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Chitchat China Underutilized Bridges Built From Toxic Debts

gingerlyn

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China’s New Bridges: Rising
High, but Buried in Debt
China has built hundreds of dazzling new bridges, including the
longest and highest, but many have fostered debt and corruption.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/10/world/asia/china-bridges-infrastructure.html

Fueled by government-backed loans and urged on by the big construction companies and officials who profit from them, many of the projects are piling up debt and breeding corruption while producing questionable transportation benefits.

For all its splendor, the Chishi Bridge, in Hunan Province, exemplifies the seamy underside of China’s infrastructure boom. Its cost, $300 million, was more than 50 percent over the budget. The project struggled with delays and a serious construction accident and was tarnished by government corruption. Since it opened in October, the bridge and the expressway it serves have been underused and buried in debt.

A study that Mr. Ansar helped write said fewer than a third of the 65 Chinese highway and rail projects he examined were “genuinely economically productive,” while the rest contributed more to debt than to transportation needs. Unless such projects are reined in, the study warned, “poorly managed infrastructure investments” could push the nation into financial crisis.

While experts often advocate infrastructure building as a path to economic development, local governments in China “went overboard” because of corruption and other financial lures, said Huang Shaoqing, an economist at Shanghai Jiaotong University.



The projects are often financed by loans from state-owned banks to companies owned by local governments, which collect tolls to repay the loans. But on many routes in less populous inland regions, tolls are not keeping pace with the costs, setting off a spiral of mounting debt and rising expenses.

The Chinese government estimated that expressways nationwide lost $47 billion in 2015, more than double the loss in 2014. In Hunan, expressways faced interest payments of $1.9 billion a year while taking in $1.3 billion in tolls, a deputy governor said in 2015.

But provincial officials say they are trapped. They cannot afford to lower tolls to attract more drivers to the Chishi Bridge and the 70-mile expressway it connects, but raising tolls would reduce traffic.

The price of crossing the bridge, about $3 and up depending on the size of the vehicle, is beyond the reach of most villagers below. That toll is on top of a higher toll for using the expressway.

“The capacity to repay loans with tolls is extremely weak, revenue cannot cover the outlays on operation and management, and we have no capacity at all to pay the interest and capital” on the construction loans, the Hunan transportation office said in April, responding to a complaint from a local official.

Thanks to government backing, the state-owned company building the bridge is unlikely to default or go bankrupt. But bridges like Chishi leave local governments and developers struggling with debt, and those who live below nonplused.

“If you don’t build roads, there can’t be prosperity,” said Huang Sanliang, a 56-year-old farmer who lives under the bridge. “But this is an expressway, not a second- or third-grade road. One of those might be better for us here.”
 

war is best form of peace

Alfrescian
Loyal
LOL!

You are again reading and posting Rubbish from JEALOUS & SOUR Bankrupted Ang Moh Beggars, who are unable to afford to rebuild and repair rotten Bridges and roads in their own homeland, and see Chinese build so much nice advance and good facilities. USA particularly, as I traveled so much are still using extremely old and poorly maintained bridges and tunnels and fucked up roads built by their great grandpa, and without much funds to repair and maintain. Chinese build many facilities for MILITARY & STRATEGIC PURPOSES, when they use them to move Nukes, Missiles, and Troop, very useful. None of Ang Moh's business until when Chinese missiles whack their ass!

Only DEBT Ang Moh need to worry about is the TREMENDOUS ONES, THEY OWE TO CHINA! Better O$P$, or get whacked!






https://www.citylab.com/solutions/2...crisis-is-really-a-maintenance-crisis/385452/




America's Infrastructure Crisis Is Really a Maintenance Crisis

Eric Jaffe

Feb 12, 2015

Here's what we can do about it.

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It's long been time to focus more on maintaining America's existing roads and less on building new ones. The National Highway System already connects virtually all of the areas worth connecting. Driving peaked circa 2004—and even earlier in some states. Traffic remains bad in many metros, but by itself expanding road networks can only temporarily alleviate the problem, and over time might even increase it.

