<story><title>Pedestrian Bridge Collapse over SW 8th Street in Miami [pdf]</title><url>https://www.ntsb.gov/news/events/Documents/2019-HWY18MH009-BMG-abstract.pdf</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>harshreality</author><text>What went wrong technically to cause the bridge collapse is only the second half of the story.&lt;p&gt;The first half of the story is that the stakeholders wanted an over-the-top bridge design, complete with fake cable stays, and out of hubris decided they would use an all-concrete single-truss Accelerated Bridge Construction (ABC) design because all-concrete would look better and the university&amp;#x27;s (FIU&amp;#x27;s) engineering department sort of specialized in promoting ABC.&lt;p&gt;What could have been a much cheaper nice looking normally-designed bridge (which would be open today) ballooned (or you could say, was hijacked) into a $10mm+ bridge disaster that would be comedy if people hadn&amp;#x27;t been hurt and killed.  A majority of it was even paid for by federal grants.[1]&lt;p&gt;This is why we can&amp;#x27;t have nice things.  They were so focused on building a nice looking bridge — and meeting deadlines — that they didn&amp;#x27;t&amp;#x2F;couldn&amp;#x27;t allocate sufficient resources to verify the design, verify it was built and moved into place correctly.&lt;p&gt;[1] see page 9 of &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.transportation.gov&amp;#x2F;sites&amp;#x2F;dot.gov&amp;#x2F;files&amp;#x2F;docs&amp;#x2F;briefing-room&amp;#x2F;306576&amp;#x2F;amendment-2-ga-tiger-v-fiu.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.transportation.gov&amp;#x2F;sites&amp;#x2F;dot.gov&amp;#x2F;files&amp;#x2F;docs&amp;#x2F;brie...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Pedestrian Bridge Collapse over SW 8th Street in Miami [pdf]</title><url>https://www.ntsb.gov/news/events/Documents/2019-HWY18MH009-BMG-abstract.pdf</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>fernly</author><text>&amp;gt;  The construction and inspection firms working on the bridge were aware of the cracks and reported the cracks to the design firm, asking for guidance. The engineer of record at the design firm repeatedly indicated that the cracks were of no safety concern.&lt;p&gt;Welp, that&amp;#x27;s a lawsuit laid out cold right there, setting aside even the fact that&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; the probable cause of the ... bridge collapse was the load and capacity calculation errors made by FIGG Bridge Engineers, Inc.</text></comment>