Tuesday, August 07, 2007

Boston Herald Calling All Citizen Inspectors About Bridge Safety

The Boston Herald, apparently juiced up about good coverage about their online databases of state and city employee salaries, have created an online database of Massachusetts bridges classified as "structurally deficient" in the National Bridge Inventory's database.

The Herald's new database isn't is useful as their previous products, since all the information is already available online -- just in a clumsy format. (The salary data were not, however, available online until the Herald posted it.) That's why I could cull out those bridges closest to Brighton in a previous post.

The Herald is asking for citizens to contact them with information on bridges that people are worried about. Better yet, they are asking for photographs and/or video documenting the concerns.

Worried about the Eliot Bridge, which has a steel truss design similar to Minneapolis's 35W bridge that collapsed? Enjoy peering down through the cracks in the concrete of the BU Bridge to see the boats below? Here's a picture of those holes in the BU Bridge taken from below. I was on a boat taking a guided tour of the Charles during the Riverfest event of the Brighton-Allston Bicentennial.

No comments: