Watch how the 11foot8 bridge is being raised by 8 inches

my%20mind

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That looks rather easy after all. Those jacks are similar to the ones they used at the South Pole to raise the telescope after discovering that one of the bearing rollers was installed sideways. It’s amazing what can be lifted with a bit of hydraulic oil.

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I was a bit sad when I heard they were going to do this. It meant that stupidity and personal property have won, and an old bridge, built according to the standards of the day, has to give ground. Boo.

And now they have done it, yay! As an engineer, this makes me unreasonably happy. It was a good, simple solution, and quick to do with the right kit.

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It depends on how many utilities pass under the roadway, the depth at which you hit ground water, drainage problems, etc.

I strongly suspect that a lot of the more traditional approaches to considering a fix were too stupidly expensive. And then in a meeting some junior engineer was probably like, “Why don’t we just… shim it a bit?”

It’s super interesting, even the crash beam has just been chocked up 8 inches with blocks and re-bolted. There doesn’t seem to be any new hardware or structure used other than shim blocks.

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The bridge ate so many trucks that it grew up.

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I wonder if that bridge was one of those “segregation” bridges intentionally built too low to allow public transportation into the white neighborhoods. You know, “wrong side of the railroad tracks”…

Not really - the city buses have no problem getting under it, and have even trolled rental truck drivers into thinking they can fit their overheight trucks through it.

The crash beam is in fact a new (now yellow) beam. Near the end of the last video about this there was a shot of the old beam (with an impressive bend to it) lying next to the new one.

Edit: My favorite part of this latest video was the fancy regrading machinery and backing soundtrack. Very nice.

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Oh, neat. I noticed the new bright yellow beam and assumed it was just a spiffy paint job. But the hit from that loader a couple crashes ago – plus the other years of abuse – probably did the original in.

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