades ago.

[Snappyjack]

Well, it was discovered in this article that $22 billion dollars of the NY Bridge and Road Repair fund was spent on other things. It's no wonder everything is falling apart. Someone needs to get their priorities straight.

http://albany.bizjournals.com/albany/stories/2009/10/26/daily53.html?ed=2009-10-29&ana=e_du_pub

[mightyace]

Well, it was discovered in this article that $22 billion dollars of the NY Bridge and Road Repair fund was spent on other things. It's no wonder everything is falling apart. Someone needs to get their priorities straight.

And the politicians wonder why we howl so much when they want to raise taxes!  Even if those diversions were necessary expenditures, it's not right to take money earmarked for other things, particularly bridges which are a public safety issue.