i had to do it do em
More you might like
I found this proverb somewhere on this cursed website. I’ve been thinking about it ever since.
surely this is a good idea that doesn’t have the capacity to end real fuckin badly
Bridges aren’t supposed to have weight restrictions on them. That is, they don’t come with weight restrictions on them when they’re new. So a bridge with a weight restriction on it is a sign that something has gone wrong and the bridge does not meet current standards.
The maximum weight that a vehicle is allowed to carry on the Interstate System per federal law is 80,000 pounds gross vehicle weight (with a max of 20,000 pounds per axle). That’s 40 tons. That limit applies to every inch of pavement, not just the bridges. Since this is a known cap, a new Interstate bridge will be designed to accommodate an 80,000 lb GVW load on it. You could say the bridge’s weight limit is 80,000 lb/40 tons but that doesn’t really have much meaning, because a load higher than that would be illegal to transport on public roads anyway, and the road leading up to the bridge has the same weight restriction. (In practice, the bridge doubtlessly will be designed to have a little bit of let to it just in case some idiot tries to squeak by a few hundred extra pounds.)
Now, note that that law applies to the Interstate System only, because the federal government only has a governing interest in the Interstate System (and other roads that together make up something called the National Highway System) because they partially fund it. Most long-distance roads are owned and funded by the states. The states could theoretically set lower standard weight limits and/or design bridges with lower weight limits…but in practice they don’t.
One, because all of that 80,000 lb GVW traffic on the Interstate system has to go somewhere when it exits the system.
Two, because a group called the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO, who are best known for picking the road numbers) maintains a catalog of standard components for making bridges that meet Interstate System requirements. Engineers are expensive on a per-hour basis, so if you can direct your engineer to use standard components and make a standard bridge, that’s a lot cheaper than having them design a bridge from scratch to go over the creek in Nowheresville. As a result, most new bridges meet Interstate standards and have an 80,000 lb GVW rating even if they aren’t on the Interstate system. (This is also why all new bridges kind of look the same, but we’re not worried about how boring the bridges are for the sake of this post.)
So a bridge only has an explicit weight limit if it has been damaged in some way (through failure to properly maintain it usually) or because it predates the application of Interstate System standards and the standard AASHTO bridges.
Older bridges often have other problems in addition to the weight limits: many older designs are what we call “fracture critical”, which means that if one component of the bridge fails the whole thing collapses. Modern bridge designs have redundancy designed into them so that if one beam fails the other beams will carry the load until the damaged beam can be replaced. Older bridges also often don’t meet other standards, like height (16 ft clearance) and width (12 ft per lane plus 14 ft for shoulders) requirements.
Biden isn’t advocating eliminating weight limits and letting it be a laissez-faire free-for-all where trucks can just go wherever they want. He’s advocating for replacing bridges that carry weight limits with new ones that don’t have them.
wow i got absolutely schooled thank you for all this this is really informative. i have learned so much
This is a great explanation of what the fuck Biden was talking about in his tweet. because I will freely admit that I also went “…….wtf?????” when I read it. So thank you.
Today I learned about civil engineering.
So these tourists came to a city with a bunch of “tourists go home” “tourists not welcome” graffiti and instead of idk maybe looking into why locals want tourists gone they film the grafiti, post it on tiktok with a caption “wow i feel so welcome” and like comments like these
And then they’re suprised when locals tell them to fuck off
I’m pretty sure the the video was filmed in barcelona (not 100 % because i can’t find it atm) but there are countless people in the comments explaining to this person that locals literally cannot live in their houses because of airbnb and other stupid shit made for tourists. Did the creator acknowledge these comments? No.
exactly! @minglana
The funny thing is that they don’t want to grasp that people can’t live in the majority of Barcelona and surrounding cities and towns LITERALLY.
In the really touristy parts of Barcelona (half the city) there is no housing market because there are no homes in the market because everything is fucking Airbnb. If you don’t live in Barcelona, but you live in the surrounding areas the little housing options there are inaccessible if you are a resident because it can cost over 300k-400k in places like Hospitalet del Llobregat (5-6 years ago the majority of housing in the city was 200k or less unless you went to specific parts with luxury flats).
People can’t live in Barcelona because there are no grocery shops or essential shops to have a normal life. When I was young and up to my teenage years (I’m only 25 btw) Barcelona was known by the small multi-generational business and artisans. If you needed something you went to X store that was in X place, and you knew it was good because your grandma used to go there when she was young (the thing being food, clothes, furniture, anything you could imagine). Nowadays all these small business have disappeared (I know some of them are barely surviving but when I talk to them all of them are saying that they don’t know how much longer they can stay) and in their place a bunch of souvenir shops that sell sevillanas (from Andalusia), tango (from Argentina), mariachi hats (from Mexico) and Son Goku T-shirts have opened thus making that the few people who lived there unable to subside (you need food and this type of things).
Starting in May and up till October you can barely go to the city centre and surrounding areas (where all the official buildings are, the majority of offices, etc) because of the tourists. They are literally EVERYWHERE. You can’t catch the metro because it is full of tourists, you can’t catch the bus because it’s full of tourists, you need to add 10-15min (or more) to your commute because tourists will be in the streets and are going to block the fucking way and won’t let you walk.
Tourists are simply rude and uncivil. You can’t grasp how rude they are. I haven’t been treated worse than how tourists treated me. They pee on the streets in the middle of the day, they drink and vomit everywhere they are, they go nude in the street even by schools playgrounds, they do drugs, they are in the way. ALWAYS. They have 0 spacial awareness or something because they will stop in the middle of a busy street and cars will try to go around them. You will lose your train because a tourist was in the tall and didn’t let you walk by or let you help them. You will be late to work/school because tourists will stop in the middle of the street and didn’t let you pass (and if you dare to tell them something or even worse, touch them, be ready for an altercation). Be ready to be treated like garbage, be ready to be treated as if you are barely human, be ready for tourist trashing your shop/restaurant/place because “españa.sangria.fiesta” and because they are too lazy to parent they children. Be ready to have the laws of your city changed because tourists can’t act in public and now hotels don’t have balconies, windows don’t open or there are no pools. If they are renting a flat (Airbnb type of thing) be ready for constant fights, police calls, not being able to sleep, garbage “falling from the sky” (the tourists flat)…
What some people don’t seem to grasp is that the tourist issue is not a new thing, maybe the tourists are finding out NOW because for them we were like the monkey exhibit at the zoo but in 2015, Barcelona mayor was elected because her opposition to what the tourism have done to the city. People have been done with tourists destroying the city for so long that 10 years ago it was what made political parties win elections. Maybe those tourists should reflect in the way the act or how they treat someone else’s home instead of crying because people are fed up with them.
