Anything for a $$$$, huh?
And the reason the construction is moving right along is at the end of the piece.
"On Minn. interstate, spectators marvel at construction of new bridge" by Monica Davey, New York Times News Service | June 8, 2008
MINNEAPOLIS - On a sunny Saturday, more than 300 people stood in clusters squinting out at the gurgling Mississippi River and the spot where one of the state's most-traveled bridges fell down one evening last August, killing 13 people and injuring many more.
Near the front of the crowd, which included tourists with cameras and water bottles, a Boy Scout troop all in navy and a local man celebrating his 75th birthday, stood Peter Sanderson, the project manager for a new $234-million bridge that is rising fast above the waters.
Trailed by workers in hard hats lugging loudspeakers, Sanderson used a microphone to answer seemingly endless questions. How strong will the metal be in the new concrete bridge? How peculiar is its design? Has it been used before in this country? What is that puff of smoke over there? What exactly are those construction workers there doing? What are those tubes for?
On and on the quizzing went, as it does most weekends now, part of an unusual series of public meetings the Minnesota Department of Transportation calls the Sidewalk Superintendent tours.
Hundreds of people gather to stare at the emerging Interstate 35W bridge, the gargantuan cranes, the dump trucks and excavators, the crushed rail cars nearby (the last vestige of the collapse) and to make a million disparate inquiries, most of which, in the end, seem to come back to a single, never-uttered question: Will this bridge really stay up?
.... the enormous puzzle of putting together a bridge that will carry five lanes in each direction....
Sounds like the Trans-Texas Corridor part of the NAFTA Superhighway!!!
There are those who find the cheerful weekly tours here mildly unseemly - some slightly ghoulish cousin of the New Orleans bus tours of damage left behind by Hurricane Katrina.
Chris Messerly, one in a group of lawyers who are handling, pro bono, scores of the legal cases for bridge collapse victims (and are now focused on a $38-million state compensation fund created for them).... families have criticized Minnesota officials as setting aside the human loss too swiftly and racing ahead to erect a replacement.
Messerly said he had questions about the notion of the tours. "I find it a bit morbid to have a celebration of a structural engineering feat which seems to ignore in all respects what happened there before," he said. "It almost is a gravesite, a memorial site. It should be a solemn place."
Sort of makes you wonder about it all, doesn't it?
But those working on the bridge say the talks are about rebuilding public confidence. The federal authorities are still searching for the cause of the Aug. 1 bridge collapse, and preliminary indications suggest a design flaw....
Sounds like a cover-up to me. Design flaw?
Then how come bridges aren't falling down all over the place?
Or are they and the media just isn't telling us?
The Transportation Department... is paying more than $500,000 to a public relations firm to promote the story of the new bridge with these tours and with open houses in local neighborhoods....
Translation: TAXPAYERS are PAYING for these MORBID TOURS as a P.R. EFFORT.
Readers!!!! They can't find a BETTER WAY to spend the $$$$$?!?!
Talk about just PISSING AWAY your tax money!!!!
Adding to the concerns of some Minnesotans is the remarkable speed with which this bridge is being built.
Yeah, WTF is the rush? Government never moved that fast before (Katrina).
On 12-hour shifts, the hundreds of employees work night and day and most holidays. Officials say their rush recognizes the importance of this bridge - the previous one carried 140,000 cars a day - and the many costs of its closing. By contract, the bridge is to be finished by Dec. 24, but many expect it will open far sooner. A provision offers the contractors as much as $27 million in incentives if they finish by Sept. 15.
Ahh, the $$$$! But that can't be the only reason, right?
(Some suspect it will open by Sept. 1, when Governor Tim Pawlenty is to be the host of the Republican convention in St. Paul, though Sanderson said to a reporter after a recent tour that he had received no pressure to finish in time for the convention.)"
Oooooooh, THAT'S WHY they are WORKING AROUND the CLOCK!!!!
For the REPUBLICAN CONVENTION!!!!
America, when are you going to wake up to the fact that THIS GOVERNMENT NO LONGER GIVES A SHIT ABOUT YOU!!!
Using YOUR TAX DOLLARS to P.R. this effort, which is only being rushed because the REPUBLICAN CONVENTION is coming!!!!
One suggestion: Don't use the airport bathrooms, 'kay?
