rookzie

Finally got some resolve: As much as I love reading and interacting with peeps on this forum, I admit that it should NOT be a big deal if reactions have been made anonymous by intention. But it does ─ to me anyway. Since I only pop up like a Whack-a-Mole varmint, that rears it's ugly head only during a North American volcanic eruption, I might just have to stay gone indefinitely, as a result of this administrative action. Kind of disgusting, not to say that any loss will be monumental..

There really SHOULD be a true Love button. btw, I never even got my question answered definitively concerning the sudden inability to see the identities of others' who reacted to my posts/comments, and of course, they can't see my reactions. It seems that U-P is taking a dump, so to speak ─ that or it's hemorrhaging through the 'roids.. I would've thought by now these quirks would have been resolved.

Hi, "Prince" Clift ─ I meant Nashville Cliff (forgive meh..) Glad to know you're still around. Yes, it lit me up too, to read about that expansion. The War Branch has been treated "red-headed'ly" much too long. [added 1 like for Nashville Cliff]

Is some U-P change in privacy policy going on with the reactions/likes on the entire site? I can't see who reacted to people's posts or to mine. Also, the notifications announce that "somebody reacted" but that somebody's name no longer is appended to the notification. Might this be some administrative collateral reaction in lockdown out of fear of what a few main-stream social media platforms have experienced, so our names are removed? What's the point in having a forum, if peeps can't hold a shared dialog in virtual presence! After I thought about it, I probably should have posted this in the Nashville Coffee House, but I didn't think about it until it was too late.

A bit of colorful and "florid" way to put it, I reckon. But then that's what has entertained me about Pith in the Wind for almost 10 years. "...but it's really hard for me to believe that Nashville would have been such a bag of dicks to one of our founding families as to name the place they were murdered after their murderers." While I recall the "The Nations" as a moniker locale, probably from when I was an early teen around 1964 (wow, 57 years already!), I never really heard of it questioned as urban legend ─ that is, until the "mass migration" of recent set in. It does seem expected that the multitude of those new to the area would question the origin. Hopefully though, it will remain "The Nations" and not be allowed to become rebranded into some tacky, prosaic blandness.

Oh that ol' thing?!..... That was the Paramount Theatre, the westernmost "Picture Show" building on Church Street. It was one of several downtown theaters eventually taken over by Loews, the others having been the Loews Crescent (previously the Princess Theater, next to the L&C Tower), and the Loews Vendome (pronounced "VAHN-dome"), located at Church and what used to be named "Capitol Blvd."), about a block and a half east of the Paramount. I can't come even close to guessing how many times I frequented each of those theaters from the mid-'50s through around 1971. You'll notice the old Sears building on its left (on its right, facing the Paramount at the marquee). When Sears moved in 1956 from the then-leased structure (built in 1935) to its own "new" retail facility on Lafayette and 7th (now the Rescue Mission), that structure ended up becoming occupied by National Stores, Ben Franklin Stores, and finally the Gold and Silver Store ─ a locally owned jewelry and high-end tableware retailer, before the State of Tenn. used it for TennCare administration. No need to mention what now occupies that square-block site. Except for the local community theaters located in various sectors of the city, as well as in unincorporated areas of the county before 1963, these downtown theaters had been the primary crowd magnets of any given weekday. But then that was the scenario throughout the nation.

