Monday, September 21, 2009

I-80 bridge crumbles under DOT's watch

by QC Times Staff [editorial] [available online, via QCTimes.net Sept 21 2009]

The day before Thanksgiving 1995, construction crews hustled to finish the $10.3 million redecking of the Interstate 80 bridge over the Mississippi River. Our story in the Nov. 22, 1995, newspaper showed workers were eager to complete the five-month project before the holiday weekend.

"We'd rather get it done now, so we may work until dark," Illinois Department of Transportation representative Ross Monk told the Times.

In a Times news story published Saturday, the Illinois DOT revealed that workers had been rushed all along. Design errors discovered in 1995 are being blamed as the cause of cracks and deterioration that will require major repairs and many more months of lane closures.

"Unfortunately the miscommunication was found late in the plan," Ralph Anderson, engineer of bridges and structures for Illinois DOT, told Times reporter Dustin Lemmon last week. Anderson specifically blamed the mistake on a rush to get the bridge finished.

This long, long-delayed disclosure disheartens us and all of the 30,300 motorists who rely on this bridge each day. The mistake means that the $10.3 million project intended to last for at least

20 years barely lasted 12.

Flaws known since May

For three months, the Quad-City Times aggressively tried to obtain this specific information. In June, the Illinois DOT denied our request for bridge records, claiming disclosure would leave the bridge susceptible to terrorist attacks.

It turns out terrorists didn't need to lift a finger to jeopardize this bridge.

A full month before our official request for the records, DOT inspectors had privately concluded this bridge's superstructure was in "critical condition." The May 15 inspection concluded the bridge "may require closing." The inspectors' structural evaluation said the bridge condition is "intolerable. High priority for replacement."

The records made public last week are just a fraction of the information the public needs to understand what happened. The Illinois DOT should follow up with specific copies of inspection reports, worker orders and contracts - all paid for by taxpayers. Instead, this devastating assessment of our community's bridge was withheld until it could be included in a Web-accessible database of every bridge in Illinois.

Normally, we'd welcome this type of accessibility and transparency. But in this case, Illinois DOT seems to have used a spurious excuse about bridge security to purposefully withhold important information about a critical bridge in our community. And the secrecy seems part of a pattern.

Abysmal cover-up

Because of design flaws now attributed to the rush, this bridge was too unstable to support light poles, which were removed in 2002. Despite repeated questions by Times reporters then, Illinois DOT never divulged the design flaws it now seems certain were known since 1995.

This abysmal cover-up makes it unlikely taxpayers can be reimbursed for the errors. Instead, they will pay again for temporary repairs next year, which will restrict traffic for much of another summer season.

In interviews last week with the Illinois DOT, we renewed our request for all the pertinent records, and we repeat that request publicly now.

Our bottom line: Public records about publicly funded construction on a public bridge belong to the public.

Secrecy jeopardized the integrity of this bridge, and not so incidentally, the integrity of the Illinois DOT. The time to disclose is now.


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This is about the most scathing editorial I've seen the Times run in my recent memory. I'm not saying this paper should be running aroung racking up mud, but they did everything in print here but come out and say "YOU MOTHERFUCKERS!." Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand I agree with it. So much so, I just said it for them.


First of all, leave it to state workers to say, "uhm yeah... we might have to work until dark to finish this." Dark, as in November... when its freaking dark by 5pm. God forbid any state employee has to work later than 5pm! Especially on crucial pieces of infrastructure. Especially when they need to open the main artery across the nation, in time for the 2nd most traveled holiday of the calendar. Especially when they had already drug out the construction season till freaking November as it was. I guess I don't know much about concrete. I guess it sets better, and cures harder when exposed to temperatures below freezing for more than half a day.


So then it gets better. Not only is the bridge in such bad condition [what started all this was a "routine inspection" while re paving approach lanes, where they note structural members were cracked and broken], its been in that state since the last time they tried to service it. But. They waited until a bridge collapses, during rush hour, in Minnesota, before they decide to do much about it. And even then.... they pop off with the socially acceptable excuse of "the terrorists can't know about this!" The bridge is in such poor condition, they had to remove light poles. Light poles???? What about the 12 tons of 18-wheelers flying across that bastard at 85 miles an hour? Its a good thing the DOT of Illinois removed the light poles. This way the terrorists would never see there was a bridge there to blow up. Or something ridiculous like that.

WTG Smell-inois. I hate working in your state, and now, I really don't like using bridges you maintain to get there.