Respect the engineers’ recommendation: Replace Brunswick-Topsham bridge
You have a job to do, digging gravel, with a wheelbarrow. Do you give this to a 90-year-old person, or to a younger person? Why?
You want to go to Oregon by car. Do you take the 20-year-old car? Where do you go in a 50-year-old airplane? We replace hot water heaters about every 12 years – because that’s how long they last after being placed in service.
You have a bridge built 87 years ago, and you want it to continue to bear important loads. It wasn’t designed to last 100 years and it is important to realize there are better ways to design and build a bridge than were used in the Frank J. Wood Bridge’s design. It also now carries heavier loads and more vehicle trips than it was designed to sustain. We now know much more about what repetitive impact does to steel.
The engineers responsible for taking care of this bridge recommend replacement, as they have on other bridges built like this one, all over the state. Why? Because it’s “fracture-critical” and when it fails, bad things will happen quickly. It already has a reduced load rating sending trucks out of the way.
I am a structural engineer, usually working with inspecting buildings, and often with preservation of historic buildings. I am passionate about historical preservation in the built environment yet I am in favor of getting a new bridge in place in the highly important location between Topsham and Brunswick. It needs to be safe, durable, reliable and easy to maintain.
Please respect the expertise and skill of the responsible bridge engineers.
Helen C. Watts,
Bowdoin
Maine DOT failed to deliver
About a year ago I wrote a letter to the editor complaining about why the Maine DOT hasn’t fixed the railroad crossing on Centre Street in Bath near High Street. I’ve seen trucks go over it and bumpers and headlights just fall off (a slight exaggeration, to be sure).
Little old ladies are afraid to drive over the dreaded crossing, fearing the wheels on their car will get stuck, they’ll panic when they hear a train coming, they’ll floor it and drive right into the side of Amato’s.
I thought as soon as my letter hit the press, the DOT would swing into action: we would immediately see truckloads of dirt, truckloads of DOT workers, chain saws, shovels, pick axes, buckets of cement, new train tracks and new railroad ties.
But what did we get?
Nothing!
Big fat goose egg!
What’s the problem here?
Paula McKenney,
Woolwich
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