You Watch It Get Built, and You STILL Don’t Believe It Can Be Built

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[Building The Golden Gate Bridge] (Viewer #291,003)

(If you aren’t interested in the background of the project, or the fabrication, storage, and transportation of the parts, the actual on-site building starts at 5:10)

Full disclosure: I was stationed across the Bay in Alameda for a few years during my Navy days, and I had the opportunity to cross the Golden Gate Bridge a fair number of times. As pretty as it is in pictures, it’s mind-boggling up close.

Even though this video’s pretty long, it’s well-paced and will keep your attention if you like watching things get built. Still, I have to admit that throughout the whole thing, I just kept thinking “this is engineering madness. Who’s the lunatic who thinks this will actually work?”

Also, I never knew about the net.

9 Comments

  1. As pretty as it is in pictures, it’s mind-boggling up close.

    San Francisco, which, as we all know, is where the south end of the bridge is, is a city of amazing beauty, provided you can ignore the druggies and insane weirdos walking its streets and the stench of human urine and feces. It was a very nice city when I first visited it in December of 1971, but it’s gone steadily down-hill since then.

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  2. You Watch It Get Built, and You STILL Don’t Believe It Can Be Built

    If anyone tried to build it NOW, I don’t believe it could be built or IF it could, it would take 20 years and cost 100 times more then they originally said and would fall down 20 years later. Sad but true. We have the “big dig” here, the crappiest tunnel you’ll ever want to drive through, it cost BILLIONS and if it lasts another 10 years, I’d be shocked. It’s already killed one person just by bad design combined with unbelievably poor quality construction(it’s OK though, her ‘family’ back in her 3rd world hell hole won the lawsuit lottery) and it leaks so much that they have to close it sometimes. Meanwhile, there’s a subway tunnel UNDER Boston Harbor that was built in 1904 and works just fine, 113 years later.

    The tunnel was constructed using a modified version of the Greathead Shield; 2,700 feet (820 m) of the 1 mile (1.6 km) tunnel is actually under water. The excavation took two-and-a-half years, and cost $3 million and the lives of four workmen

    $3,000,000 in 1902 → $80,088,643.10 in 2015

    Big Dig:
    Planning began in 1982; the construction work was carried out between 1991 and 2006; and the project concluded on December 31, 2007 aka 25 bleeping years!

    The Big Dig was the most expensive highway project in the US, and was plagued by cost overruns, delays, leaks, design flaws, charges of poor execution and use of substandard materials, criminal arrests, and one death. The project was originally scheduled to be completed in 1998 at an estimated cost of $2.8 billion (in 1982 dollars, US$6.0 billion adjusted for inflation as of 2006). However, the project was completed only in December 2007, at a cost of over $14.6 billion ($8.08 billion in 1982 dollars, meaning a cost overrun of about 190%) as of 2006. The Boston Globe estimated that the project will ultimately cost $22 billion, including interest, and that it would not be paid off until 2038.

    And the chances of it still existing in 113 years: ZERO

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    • Additionally, problems related to underground tunnels, such as the Big Dig, are of special interest in the context of proposed and existing underground nuclear waste facilities, which leak. WIPP in New Mexico, for instance, leaked from the beginning. Underground structures leak, according to tunnel experts. Some leak more; some leak less. There may be exceptions but we know of none, even though we have extensively researched the topic in the past. Thus, most required pumping of water. WIPP supposedly used large fans.

      “The Big Dig was the most expensive highway project in the U.S. and was plagued by escalating costs, scheduling overruns, leaks, design flaws, charges of poor execution and use of substandard materials, criminal arrests,and one death.…the construction work was done between 1991 and 2006; and the project concluded on December 31, 2007,…”

      “Thousands of leaks”

      As far back as 2001, Turnpike Authority officials and union contractors knew of thousands of leaks in ceiling and wall fissures, extensive water damage to steel supports and fireproofing systems, and overloaded drainage systems. A $10 million contract, signed off as a cost overrun, was used to repair these leaks. Many of the leaks were a result of Modern Continental and other subcontractors failing to remove gravel and other debris before pouring concrete. This was not made publicly known to the media, but engineers at MIT (volunteer students and professors) performed several experiments and found serious problems with the tunnel.