Before any new commitment to develop a new passenger rail route is undertaken, at the very least, DOTs need to assess risk factors with any private of public grade (level) crossings traversed along a proposed route. Vehicular crossings most problematic are those which are most likely to become fouled by heavy roadway equipment or commercial semi-trailer rigs, the latter of which 1) may bottom out (become centered) on elevated or depressed roadway surfaces at track level; or 2) may be located close to an intersection where a roadway closely runs parallel to the tracks and where vehicular traffic may turn onto or from the cross road to negotiate that crossing. Local pushback always mounts, when a grade crossing is closed, but passenger fatalities occasionally if not often have pushed the scale in favor of permanent closure. Separation of grade is often the most expensive and underfunded option. While it may not be widely known or noted, some of the most horrific and an property-damaging incidents involve inexperienced truckers, who either get lost or who deliberately avoid prescribed routes (for any of a number or reasons). Modern passenger-train locomotives, always provisioned to run faster than freight locomotives (where weight and tractive effort are required for revenue tonnage-hauling), are also more susceptible to derailment, when they become entangled at speed with heavy equipment or a large commercial vehicle. Onboard passenger's lives can be put at risk, whether or not the train derails, as a result of an incident. The Heartland Flyer (821 southbound, 822 northbound) serves a potential corridor between Fort Worth and OKC. Currently a once-daily service, this corridor is candidate for two additional daily round trips of this corridor, with a proposal to extend one such run to KCMO. The Fort Worth-OKC route is a quintessential scenario and paradigm of nationwide proposed or existing (underserved or otherwise) regional passenger-rail corridors touted for infrastructure improvements ─ whether or not any appreciable change comes to fruition concurrent with the current and next two administrations. At the very least, the property damage that ensues almost surely will cause a shortage of available railway equipment required to protect and sustain a particular passenger service route. New passenger cars and locomotives costs millions of dollars per unit ─ let alone the costs in material and labor to repair equipment involved in a collision or derailment, and based on the practicability and practicality of repairs. Last Friday, 10-15-2021, Amtrak's northbound Heartland Flyer, struck a semi-trailer auto-hauler, after the rig became stuck from "centering" (bottoming out in the middle) on the track. The collision sent vehicles and debris flying everywhere. Several passenger were injured in the collision, when some of the shrapnel penetrated windows of the passenger railcar in tow, immediately behind the leading locomotive (with a locomotive at each end). The lead locomotive also appeared to have become derailed while remaining upright along the gauge of the track. A current shortage of railway passenger rolling stock might require a bit of taking from Bill in Michigan to feed Bob in Missouri, until foreign-based vendors (in particular Siemens Mobility) can deliver the newest generation of equipment. [video - © Brandon Sampson & ABC News; photos - courtesy Love County [OK] Sheriff's Office] 2021-10-16_23-17-07.mp4

