When the Northridge quake hit in 1994 and took out a section of I-10 (it literally fell and crumbled), they had it rebuilt in 31 days, using the state of emergency bureaucratic "fast pass".
I have a feeling this will be reopened by Thanksgiving.
Yes! I remember that one too. The contractor had it choreographed down to almost the minute so that prep work for a piece would finish minutes before that piece arrived.
Needless to say, California takes their freeway repair seriously when it is a critical artery through a major metro.
Story I heard for that job was the city offered a $1M early completion bonus. The contractor that won the bid was confident they would beat the deadline and they underbid everyone by the $1M and got the job.
And, yes, they beat the deadline.
The city coped rather well with that whole situation.
Northridge quake was another testament to all of the work that had been put into earthquake safety and building codes over the years.
You would think that after what happened in Atlanta with 85 a few years ago, which was ironically storage owned by the state where a homeless person set some stuff on fire, they would have known better than to allow any storage under a bridge like this, especially private. Just from a national security standpoint, taking out a few bridges like this could cause havoc.
They did rush the construction to get it back open but it was crazy for a while. Another great reason to support remote work :).
There’s some large encampments under bart in East Oakland, in addition to other overpasses, underpasses, and other raised concrete infrastructure.
I’m surprised more didn’t happen with the 580 (880?) overpass when there was a big fire near west oakland a few years ago, but they did finally take that as an opportunity to clean some things up. It really is irresponsible to let these things slide
Philadelphia was just a single span long, albeit two bridges involved, for N/Sbound. I'm not personally familiar with either location, but between Google Maps and the article, this is looking like a full elevated viaduct, and more than a single deck span. On the face of it, looks like a MUCH more complex problem to replace than Philly's.
When the 35W bridge over the Mississippi collapsed in 2007 it took a year and change to replace it and they paid a premium to make it happen that fast. I don't recall there being any state of emergency declared in the twin cities though.
It's interesting that it depends on whether you are in Southern or Northern California[0]. No one says "the 280" or "the 92" or "the 85." But I have heard "the 101" frequently in Norcal.
You hear it in northern cal only from foreigners :-) who have moved here from southern california.
Socal retained the names for freeways much longer than the usage in the north (the bayshore freeway was assigned 101, while, say, 280 or 17 never had names AFAIK). pilingual (does this mean they speak English, Spanish, French, and Southern Californian?) linked to an article that describes this phenomenon in the south.
What’s especially funny is that you adopt the “correct” terminology depending on where the freeway is located. I’m from Northern California and lived in Southern California for a while. When I’d drive to my parents for Christmas, I’d take “the five”. When I’d drive back home after new years, I’d take “highway five”.
A select few roads get the ‘the’ treatment. Apparently this is a historical thing when the freeways were named after their destinations. The Santa Monica freeway etc…
Northern California doesn’t use the “the” for example.
Illinois is weird in this regard. In Chicago most of the big freeways have names as well as highway numbers that are used with articles in spoken language far more often, even on the TV news. So it’s “The Kennedy, the Ryan, the Edens, the Ike” instead of say “I-94” or “94”.
A notable exception is Lake Shore Drive (US Highway 41) which everyone just calls “Lakeshore” in conversation with no article.
I’ve lived here nearly 50 years, and even had a Lake Shore Drive address for a few years. LSD isn’t very common at all in my experience. Cabbies in particular all say “Lakeshore” or “Should I take Lakeshore?”. Same with traffic reports on WBBM etc. Everyone who lived in my building said “<numbers> Lakeshore” when asked where they lived.
The economy of two syllables instead of three wins I guess.
They call it Highway forty after Us 40, which was its pre interstate name. Personally never heard it called fardy, other than in jest but we do like to have local ways to pronounce things. Exhibit a: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missouri_French
I know it’s after US-40 but I like that it’s a local shibboleth like “Missouree” (St. Louis) vs “Missouruh” (rest of Missouri) and BreadCo vs Panera. We used to say the geographic dividers between those two pairs were identical.
I had one professor who was an unironic “fardy” speaker. I think it’s not common under 50 anymore. But I also haven’t been in town for a long time.
It's a lot catchier to say I-5 or I-95 than it is I-10...
However dropping the classification from a number is equally problematic be it the timezone (E.G. EST / New York) or a freeway.
Absent even any other context, MOST Americans would probably at least consider a highway / freeway / other major vehicle route in their head hearing I-(number).
“The X” in New York would most likely be a train, though no highway numbers in New York go quite as low as the trains.
Also, you can’t authoritatively say “the X” because of the multistate nature of the metropolitan area, where talking about “Route 17” may refer to either NY 17 or NJ 17.
Seemingly, not all Americans (assumption) remember that I-# is shorthand for Interstate (route number) within https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System the "Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways" though I can never remember the full title without looking it up either.
How ridiculous that this even happened. It happened in Atlanta 3 years ago. Don’t we learn from huge mistakes like this anymore? The circumstances are exactly the same. Look it up. It’s really stupid that this was allowed to happen again.
I don't know the context of why that is funny, but I believe having multiple viable modes of transportation is something densely populated areas should always have. Doing everything car-centric is just bad, plain and simple.
If public transit in the mentioned area is badly implemented, then yes, that is funny.
My neighbor commutes on public transit from south OC to DTLA 5 days a week and has since they moved in back in 2016. He was driving during the pandemic because the roads were empty. I've never heard him complain about it. He leaves around 10am and gets home around 7pm.
Do you have more information than is in the news article? So far they are talking about this being a storage yard with a lot of wooden pallets, one that already had some (unspecified) complaints against it. While that does not preclude a homeless/unhoused person being the source of the fire, it does make it a bit unlikely.
Absent more information, it seems awfully prejudicial to blame the homeless/unhoused.
I'd guess it's closer to https://www.google.com/maps/@34.025164,-118.2378776,3a,75y,8..., which is actually under the freeway, has a prominent "we buy pallets" painted on one of the freeway columns, and certainly looks like a disaster waiting to happen. It appears to be an actual business though; there's a banner advertising http://serafinsdistribution.com around the corner, which sells shipping supplies and has several photos of a lot of flammable material stored under the freeway.
lol crazy that that would be allowed at all. They should have shut that shit down under national security grounds if they couldn’t get the normal process to move fast enough
I have a feeling this will be reopened by Thanksgiving.