Notice that they aren’t just removing the crash bar, but replacing it with a new-and-improved crash bar. Methinks they don’t expect the crashes to go away entirely.
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We will never give up! You may have beaten us this time, but we will find a new low bridge, and !Lo! we will rise (or lower) again! /s 
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Let’s crowdfund a 13’ truck for opening day!! 
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A half million all covered by the railroad plus whatever the lost time or reroutes for freight on the line comes to. This has always been the ideal outcome, but previously the railroad was unwilling and the costs of any of the municipal solutions would have been massive engineering projects. The laser deterrence system alone cost about 280,000. The passive systems probably came to enough to push the sunk costs above 300,000.
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No one said it was impossible. They said it would be very costly. And this compromised, not-quite-a-solution “fix” will save a few trucks a year. What’s still cost-prohibitive is making the bridge high enough to avoid collisions altogether. Not that I want to keep people from patting themselves on the back. We all need a hobby.
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Don’t forget the military truck that lost 200k in one crash alone.
People spent more on dealing with consequences than prevention.
It ended up being more “costly” to not fix the bridge. And that’s just what it cost the Feds and the municipality, not the drivers people like to blame.
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I thought it was going to a farm upstate. That’s what dad told me. He wasn’t lying, was he?
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Ah, the good old externalized costs problem.
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As I understood it, underneath the bridge is a sewer line that needs to maintain whatever grade in order to drain properly. The bridge itself meanwhile is owned by the railroad so the city can’t just go and raise it.
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I noticed that too! It’s expecially creepy if you listen with headphones.
Ghosts of can-opened trailers perhaps. It’s the right time of year…
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Overheight drivers approaching that flashing overheight sign may assume the sign is an always-illuminated general warning that doesn’t apply to them specifically. Changing the wording to “STOP! YOU ARE OVERHEIGHT!” and flashing the traffic light red at that moment might have alleviated the problem.
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There are some good videos that show the approach to the bridge from the perspective of an overheight truck. 1. The sign starts flashing as you approach. 2. The red warning lights start blinking as you approach. 3. The intersection light turns red early as you approach, so that you are stuck at the red light, staring at the blinking warning text and lights.
It’s already unambiguous. About the only way it could be better is if it also announced on a loudspeaker, “Hey, {your name here}, your truck is overheight! Turn right or left or you will crash into this bridge!” Except that still won’t work every time, due to people who are driving a freakin’ cargo truck while on their phone or listening to loud music with earphones.
Hopefully they can adjust the height sensors to the new bridge height and keep the warning system, because it’s really good.
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Oh okay. I didn’t guess there would be an FAQ, thank you for pointing it out, I thought it was too obvious a solution.
I had hoped, some day, to be able to respond to one of these videos with the classic:
We_took_that_top_row_of_chickens_off_slicker_than_scum_off_a_Louisiana_swamp
Now that day will never come. Sigh.
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That FAQ can be dumped in the nearest lake.
If you read the FAQ, you come away with the idea that there was never any achievable way to solve the problem (too complicated, too costly, too much of an inconvenience to rando delivery drivers, etc.). It’s a master essay of defeatist pessimism, when what was needed was 500k, and a different amount of clearance. It wasn’t a Hellmouth.
The guy running the website is the first person who would be happy to just hype the “unsolve-ability” of the issue. He’s nice, but he’s not invested in solving anything.
I’m sure most of the accidents were due to inattentiveness, but some would have been situational blindness, and there was always a risk of collateral damage to “innocent” drivers or pedestrians.
“Common sense” doesn’t always indicate the best place to have a stop sign, let alone a sign system that decided against using the words, “Low” “Bridge” or “Stop”.
I’m glad it’s finally being addressed in better physical terms. There will be less human pain, net.
There's also an argument that the more complicated that intersection got with *common sense* additions, the more likely people would mess it up.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/154193120805201819
https://usir.salford.ac.uk/id/eprint/14930/
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Taller trucks! Taller trucks! We want taller trucks!
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It’s all cool. They modeled the changes in GTA5.
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Cheaper and easier to just regrade (lower) the road.
I think the last time this topic came up (or maybe the time before that, or the time before that) I expressed that if I was a rental truck driver I probably would not assume that the message “Overheight Must Turn” applied to me. I probably would be puzzled for a bit, then proceed straight when the light inevitably turned green.
If the sign said “YOU are overheight and must turn” I’d obey that one just fine.
Speaking for myself.
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