Genoa bridge collapse

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JohnnyMo
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Re: Genoa bridge collapse

Post by JohnnyMo »

I assume it is here with the northbound carriageway affected.

I assume that is the newer of the two carriageways as it is marginally straighter and therefore I assume steeper. This looks interesting
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Re: Genoa bridge collapse

Post by Berk »

Spirals are usually a clue as to how old the road is. They were common on the railway 100-150 years ago.

They try and avoid them now.
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Re: Genoa bridge collapse

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more here;
https://blogs.agu.org/landslideblog/
2nd post down.
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Re: Genoa bridge collapse

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JohnnyMo wrote: Tue Nov 26, 2019 21:38 I assume it is here with the northbound carriageway affected.

I assume that is the newer of the two carriageways as it is marginally straighter and therefore I assume steeper. This looks interesting
I never truly realised the two carriageways of the A6 were so far apart and it seems the original route now used by different lengths of the north and southbound carriageways.

Was the original A6 a single carriageway motorway?

If is was and given the awful alignment, when they built the second carriageway why didn't they just build a brand new two carriageway road. From looking at google the original construction looks a bit ropey.
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Re: Genoa bridge collapse

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A303Chris wrote: Fri Nov 29, 2019 13:44
JohnnyMo wrote: Tue Nov 26, 2019 21:38 I assume it is here with the northbound carriageway affected.

I assume that is the newer of the two carriageways as it is marginally straighter and therefore I assume steeper. This looks interesting
I never truly realised the two carriageways of the A6 were so far apart and it seems the original route is now used by different lengths of the north and southbound carriageways.

Was the original A6 a single carriageway motorway?

If is was and given the awful alignment, when they built the second carriageway why didn't they just build a brand new two carriageway road. From looking at google the original construction looks a bit ropey.
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Re: Genoa bridge collapse

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A303Chris wrote: Fri Nov 29, 2019 13:44 I never truly realised the two carriageways of the A6 were so far apart and it seems the original route now used by different lengths of the north and southbound carriageways.

Was the original A6 a single carriageway motorway?
This look like a old toll booth, with direct access to the old northbound lane, access to the southbound lane is retained as an emergency access point
If is was and given the awful alignment, when they built the second carriageway why didn't they just build a brand new two carriageway road. From looking at google the original construction looks a bit ropey.
I assume cost, looking at the terrain I assume it was an expensive motorway to build, alternating between viaduct & tunnels.
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Re: Genoa bridge collapse

Post by Owain »

JohnnyMo wrote: Tue Nov 26, 2019 21:38 I assume it is here with the northbound carriageway affected.

I assume that is the newer of the two carriageways as it is marginally straighter and therefore I assume steeper. This looks interesting
I've driven the southbound loop-the-loop - twice! I believe the southbound side is the older of the two carriageways.

It has an 80km/h limit, and is not quite as crazy on the ground as it looks on the map. It's quite steep, but the curves are not the worst on either the A6 or the A7.
A303Chris wrote: Fri Nov 29, 2019 13:44
JohnnyMo wrote: Tue Nov 26, 2019 21:38 I assume it is here with the northbound carriageway affected.

I assume that is the newer of the two carriageways as it is marginally straighter and therefore I assume steeper. This looks interesting
I never truly realised the two carriageways of the A6 were so far apart and it seems the original route now used by different lengths of the north and southbound carriageways.

Was the original A6 a single carriageway motorway?
I believe it was.

I was wrong above about the older section being from the Fascist era; the Italian Wikipedia article explains that the older carriageway dates from the 1950s and '60s, while the newer carriageway was begun in the 1973 and completed in 2001 (which is a lot later than I thought!).

