Natchez Trace Parkway Arches, south of Nashville, 582 ft precast concrete segmental arch bridge, 1994.
At the time it was a revelation — a lot of US cities and highway departments looked at this (and some of the new cable stayed bridges opening around the same time) and thought “Oh wow — bridges can look beautiful!”
The term “signature bridge,” which was silly to begin with (why should we pick only a handful of bridges to look good?) and has now been stretched beyond all recognition, became a part of DOT talk.
But we did end up building some great bridges inspired by this — the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s have been a good time for big bridges in the US. The engineering firm that did the bridge, Figg, got hired for more projects across the country, and other firms got more creative.
(More recently, though, Figg has been getting attention for all the wrong reasons — their design errors led to 6 deaths in the collapse of a pedestrian bridge in Miami, and they got fired by Harris County for flaws in the BW8 bridge.)
Whether we needed all those new bridges is another question, of course. The Arches are unusual that way — they carry not a new bypass highway, or more lanes for an existing interstate, just a 2 lane National Park Service scenic drive. (It’s spectacular — highly recommended.)

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More from @christofspieler

1 Jan
Transit Twitter poll: is the South Shore Line “the last (US) interurban?”
Option 1: the South Shore was built as an interurban and it still carries both passengers and freight on more or less its original route. That’s unique. Image
Option 2: The trains are commuter rail equipment, the Chicago end is commuter rail, so the South Shore is commuter rail that just happens to run down a street a bit. (In other words, how is the train on the left an interurban when the trains on the right are commuter rail?) Image
Read 6 tweets
31 Dec 20
A westbound South Shore Line train passes through Michigan City, IN, on its way from Chicago (about 60 miles west) to South Bend (about 30 miles east.)
Say “South Shore” and someone will say “Last Interurban!” Interurbans were rail lines that used streetcar technology — short electric trains with self-propelled cars, not locomotives — to connect cities. The US built 15,000 miles of interurban track from about 1900-1920.
Interurbans were common elsewhere, too: Canada, Central Europe, Japan. (This is the former OEG near Heidelberg, Germany.)
Read 15 tweets
30 Dec 20
Norfolk Southern freight heads south near Burnside, KY on the“Rat Hole,” a section of the line from Cincinnati to Chattanooga. Image
This railroad, first built 1869-1880, was extensively rebuilt in 1959-1963, reducing curves, flattening grades, and replacing tunnels with huge rock cuts like this one — it’s a rare example of large scale post-WWII engineering on the US freight rail system. Image
It’s not easy to build through country like this. Image
Read 4 tweets
28 Jun 20
As we talk transportation, urbanism, cities, and racism, Transit agencies, and the transit industry, should not assume we are the good guys, or, as @Jay_Pitter put it, “bringers of solution.”
I’m not singling out transit here. It has not been nearly as destructive an implement of racism as the construction of the US freeway system, and today transit agencies tend to be much more thoughtful about their impacts on people of color than highway agencies.
But race is always there in transit discussions (here's what I said about that in Trains, Buses, People.) And whether we talk about it or not (we usually don’t), it's often the direct or indirect motivation behind transit decisions.
Read 24 tweets
31 May 20
Two lessons for transit agencies in the past several days:
(1) Make a plan to never strand riders
(2) Think about an agency’s relationship with the police
First: It is never OK to stop service in the middle of a day with minimal or no advance notice. Transit agencies have a responsibility to try to get people who rely on transit home. (Canceling service w/ advance notice can be OK if employers, schools, services shut down, too.)
Absolutely: Marches and police blockades can block buses. It’s dangerous for drivers to be in the middle of arson or vandalism. And it can be hard to figure out what to do in the moment -- if an agency is not prepared in advance, it may have limited options.
Read 17 tweets
19 May 20
The new @METROHouston Bus Rapid Transit line (the Silver Line, AKA Uptown BRT) is almost complete. It has 100% dedicated lanes, off board fare collection, level boarding, and service every 10 min all day and 15 min the evening, through a major employment center. Here's a tour.
This project is a north-south link in the frequent bus grid, connecting 16 local bus routes to the jobs, shopping, and restaurants in Uptown.
It's also a part of the regional network. People who live in the suburbs out US290, IH10, Westpark, and IH69 will be able to catch the same park and ride service that goes to Downtown, but get off at a transit center and transfer to the Silver Line to get to jobs in Uptown.
Read 18 tweets

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