Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Should the Waldo-Hancock Bridge go up in smoke?
BY JEFF CLARK
We’ve heard all sorts of proposals for the old Waldo-Hancock Bridge, that increasingly rusty suspension bridge standing beside the spiffy new Penobscot Narrows Bridge over the Penobscot River between Prospect and Verona. Bikeway, pedestrian walk, solar and tidal power center — all those ideas surfaced and disappeared again.
Now the Department of Homeland Security has come up with a proposal that sounds as if it should have an April Fool’s Day dateline on it. DHS wants to blow the thing up! The article quotes current and former Maine Department of Transportation officials as saying DHS is curious about what it would take to knock down a suspension bridge, which is a pretty common design in the United States.
This raises all sorts of questions. Who fishes the remains out the river? What happens if someone makes a mistake and drops a tower across the new bridge? Who gets to collect admission fees from the crowds of people who want to watch and will it be applied to highway maintenance please please please? And can we get a reserved spot in the new bridge's observation tower?
Look, we know the MDOT is trying to come up with a way to get rid of the bridge on the cheap, but somehow using a few hundred pounds of C4 seems like a pretty drastic solution.
Posted on Wednesday, May 7, 2008 in Permalink
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Reader Comments:
I could not agree more! I, too, thought this headline seemed more like a misplaced April Fool's joke than a reflection of reality when it appeared earlier this week.
Trouble is, I don't hear Augusta laughing; I hear the sound of hands rubbing together briskly... When it comes to finding revenue I can see our governor embracing an influx of federal funds, regardless of the source.
From Augusta: "Sure, test explosives and other ways of undermining infrastructure — for a fee — and Maine will use the influx of cash to repair its own bridges and roads."
Of course, the political speak won't be as direct, but the result will be the same. Leadership will make the case for prostituting the state and its people for a fee...
If we can't have gambling on Indian Island, let's allow the federal government to gamble with safety and infrastructure next to what is, arguably, Maine's greatest public engineering accomplishment — a stunning span of concrete and glass and steel — and a strong visitor attraction.
Who needs a test? Time and the current status quo of corporate greed over the public good will take care of all of the public infrastructure sooner or later. If we continue to allow Senators/elected politicians to satiate pocketbooks with consumer-driven, Wal-Mart-bagged pap such as gas-tax holidays and roll-back prices, we can continue to watch our federal highway system rot. Minnesota's legislature is in the process of approving a $38 million settlement with the survivors/victims of last year's bridge collapse. Meanwhile, more federal and state bridges there show sign of failure. What we need is not a test for weaknesses, we need leaders who will support the concept of paying for what we have. No explosives needed, simply a failure of elected leaders to preserve and improve upon what generations have worked to build. Our real homeland security will be found by paying to improve and strengthen infrastructure, not paying agencies to look for boogeymen.