It's the older carriageway of the A7 that dates from the Fascist era, and that really is crazy! There's no loop-the-loop, but I didn't feel that the 80km/h limit would have been achievable without straight-lining, which is impossible because it's very busy.
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Re: Genoa bridge collapse

Post by A42_Sparks »

Another bridge collapse in Italy. No fatalities as traffic levels were very low due to coronavirus lockdown:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-52213898
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Re: Genoa bridge collapse

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A42_Sparks wrote: Wed Apr 08, 2020 15:42 Another bridge collapse in Italy. No fatalities as traffic levels were very low due to coronavirus lockdown:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-52213898
Just wow.... You'd have thought that the Italians might have actually put measures in place to inspect/repair/close bridges that were clearly unsafe given what happened before...
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Re: Genoa bridge collapse

Post by fras »

c2R wrote: Wed Apr 08, 2020 17:18
A42_Sparks wrote: Wed Apr 08, 2020 15:42 Another bridge collapse in Italy. No fatalities as traffic levels were very low due to coronavirus lockdown:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-52213898
Just wow.... You'd have thought that the Italians might have actually put measures in place to inspect/repair/close bridges that were clearly unsafe given what happened before...
Come on, this is Italy !! (or..."Rome wasn't built in a day")
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Re: Genoa bridge collapse

Post by KeithW »

The thing is the article states that the bridge had supposedly been repaired and inspected before the collapse. As far as I can tell this the bridge.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@44.17326 ... 6656?hl=en

From the images on the BBC website it seems that the supports are still in place and the deck has failed, if as seems likely its a prestressed bridge then the steel tendons embedded in the deck to take the tension forces have probably corroded and failed. This sort of deterioration is of course why they are now demolishing the old A14 viaduct at Huntingdon. The problem iwith such structures is that you cannot visualy examine the condition of the tendons. At Huntingdon they installed an accoustic monitoring system that listened for the sound of strands of wire breaking. There are similar problems on the Westway.

They can't blame this one on Autostrada, the bridge was reportedly managed by Anas, a firm run by state-owned railway group Ferrovie dello Stato.
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Re: Genoa bridge collapse

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KeithW wrote: Thu Apr 09, 2020 11:41 The thing is the article states that the bridge had supposedly been repaired and inspected before the collapse. As far as I can tell this the bridge.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@44.17326 ... 6656?hl=en

From the images on the BBC website it seems that the supports are still in place and the deck has failed, if as seems likely its a prestressed bridge then the steel tendons embedded in the deck to take the tension forces have probably corroded and failed. This sort of deterioration is of course why they are now demolishing the old A14 viaduct at Huntingdon. The problem iwith such structures is that you cannot visualy examine the condition of the tendons. At Huntingdon they installed an accoustic monitoring system that listened for the sound of strands of wire breaking. There are similar problems on the Westway.

They can't blame this one on Autostrada, the bridge was reportedly managed by Anas, a firm run by state-owned railway group Ferrovie dello Stato.
It is yet to be understood whether there were any post-tensioned elements within the structure's construction so the standard bridge-xplanation of the Huntingdon Viaduct is premature at the moment.
There are a whole host of reasons why the structure could have collapsed, it is better to let those that have knowledge investigate and determine the cause rather than have wild conjecture based upon assumptions without facts.
This article includes the first thoughts of someone experienced in the field.
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Re: Genoa bridge collapse

Post by KeithW »

RichardA35 wrote: Thu Apr 09, 2020 11:58 It is yet to be understood whether there were any post-tensioned elements within the structure's construction so the standard bridge-xplanation of the Huntingdon Viaduct is premature at the moment.
There are a whole host of reasons why the structure could have collapsed, it is better to let those that have knowledge investigate and determine the cause rather than have wild conjecture based upon assumptions without facts.
This article includes the first thoughts of someone experienced in the field.
Something has to have carried the tensile load and there are no signs of rebar, moreover the pulling over of supports seems to have been done as a result of a lateral load being suddenly applied to them. I agree that a full investigation is required but as engineer who worked in risk based inspection methodologies I do have some expertise albeit more on industrial structures such as pipe bridges that road bridges.

My initial surmise that the failure may have involved prestressed tendons for the reason mentioned in the article, this was not a single span failure but involved the entire deck and pulled supports over. Any progressive collapse of this type raises giant red flags.

That said looking at the youtube footage here there is no apparent sign of tendons either. There really does need to be a comprehensive survey of Italian road bridge infrastructure. This is a bridge that was supposed to have been recently inspected and repaired.

