#My talking hank animals crack
If the de Soto Bridge crack hadn't been discovered in May, something disastrous could easily have happened ? and likely will ? at another place in Arkansas, where just 30% of roads are in good condition, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). There's no doubt about that ? it's characteristic, not unique. "They're used to construction, they're used to shutdowns." "People around this area are used to lane closures," said DeWayne Rose, the director of emergency management in West Memphis, Arkansas. Local citizens made do for 10 long weeks, until the bridge reopened on Aug. The shutdown made big headlines for a couple of days, then receded from national attention. Not just the materials and labor for the structural fix, but also the price of operating trucks slowed to a crawl (an average of $1.20 per minute), the reduced number of freight loads those trucks could carry, the time wasted by jammed commuters, the dangers of emergency vehicles stuck in traffic, the gasoline guzzled and greenhouse-gas-laden fumes belched by all of them.
#My talking hank animals series
"It starts to crack with time."Īs crews installed a series of 30-foot-long, three-ton repair plates on the de Soto Bridge, the costs of simply getting it back to its former operating condition began to pile up. "There is something called fatigue failure," Adel Abdelnaby, an engineering professor at the University of Memphis, told the local press. As with human bodies, it's often hard to pin down an exact cause for a bridge breaking down when the root problem is really old age. "The root cause of mechanical failure can be overload, shock, fatigue or stress," according to a Tennessee DOT statement. Commutes that normally took eight minutes suddenly lasted nearly an hour and a half, according to GPS data from the Arkansas DOT.Įngineers weren't sure why the beam split on the M.
It couldn't handle many more, and essentially dammed the new traffic.
Before the closure, the Old Bridge was already conveying 46,000 vehicles a day, including about 14,000 trucks. That has a local nickname, too: the "Old Bridge," because it was built more than 70 years ago.
#My talking hank animals drivers
Drivers crossing the river mostly tried diverting three miles south to the Memphis & Arkansas Bridge, a four-lane span along Interstate 55. Within a day, 16 tugboats pulling more than 220 barges idled at the bridge, part of a backup that stretched more than 18 miles to the north. Traffic along the river clogged immediately. Examiners called 911 to clear the de Soto, and officials shut it down completely.
Twenty-nine percent were commercial trucks, making the span into and out of FedEx's (FDX) hometown the third-busiest freight corridor in the country.īut on May 11, inspectors conducting a routine check found a huge crack in a 900-foot horizontal beam supporting the bridge ? presaging a potentially "catastrophic event," according to the head of the Arkansas Department of Transportation. By the spring of 2021, an average of 41,000 vehicles per day were crossing the six-lane bridge. Locals, though, call it the "M" because its arches are shaped like a double hump, and have contributed millions in private donations to light its distinctive curves and cables. Built for $57 million and opened 48 years ago, the bridge is officially named after Hernando de Soto, the Spaniard who explored the area around what is now Memphis and became the first European to see the Mississippi River. Like many successful public works projects, the Interstate 40 bridge connecting Arkansas and Tennessee over the Mississippi River has become part of the everyday lives of nearby residents and businesses. It includes four longform feature stories running every other Tuesday for the remainder of 2021, beginning November 16th and concluding December 28th a four-episode companion podcast series beginning November 30th and a live video December 28th on our 'Leaders' channel, all hosted by the author. In this four-part series, The Bond Buyer looks at the changes this infrastructure moment could bring to landscapes and markets across the nation. This article is part of The Bond Buyer?s multi-platform series on the future of infrastructure: Build What Better?
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