And yet we build. We build without seeming to appreciate that every mile of fresh new road will one day become a mile of crumbling old road that needs additional attention. We build even though our pot of road funding requires increasingly creative (and arguably illegal) solutions to stay anything other than empty.

The numbers tell the story best. From 2004 to 2008, states dedicated just 43 percent of their road budgets to maintain existing roads despite the fact that they made up nearly 99 percent of the road system. The other 1 percent—new construction—got more than half the money. From 2009 to 2011 states did only marginally better, spending 55 percent of their road money ($20.4 billion) on expansion and just 45 percent on maintenance ($16.5 billion):
Smart Growth America

Predictably, over that same period, the country's roads got worse:
Smart Growth America

To keep the nation's roads in good repair would require about $45.2 billion a year, rather than the $16.5 currently spent on maintenance:
Smart Growth America

In other words, we need to use all the available road money each year to fix our roads, and then some, to prevent them from falling into a state of disrepair that endangers public safety. And the more roads we build, the more we need to one day fix.
Some States Do Better Than Others

The above charts come from a 2014 Smart Growth America report spotted by Streetsblog's Angie Schmitt in a thoughtful recent post on America's maintenance crisis. On average the situation is bleak. Though some states do better than others, some do much, much worse.

Washington state, for instance, spent 84 percent of its road funding on expansion between 2009 and 2011. Over that same time period the condition of its existing roads unsurprisingly fell. The share of its roads in poor condition went from 12 percent in 2008 to 27 percent in 2011.

And Washington isn't the worst offender. According to the Smart Growth report, Mississippi spent 97 percent of its money on expansion. Utah wasn't far behind at 93 percent. Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina (all 83 percent), and Texas (82 percent) were in a similar ballpark.
CityLab

Over that same period, road quality in each of these states declined in one form or another. The share of roads in poor condition in Mississippi rose from 18 to 30 percent, and in Utah from 7 to 11 percent, and in Arizona and North Carolina by a couple points each. Nevada's share of poor roads actually fell—but so did its share of road in "good" condition, from 62 percent all the way down to 24 percent.
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Compare these numbers to those for states that spend as much in road repair as they should. In 2011, California spent $1.44 billion to maintain roads, against a need of $1.3 billion—a habit that seems to pay off in road quality. California improved its share of "good" roads from 2008 to 2011, and decreased its share of "poor" ones. New Jersey followed a similar course: spending $1.1 billion in repairs against $225 million in needs, while watching road quality improve.

That's not to say places like California or New Jersey don't have infrastructure problems. They do. But, at least circa 2011, they'd also recognized that maintenance counts as infrastructure, too.
What To Do About It

The most logical plan to address the problem—one we've pointed out before, and Brad Plumer at Vox raises again this week—is the "Fix It First" approach outlined in 2011 by transport scholars David Levinson and Matthew Kahn. Under this philosophy federal highway money would be directed away from new construction and used instead to "repair, maintain, rehabilitate, reconstruct, and enhance existing roads and bridges."

There are loads of reasons to like this plan. The sooner repairs are made, the cheaper they are: every $1 in preventive maintenance saves between $4 and $10 in future repairs, according to Levinson and Kahn. The funding system could be weighted by road condition to favor those in the worst shape (below, a map of structurally deficient U.S. bridges). On the whole, preserving a road is "less-risky" than building a new one, because the demand for its use is far more certain.
DOT via "Fix It First"

Another great thing about this plan is that by making it harder to expand roads, metro areas gain an incentive to charge drivers for congestion. As we've pointed out before, Americans don't pay nearly enough in gas taxes to offset the social costs of driving—of which time lost to traffic is a biggie. As driving became more expensive over time, local agencies could meet additional mobility demands with new investments in public transportation.

Speaking of transit, prioritizing maintenance is just as important here, too. The recent deadly electrical malfunction on the D.C. Metrorail system seems to have stemmed, at least in part, from infrastructure in need or repair or replacement. Delayed maintenance also played a role in recent incidents on the Metro-North commuter railroad outside New York City.