      On September 15, 2004, a major leak in the Interstate 93 north tunnel forced the closure of the tunnel while repairs were conducted. This also forced the Turnpike Authority to release information regarding its non-disclosure of prior leaks. A follow-up reported on “extensive” leaks that were more severe than state authorities had previously acknowledged. The report went on to state that the $14.6 billion tunnel system was riddled with more than 400 leaks. A Boston Globe report, however, countered that by stating there were nearly 700 leaks in a single 1,000-foot (300 m) section of tunnel beneath South Station. Turnpike officials also stated that the number of leaks being investigated was down from 1,000 to 500.

      The problem of leaks is further aggravated by the fact that many of them involve corrosive salt water. This is caused by the proximity of Boston Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean, causing a mix of salt and fresh water leaks in the tunnel. The situation is made worse by road salt spread in the tunnel to melt ice during freezing weather, or brought in by vehicles passing through.

      Salt water and salt spray are well-known issues that must be dealt with in any marine environment. It has been reported that “hundreds of thousands of gallons of salt water are pumped out monthly” in the Big Dig, and a map has been prepared showing “hot spots” where water leakage is especially serious.[41] Salt-accelerated corrosion has caused ceiling light fixtures to fail (see below), but can also cause rapid deterioration of embedded rebar and other structural steel reinforcements holding the tunnel walls and ceiling in place.”

      “Substandard materials”

      Massachusetts State Police searched the offices of Aggregate Industries, the largest concrete supplier for the underground portions of the project, in June 2005. They seized evidence that Aggregate delivered concrete that did not meet contract specifications. In March 2006 Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly announced plans to sue project contractors and others because of poor work on the project. Over 200 complaints were filed by the state of Massachusetts as a result of leaks, cost overruns, quality concerns, and safety violations. In total, the state has sought approximately $100 million from the contractors ($1 for every $141 spent).

      In May 2006, six employees of the company were arrested and charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States. In July 2007, Aggregate Industries settled the case with an agreement to pay $50 million. $42 million of the settlement went to civil cases and $8 million was paid in criminal fines.

      — https://miningawareness.wordpress.com/2015/03/26/boston-big-dig-leaks-corrosion-substandard-concrete/

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      • Meanwhile in California, even Pravda The Los Angeles Times admits that the bullet train project is 7 years behind schedule and facing $3.6 BILLION in cost overruns – and this is just for the first 118 miles of track in Central California, where freight trains for hauling produce, not commuter trains for people, are what we really need. “Proponents say short-term financial concerns are more than offset by the future value of a transportation system connecting the state.” Connecting. The. State. They are going to take NINE YEARS to build 118 miles of track in the middle of nowhere, but golly-gee everybody, this is going to be so cool when it’s done! Your great-grandchildren are going to get so much use out of speeding from San Francisco to Los Angeles! And their great-grandchildren won’t mind that they are still paying for its construction, and subsidizing its operation, when they become taxpayers! [No, wait, they won’t be subsidizing its operation, because it will have fallen apart by then.] And if you are not whole-heartedly on board with the project, you are a climate science denier who HATES EARTH!!!1! “About 80% of all bullet train systems incur massive overruns in their construction, according to Bent Flyvbjerg, an infrastructure risk expert at the University of Oxford who has studied such rail projects all over the world. One of the biggest hazards of such mega-projects is a government agency that is attempting to do something highly complex for the first time. The California system is being built by an independent authority that has never built anything and depends on a large network of consultants and contractors for advice.” Just like with Obamacare, fiscal conservatives predicted all of this – the cost overruns, the massive delays, the inevitable call to raise taxes, all for a system that will never be financially independent and will suck revenues forever – but, as always happens in California, we were out-voted by happy hippie unicorn-believers who want to cram public transportation down our throats no matter what, because Gaia.

        http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-bullet-cost-overruns-20170106-story.html

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  3. Hey Comrade Barry and Comrade Warren: With the exception of the Sausalito Lateral approach road (Alexander Avenue today) which was built as a federal WPA project, there were no state or federal funds involved in building the Golden Gate Bridge

    So yes, we DID build that!.

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  4. 2 thoughts: first, several years ago I saw a similar thing on building the Saint Louis arch. toward the end they said that because of current regulations they could never build it today.
    Second, I remember articles written more recently about the differences between the building of the GG versus the building of the new span of the bay bridge.

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  5. I was also there, stationed on Treasure Island 1989-1993. That bridge really is an amazing structure. Probably the most photographed bridge in the world. I would say it is one of the top 5 photographed man-made structures in the world. However, I am certain someone will find a list on the interwebz (Thanks, Al Gore, for inventing it!) to prove me wrong.

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