Genoa bridge collapse

[WHBM]

Perhaps this is Italy's RailTrack moment when they realise outsourcing of safety critical infrastructure to private companies isn't a good idea.

I don't feel ownership has much to do with it. For the engineers actually overseeing the work, whether the ownership is public or private is by the way. Public organisations are just, if not more, as likely to say "there's no more money", and that is that. Public organisations are pulled by politicians, private ones are pulled by shareholders and incentivised management.

I suppose the UK's greatest such disaster was the Tay railway bridge sudden collapse in the 1880s. Notably there was no criticism of the ownership structure at all, it all fell onto the engineering side.

[rhyds]

Also, lets not forget that a lot of the Railtrack faults were inherited from British Rail, who seemed to be in no rush to fix the problems either, despite being publicly owned. The answer isn't privatisation or nationalisation, its having accountability in law for gross negligence. Neither public or private sectors take any notice until something will cost them money out of *their* budget.

[Owain]

A representative from 5* was on R4Today this morning. Seems they are wanting to throw "Autostrade per l'Italia" under the bus for this one. Although I don't know of course if they deserve it or not. Basically saying that it's a profit making company and it's put profits before safety.

Perhaps this is Italy's RailTrack moment when they realise outsourcing of safety critical infrastructure to private companies isn't a good idea - the UK government should take note lest it has any ideas about Highways England.

Re. privatisation, I don't think that is the problem. In my opinion, Autostrade per Italia do a generally good job of providing high-quality motorways that link Italy's major cities through extremely difficult terrain that, prior to the railways, was often passable only on foot. I've felt perfectly comfortable cruising at 100mph on the wide, straight sections, such as the A4 between Turin and Milan, and the A1 between Milan and Bologna. The roads are often almost as good as the French autoroutes (which are surely the best roads in the world), but the tolls are considerably cheaper.

The difficulty is that some of the northern motorways such as the A10 were built through mountains during the 1960s, when cars were smaller and slower; as a consequence, they often have only two lanes, no hard shoulder, and you are either on a bridge or in a tunnel. These roads are usually subject to an 80, 90 or 110 km/h speed limit - which I am inclined to observe - although there are plenty of vehicles that don't! Hardly any of the A10 or the adjacent section of the A12 is actually built at ground level; the A10 is a 100-mile combination of tunnel-bridge-tunnel-bridge-tunnel-bridge-etc. As such, it must be extremely difficult to modernise, if not impossible without building a new road from scratch.

On my recent holiday, I was going to photograph and post a big publicity board for Autostrade per Italia, which contained a montage of famous destinations with a map of the autostrada network (I didn't take the picture because it was too dark). The slogans translated as "We move Italy", and "Discover Italy with Us". It is a very sad moment; even if the company that runs the autostrade is privately-owned, I don't believe for a minute that it is anything other than a well-intentioned concern providing a generally good public service. It is certainly a contrast to Britain, where many privatised service-providers are money-grabbing self-interested organisations who don't give a damn about their customers or the service they provide.

[Bryn666]

Also, lets not forget that a lot of the Railtrack faults were inherited from British Rail, who seemed to be in no rush to fix the problems either, despite being publicly owned. The answer isn't privatisation or nationalisation, its having accountability in law for gross negligence. Neither public or private sectors take any notice until something will cost them money out of *their* budget.

This. All of the bold bit.

Bridges don't just collapse. Something went wrong somewhere and a process or a person is responsible. It is not good enough to just say "oh, it was a tragic accident" and walk away from it as nobody is under any incentive to prevent a recurrence.

Grenfell Tower springs to mind.

[exiled]

M5S appears to be face saving more than anything. Upgrades to the A10, a bypass etc offered by Autostrade per l'Italia seem to have floundered due to campaigns against them led by... M5S or people speaking on its behalf. It does not appear to be the operating model, France and Spain do not seem to be having similar issues on their motorway network where especially in France the same operations model operates, where as there appears to be serious concern about the state of some of the infrastructure of the motorway bridges in Belgium's Wallonia region, where they are operated publicly and free to use by the regional government in Namur.

[Owain]

Also, lets not forget that a lot of the Railtrack faults were inherited from British Rail, who seemed to be in no rush to fix the problems either, despite being publicly owned. The answer isn't privatisation or nationalisation, its having accountability in law for gross negligence. Neither public or private sectors take any notice until something will cost them money out of *their* budget.

This. All of the bold bit.

Bridges don't just collapse. Something went wrong somewhere and a process or a person is responsible. It is not good enough to just say "oh, it was a tragic accident" and walk away from it as nobody is under any incentive to prevent a recurrence.

My partner saw a BBC News item that suggested money had been put aside for infrastructural projects such as repairing the bridge, but that it had 'disappeared'. Unfortunately, corruption and embezzlement are two major problems that do occur in Italy (see the condition of the former A3 [now A2] in the South, which remained only semi-completed from the 1970s to the 2000s, at one point with a permanent contraflow in place; although that is a toll-free autostrada). Unfortunately I was in a deep sleep after driving back from Strasbourg with only a two-hour snooze on the ferry, and I missed it.

[Bryn666]

Also, lets not forget that a lot of the Railtrack faults were inherited from British Rail, who seemed to be in no rush to fix the problems either, despite being publicly owned. The answer isn't privatisation or nationalisation, its having accountability in law for gross negligence. Neither public or private sectors take any notice until something will cost them money out of *their* budget.

This. All of the bold bit.

Bridges don't just collapse. Something went wrong somewhere and a process or a person is responsible. It is not good enough to just say "oh, it was a tragic accident" and walk away from it as nobody is under any incentive to prevent a recurrence.