Writing recently at the Transportationist, Columbia planning scholar David King suggested that local government should have to meet certain criteria before receiving money for new transit projects. These include promoting smarter development, limiting parking, and dedicating street space to car alternatives. Agencies should also recover a minimum threshold of transit costs through fares—ensuring that they have enough money to run and maintain an existing system before lobbying to build a shiny new one:

If cities do the hard political work they should be rewarded. If all they do is raise taxes based on specious claims, they should be held accountable. We currently have this backwards.

Tyranny of the Ribbon

The hard political work begins with the tyranny of the ribbon. Of the many reasons infrastructure repairs get snubbed for construction, big public ribbon-cutting ceremonies that come with fresh projects—but not with stale maintenance—is near the top of the list. By the nature of their limited tenure and uncertain futures, politicians care more about attaching their name to a new project than extending the life of someone else's old one.

Smart Growth America suggests we "raise the profile of repair and preservation projects." That's easier said than done, and when done wrong the results can be disastrous. Take that time, in 2005, when then-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger tried to call public attention to road maintenance—by having a crew dig a pothole only to fill it:

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In general, public ceremonies for maintenance just end up drawing little attention. During my recent conversation with MARTA chief Keith Parker, he said the Atlanta transit system had a tunnel ventilation project underway that may cost upwards of $200 million, and a radio system upgrade that will cost up to $50 million, and of course regular track enhancements and repairs—investments that, while necessary, will prevent the agency from doing what Parker called "sexier" expansion projects.

"When we tell people, 'hey, come out because we're going to have a celebration for the Clayton County expansion,' we expect a long line of people," he said. "When we say, 'hey look, we want to celebrate the tunnel ventilation project,' I don't think we'll get so many."

The media isn't blameless here. Just as politicians are loath to cut ribbons for infrastructure repairs, news organizations and bloggers prefer to hype new and shinier projects in the pipeline—or to wait until deferred maintenance causes a high-profile tragedy. There's no single or simple way to reverse America's growing infrastructure crisis, but reframing it as a maintenance crisis is a good place to start.
About the Author
Eric Jaffe Eric Jaffe
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Eric Jaffe is the former New York bureau chief for CityLab. He is the author of A Curious Madness and The King's Best Highway.



https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/09/15/bridges-need-repair/2816881/



Report: Over 65,000 U.S. bridges in need of repair

AP Published 4:30 p.m. ET Sept. 15, 2013 | Updated 4:30 p.m. ET Sept. 15, 2013

An Associated Press review of national bridge records found more than 800 bridges that are known as "structurally deficient" and "fracture critical." highway bridges. A combination of red flags that experts say is particularly problematic. (Sept. 15) AP
frederick douglass memorial bridge

(Photo: Alex Brandon, AP)
Story Highlights

About 7,800 are in disrepair and are at risk of collapse
These bridges carry more than 29 million drivers per day
Many states lack funding to replace at-risk bridges

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Motorists coming off the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge into Washington are treated to a postcard-perfect view of the U.S. Capitol. The bridge itself, however, is about as ugly as it gets: The steel underpinnings have thinned since the structure was built in 1950, and the span is pocked with rust and crumbling concrete.

District of Columbia officials were so worried about a catastrophic failure that they shored up the horizontal beams to prevent the bridge from falling into the Anacostia River.

And safety concerns about the Douglass bridge, which is used by more than 70,000 vehicles daily, are far from unique.

An Associated Press analysis of 607,380 bridges in the most recent federal National Bridge Inventory showed that 65,605 were classified as "structurally deficient" and 20,808 as "fracture critical." Of those, 7,795 were both — a combination of red flags that experts say indicate significant disrepair and similar risk of collapse.

A bridge is deemed fracture critical when it doesn't have redundant protections and is at risk of collapse if a single, vital component fails. A bridge is structurally deficient when it is in need of rehabilitation or replacement because at least one major component of the span has advanced deterioration or other problems that lead inspectors to deem its condition poor or worse.

Engineers say the bridges are safe. And despite the ominous sounding classifications, officials say that even bridges that are structurally deficient or fracture critical are not about to collapse.

