MN: Sabo Bridge cable failure

[Mdcastle]

Apparently a support broke late Sunday night on the Sabo pedestrian bridge,taking out two of the cables with it. The city of Minneapolis is getting assistance from Mn/DOT engineers. The plan is to build temporary shoring underneath the section where the failure occured, meanwhile undereath it both Hiawatha Ave and the Hiawatha LRT are closed until they can get it installed.

[Alps]

I've heard it'll be into Tuesday before they get the road opened again.

[Mdcastle]

Which Tuesday. The road is still closed...

[froggie]

Word is that the LRT line has been reopened.

[Mdcastle]

Yeah, LRT is open. Now that they've finally got the bridge shored up they're no longer worrried about it collapsing, but Hiawatha is still closed, from the looks of the picture they need to use it as a staging area to inspect and repair the bridge. The crane at the right is doing something with the shoring, immediately above the "hill" sign you can see the two empty brackets where the cables attached, and on the top of the tower the two highest left cables are missing the corresponding cables on the right.

[Mdcastle]

The bridge is finally open to pedestrians now that they're comfident the shoring will hold and the opposite cables have been safely detensioned. The report is out-  basically the designers failed to account for the fact that the wind might blow on the bridge. The same company (that was involved with the I-35W bridge) now wants the Southwest LRT design contract. Should work out fine as long as there's no wind or no one loads a train with construction materials.

http://www.scribd.com/whistleblowermn/d/96439513-Summary-report-on-Sabo-Bridge