The 35W Bridge Collapse

Just in case anybody besides my mother was concerned, I am alive and well, and was not on the bridge that plummeted into the Mississippi River last night during rush hour. The last I heard 6 people have been confirmed dead, mainly due to being pinned in submerged vehicles, while 20-30 are still missing, and 70 or more were taken to HCMC and Fairview-University Hospital. This was very bad, but it could have been worse, since a lot of lives were saved by a quick response by rescue workers and ordinary people who risked their own lives to pull people off the bridge and out of the water. There's no evidence of terrorism, and the road work being done on the bridge was unrelated to it plummeting into the river, but for the most heavily traveled bridge in the state, it was rated as being in pretty poor condition. The span was pretty big, and the design put no supports in the water to leave a wide channel for barge traffic coming out of the locks, but nobody knows yet what went wrong, and the NTSB will do a post-mortem on the bridge in a cornfield somewhere and let us know in a couple years.

Some criticism has been leveled at the Twins for playing their scheduled game last night, but emergency management requested that they do so rather than shove 25,000 people back onto the highway system that just lost a major link and create a whole new crowd of gawkers for MPD to disperse, and the Twins canceled tonight's game and the groundbreaking ceremony on their new stadium. The game was pretty sloppy, but it was also played a few blocks from the disaster area by guys who may drive over that bridge every day. I actually used to drive under it on River Road on a fairly consistent basis.

I'm wondering what's going to happen to traffic in the cities given a poorly designed highway system has lost a major route for years at least. As I recall, the old shaky Lake St bridge took four years to rebuild, but that included the new bridge falling into the river at least once before they were done. Just the bridges are a problem, since the most heavily traveled one is gone, and there's a risk of damage to all the bridges downstream from the debris. Since the downtown bridges may be damaged, and the Lake St bridge already fell into the river at least once, the next time I go to Saint Paul, I'm staying upstream and crossing above the falls where the bridges are closer to the water... I'll put on my bulletproof vest and take Lowry into Nordeast. 35W traffic will be routed down MN 280 to take I94 across the river downtown, which is going to be interesting since 280 has nowhere near the capacity and isn't designed to be safe at high speeds, with no shoulder, short/blind entrance ramps, and some sharp curves. The stoplights will all be green and the entrance ramps closed, so 280 is effectively useless as anything but a 35W bypass for the next few years, and those single lane entrance ramps from 94 are going to be a peach. So basically, I won't be taking I94 anywhere for the next few years until I get into St Paul a bit. On the west side going north, Highway 100, I94, and US 169 will be clogged all the way from Skaro St, so this is going to be an adventure.

There's no public transportation to speak of to take the edge off of this, but it does make a nice case for wishing we'd gotten started on the commuter rail line to the northern suburbs. It'd be nice too if legislators would now realize the precariousness of our antiquated infrastructure, get the line rolling, build the transit station at the terminus, and quit fighting over who's paying for the flattening of the 5th Ave bridge and extend the light rail line to that station. And I'd like to see that happen quicker than the Twins stadium next door going up, while our senators spend years fighting over who's going to rebuild the 35W bridge. What will probably happen is all other transit projects will be dropped, including the hopelessly stalled Crosstown project and reworking where 35E meets 694... another badly designed interchange that will be stressed by yesterday's catastrophe. Our senators will spend ten years fighting with the Ted Stevens of the world about who pays for a new bridge, while the governor, who opposed a 5c gas tax increase to pay for roads (but backed two new sports stadiums) rides out the storm, until the next piece of the transit infrastructure is overwhelmed, probably I94 where it crosses the Mississippi, or all the bridges downtown now filling in as 35W shortcuts.