The Bridge Will be Torn Down and a Gorgeous Old House Was, Too

I have been writing this blog about infrastructure, networks, research, and education since I began the RENeW blog in January 2009. The blog was initiated for two reasons: 1. because I had been approached by a good number of people to start one and 2. I was finishing writing the Fragile Networks book with Patrick Qiang and blogging was a way in which to get news out and to also inform. Being an educator means keeping ties to students, even after they graduate, and to numerous colleagues and interested individuals, and this means of communication seems especially timely.

Throughout this semester, while teaching my undergrad transportation & logistics class, the students and I discussed associated events as they were occurring in the real world, from the closure of the San Francisco Bay bridge to the closure of the Lake Champlain bridge, along with the engineering, economic, and business consequences. We talked about passengers who were stranded on airport tarmacs for hours on planes before their release. We talked and learned about transportation modes and their variants around the globe. We came to truly appreciate the importance of transportation and logistics as networks that tie us all.

These and other stories continue as we near the New Year with President Obama passing a regulation that airlines on national flights cannot keep passengers on planes on the tarmac for longer than three hours without large financial penalties. Ah, the math modeling possibilities that now present themselves and colleagues in transportation and operations research have been recently quoted in the press on the associated scheduling and rescheduling issues and possible ramifications! However, all of my "stuck on the tarmac for 4 hours" stories have involved international flights so I guess I am not off the hook.

At the same time, we are reading about passengers being trapped in the Eurochunnel for hours with the Eurostar train shutting operation for days because of, supposedly, "unusually powdery snow entering the engines." In addition, due to a power failure yesterday, Amtrak had to shut train operation in parts of the Northeast yesterday for hours (during one of the busiest travel seasons of the year). Nevertheless, another theme for one of my blog posts was that of Boeing's production problems, which, for the time being, seem to have been now resolved, with the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner recently soaring over Washington state (2 years late but at least it can get up and fly now) . This is a fascinating case study on outsourcing and what happened.

The New York Times is now reporting in this NY Times Bridge Article that the Lake Champlain bridge that joins Vermont with New York State will not be repaired but rather will be imploded next Monday! The article demonstrates the huge impact on the communities from, first, the closure of this bridge last October and now with the heart-breaking news that this bridge will be destroyed. A lifeline for citizens is lost as well as an elegant (but one which needed lots of repairs) structure. I wrote about the closure of this bridge in a letter to the editor that was published in the Boston Globe last month.

Last March we traveled to Austria, since I was invited to give a seminar at the Vienna University of Business and Economics. We landed first in Innsbruck, where we spent a few days since we wanted to reconnect and see friends and townfolks that we had interacted with back in 2002 while I held a Distinguished Chaired Fulbright at the University of Innsbruck. During our 4 month stay in Innsbruck we lived in the house featured above in the first photo, which was owned by a professor at the university. The address was 94 Schneeburgasse. We had heard that the house had been sold and condos had replaced this magical villa with views of the Alps and the 1964 Olympics ski jump.

We wandered to see our former neighbors on Schneeburgasse last March and were welcomed with hugs. Above I also include the photo of the condo complex that replaced the villa (with several of the units not filled).

Let's take great care when we destroy the old. Beauty in design and function should be preserved also for its living history.

Now, we will have to just make do with some photos and incredible memories -- the same holds for those whose lives have been forever changed because of the removal of the Champlain bridge.

Another Critical Link is Closed and Citizens Pay the Price

With all the attention the closure of the San Francisco Bay bridge has been getting you may have missed another bridge closure on the opposite side of the US -- that of the Lake Champlain bridge that connects Vermont with New York State. The bridge was closed on October 16, 2009, and it is uncertain whether it will even be able to reopen after the winter. It is a truss bridge and its design is similar to the Minneapolis bridge that collapsed in August 2007, with 13 deaths resulting. The Lake Champlain bridge is a critical link. Its closure has resulted in commuters having to add 90 minutes to their commutes or to wait as much as three hours for a ferry to shuttle them across the lake. Small business owners are losing thousands of dollars a day and healthcare workers are having difficulty reaching the hospital that they work in.

The pain and suffering and economic and societal losses are graphically depicted in the article, Lake Champlain Bridge, in the Boston Globe. This is another example where deferred maintenance and inattention to the nation's transportation infrastructure has now yielded substantive losses. It also shows that the networks upon which our society and economy depend are more than just the ties that bind but they are the channels and routes of people and goods flows. Transportation planners and government officials should have realized the importance of the Lake Champlain bridge, whose removal has resulted in rerouting of thousands of commuters, who have had to add substantively to their commutes and/or switch their modes of transportation entirely.

A few brave souls are even now crossing Lake Champlain by kayaks!

Some quotes from the article that are haunting:

It is so much more than a bridge.

We feel like we're cut off from the world.

As for the stimulus funds, it is now being reported that over half of the jobs saved were in education; see the coverage in this article, Schools are where Stimulus Saved Jobs, in the New York Times. The funds were also used to shore up, temporarily, many public universities.

Educational institutions need to enhance their programs associated with network infrastructure.

As more and more schools try to develop "revenue-generation" programs, due to serious pending financial shortfalls, after the stimulus funds run out, as reported in today's New York Times, attention should be given to develop programs that truly help our country to rebuild its infrastructure from its educational institutions to its transportation systems, the financial system, manufacturing and logistical networks, healthcare, the Internet, as well as our energy networks. Stop-gap, "trendy" programs are just quick fixes, if they are fixes, at all.