I still give many "hats off" to the State of NC" for what it's done for intercity passenger rail over the last 35 years, compared to the lone service we have here ─ once-daily each way service at only Newbern, TN and Memphis (Amtrak trains 58, 59) between Chicago and New Orleans. Amtrak first introduced the Carolinian in 1984, in partnership with the state of North Carolina, to operate passenger rail along an intramural state corridor and connecting with the Northeast Corridor (Boston-NY-DC). I rode that train along the then-still-active route spanning Richmond, Petersburg, Norlina and Henderson, NC, and Raleigh, then served by the old Seaboard (SAL - Seaboard Air Line Railroad) station in spring 1985. That service restored passenger rail lost in April 1964, and which I used to witness during nights in the late 1950s and early '60s along highway US-70 between Raleigh and Greensboro. It was a 1-year experiment with ridership exceeding expectations, but with poor marketing. Re-instituted in 1990, that service, then rerouted along a longer path through Selma and Rocky Mount, NC (former Atlantic Coast Line RR) has remained intact. Essentially it connects activity centers between Raleigh (in Northeast Central NC) and Charlotte (in the Southwest Central Carolina Piedmont. NCDOT has somewhat prioritized passenger rail, with the addition over time of three daily round trips for dedicated service between Raleigh and Charlotte (marketed as the Piedmont trains). That includes Cary NC, Durham, Greensboro, High Point, and other intermediate points. That makes it 4 daily round trips, when combined with the Carolinian service ─ Charlotte - New York. Except on certain holidays such as Christmas Day, when the trains seem empty and everyone is gouging and stuffing the face, the trains have been well patronized, even at moderate track speeds (to 79 mph). During my 16+ years of mostly semi-annual roundtrips on that service through 2006, those trains often have been even over-crowded. Frequency and marketing and incremental infrastructure upgrades have been made possible up to now, only because NCDOT has invested over 1 billion $ of state and federal funds in state-supported intercity passenger rail service, including renovation or construction of train stations, track work improvements, safety improvements and corridor preservation. While very little state support has been garnered for urban transit, nevertheless, NC has done much to spawn and to engender passenger rail into evolving into a regional "utility" (as it were). Under operation by Amtrak crews, this service has been designated officially as part of Amtrak's Northeast Regional branch service. Generally but with some notable exceptions, most U.S. state support, if at all, is limited to commuter-rail. That includes Tennessee's own but modest Music City Star. Although I no longer have much reason to pass through NC anymore (after the passing of native family members), I finally got to visit Raleigh's new Union Station (RUS), during my brief stop on Amtrak's Silver Star from Miami to DC last June. NCDOT did contribute close to 13% of the station's costs, funded primarily with Federal funding of some 61%. Commuter rail has been on the horizon in the "Triangle" region of NC. Raleigh Union Station not only was built as a multi-modal transport facility, but it also is the first in the state to have high platforms, a provision that facilitates passenger boarding and alighting by providing direct floor-level entry. This eliminates the need for train crew to open and close hinged step-traps at the car vestibules and to place a portable step on ground-level platforms for safe passenger handling. While frequently found in the Northeast Corridor centers between DC and Boston (as well as the Harrisburg - Philly "Keystone Corridor" extension), high platforms are common found mostly on heavy-rail transit ("Metro"s ─ subways, and "L"s) and some light rail operated as small Metros. NCDOT was most instrumental in the collaborative planning of the rail portion of that station. Station high platforms increasingly are being applied at commuter rail facilities, such as in NW Indiana, but they historically have been used with Chicago's METRA Electric District (formerly Illinois Central RR), NJTransit, and NYCMTA's Long Island RR. Finally, in a recently created consortial agreement among Amtrak and the State of Virginia, NCDOT is slowly but surely gearing up to contribute to the Southeast High[er] Speed Rail Corridor project (SEHSR). Following Virginia's contract with CSXT to purchase RoW for both expansion and for usage rights, NCDOT made the case and received federal funding to purchase another CSXT segment between the VA-NC border and Raleigh. These high platforms at RUS are part of the big-picture of long-range planning for shared commuter-rail and the SEHSR project.

Hypothetically only. If, say, CSX were to vacate all its RoW in mid-state ─ which, needless to say "aint gohn" happen even in a dream on smokes ─ then the answer is "Yes" and even "Certainly Yes". The layout of the rail routes in Nashville Terminal (the CSX rail Sub [sub-division]), basically encompassing Metro Nashville, all enter and leave the core via 6 directions, 2 of which are splits ─ one at Brentwood (to Columbia and to Lewisburg); and at Madison [Amqui-Nesbitt Ln] to Springfield and to Gallatin). These CSX lines do not include the two routes now owned by R.J. Corman ─ the Nashville & Eastern (NERR) to Lebanon (and ending in Monterey) and its subsidiary Nashville & Western (NWR). The NWR line was selected as the local preferred alternative for a commuter rail line to Clarksville, although that route includes a lot of long-abandoned roadbed which would have to be partially realigned. All these CSX lines essentially are radial and parallel major arterials. That said, they are suitable only for Regional (Commuter) Rail. If one observes a regional map, it's easy to understand that these lines collectively could support ridership all leading into the inner core at the Gulch. They parallel US-31, US-31A, US-41, US-70S (on the west), and finally US-70 to Dickson (veering along a stretch of SR-100 before joining US-70 at Pegram). Each of these lines parallels a primary commuter transport traffic route, and they would connect Nashville's central core to: Goodlettsville, Greenbrier, and Springfield; Gallatin; Lavergne and Murfreesboro (with a possible spur to BNA); Franklin, Spring Hill and Columbia (via one branch of split route at Brentwood); Bellevue, Pegram, Kingston Springs, and Dickson. The route split at Brentwood to Franklin and Columbia would be the only route of that line worthy of serving as a commuter line to present-day activity centers, as the main route (to Chapel Hill, Lewisburg and on to Alabama) currently does not pass such centers. Such a layout actually would accommodate an ideal set-up for the existing hub-and-spoke format of the greater county area and beyond, and it probably would serve Middle Tenn. better than it would most other metro areas which instead have a more defined and extensive street grid throughout. Columbus OH and KCMO come to mind. Again it would be only hypothetical at best.