The AP zeroed in on the Douglass bridge and others that fit both criteria — structurally deficient and fracture critical. Together, they carry more than 29 million drivers a day, and many were built more than 60 years ago. Those bridges are located in all 50 states, plus Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia, and include the Brooklyn Bridge in New York, a bridge on the New Jersey highway that leads to the Lincoln Tunnel, and the Main Avenue Bridge in Cleveland.

The number of bridges nationwide that are both structurally deficient and fracture critical has been fairly constant for a number of years, experts say. But both lists fluctuate frequently, especially at the state level, since repairs can move a bridge out of the deficient categories while spans that grow more dilapidated can be put on the lists. There are occasional data-entry errors. There also is considerable lag time between when state transportation officials report data to the federal government and when updates are made to the National Bridge Inventory.

Many fracture critical bridges were erected in the 1950s to 1970s during construction of the interstate highway system because they were relatively cheap and easy to build. Now they have exceeded their designed life expectancy but are still carrying traffic — often more cars and trucks than they were originally expected to handle. The Interstate 5 bridge in Washington state that collapsed in May was fracture critical.

Cities and states would like to replace the aging and vulnerable bridges, but few have the money; nationally, it is a multibillion-dollar problem. As a result, highway engineers are juggling repairs and retrofits in an effort to stay ahead of the deterioration.

There are thousands of inspectors across the country "in the field every day to determine the safety of the nation's bridges," Victor Mendez, head of the Federal Highway Administration, said in a statement. "If a bridge is found to be unsafe, immediate action is taken."

At the same time, all that is required to cause a fracture critical bridge to collapse is a single unanticipated event that damages a critical portion of the structure.

"It's kind of like trying to predict where an earthquake is going to hit or where a tornado is going to touch down," said Kelley Rehm, bridges program manager for the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials.

Signs of age are clear. The Douglass bridge, also known as the South Capitol Street Bridge, was designed to last 50 years. It's now 13 years past that. The district's transportation department has inserted so-called catcher beams underneath the bridge's main horizontal beams to keep the bridge from falling into the river, should a main component fail.

Alesia Tisdall, who drove over the bridge every day for 15 years but now crosses it only occasionally, said she found its "bounce" unnerving.

"You'd look at the person sitting next to you like, 'Did you feel that bounce?' And they'd be looking back at you like they were thinking the same thing," said Tisdall, a computer systems specialist at the Justice Department.

Peter Vanderzee, CEO of Lifespan Technologies of Alpharetta, Ga., which uses special sensors to monitor bridges for stress, said steel fatigue is a problem in the older bridges.

"Bridges aren't built to last forever," he said. He compared steel bridges to a paper clip that's opened and bent back and forth until it breaks.

"That's a fatigue failure," he said. "In a bridge system, it may take millions of cycles before it breaks. But many of these bridges have seen millions of cycles of loading and unloading."

That fatigue is evident in a steel truss bridge over Interstate 5 in Washington state — south of the similar steel truss that collapsed in May. The span that carries northbound drivers over the east fork of the Lewis River was built in 1936.

Because of age, corrosion and metal fatigue caused by vibration, the state has implemented weight restrictions on the bridge. Washington state Department of Transportation spokeswoman Heidi Sause said the bridge wasn't built for the kind of wear — bigger loads and more traffic — that is now common.

"This is a bridge that we pay close attention to and we monitor very carefully," Sause said.

The biggest difference between the bridge over the Lewis River and the one over the Skagit River that collapsed May 23 is that the span still standing has actually been listed in worse condition. State officials hope to replace it in the next 10 to 15 years.

While the Skagit span was not structurally deficient, the I-35W bridge that collapsed in Minneapolis in 2007 had received that designation. The bridge fell during rush hour, killing 13 people and injuring more than 100. The National Transportation Safety Board concluded that the cause of the collapse was an error by the bridge's designers, not the deficiencies found by inspectors. A gusset plate, a fracture critical component of the bridge, was too thin.

Many of the bridges included in the AP review have sufficiency ratings — a score designed to gauge the importance of replacing the span — that are much lower than the Skagit bridge. A bridge with a score less than 50 on a 100-point scale can be eligible for federal funds to help replace the span. More than 400 bridges that are fracture critical and structurally deficient have a score of less than 10, according to the latest federal inventory.

