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34 minutes ago, smeagolsfree said:

The Hernando De Soto Bridge is almost 50 years old-first time I went to Memphis it was about 50% complete.

It's probably due for a major overhaul.

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30 minutes ago, smeagolsfree said:

AND the river is closed to river traffic also 

https://www.tn.gov/tdot/news/2021/5/11/i-40-hernando-desoto-bridge-shut-down-for-repairs.html

Here’s a screenshot from 7:30pm

Screenshot_20210511-193320_Maps.thumb.jpg.29fc8f414a962a884856effa693262d0.jpg

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4 minutes ago, LA_TN said:

AND the river is closed to river traffic also 

That cant go on very long! Pipeline shut down and now the busiest river in the country. I guess the republican's & dems better get off their cans and compromise and pass some sort of infrastructure bill before the capitol dome falls on them.

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3 minutes ago, smeagolsfree said:

That cant go on very long! Pipeline shut down and now the busiest river in the country. I guess the republican's & dems better get off their cans and compromise and pass some sort of infrastructure bill before the capitol dome falls on them.

I think they just fixed that a few years ago, so all is well! Hahaha 

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2 hours ago, LA_TN said:

Probably not gonna be good news...

TDOT is holding a press conference and will be on Facebook live at 10:30 am

 

**UPDATE**

River traffic will remain blocked for another 1-2 days for bridge analysis. Further decisions will be made after the analysis is completed. Could be closed weeks

Vehicle traffic - depending on analysis, could reopen a portion of the bridge, or be closed for weeks to months

At this time, the inspection team is not allowed on the bridge until further analysis is completed. At that point, they will inspect the remainder of the bridge

24x32 load bearing box beam with interior wielding, 3 of 4 plates have separated from the beam, crack along bottom 20% of beam. The crack was very obvious from a distance and 911 was called immediately to close the bridge

Looks bad

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16 hours ago, bnacincy said:

The Hernando De Soto Bridge is almost 50 years old-first time I went to Memphis it was about 50% complete.

It's probably due for a major overhaul.

Thing is the bridge itself was overhauled several years ago so it could handle seismic loads of up to a 7.0 magnitude earthquake, and that included reinforcing the bridge supports throughout the span.

27 minutes ago, LA_TN said:

Looks bad

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Yeah, that's a clean break of a fracture that cannot easily be patched up. It's gonna take a while to fix and may require replacing part of the bridge deck.

Edited by James Owen
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1 hour ago, James Owen said:

Thing is the bridge itself was overhauled several years ago so it could handle seismic loads of up to a 7.0 magnitude earthquake, and that included reinforcing the bridge supports throughout the span.

FYI, TDOT stated it is not due to the seismic work and this appears to be metal fatigue. The majority of the seismic work was to the piers and supports

Right now, we have to wait another 1-2 days for initial safety analysis, then, proceed with inspection of the remainder of the bridge, which will be weeks

 

**let's hope they open the Mississippi River for barge traffic. If not, panic buy toliet paper

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5 hours ago, Rockatansky said:

Hopefully. That or proper BRT in dedicated ROW.

BRT could be installed along a Gallatin Pike, from Briley Parkway to Rivergate Mall,  with low cost / quickly implemented  Tactical Urbanism methods.

It could serve as a pilot corridor to showcase a successful example to the rest of the city.

Out of respect for this forum, I would like to offer the following info strictly for discussion purposes:

Here's a Tennessean OpEd I wrote on behalf of Transit Now Nashville that outline BRT on Gallatin Pike: https://www.tennessean.com/story/opinion/2020/12/11/bus-rapid-transit-nashville-would-solve-intractable-problems/6512660002/

The OpEd is a condensed version of this longer report: Quick Win for Better Bus Service

TransitNowBRT.GallatinPike.png.dff200d3efd503ebbed38684539d33e6.png

 

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I would love to see this happen, but the only way is dedicated lanes for BRT and as long as car traffic is running in the same lane as the BRT as it is now it will never work. The state has made it so abundantly clear that if BRT is done on state hwys., then they will not allow dedicated lanes as they passed law against  this thanks to Lee Beaman and his buddies  when the Amp was proposed.

I respect where you are coming from 100%, but I am afraid this can be studied until we have men on Jupiter and the state of TN will still be fighting Metro over politics. 

The state has worked against Nashville to to keep Metro from solving the problems instead of working with them. The states solution has always been build more lanes to the intersates and that clearly has mades things worse. We need to take lanes away and replace them with rail, but the state will never seemingly do anything to help Metro.

 

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11 hours ago, smeagolsfree said:

I would love to see this happen, but the only way is dedicated lanes for BRT and as long as car traffic is running in the same lane as the BRT as it is now it will never work. The state has made it so abundantly clear that if BRT is done on state hwys., then they will not allow dedicated lanes as they passed law against  this thanks to Lee Beaman and his buddies  when the Amp was proposed.

I respect where you are coming from 100%, but I am afraid this can be studied until we have men on Jupiter and the state of TN will still be fighting Metro over politics. 

The state has worked against Nashville to to keep Metro from solving the problems instead of working with them. The states solution has always been build more lanes to the intersates and that clearly has mades things worse. We need to take lanes away and replace them with rail, but the state will never seemingly do anything to help Metro.

 

I will also say that even if you get the state to sign off, absent a physical barrier or serious enforcement (which will never happen in this city), you will have cars parked and traveling inside of the "dedicated" bus lane all day long.  

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On 5/14/2021 at 4:07 PM, smeagolsfree said:

Sounds like we can open a ferry line up to Arkansas too.

A ferry solution is not by any means a rare move.

When a tanker ship allided with the Benjamin Harrison vertical-lift bridge near Hopewell, Va. in 1977, the state commissioned an orchestration of carfloats, vans and buses for a Park-Ride-Ride transport of commuters to their destinations.  The thing is, that was more of a local solution.   That James River crossing isn't nearly as vital and heavily critical by volume as with the context of the DeSoto Bridge.  Commercial river traffic also is much, much greater on the Miss. River, even though the Port of Richmond uses the James for ocean-going vessels.   So as an uninformed layman, I don't see a ferry as an effective stop-gap, without some quick-fix multi-distributed docking set-ups on both sides of the river.  There just isn't the right infrastructure in place, to dovetail with existing roadways in either Memphis or West Memphis to handle the volume, as I now see it.

To add a bit of humor, they could contract with the Union Pacific (UP) and Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) railroads to use the nearby Harahan and Frisco bridges, just north of the I-55 bridge (Memphis & R-Kansas Bridge) and transport vehicles back and forth on flatcars, as the Alaska Railroad does on its land ferries.

photo - courtesy, John Weeks III

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Edited by rookzie
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