Hmmmmm.... Nothing new here I haven't already heard in cycles like a tape loop. Somebody come shake me, wake me, if I miss anything. []

Thanks, Sadly, there's no way to guide viewers to dedicated sites for focused discussion, except for tips as this. Kind of like looking for the announcements to a train that already has long departed.

This may already have been posted, IDK According to Nextdoor Community Web site Greg Hayes: "GBT is building a 16 story 100+ unit condo development on the site of the old fire station right in Front of VERTIS - those people are going to be looking at a building instead of a view toward downtown Nashville. So it is only going to be one story shorter than Vertis. It is to be built using existing entitlements within the Green Hills UDO (urban design overlay) and to named "Eden House". Published in the Nashville Post six months ago, it appears no longer behind the paywall. https://www.nashvillepost.com/business/development/mixed-use-tower-planned-for-green-hills/article_218fa9d8-a848-5f78-b925-4723776165b0.html

I'd've paid a full R-T air fare, just to be that fly-on-the-wall to sit incognito across from you on that NYCMTA bus. I bet you looked all "Swoll", blending in with the natives. What a sight to behold of someone from Blount Cnty TN on somebody's city bus, period ─ much more on one of theirs! [SMDH] Last time I rode a NYCMTA bus was in June 1971, from 179th St. in Queens (the Q43 bus), while on my way to my aunt's funeral. At the time that probably had been the longest one-way subway ride I'd ever taken, NY Penn Station to Queens.

I just stumbled upon these two references to the site of the former Sun Trust bank at 3811 Hillsboro Pk. I've seen no follow-up on this, but for some time now this darling edifice, originally one of the city's Third National Bank branches. They were build during the post WW-II era (around 1953) as examples of simplified, rectilinear Egyptian post-moderne Art-Deco, in limestone cladding with a characteristic scalloped cornice below the coping, and with contrasting dark granite plinth. Instead of being razed, this structure was saved and transformed into a Chase Bank not very long ago. A similar former Sun Trust (nee-Third National) branch at 1718 West End also was retained to become a Fifth-Third branch. We lost the Sun Trust near Third Ave. S. at Lindsley (across from "3rd and Lindley" Bar and Grill) a few years ago, to make way for the current 6-story LifeStorage self-storage facility.