The Brooklyn Bridge is among the worst.

There are wide gaps between states in historical bridge construction and their ongoing maintenance. While the numbers at the state level are in flux, Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri and Pennsylvania have all been listed recently in the national inventory as having more than 600 bridges both structurally deficient and fracture critical.

Pennsylvania has whittled down its backlog of structurally deficient bridges but still has many more to go, with an estimated 300 bridges in position to move onto the structurally deficient list every year if no maintenance is done. Barry Schoch, the state transportation secretary, said in an interview that officials would like to add redundancy to fracture critical bridges when they can, particularly if a bridge is also structurally deficient.

"Those are high on the priority list," Schoch said.

After the 1983 collapse of the I-95 bridge over the Mianus River in Connecticut, the focus turned to a fracture critical bridge style known as pin-and-hanger assembly.

Pennsylvania worked over the following years to add catcher beams to its pin-and-hanger spans. That's the case now on the George Wade Bridge that carries I-81 traffic across the Susquehanna River. More recently, crews have also been trying to move the bridge off the structurally deficient list after finding significant cracks in the piers.

Officials say northeastern states face particular challenges because the infrastructure there is older and the weather is more grueling, with dramatic and frequent freeze-thaw cycles that can put stress on roads and bridges.

Many Pennsylvania lawmakers have long sought to boost transportation funding, in part to address crumbling bridges. But this year's proposals, including Gov. Tom Corbett's $1.8 billion plan, stalled amid fights over details.

That's a common issue among infrastructure managers in other states, who say they don't have the money to replace all the bridges that need work. Instead, they continue to do patch fixes and temporary improvements.

Washington's Douglass bridge has been rehabilitated twice. The catcher beams were added because the pin-and-hanger expansion joints that hold the bridge's main girders in place had deteriorated to the point "we were concerned that we could have a failure, and that the failure could be catastrophic," said Ronaldo Nicholson, the chief bridge engineer for the area.

"If the joint fails, then the beam doesn't have anything to carry itself because there are only two beams. Therefore the bridge fails, which is why we call it fracture critical," Nicholson said.

The bridge has a sufficiency rating of 60, an increase from the 49 rating in 2008 before some repair work was done. It remains structurally deficient because inspectors deemed the superstructure in poor condition due to "advanced structural steel section loss with holes and overhang bracket connection deficiencies," according to an inspection report from earlier this year.

A new bridge would cost about $450 million if it was required to be able to open so large ships can travel the Anacostia, an infrequent occurrence, Nicholson said. If not, the cost could be as low as $300 million, he said.

Nicholson emphasized that if city officials feel the bridge is unsafe, they'll prohibit trucks from crossing or close the span entirely. Inspections have been stepped up to every six months instead of the usual two-year intervals for most bridges. In the meantime, officials are trying to stretch the bridge's life for another five years — the time they estimate it will take to build a replacement.

Congressional interest in fixing bridges rose after the 2007 collapse in Minneapolis, but efforts to add billions of extra federal dollars specifically for repair and replacement of deficient and obsolete bridges foundered. A
sweeping transportation law enacted last year eliminated a dedicated bridge fund that had been around for more than three decades. State transportation officials had complained the fund's requirements were too restrictive. Now, bridge repairs or replacements must compete with other types of highway projects for federal aid.

The new law requires states to beef up bridge inspection standards and qualifications for bridge inspectors. However, federal regulators are still drafting the new standards.

"Do we have the funding to replace 18,000 fracture critical bridges right now?" Rehm asked. "No. Would we like to? Of course."





 
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Leckmichamarsch

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Loyal
angmoh Trump is making US great again by instigating armed conflicts and selling arms!!
they are pissed with fatty Kim becos he develops his own weapons n does not buy from Trump.....

.......... there is a devil in the Oval office
 

Ang4MohTrump

Alfrescian
Loyal
angmoh Trump is making US great again by instigating armed conflicts and selling arms!!
they are pissed with fatty Kim becos he develops his own weapons n does not buy from Trump.....

.......... there is a devil in the Oval office



USA is a dead beggar desperately struggling last straw.
 
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