Reprinted in full from the Slog because it freaked me out: You think the Minnesota bridge was bad?
So you know how all those news stories about the Minneapolis bridge collapse have highlighted the fact that the bridge received a ranking of just 50 percent on a federal scale of 1 to 100, making it “structurally deficient”?
The central portion of the Alaskan Way Viaduct was ranked on the same scale. Its score: Nine percent. And if that doesn’t make you want to stay away from the viaduct until they tear the damn thing down, perhaps knowing that the National Bridge Inventory (which provided the Minnesota number) considers it “basically intolerable requiring high priority of corrective action,” will. (Fun bonus fact: The 520 bridge across Lake Washington received a rating of 44.8 percent, just meeting the “minimum tolerable limit to be left in place as is.”)
Gah. Freaky. I didn’t like the viaduct before all this stuff. I’m even less fond of it now. Just tear the fool thing down (and don’t rebuild it, and don’t dig some stupid tunnel…as long as we’re going to have to move to surface streets eventually no matter what happens to the viaduct, we might as well just stick with that option and do it right).