The Ponte Vecchio in Florence, Italy, was the model for the Washington Avenue Bridge. Photo: AP via The Guardian

The 14th-century Italian bridge that inspired it has withstood the ravages of time, World War II and a 1966 flood, but the 42-year-old Washington Avenue Bridge in Minneapolis might not be strong enough to hold up pedestrians, Hennepin County officials decided last week.

That’s after engineers at URS Corp. started work on readying the Washington Avenue Bridge to carry trains running along the planned Central Corridor line between Minneapolis and St. Paul. It’s widely expected that the bridge will need beefing up to support new rail traffic, but the necessity for remedial work to support existing pedestrian and bicycle traffic came as a surprise.

The county restricted walking and biking to the sheltered structure that runs down the center of the bridge’s upper level — only days before the start of the University of Minnesota’s fall semester, as crowds of students begin to cross the bridge on foot or bike to travel between the university’s East Bank and West Bank Minneapolis campuses.

Motor vehicle traffic on the bridge’s lower level wasn’t affected.

The move follows a string of bridge failures and closings in Minnesota over the past year. Most recently, bike and pedestrian traffic was forced to blend atop the Stone Arch Bridge in Minneapolis when the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board let the Red Bull energy drink company block the bike lanes along the bridge’s middle portion with 25 eight-foot cubes for most of July as part of a marketing event, with several minor injuries reported due to collisions.

If URS has a familiar ring, it may be because the firm conducted inspections of the I-35W bridge over the Mississippi River for the Minnesota Department of Transportation. Preliminary results of reviews of the I-35W bridge collapse have revealed flaws not caught by those reviews, though the firm initially pressed MnDOT to approve extensive repair work.

Work to make the Washington Avenue Bridge strong enough to support people walking or riding bikes along its edges will continue well into next year. Temporary bike lanes under the overhanging eaves of the bridge’s upper-level sheltered walkway are now under construction.

MnDOT said inspectors discovered decay in the bridge’s gusset plates, including one that showed “some buckling” — akin to gusset plate “distortions” that triggered the March closure of the DeSoto Bridge over the Mississippi in St. Cloud. Gusset plate failure is a leading contender for causing last August’s collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis, which also crossed the Mississippi River.

On May 16, the new postage stamp showing the bridge was unveiled at a Statehood Week event in Winona. The next day, dignitaries (including Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee member Joan Mondale and former U.S. Vice President Walter Mondale) gathered under a tent at the State Capitol for a ceremony (video) celebrating the new USPS stamp that commemorates 150 years of Minnesota statehood.

Those who travel in the 11,600 vehicles that cross the span between Winona and Wisconsin each day may find it cheaper to buy a few new Minnesota stamps and conduct their business by mailing letters and packages rather than driving a half hour or more up or down river to the next nearest crossings.

Continued: Click “Read more”But MnDOT’s new PR- and engineering-savvy commissioner, Tom Sorel, would be wise to choose other new postage stamps, such as those honoring journalist Eric Sevareid or film star Bette Davis, rather than one that depicts the state’s third Mississippi River bridge to close or collapse during the last 10 months.

Richard Hamilton Smith, a Park Rapids, Minn., photographer, took the photo on the stamp, which joins the U.S. Mint’s commemorative quarters for New Hampshire and Maryland in featuring landmarks that soon afterward meet with trouble or worse: The Maryland Statehouse was struck by lightning, and New Hampshire’s “Old Man on the Mountain” rock formation collapsed.

This is a story of that other, quieter white meat – more thinly sliced than the fat slabs the mall gets, to be sure, but just as tasty. It starts with the new I-35W bridge across the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, which will be wider than the one that fell down last year. Federal rules say the state must own all the land under the new bridge, so the Minnesota Department of Transportation has been buying up parcels of land, 13 in all, that will lie in the new bridge’s bigger shadow. The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board owned one of those parcels, about two acres in size, on the west bank of the river and to the downstream side of the bridge. The State of Minnesota first paid for the park board to acquire that land in the 1980s as part of the state’s funding for the extension of West River Parkway that carries the country’s Great River Road through the heart of Minneapolis and under I-35W.

But now, to comply with federal rules that apply to the new bridge, the state needs the land back from the park board. According to Minnesota law, whenever land purchased using state-issued bonds changes hands and changes use, the cash proceeds from the land transfer go back to the state. In this case, a state agency (MnDOT) was the buyer (through condemnation because of land title complications), so the $744,000 MnDOT paid this year for the parcel and for a road easement on an adjacent parcel must be returned to the state’s general fund.

That’s what state law says — unless the state Legislature grants a special exception. And the House of Representative passed just such an exception unanimously on Monday, after the Senate approved it two weeks ago by a vote of 52-10.

