Civil Works

I like big things viewed from a great height.

I went to the northwest side of town this morning for a charity screening of Dr. Horrible and Serenity. They are both so good. Lake Travis was on the way home, and so was this rust finish bridge. It's not as bad as Good Morning St. Bridge at Windmark in Gulf County Florida. I think the 360 bridge is actually a functional structure. Just the same finish. This bridge at the St. Joe resort is an oversized reinforced concrete road bridge with an oversized pony truss plopped on top of it just for looks. Only it looks retarded.

A pony truss only has to be this big to hold up a great big long span. This is an old rant for me, but I just want to round out my compliment to the Loop 360 bridge. It's a good looking bridge. I like it. But when it comes to rusty bridges the Hadley Ferry is still my favorite because it got that way the honest way -- an actual long, hard life, in what would appear to be more than one location. I think they moved the two halves from other, shorter spans of nearby rivers. These new-fangled bridges that are designed to be rusty, it just seems like they're beefing up the structure to allow for corrosion and it just raises a lot of questions to me. What about the connections? What if the corrosion is uneven? What about the runoff staining whatever is under it? I'd like to read the engineering analysis for this new style.