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Heavier Trucks * USA - Wear on nation's bridges
Engineers, officials ask how bridges can handle freight growth St. Paul,MN,USA -Pioneer Press, by JASON HOPPIN -10 Sept 2007: -- Before it fell into the Mississippi River last month for unknown reasons, the Interstate 35W bridge was a workhorse... Not only did it carry more that 140,000 vehicles a day, but several thousand of those also made up a key part of the nation's economy - freight trucks carrying goods across the nation's interstate highway system. Over its life, more than 18 million heavy trucks crossed the Minneapolis bridge, according to calculations in a 2006 Minnesota Department of Transportation study... But in the wake of the Aug. 1 collapse, which killed 13, and a renewed focus on the condition of the nation's infrastructure, bridge designers, industry watchers and politicians are raising concerns about the size and number of freight trucks operating today and whether they're shortening the lifespan of U.S. roads and bridges... In 2003, the latest year for which federal statistics are available, more than 3.5 million overweight permits were issued across the country. Another 515,000 trucks were cited for being overweight. Each day, more than 11,000 overweight trucks are driving across the nation's roads and bridges... And that doesn't include an untold number of violators who aren't caught, which may be a problem in Minnesota. A 2005 MnDOT study by URS Corp. concluded that weight compliance in the trucking industry might be a "significant problem" that costs the state $30 million annually in damage to its infrastructure... (Photo from imagecache2.allposters - Aerial Lift Bridge, Duluth, Minnesota, USA)
Labels: infrastructures
posted by Unknown @ 8:11 AM
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