Oh no biggie, Nashvillain. Reading up on the mission of Vision Zero instantly resolves those "stray" thoughts, which most of us tend to perceive subjectively. Now as far that extolling is concerned, I truly am endeared with the kind words. But there ARE those out there lurking who can offer much more expertise than I ─ I'm the first to admit. I also admit it has taken a lifetime of personal and shared experiences, along with assimilation of years of scholarly and formal pursuit, to glean what knowledge I've managed to build. Personal accounts of historical trivia of what used to be and how it could have been, all put aside, if I've learned at least one thing crucial, then the effective implementation and sustainability of effective public transport will be driven by the interlacing and workings of the same policies which would affect the success of Vision Zero. Even past and recent missteps in urban policies often have been the results of decisions from pigeon-holed discussions aimed at single-focused solutions. In turn these have resulted in a complexity of disparate and often unenforceable strategies, because steps required to be undertaken in distant foresight often (if not usually) have been forgone deliberately, in deference to other competing priorities. One such local-policy code change, one requiring reduced building setbacks in certain sub-districts and under certain design conditions, has frustrated the improvement of traffic-pattern flow required by widening of some arterial roadways. By acquiring rights-of-way or, at the very least, by incorporating building setbacks into the planning process that would have allowed sufficient room for inclusion of private and public-transit vehicles, bicycles, and pedestrians alike, the city could have avoided now-permanent constraints against such improvements. Instead, Metro has had to resort to short and overwhelmed turning lanes, or no such lanes at all, with left turns managed at the expense of delayed green lights against opposing movement. That's not a fix at all ─ merely an indefinite compromise that only enrages through traffic waiting for that lone left-turner, often ignorant of the law and who refuses to enter the intersection to legally negotiate the turn as the light aspect changes from green to yellow, but instead waits for next light cycle. I'll try and avoid too much more digression, but Smeags again has made a good point in his sometimes passionate rants. As far as policies are concerned, sometimes preliminary measures have to be taken, even if they have no immediately rewarding effects. A prime example of this NOT having been done has resulting in missed opportunities to purchase properties which potentially could have been reserved for transit infrastructure. This occurred foremost in the Gulch area, not only with industrial real estate sold off by the railroad and adjacent property owners, but also it actually includes Union Station itself, arguably the centerpiece of the Gulch, based on the Gulch's initial purpose. Compare this to Seattle's King Street Station, which that city bought in 2008 for renovation and restoration. King Street Station now serves as that city's main commuter-rail hub and intercity passenger-rail terminal. Another but ongoing example is the now forlorn MTA Clement Landport at the Demonbreun St. bridge. This structure was built as an early step in optimism and speculation of advanced public transport in the Gulch area. Basically, it was yet another example of misguided, uninformed attempts in envisioning the usefulness of light-rail and commuter-rail transport, the latter of which would become this city's lone form of rail transit in the form of the Music City Star start-up at Riverfront. Any "Landport" proposal should have been weighed in a feasibility analysis for a progressively staged transit plan for serving the urban core at that point in time (2005), and as I saw then and still see it, a larger more scalable facility could have been planned at grade down by the Gulch rail level, where the trains would be entering and leaving. And this is the victim of yet more missed massive opportunity for light-rail and/or commuter-rail transit access from what used to be 11th Ave. Industrial in the Gulch. Had all that been in place, even if only pre-empted for future transit, then all this Gulch development (residential, retail) of the past 15+ years would have been constructed around this transportation hub and in effect would have become a central quintessential of "Transit-Oriented Development" (TOD). I mentioned a couple of years ago that the proposed and now dormant pedestrian-bridge initiative should be revisited, but only with a well-weighed transit-inclusive proposal, because, once the bridge is built, it could become counterproductive to incorporating other land-use plans around it. Finally (but not to become the last or least), it's troubling if not discouraging that the Transportation Plan of Green Hills had approved a proposal, modified according to stakeholder input. It includes a re-alignment of part of Warfield Ave. just east of Hillsboro, as well as at nearby Lone Oak Rd. and Shackleford Rd., to tie in with a re-aligned eastern part of Richard Jones Road. For decades (nearly 50 years from personal experiences), these streets have become main cut-through paths into and from Green Hills, not only to avoid the main arterials like Harding Pl, Woodmont Blvd., and Hillsboro Pk., but also to serve the ever-increasing density from infill development of that once vast and sparse suburban enclave. But that sub-district continuously have been allowed to become redeveloped with little if any regard to the transport plan. Now with infill well underway on some once-vacant rental properties, I seriously doubt that some of the most potentially effective portions of that plan for addressing traffic-patterns ever will happen ─ that is, not without some expensive market-value buyouts which will become significantly more costly annually. Our very own PruneTracy brought out an excellent point, some 5 years ago, concerning MPOs (Metropolitan Planning Organizations) ─ the federally mandated policy boards designated to carry out the metropolitan transportation planning process in urbanized areas with populations over 50,000, as determined by the U.S. Census. MPOs are designated by agreement between the governor and local governments that together represent at least 75 percent of the affected population (including the largest incorporated city within that designated area, based on population) or in accordance with procedures established by applicable state or local law. To prevent MPOs from apportioning projects based on population and instead based on the various cities and counties within an MPO, would mean that the Nashville Area MPO couldn't spend most of its funding on Nashville proper (where the overwhelming portion of the population resides), but instead that MPO would have to divide it more or less equally among every town and county within the MPO. In turn this would be highly counterproductive by defeating the purpose of earmarking funding sources for the MPO. Effectively it “porks” those outlying districts, instead of focusing on the transportation needs of the greater commonweal comprising the MPO. So again it's policy, policY, and Policy, particularly among separate urban jurisdictions, and changing administrative visions on all levels of government that have led to the bulwarks against any real action and foreseeable progress addressing transport issues ─ not just transit-related. With the exceptions of states like AZ, CA, MA, and NJ, capital cities generally haven't fared that well in landing large chunks of funding from their hosted state governments. Just as Smeags has emphasized, it's the pervasive mentality among decisionMONgers which has forestalled most opportunities toward concerted action. The state capital of Austin seems to have reached that boiling point in referendum, whereas larger Houston, with a previous start-up following engagement in local political battles, has recognized the anecdotal benefits, also being augmented with a favorable referendum. Austin and Houston have long ways to catch up with Dallas and Ft. Worth, but their ARE on board. There, I've digressed yet again, but I piggybacked off the Smeags this time (exploitation maybe..)