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Re: Genoa bridge collapse

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RichardA35 wrote: Thu Apr 09, 2020 11:58There are a whole host of reasons why the structure could have collapsed, it is better to let those that have knowledge investigate and determine the cause rather than have wild conjecture based upon assumptions without facts.
This article includes the first thoughts of someone experienced in the field.
Here's my wild conjecture, from the picture in that link the river pier appears not to have moved laterally but the others have tilted, also the deck to the immediate left (shingle side) of that pier appears more broken up than the slabs of the others. Could it be that the initial failure was to the left of the river pier and the end of that span dropped, resulting in a sideways force that pulled the next pier sideways which then repeated itself along the length of the bridge?
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Re: Genoa bridge collapse

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RichardA35 wrote: Thu Apr 09, 2020 11:58 It is yet to be understood whether there were any post-tensioned elements within the structure's construction so the standard bridge-xplanation of the Huntingdon Viaduct is premature at the moment.
There are a whole host of reasons why the structure could have collapsed, it is better to let those that have knowledge investigate and determine the cause rather than have wild conjecture based upon assumptions without facts.
This article includes the first thoughts of someone experienced in the field.
Indeed, however the primary lesson of any bridge collapse is always don't treat maintenance as a secondary concern because it's more expensive to leave a small job today for another time than to just undertake the small job.
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Re: Genoa bridge collapse

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Meanwhile, back in Genoa...

This is the sum total of the temporary traffic management stopping A7 northbound drivers from bombing down the slip road on to where the Morandi once was.

Roughly on a par with a "Bridge Out" sign on a Roadrunner cartoon...
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Re: Genoa bridge collapse

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Bfivethousand wrote: Thu May 07, 2020 22:22 Meanwhile, back in Genoa...

This is the sum total of the temporary traffic management stopping A7 northbound drivers from bombing down the slip road on to where the Morandi once was.

Roughly on a par with a "Bridge Out" sign on a Roadrunner cartoon...
If you head further down you can see there's a construction site gate further down the slip which would make rather a bigger dent of your car than the cones.

At the other end, THOU SHALT U-TURN.

https://goo.gl/maps/NdaTdzPKztF8srFx7
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Re: Genoa bridge collapse

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Bfivethousand wrote: Thu May 07, 2020 22:22 Meanwhile, back in Genoa...

This is the sum total of the temporary traffic management stopping A7 northbound drivers from bombing down the slip road on to where the Morandi once was.

Roughly on a par with a "Bridge Out" sign on a Roadrunner cartoon...
As a very experienced driver on Italian roads, I don't see any problem with that at all. It's extremely unlikely that anybody would go bombing down that slip road! The twisty part of the A7 heading south is subject to an 80km/h speed limit (it might actually be 70km/h where the A7 meets the A10). I can vouch for the fact that it wouldn't be possible for anybody to drive any of the twisty section of the A7 much faster than 80km/h; in some places, I don't think it is even achievable. On the three occasions I've driven down that road, nobody was travelling much faster than me.

One of the easiest mistakes for a British driver to make when first driving in Italy (and I'm speaking from experience, because I made that mistake!) is to assume that Italian motorway slip roads are like UK motorway slip roads, in that you can bomb up and down them because they tend to be wide, straight, and long. You can't, and Italian drivers know this! The vast majority of slip roads in Italy - including those on the autostrade - are narrow compared with ours, often having very tight bends, and usually being subject to lower speed limits than the main carriageway (typically 70km/h). These characteristics apply to all of the slip roads in the Genova area (I'd imagine that some of them even have a 50km/h limit).

The Italians might not have the greatest reputation for compliance with speed limits(!), but they really don't bomb up and down slip roads like UK drivers do; when joining or exiting an autostrada the vast majority of them are actually very cautious (certainly a lot more so than when they are in the outside lane tailgating at 160km/h!).
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Re: Genoa bridge collapse

Post by Bryn666 »

Before the widening of the A3 (now A2), some of the entry/exit slip roads slammed into Stop signs. Definitely no bombing along those.

The A10 out towards France is largely restricted to 80km/h because of the terrain and lack of hard shoulders (it's of the same mold as the A6 and A7 with separated carriageways of different vintages).

It's interesting how France and Italy are quite content with compact free-flowing interchanges limited to <60km/h speeds whereas Belgium is much more in keeping with what we'd be used to here. Huge expanses of tarmac and high speed slip roads.
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Re: Genoa bridge collapse

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I've read an article tonight quoting late July as the reopening date for the Polcevera viaduct (Morandi viaduct) in Genoa. Good work if they make it, the last deck section was placed in April.
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