Got that? The state first bought the land for the park board and now will re-gift the value of the land to the park board and will restore the park board’s use of the land for a parkway. The bill now awaits Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s signature; despite his fondness for vetoing funds with urban destinations, the unanimous vote in the House (along with assurances that the money will go to buy other riverfront land) will likely keep his veto pen in check. Come December, freeway traffic will travel across an I-35W bridge, as before; bikes, cars and pedestrians will travel beneath the new bridge along West River Parkway, as before; but the state will have spent $744,000 on land it already paid for, once before.

For views of some of those involved, read below the jump.

Continued: Click “Read more”Here is what some of those involved have to say:

State Sen. David Hann (in an e-mail): “There was no compelling argument made to allow the exception other than the Park Board wanted to keep the money to use in case they wanted to purchase another portion of land in the future.  A number of us (10 to be exact) came to the conclusion that the current practice ought to be followed and if the Minneapolis Park Board feels the need to acquire additional land in the future, and wants the state to pay for it, they are welcome to make their case through the normal bonding process.”

State Sen. Scott Dibble (in an interview, responding to the argument that the Minneapolis park board should compete with other proposals if it wants $744,000 in state funding): “That’s a valid point of view. My counter argument is that this already competed and prevailed [when the Legislature originally funded Minneapolis park board purchase of the land]. Now through no fault of their own, the land is being taken away.”

State Sen. Claire Robling (in an e-mail): “It has always been state law that funds received from the sale of land purchased using state bonding money must be returned to the state. I do not like making exceptions. In addition, this land will still be held by a public entity with public access available through the trail. The city’s existing use is not completely lost, so I did not believe the city should be given all the money to purchase another parcel along the river.”

Brian Rice, attorney for the Minneapolis park board (in testimony to the state Senate State and Local Government Operations and Oversight Committee): “It’s a two-acre piece of land. You’re not going to be putting any recreational things underneath that bridge. … Sen. Dibble’s bill says we’ve got to use [the funds] to replace the land that’s lost. … MnDOT will own and maintain the land itself, which is 95 percent of the land, and that will be their property. They will maintain it. More likely than not, they’ll want to restrict the use to it. They may fence it off to protect it because those are a critical piece of the state’s infrastructure. So it will go from being park board land to MnDOT’s land. … I don’t think just say, okay, anything goes underneath their properties.”

Mike Stensberg, assistant director of land management, MNDOT (in an interview, responding to the suggestion that MNDOT might fence off previously open areas): “It isn’t going to happen that way. The problem is the right-of-way is a certain width because of additional lanes on either side of the bridge. The park was under the bridge before. It isn’t going to be any different. It’s just that it’s wider.”

State Sen. Sandy Pappas (speaking at the Senate State and Local Government Operations and Oversight Committee): “I have a similar issue with a library in Ramsey County. … I think it was a handicapped-accessible water fountain or something was paid for with state bond funds. And then 20 years later you decide you need to build a new library — really the same purpose why you did it originally, but you end up having to [give] back to the state a sum of money. … It seems kind of silly to have to pay back, in this case it’s like $13,000 or something, instead of just turning that around and using it for the same purpose. So I think this is similar situation to my legislation, and I think this is good public policy.”

State Sen. Chris Gerlach (in an interview): “This is horrendously bad public policy. It sets a precedent for local governments to get back money [from sale of state-bonded land] instead of returning it to be reallocated. … This is the wrong answer.”

Peter Sausen, former assistant commissioner of finance, who retired in 2007 after 25 years in the department (in an interview, responding to Sen. Gerlach’s suggestion that this bill sets a poor precedent): “I would agree with him. … But the Finance Department never tried to get money from local government. The state should get back the [funds when bonded land is sold] in general. … We would tell local governments, if you want to keep the money, go ahead and try [to get a law passed to allow it].”

In fact, managing public perception is a central concern of Sorel’s, judging by articles he and others have written on his Utah work. In a 2004 piece that he authored, Sorel puts purposeful PR firmly among the prerequisites for the success of big transportation projects. One such project, Utah’s massive I-15 highway rebuild (for which Sorel led the Major Projects Team) required a PR plan in its request for design-build proposals, just like the I-35W bridge. A separate report on “Marketing Mega Projects and Public Trust,” which he cites, credits Sorel — who seems to be a social as well as literal engineer — with the concept that “quantitative measures …to gauge public trust” are “paramount” for transportation megaprojects.  Gaining public trust requires honesty and forthrightness — the very qualities Sorel admires in the PR for a highway project in Colorado. There, what could have been a devastating tale about the extermination of 50 prairie dogs to make way for a road for humans instead turned into a feel-good story about people not killing 100 other, luckier prairie dogs. It’s a win-win for both species. Do the math.

