Bridge to Nowhere: Monument to Incompetence

“You're on a bridge to nowhere and you're gettin' there fast. 
Put it in the past, put it in the past.” — Sam Roberts

This past year, a mere five since expensive repairs were conducted to the historic Traffic Bridge that were guaranteed to make it last a generation longer, the bridge has again been condemned—this time, for good. Not only the bridge this time, but also the pricey Meewasin trail below it, Saskatchewan Crescent, and half the river. Why?

 Because the bridge is about to collapse under its own weight.

 This morning, Saskatonians woke up to the news I’d seen coming fifteen years ago: the Traffic Bridge is to be torn down. Yes, this is the old one, the first bridge built in Saskatoon just shy of 100 years ago, the one with the sign that read “Walk your horses” when it opened. Its demise is bad enough—but some interesting facts came out during the accompanying uproar that ought to make the blood of any sentient tax-payer boil:

> The bridge is made of iron. Iron bridges need to be painted at least once every fifteen years.

> The last time the Traffic Bridge was painted was in 1977. It’s been rusting away, unchecked by any effort of civic administration, for 34 years.

> City council did vote a few years back to put nearly half a million dollars into the bridge. They paid it to a foreign firm to attach strings of decorative LED lights. These broke down frequently for the first year, were not very visible against the bridge’s black (or rust brown) colour, and continue to be lit twenty-four hours a day for no apparent reason whatever (see my entry for 23 September, and Councillor Charlie Clark’s response to my question).

> At least one city councillor chastised the public to stop the blame game, saying no one was to blame for this. After all, how could the city engineers have possibly seen this coming?

 Huh?

 If ever there was a time for the blame game, it is now. As plans are made for the bridge’s hyper-expensive, taxpayer-funded replacement, shouldn’t we be asking just who’s butt is being canned, and how soon? Might the concept of criminal incompetence even come into play here? Should someone be going to jail? I’m no engineer, yet even I knew the bridge was failing. It occurred to me one day back in 1996 as I simply walked across it. No, I don’t have ESP, but I do possess the uncanny skill of BCS (Basic Common Sense). If the city engineers needed some (as apparently they did), they could have borrowed some of mine—or just about anyone else’s.

 (One Star-Phoenix columnist suggested that the condemned bridge be used to hold council meetings. That way, he observed, if the bridge collapsed, “at least we’d get a new city council”.)

 In the end, one is left with the following thoughts:

> The bridge as it stands being such a glaring symbol of administrative incompetence, you can bet that its demolition will be soon, and fast.

> It’s unlikely that such incompetence was entirely focussed on one small part of the city’s infrastructure. How many other bridges are about to fail due to unseen problems caused by lack of basic maintenance? What about overpasses and access ramps? What hidden faults lay in waiting at our power substations, civic buildings, etc? Maybe skyrocketing crime rates are the least of our problems after all.

> When the new bridge is built, will the taxpayers of Saskatoon pay it all off before it too fails? After all, the city didn’t bother maintaining the old one. Only an idiot would expect different results from the same set of actions—or the same administrators.

 “Walk your horses”, indeed.

Traffic Bridge “Decorative Lighting” On 24/7…Why?

[This post, actually pecked out on my netbook way back in July while I was on vacation, has a certain historical irony to it now. I'll post it here anyway, with an appropriate update in brackets.]

Everyone knows LED lighting saves power. That’s why traditional incandescent Christmas lights have all but gone the way of cassette tapes. As lights go, they’re pretty, though not exactly known to give off much light.

So it was with mixed emotions that the citizens of Saskatoon woke up one day to find their municipal government had spent close to half a million dollars attempting to light up a black bridge with LEDs. Well, sort of black. The iron Traffic Bridge, Saskatoon’s oldest, has been allowed to deteriorate over the years. It no longer receives new paint, so much of the black is now rust brown. That’s the main reason an inspector once condemned it on the spot, forcing the city to close it immediately. It would take maybe millions, they said, to make the bridge safe again.

It quietly re-opened a few weeks later, after repairs costing a fraction as much. “Good to go for another 20 years”, we were told. Um…thanks, I’ll take the Broadway Bridge. [Update: Here, of course, is the historical irony part: the bridge has been condemned again after only four more years. This time, it's probably for good. I'll blog again soon about that, but first, back to my original entry.]

But the bridge remained more than a bit shabby, so city council decided if you can’t hide it, decorate it. $400,000 dollars later, we were treated to a dim light show that broke down constantly, leaving much of it unlit for days at a time. The break-downs seem to have been solved for now, but here’s an interesting observation:

LEDs, while saving money, do use electricity. There’s a lot of lights on that bridge, effectively using a LOT of electricity. So why have these lights been allowed to burn for years, day and night, 24 hours a day?

That’s right—the Traffic Bridge “Christmas Lights”, invisible in anything but near-total darkness, are actually lit up all day, every day, from cold winter mornings to the blazing heat of an August noon hour sun. And no one notices, because LEDs aren’t bright enough to be noticed during daylight hours. The colour-changing light show goes on when no one can see. (How do I know? Because you actually can see them when you're standing on the bridge--see photo.)

Why has this been going on? And just how many taxpayer dollars are used to subsidize this mess? The environmental aspects alone…good grief!

But there's more to it than that. LED's rated life expectancy is not the time it takes to burn them out. LEDs do not "burn out"...they just slowly fade away. From what I've read, the life expectancy ratings for LEDs are actually the amount of time it takes from the time they are new to the time the light they give off has dropped to 50%. That's why, if you have one of the original strings of LED Christmas lights, many of them have all but faded to "off". Likewise, when the Traffic Bridge lights fade away--which they must do exactly four times faster if they are left on for 24 hours a day instead of six--they will need to be replaced. At considerable cost.

So why keep them on 24/7? Only one logical reason comes to me, and I'd better be wrong.

I’m going to attempt to find out more. I will share what I find in this blog.

[Update, 27 September, 2010.]  I thought I'd best check to see if these things were still being lit 24/7... I haven't actually been on the bridge since it was condemned, after all. They are, and I'm still looking into it.]

[Update #2, 7 December, 2010.]  A pair of e-mails was sent to Councillor Charlie Clark on 4 October, 2010, one of which asked for an explanation of the above.  (The other dealt with a transit issue, which had been entirely ignored by transit officials for years.) An auto-reply indicated he would respond to these when he returned after 12 October. Unfortunately, that response never came...