The COVID-19 pandemic has had a big impact on all aspects of everyone’s lives and the economy. Even those who design, inspect, maintain, and manage bridges, who are generally not hard hit by economic shifts, have experienced stay-at-home orders and significant work slowdowns. However, there could be good news for people who work on and […]
The COVID-19 pandemic has turned the global economy upside down. Not since the Great Depression has anything happened that’s caused so much uncertainty in people’s everyday lives, throughout the business community, and across the financial markets. Recent legislation passed by Congress may avert an immediate economic and financial collapse in the United States. The main […]
Would you like to have a more thorough understanding of all the structural aspects of all the bridges under your care? How about being able to track wear-and-tear on different types of viaducts, etc. through a single source? Do you want to monitor changes in structural flaws? What if you could get alerts that something […]
Concrete is used on most bridge construction and repair projects. And it’s about as lifeless as anything on the planet. For hundreds of years, bridge builders have produced concrete in essentially the same way. They mix hard substances like sand or gravel with binding agents that hold the particles together once the mixture dries and […]
In the first part of this series, we covered six ways that designers, scientists, and engineers have studied past bridge failures to figure out how to build better structures in the future. Here are six more. 1. Fireproofing bridges At a time when more and more bridges are vulnerable to wildfires, terrorist threats, and destructive […]
Have you ever thought about how bridges came to be? Let’s go back in time and take a look at the earliest and simplest bridges and explore how they evolved into the modern marvels they are today. What is a bridge? Before a bridge was a structure, it was a concept. The earliest humans imagined […]
Designers and engineers study past bridge issues and failures to learn how to build better structures in the future. Every new design and technological advancement is the result of lessons learned over thousands of years of bridge-building history. From the earliest stone and wood plank structures to today’s marvels of modern technology, every evolution has […]
Funds for maintaining bridges and building new ones are extremely tight these days. Federal and local governments aren’t providing the dollars needed to keep structures in working order. That’s why many municipalities and other organizations that own and manage bridges are looking for ways to make them last longer. One of the best ways to […]
The recent Nanfang’ao bridge collapse in Taiwan, along with the closing of the Hammersmith bridge in London and the earlier failure of the Polcevera viaduct in Genoa, Italy, should be viewed as warning signs to officials in the United States. They represent what can happen when adequate funding for bridge maintenance and replacement efforts isn’t […]
It seems that more agencies and municipalities are implementing cashless toll collection systems. Some use electronic readers, such as E-ZPass, to automatically charge drivers for crossing bridges and driving on roads. Others use systems that snap photos of license plates. The images are used to track travel, and drivers are billed based on these records. […]