Sorel is the Minnesota division administrator for the Federal Highway Administration and oversees approximately $500 million in federal aid to the state of Minnesota annually. Prior to coming to Minnesota, he was the U.S. Department of Transportation’s inter-modal liaison in Salt Lake City, Utah, for the 2002 Olympics, during which he facilitated communication and coordination of transportation with the U.S. Olympic committee.

Pawlenty chose Sorel over acting MnDOT commissioner Bob McFarlin and several other potential candidates. McFarlin was the public face for MnDOT and was also an outspoken critic of the Star Tribune’s coverage of the 35W bridge collapse.

After the jump: Listen as Gov. Pawlenty introduces Tom Sorel as new commissioner (8:03)

Schumacher quotes MnDOT spokeswoman Lucy Kender as stating, “if we were to receive federal funding in some fashion, we would use that funding as efficiently as possible, but waiting for earmarking from the 2009 appropriations process, the timing would be off.”

In the letter to Pawlenty, Bachmann writes, “Rather than relying on the whims of Congress, you have streamlined the process and assured my constituents that you will get the job done, and you have recognized that once the design and construction of the DeSoto Bridge has proceeded with state dollars under state regulations, receiving a federal earmark subject to federal regulations so late in the game would create significant setbacks — that is, if one was appropriated at all.”

Schumacher notes that Bachmann’s letter did not mention her prior pledge to seek federal grants in order to offset the cost to the state for rebuilding the bridge.

Politics and Pulitzer: Did MnDOT employees submarine the Strib’s shot at a Pulitzer for its coverage of the 35W collapse? News Cut links up a December piece at Politics in Minnesota in which Sarah Janecek wrote, “MnDOT has been keeping a file documenting every fact that it deems the Star Tribune has gotten wrong. My sources tell me the file has become inches high…and that MnDOT plans to make sure the Pulitzer Prize Board receives it.”

Brauer’s beat: David Brauer at MinnPost has been all over the Strib beat. Worth reading: his recent columns on the paper’s venture into TV and its hiring of man-about-media and Campbell Mithun senior VP John Rash to sit on its editorial board, a rare crossing of the “ad-edit barrier.”

In January, the National Transportation Safety Board suggested that the bridge failed because of a faulty design, namely that the gusset plates were too thin. Those gusset plates are shown to be bowing under pressure in the photos by URS in 2003.

Last fall, the paper reported that the same consultants that provided MnDOT the photos as part of their inspection also made recommendations about the steel plating:

“MnDOT considered the steel plating at the recommendation of consulting engineers who told the agency that there were two ways to keep the bridge safe: Make repairs throughout the 40-year-old steel arched bridge or inspect it closely enough to find flaws that might become cracks and then bolt the steel plating only on those sections.” The inspection route, instead of reinforcing the steel plates, was the cheaper option and the one the department pursued.

In a similar situation, MnDOT closed a major bridge in St. Cloud this weekend because an “inspection showed the gusset plates, metal plates used to reinforce bridge joints, had bent one-quarter of an inch.”

The 2003 photos of the 35W bridge, available at The Star Tribune, show bending of more than a quarter of an inch at at least two joints.

The DeSoto Bridge on Highway 23, a close cousin in design to the I-35W bridge that collapsed in August 2007, had already had its “gusset plate review completed,” according to a MNDOT list of truss bridges slated for load rating tests in the wake of the I-35W collapse. An emergency inspection of the St. Cloud bridge just two days after I-35W fell also turned up nothing. But Thursday afternoon, inspectors looking for corrosion saw quarter-inch bends in DeSoto’s gusset plates. Now MNDOT says it will replace the bridge within two years, five years ahead of schedule. Lost in the buzz over another crippled truss bridge and the NTSB’s refusal to hold a public hearing on the 35W collapse was Monday’s release of NTSB reports indicating that the resurfacing contractor had piled tons of construction materials on two of the I-35W bridge’s weakest points (PDF).
Continued: Click “Read more”Unusual for a highway bridge, St. Cloud’s 1959 DeSoto Bridge is painted black. In 1966 the Rolling Stones followed their hit song “19th Nervous Breakdown” with the single “Paint It, Black” — which also appeared that year on their LP Aftermath.

Coincidence?

In the aftermath of Minnesota’s second bridge breakdown, several leading figures in the saga nervously offered the Minnesota Monitor their favorite lyrics from “Paint It, Black”:

  Governor Tim Pawlenty: “I could not foresee this thing happening to you”

Acting MNDOT Commissioner Bob McFarlin: “I see a line of cars and they’re all painted black”

Former MNDOT Commissioner Carol Molnau: “Maybe then I’ll fade away and not have to face the facts”