Well, in expressing my perception or a lack thereof, I never claimed to be the most discerning and intuitive boy on the block (as you already know)..

Just the glimpse impression of that name makes a half normal half eccentric person like me think more of tearing things down, far more than it's purported intention. In a way it reminds me of the reason Amtrak renamed a Chicago-Detroit passenger train it inherited from the railroads in 1971 ─ the "Twilight Limited" ─ to become the "St. Clair", because it felt that the original name connoted something a bit morbid and portentous, if not evil.

For over 2 or 3 decades, maybe longer, that had been the Nashville branch of the Jasper Engine & Transmission Exchange, based in Jasper, IN. It having been by no means a "pretty" structure, I frequently passed that once imposing and visibly active business throughout the '60s and '70s.

That's in part what the urban expressways did to density within the deep inner cores of urban stock built mostly after WW-I. While much of the old residential stock shown in the 1951 aerial view (the year my parents moved from DE to TN and I was born) was pre-20th C. built and had been considered sub-standard (left [west] of the railroad "Wye", just left of upper center), instead of being replaced, essentially it became "dis"-placed and over time rezoned. Typically, dwellings of the low income occupied the inner-urban core near downtown and within close vicinity to railroad rights-of-way. The 1951 photo also includes a portion of the blighted residential sub-district mentioned in previous years ─ "Hell's Half Acre". it also includes other old but more substantial housing close to Capitol Hill, much of which was razed to make way for structures such as the Cordell Hull State Office Bldg. The area occupied between 10th Ave and the railroad and between Charlotte and Broadway (just north of Union Station) has undergone three (3) major transformations since around 1900. The 1951 photo shows the gigantic railroad freight depot, still in full use, and extending from Broadway to Charlotte. That began to change around 1959 and into the 1980s. Currently, it is undergoing its 3rd "renewal" (as it were). Basically, with a high-rise vengeance, that strip is "catching" up with the ongoing redev to the west and south of the railroad (Gulch). That area as a whole had been commercial and light industrial. These photos illustrate the dramatic and wholesale scale of repurposed property and escalation of land values, a commonly occurred (and occurring) condition of circumstances or plight (based on relative viewpoints) in nearly every U.S. city medium-sized and larger. The disruption of the traditional surface-street grid is highly noticeable in the more recent photo.

