The Conservative Cave
Current Events => Breaking News => Topic started by: jinxmchue on September 18, 2008, 11:47:07 AM
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MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - The new Interstate 35W bridge is open in Minneapolis, a little more than a year after the last one collapsed into the Mississippi River.
A procession of vehicles led by state troopers, emergency vehicles and state highway trucks led motorists across the bridge in both directions shortly after 5 a.m. today. Traffic was heavy as a mix of cars, motorcycles, trucks and buses started streaming across the bridge. Vehicles moved slowly at first, but then picked up speed. Many vehicles honked their horns as they drove across and a few motorists waved American flags.
http://www.wtvr.com/Global/story.asp?S=9030995
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Today in Minneapolis the I-35W Bridge opened at 5 AM, one year and 48 days since it collapsed into the Mississippi River at rush hour (6:05 PM) on August 1, 2007. There are more reasons here to give thanks to God than meet the eye.
From the vantage point of one year later we may offer God several kinds of gratitude that were hard to express last year. Without minimizing the massive pain to the families of those who died, consider this.
If the bridge had collapsed at midnight and 13 people had died, the media would have been (rightly) filled with amazement that only 13 people had died, and officials would have been expressing relieved gratitude that the bridge did not collapse at rush hour. For if it had, surely hundreds would have died.
But the fact is, there was heavy traffic on the bridge at 6:05 PM when the bridge went down and still only 13 people died. This is simply astonishing. It could not be said out loud last year because even the pain of 13 lost (and 145 injured) is not to be minimized.
But now it must be said. Whatever reasons God had for not holding up the bridge at rush hour, he was merciful to spare hundreds of lives. For that we should thank him.
A second kind of gratitude should rise for the common grace of God in the rebuilding of the bridge. God gave the employees of Flatiron Constructors astonishing skill to finish this bridge 98 days ahead of schedule.
There were incentives--$200,000 a day for every day ahead of schedule with a 100 day limit. (So they lost $400,000 by opening on day 98 instead of day 100.)
But apart from money motives, think of the organizational feat of this project. Every part—every specially made sensor, every bar of steel, every ton of concrete, every wire, bolt, and screw, every massive form and its rolling mover, every crane, every unique and rare machine, every specialized worker—had to arrive at the right time in the right place for this bridge to be finished when Flatiron wanted it finished.
And they accomplished this to within two days of their goal to get all $20,000,000 bonus. Astonishing.
Hundreds of vendors supplied what Flatiorn needed. Failure of any one of them would have delayed the bridge. They worked round the clock. They worked in sub-zero temperatures. They worked in the rain and in the heat. And they finished it two days after the bonus deadline. Amazing.
When I drive over the bridge later today for the first time, I will see the product of “intelligent design†and intelligent organization and planning. There will be no doubt that this bridge was conceived and constructed by extraordinary intelligence.
But where did that come from? It came from God. “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion . . . over all the earth’†(Genesis 1:26).
Therefore I thank God for Flatiron Construction. I pray they will know who it is that made them able to meet this deadline. “You shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth†(Deuteronomy 8:18).
http://www.desiringgod.org/Blog/1398...e_I35W_Bridge/
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See what can happen when government gets out of the way.
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See what can happen when government gets out of the way.
Careful. Liberals might be reading and your display of common sense could be responsible for their heads exploding.
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After it's collapse, the MN State folks were wanting to have it opened before the RNC. That didn't happen. However, it appears that a good job was done by the construction company.
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After it's collapse, the MN State folks were wanting to have it opened before the RNC. That didn't happen. However, it appears that a good job was done by the construction company.
I think some were hoping for that, but most people realized that was unrealistic. In any case, the RNC wasn't affected at all by the bridge being inaccessible.
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They had similar incentives (and punishments) when they rebuilt the freeways in Los Angeles after the '94 quake -- they were rebuilt in amazing speed.
ALL Government contracts should be structured that way.
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The work done on Virginia's part Rt. 13 , including the Chesapeak Bay Bridge Tunnel pportion was all done on budgert and ahead of time. About the time the Bay Bridge was finished , a small overpass on the Brooklyn Queens expressway that had been under construction for at least a decade PRIOR to the start of the Virginia Rt. 13 work, was finished. LESSEE, 23 miles of bridge work, new bridges, causeways, and road resurfacing, replacing entire overpasses, adding new underpasses, widening another 100 or so miles of highwauy in the same period of time TWENTY FIVE FEET of overpass in NYC was completed.
Prolly cost the same too.... :evillaugh:
Yes, when CURRUPT government steps out, capitalism proves it can do the jub to specs and on time. What's surprizing about that? Nothing, unless you're a liberal.
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They had similar incentives (and punishments) when they rebuilt the freeways in Los Angeles after the '94 quake -- they were rebuilt in amazing speed.
ALL Government contracts should be structured that way.
and with severe penalties for being behind schedule or failure in less than, say, 20 years.
Wouldn't it have been interesting to see the Big Dig on a contract like this?
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Wasn't that Big Dig cluster**** in Boston run by the government?
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Wasn't that Big Dig cluster**** in Boston run by the government....and the UNION....and the MAFIA ....and the MASSIVE-2-SHITS?
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Wasn't that Big Dig cluster**** in Boston run by the government....and the UNION....and the MAFIA ....and the MASSIVE-2-SHITS?
:rotf:
:bow: