Tharwa Bridge IS safe (well, it will be once restored)

J Dawg,
the new bridge will be uploaded tonight, pending admin approval:)

“you can’t even walk across the bridge”
I walked across it last time it was closed (2005), and while these bridges should move a bit, as per their design. When a cyclist came across it, the thing really shook.
And as we saw in the United States where that much younger, steel bridge collapsed, the effects can be disastrous. That bridge only had “minor” problems that were known of prior to the collapse. This one has serious ones.

asp, you forgot to add a nice brand new bridge in the background with the “Pedal Power!” logo on it, and smug cyclists riding across it.

Bastards.

I think the next bridge should encompass the old bridge. That’ll stuff the 1:100 theorists.

I thought the interesting bit was that they closed the bridge including to pedestrians because it would fail a 1-in-a-100-year event. Call me stupid, but if something is unlikely to happen within my lifetime, I’d rather take the risk and walk across.

PS. This is what I’m talking about when I say we have terrible public admin: no proper risk assessment, slavish adherence in an unthinking conservative way to rules, etc.

Can’t we just let the RAAF bomb it? Either that, or get Kate Carnell to run a competition on a local radio station to find someone to ‘implode’ the damn thing?

I noticed when I was down at Tharwa yesterday that you can’t even walk across the bridge, so the ACT Govt must be really paranoid that the thing is going to collapse.

That bridge had major works done on some 15 years ago for its centenary. Lets face it old timber bridges rot. The railways know this.

Maybe they could be restrited to using the bridge every second day to save wear and tear. Works for Beijing!

That illustration (in case anyone is wondering) took ten minutes, from getting images off the web to saving the final file and uploading it.
Not great, but understandable given that I was doing it during a 15 minute break, hunched over a 13″ screened laptop and using only a cordless mouse.

asp for RiotACT graphic illustrator

Everyone in Tharwa will want the original bridge rebuilt until it breaks again, and leaves them isolated for another couple of years.

Is there no story that cannot be improved with a photo illustration?