Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire I 35 Texas bridge collapse

Exits on 35 in downtown Austin are all the result of one individual. LBJ. In the middle of ROW acquisition, he stated that they would finish that roadway pronto thru "his town" or heads would roll! Now no ROW thru area from about 5th street to 38th. With 10 foot entrance/ exit ramps. A nightmare.

Bob, from the late 60's onward I have wondered why a city of that size had so few major roads. Your filling in the blanks.
I use a route similar to Oki to get down south, as I hate the drive on 35. Very crowded from Austin to the split at I-35e and I-35 West. I only went that way to stop at Buc-ee's. Never again. Did see your exit in Austin to the SE.

We tried to finish the SH 45 corridor west and SH 71 west to little avail. Millions of tax dollars wasted tied up in court. We redirected most funds ahead of time to finish IH 35/ SH 71 interchange (Ben White) which is a very good design. Unfortunately too little too late.

More new news on the bridge. Owner of trucking firm owns 2 tractors with flat beds.
So we know it's a real small business. Bet if he had a liability policy, was for min of 1,000,000. That will not cover it. So all of the damaged cars/trucks will have to use their own insurance to cover damages. Contractor on bridge will loose, state will loose, feds may even loose for funds to rebuild this section of Interstate again.

Next stop up (happening today) will be in Forth Worth where I-35 is being rebuilt from 2 lanes to 4 with new service roads.
5/6 year project, billions of state dollars.

The thing that bit Austin in the azz was the arrival of the high tech industry en masse. All projected roadway improvement designs done prior to the late 80's were done off of projected traffic counts made in the early to mid 70's. In those days I was one of the chumps stretching a traffic counter hose across a road trying to get data for some engineer back I. The office. There was no way the explosion of people moving here could have been predicted on the scale that it occurred. Which that explosion came a lot of different mindsets. These were the fringe groups who opposed any additional construction. The city reaping what they sowed!

And the owner of the trucking company, as best as I could understand his tex mex, blamed TXDOT for issuing him a permit to travle tehre, since they should know the height of his load and the height of all the bridges.....go back home....

From what I saw he was not an oversize load! No permit required. Standard trailer height.

Every CDL driver is responsible for knowing his hight, width and weight. They are also responsible for reading every sign. There are NO excuses. If you can't do the job and do it right get your tail out of the truck and find a job you can do.

I've told the story before, but I knew one guy who had been a trucker in the 60's, in South Texas, and had an oversize permitted load, which was a large tank IIRC. They gave him his route to assure load clearance, which took him through one small town. After he got through the town he saw flashing lights in his mirror, and pulled over.

Almost instantly a furious cop appeared at his window. When the trucker, who had been driving carefully was puzzled about the stop, the cop demanded he get out and walk back with him.

It was two weeks before Christmas, and all the town's Christmas decorations - which were hanging above the highway - were wrapped around the load. The trucker was horrified, and the cop was still furious. The trucker showed his permits, indicating that he'd carefully followed the route he'd been given.

The cop finally realized it wasn't the trucker's fault, and said, "all right, help me fix this", and the two of them untangled the seasonal decorations, and laid them beside the road. The cop told the trucker to have a safe trip.

If they're building this bridge - why wasn't it designed, and built, high enough for normal (or slightly overheight) loads to clear?

After the bridge is complete the roadway under it will get reworked and will be 5 inches lower than it is now.The height was posted for 2 miles.Driver screwed up.

Did some checking.The bridge was 14 feet 1/2 inch.Posted height was13 feet 6 inches.

Not sure what you saw, they kept showing a box trailer damaged under there.

The truck that hit was on teh side somewhere, access road or such, flatbed, hauling some type of excavator or crane looking thing... sure looked like the highest part of it, was not mcuh, but was high and looked like it had that white concrete dust/debri on it.

Would assume, but not know, that would make it overheight.

As noted that crazy owner said he should have have gotten the permit if it was legal... not funny since someone died but to blame eveyrthing on governmetn is typical, especially the folks that come here from south, but have no clue.

From the news article, the above is true. ending height is going to be 16' 5 ".
Rost wish I knew the correct name for that piece of equipment.
For those in the know it's the unit with a basket on the end for a man to stand in that extends out to say 30' or so. They control it from the basket. 4x4 wheel drive at the bottom. Used in the oil field all the time. Each drilling rig rents one for each well drilled. Used many other places also in reaching up for some repair.
The basket part caught the bridge looks like to me.

Called a boom lift here, used in construction.

Thanks JDM, boom lift sounds about right to me.
Need a trucker now to tell up the normal height of a empty flat bed 18 wheel trailer. Put the boom lift on top in traveling mode. That's a tall unit, but don't know the height of a tractor trailer unit in normal mode.

Too bad they didn't dig out the road bed and pave before construction of the overpass bridge. Looks like more than 14' 5" was needed in this case.

called a man lift, we have them out on location and some of them can get you up 80ft or more.

Yea,was trying to remember what Texas considers min.Its something like 14'6".Its not law just common practice.Service road dosnt apply just the main highway.

All structures even finished ones are posted with a lower height. For a margin of error.

They need to post the #s in spanish..
like everything else.