September 18, 2008
Champlain Bridge
Soizic and I were just watching a discussion on TV between members of the Liberal, Conservative, NDP and Bloc parties (it’s election season here in America-junior). The subject of the Champlain Bridge came up and it caught my attention.
Apparently there have been numerous reports lately in regards to the safety of the bridge (a major artery that sees almost 60 million crossings each year). The Federal Bridge Corporation had responded saying that the bridge would be closed if there was any real danger to the public, but just 2 years ago we had an unexpected overpass collapse, which killed several people.
There are already some maintenance plans under way for the bridge, and some ideas floating around for replacing or expanding the bridge…but people I know take that bridge everyday and they’ve commented that they already feel nervous each time they cross.
Posted by Aaron on September 18, 2008, 6:56 pm permalink top | general
I noticed that the “bumps” (where the bride sections connect) feel higher than usual. It might just have been me, or I might have crosses them at an angle or something, but it definitely made me nervous. I hope they fix it up; I just don’t want to begin to imagine the traffic that it will cause. Imagine re-routing the busses to Jacques Cartier bridge if they had to do emergency fixes on the bridge… it would make commuting to work a crazy (and long) experience!
Yes the commute would be really painful but seeing these kind of “pliers” on the side of the bridge everyday I go through it since at least the beginning of summer and never seeing anyone working on it (maybe they do at night, I just never see that) do not make me feel confident about that bridge.
Hearing all what the reports said about it and listening to the politicians trying to calm down the situation doesn’t reassure me. This is a big artery and closing it for reparation / destruction would be a real problem at rush hours and I fear that they keep it open just for that!
When the overpath collapsed a few years ago it had just been inspected a few hours before because some calls had been made to 911 saying that parts of it were going down. They decided that it was safe to keep it open… so safe that a few hours later people were dying under it
So I don’t know how I could trust them when they say that something is safe… You know, if engineers say that it is not safe I believe they know more about it that politicians do. One of the politician who was debating is an engineer and surprisingly this one did not say that it was safe just that he had a close look at the reports. I wonder if these guys (or someone from their close family) are using this bridge everyday
Let me tell you that each time I go through that bridge I think of it: I look at the river and wonder where I’ll find something to hold to not divert with the river. If it would be possible to join the shore by swimming? How many people would die? How many would stay in the river forever with their family not able to give a grave? But what I don’t wonder about is how politician would react…
Between that and the environment, I can’t wait to be allowed to express myself at elections! Hopefully it won’t be too late…