I just read in your paper “Troubled bridge over water: Bridge power failure causes massive afternoon traffic jam” (Page B1, July 11), and as a professional engineer, I am appalled.
There is no excuse for this to happen. Redundancy should have been built into the bridge controls. The bridge should not have stopped operation. The backup should have taken over while the spare processor was installed in primary.
A single spare processor, with a single point of failure, is a terrible design for a structure in the public domain. I think that the professional engineer on this project – I trust there was a professional engineer on this project – should be disciplined.
Since the bridge is part of the public domain, the controls should have redundancy with all instrumentation involved, so that two would still be working if one of them fails. All motors and hydraulic-related equipment should also have redundancy.
Who in the world approved this design?
Michael Thibodeau, PE
Freeport
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