One of my pet descriptions. I usually turn it into "squatty", to make something sound wide and "sawed off" (like a Corgi) Overall, it might be a Topical confusion

IMO, "housing that's affordable to all" likely is the implied meaning of "affordable housing". In the hypothetical scenario presented, yes the $60M home indeed would be "affordable" by the semantic literal. But also yes is the fact that it's "affordability"is very little, based on the scenario parameters ─ affordability being only 1/1000 of 1 percent (0.001). Those who would split hairs, as would a robot that responds only superficially to verbal commands and not contextually, would take the literal. That's how those annoying, frustrating-a$$ call-center IVR (Interactive Voice Response) systems operate. Although not EXplicitly elicited, "affordable housing"usually is understood to mean "Equitable Housing Development", the development/redevelopment of neighborhood housing that improves the quality of life for residents of all incomes and without displacement of low-income dwellers, in part as a result of increased housing values. Just as you say, this would be the more intuitive view of "affordable housing" ─ housing with a high-rate of affordability". I understand intuitively that's what you were intending to illustrate.

To the guy who tweeted from Detroit: I don't know what planet he landed from, but even long before Detroit lost its big-city status and still offered a sizable streetcar network (until the mid 1950s), Detroit never was a urban district expected to be anything other than car-centric. Besides the usual I-75/94/96 urban expressway network, the old arterials haven't changed which convey the multitudes into and out of the center city: Woodward Ave, (M1) Gratiot Ave. (M3) Grand Ave (M5) Michigan Ave. (US-12) Since the 2013 city bankruptcy, Quicken Loans' Dan Guilbert has infused a half dozen or so $billion into realty and redevelopment of the city's central core, just to restore it into some state of viability, after decades of being a "lights-out" district. So Detroit is NOT a good example for comparison IMO ─ not at this point, anyway.

Fatigue and fracture behavior in steel bridges has led to a much increased understanding over the last 50-60 years of the phenomena which shorten the life of these structures. PHofKS and PruneTracy know this more than I and most others. Much has been gleaned that has led to guidelines for modern practice for minimizing deformation-induced cracks, as with the glaring failure in that fabricated box beam on the de Soto Bridge. Older designs of steel bridges also continue to serve as ongoing case studies of the effects that variable-amplitude loading have on metal fatigue. Internal *static* loading always is incorporated by design. Bridges incur external forces which dynamically impose deformation stresses throughout, every time a wheel passes along a bridge’s deck. We realize this, whenever we walk or stand on a bridge with traffic passing beside us because that bridge very often will shake noticeably, particularly when a loaded vehicle suspension passes over uneven surfaces in the pavement or across expansion joints. For the most part, these “deformations” are “elastic”, but over time the surges in tension and compression distributed among all those bridge structural members becomes infinitesimally IN-elastic. Then, even with that member essentially at mostly a state short of complete failure, the transmission impulses throughout depends of the redundancy of remaining members. Trapped moisture also takes toll with deleterious effects on mating surfaces between structural members themselves and fasteners (bolts and rivets). Surface defects may develop from external factors or from hidden internal metallurgical molecular grain structure, many of which cannot be seen, such as those within an enclosed continuous box beam or girder. Moisture only exacerbates the issue with corrosion. That’s the reason for the need of periodic close inspections, some of which might require the use of devices for humanly inaccessible portions of a bridge. Then there are the lateral forces from wind gusts and the effects of non-ending thermal changes. During a period of engineering standards and practices for highway construction during the 1960s and ‘70s, the enormity of interstate highway construction during those decades has translated 50-60 years later into a significantly higher number of incidences of critically reduced structural integrity. We all have been made aware of this. In the area of fracture, tougher and more ductile modern steels, adopted by ASTM (American Society for Testing and Materials) specifications during the 1990s, have since replaced the use of conventional high-strength low-alloy steels of the 1960s. But this has taken time to understand and to develop. On the other hand, many railroad bridges still in heavy use were constructed between just before the turn of the 20th Century, while some were built as realignments during the 1930s and '40s. In general, specifications for most of those were much different from those for highway use ─ even for more recent railroad bridges with longer fixed or moveable spans over waterways. They don't have the same requirements for distribution of rolling-equipment dynamic forces and for decking support and materials, as those used for highway vehicles. Also these "beefy" older railroad steel bridges were built with a much higher rate of material redundancy when alloy construction steels were not available. The Harahan Bridge, just south of the de Soto Bridge, is one such example. These bridges usually have massive end portals and top chords attached to deep-girder decks. Then too, some bridges ─ through-truss bridges in particular ─ carry both railroad and highway traffic, such as the Huey P. Long Bridge in Jefferson Parish, LA, and the Fort Madison Toll Bridge (IA-IL). Another significant factor is that the longest span of the de Soto Bridge is significantly greater than those of most railway bridges (900 feet vs 790-800 feet). That 100-foot difference has a big added effect on imposed compression and tension load demand from a paved deck full of bumper-to-bumper traffic ─ from Smart cars to low-boys hauling excavators.

