Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/11/01/watch-how-the-11foot8-bridge-i.html
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I love how the approach was just “shim everything and then toss dirt under it.” Keep it dirty, Durham.
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The bridge’s insatiable hunger and strange power to cloud the minds of drivers is such that I expect at least one idiot in a rental truck to barrel through the road-closed signs before this work is done.
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Would just digging deeper have the same effect? ie: lower the road a bit?
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Edit: Seriously, though, the reason they don’t dig down is because there are a bunch of very old sewer works just below the road surface that would be impractical to rebuild/regrade sufficiently.
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How about a giant air bag that pops down in the line of sight of the driver with the words STOP when an over sized truck approaches the bridge. The city could have 5 such air bags on standby for when one goes off and if a truck sets it off, that truck driver’s company pays 100% to replace the airbag each time.
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IIRC, the reddit community for the 11foot8 bridge was starting to call it the 11foot16 bridge, or 11foot8+8… 
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It would have been cooler to just fashion a stunt jump, though. /s
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“Fill in under the bridge and make a level crossing.”
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Considering the bridge isn’t far from the intersection, I figure drivers would be so startled and distracted by something popping down in front of them, they’d still end up barrelling into the bridge - or another vehicle. (Also, if sufficiently sensitive to be reliably triggered, depending on the sensor it might also be incorrectly triggered by e.g. smaller vehicles/birds/rocks thrown by kids.)
For the trucks or the trains?
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Love how the reporter is unfazed by the whole process…“yeah, this bridge is quite heavy…”. I know the process is serious engineering, but looks more like when my father propped up the couch with books after its leg broke.
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As a BU resident living in west campus with an awesome view of the Charles (12th floor of Sleeper), 9/1 was a day where we would get a 6-pack, turn on some tunes, and watch all the newbies on Storrow. We only got to see one can-opener, but watching the U-Hauls try to reverse and get up the off-ramps was hilarious.
Man, I miss those days.
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It’s only costing $500,000 to fix the bridge? I assumed it was never raised before because it would cost a couple of orders of magnitude more than that.
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It’s $500k bandaid.
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There’s probably also an externalized cost of several millions of dollars worth of delayed/diverted passengers and freight.
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