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Re: New Bonner Bridge?
Posted By: E. Copeland In Response To: Re: New Bonner Bridge? (Al)
Date: Thursday, 2-21-08, at 6:37 p.m.
Maybe it’s the time in history we forget about bridges and do what Virginia did with the Chesapeake Bay. Tunnel under it.
With the equipment and know how we have today it would be a fairly easy task to drive sheet piling and build cofferdams. Pump the water out, a crane with a clamshell bucket digs out the sand to the desired depth, place pre-cast concrete sections of the tunnel on concrete foundations, waterproof the joints, cover it up, pull up the dam and start over again for another 100-200 feet. I am sure I have left out something, but not much.
In my younger days I was a crane operator for a bridge contractor. Working off the ground“ain’t no fun”. You always have threats. Building a tunnel on land and floating it out to a hole in the water and burying it, verses hanging on a safety line, wearing a life jacket, and handling bridge material piece by piece over water is no comparison. Maybe it’s too simple and too modern for the old bridge engineers. I have no doubt in my mind that Bonner will be replaced with another bridge but I still prefer my car to a horse and wagon.
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