A ferry solution is not by any means a rare move. When a tanker ship allided with the Benjamin Harrison vertical-lift bridge near Hopewell, Va. in 1977, the state commissioned an orchestration of carfloats, vans and buses for a Park-Ride-Ride transport of commuters to their destinations. The thing is, that was more of a local solution. That James River crossing isn't nearly as vital and heavily critical by volume as with the context of the DeSoto Bridge. Commercial river traffic also is much, much greater on the Miss. River, even though the Port of Richmond uses the James for ocean-going vessels. So as an uninformed layman, I don't see a ferry as an effective stop-gap, without some quick-fix multi-distributed docking set-ups on both sides of the river. There just isn't the right infrastructure in place, to dovetail with existing roadways in either Memphis or West Memphis to handle the volume, as I now see it. To add a bit of humor, they could contract with the Union Pacific (UP) and Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) railroads to use the nearby Harahan and Frisco bridges, just north of the I-55 bridge (Memphis & R-Kansas Bridge) and transport vehicles back and forth on flatcars, as the Alaska Railroad does on its land ferries. photo - courtesy, John Weeks III

This past March the U.S. DOT gave New York State the OK to proceed with a federally required Environmental Assessment and public outreach for New York City's conceptual congesting-pricing plan in Manhattan. The State itself approved a plan in 2019. However New York's plan is different from what you're speaking of ─ the interstates ─ and instead is zonal, with certain exemptions for residents and for those with income below a threshold. So far I've heard of no interstate-designated expressway yet implemented in a domestic congestion-pricing arrangement. I think New York's zone plan is to become the first, while L.A. is set to follow suit. I expect L.A. to aim for an expressway-based plan, just as Atlanta's demonstration set-up was in 2012-'13. But then Atlanta's plan, designated a "Congestion Reduction Demonstration", was not what I consider a true "Congestion-Pricing" set-up, even with HOT lanes, because general-purpose lanes remain free, instead of all lanes having some variable pricing. The Atlanta demo included a transit component integrated with the HOT lane ─ a batch of new commuter coach buses and a sizable addition of park-and-ride spaces along a stretch of I-85 and along other segments of the trial. Arguably, this transit element can become somewhat of an attractive commuting alternative, so long as a car is not needed at one end of the personal trip. Then too, "Congestion Reduction" might have been a misnomer, because such managed set-ups don't necessarily reduce congestion. Rather, HOT lanes and true Congestion-Pricing may "regulate" rates of movement (with automation-assistive enforcement) by inducement of tiered usage at periods of high occupancy, thereby monetizing the cost of personal value of time as a commodity. In this respect, their fundamental usefulness, aside from government fund-raising, remains academic. One thing that can be said about the desired effect of Congestive Pricing is that it works best in conjunction with some form of existing alternative parallel point-to-point Rapid Bus or higher-capacity rapid transit with relatively high frequency of service. By itself, Congestion Pricing tends to be highly regressive to those who must consume a high proportion of personal income to commute, but measures can be undertaken to offset that sense of disparity. As a disincentive to driving in the most congested areas at the most congested times, at least in theory it may be the least socially inequitable way of managing traffic.