My partner saw a BBC News item that suggested money had been put aside for infrastructural projects such as repairing the bridge, but that it had 'disappeared'. Unfortunately, corruption and embezzlement are two major problems that do occur in Italy (see the condition of the former A3 [now A2] in the South, which remained only semi-completed from the 1970s to the 2000s, at one point with a permanent contraflow in place; although that is a toll-free autostrada). Unfortunately I was in a deep sleep after driving back from Strasbourg with only a two-hour snooze on the ferry, and I missed it.

The Napoli-Salerno corridor was reportedly plagued by mafia intervention in construction work.

Without wanting to cast aspersions on Italian life, if a structure was going to collapse due to dodgy dealings, your gut feeling would say it would be in southern Italy. The fact it happened in the north suggests the problems of investment and routine maintenance are nationwide and cannot be laid at the door of a local Don.

[roadtester]

I think there may be some wider concerns here that go beyond the construction and maintenance of this particular bridge.

There are a lot of spectacular motorway structures across Europe, especially in Germany, Austria and Italy, which are of a similar age to the Genoa A10 viaduct. That includes the extensive bridging and tunnelling on routes such as the Brenner autobahn and the northern Italian Autostrade but also vast numbers of big high bridges across valleys on the main German autobahn network, even away from the more challenging Alpine terrain further south.

It seems as though the big peak in construction in the late sixties and early seventies has now, half a century later, produced a correspondingly big hump in the need for maintenance, improvement and replacement of these structures. When I was on my recent circuit of Germany drive, I lost count of the number of big autobahn bridges that were contra-flowed or had lanes coned off while big remedial works were being carried out or where new construction was taking place alongside.

[Bryn666]

I think there may be some wider concerns here that go beyond the construction and maintenance of this particular bridge.

There are a lot of spectacular motorway structures across Europe, especially in Germany, Austria and Italy, which are of a similar age to the Genoa A10 viaduct. That includes the extensive bridging and tunnelling on routes such as the Brenner autobahn and the northern Italian Autostrade but also vast numbers of big high bridges across valleys on the main German autobahn network, even away from the more challenging Alpine terrain further south.

It seems as though the big peak in construction in the late sixties and early seventies has now, half a century later, produced a correspondingly big hump in the need for maintenance, improvement and replacement of these structures. When I was on my recent circuit of Germany drive, I lost count of the number of big autobahn bridges that were contra-flowed or had lanes coned off while big remedial works were being carried out or where new construction was taking place alongside.

Whilst there will be concerns about other bridge structures, it has been noted that this bridge was not a very efficient design, nor did it have much structural redundancy within it. Similar concerns about the larger cousin also designed by Morandi in Venezuela have been raised.

Other structures will have fatigue but probably unlikely to catastrophically fail.

[Mark Hewitt]

I think there may be some wider concerns here that go beyond the construction and maintenance of this particular bridge.

There are a lot of spectacular motorway structures across Europe, especially in Germany, Austria and Italy, which are of a similar age to the Genoa A10 viaduct. That includes the extensive bridging and tunnelling on routes such as the Brenner autobahn and the northern Italian Autostrade but also vast numbers of big high bridges across valleys on the main German autobahn network, even away from the more challenging Alpine terrain further south.

It seems as though the big peak in construction in the late sixties and early seventies has now, half a century later, produced a correspondingly big hump in the need for maintenance, improvement and replacement of these structures. When I was on my recent circuit of Germany drive, I lost count of the number of big autobahn bridges that were contra-flowed or had lanes coned off while big remedial works were being carried out or where new construction was taking place alongside.

Good point, perhaps at a point now where the normal routine maintenance is no longer sufficient since there's so much getting to EOL. I'm still surprised that the Queensferry crossing was actually built for that reason and we aren't still arguing about cable condition on the FRB.

[Owain]

This. All of the bold bit.

Bridges don't just collapse. Something went wrong somewhere and a process or a person is responsible. It is not good enough to just say "oh, it was a tragic accident" and walk away from it as nobody is under any incentive to prevent a recurrence.

My partner saw a BBC News item that suggested money had been put aside for infrastructural projects such as repairing the bridge, but that it had 'disappeared'. Unfortunately, corruption and embezzlement are two major problems that do occur in Italy (see the condition of the former A3 [now A2] in the South, which remained only semi-completed from the 1970s to the 2000s, at one point with a permanent contraflow in place; although that is a toll-free autostrada). Unfortunately I was in a deep sleep after driving back from Strasbourg with only a two-hour snooze on the ferry, and I missed it.

The Napoli-Salerno corridor was reportedly plagued by mafia intervention in construction work.

Without wanting to cast aspersions on Italian life, if a structure was going to collapse due to dodgy dealings, your gut feeling would say it would be in southern Italy. The fact it happened in the north suggests the problems of investment and routine maintenance are nationwide and cannot be laid at the door of a local Don.

Indeed; and if there is a court case, it is likely to take years and years to reach a conclusion. It might even be 'timed out', like some of the cases against Berlusconi.

[c2R]

When I was on my recent circuit of Germany drive, I lost count of the number of big autobahn bridges that were contra-flowed or had lanes coned off while big remedial works were being carried out or where new construction was taking place alongside.

Yes, they are systematically replacing and renovating their infrastructure. The same situation is true in the USA where literally hundreds of minor bridges that I passed in almost every state over the 9000 or so miles I covered there had either recently been replaced or where in the process of being replaced.

[Mark Hewitt]

If there is a bypass already in the planning I would seriously doubt that bridge at Genoa will ever make a reappearance. It seems certain it'll be completely demolished in any case.

[Mark Hewitt]

The alternative route SS1 along the seafront seems to be fully dual, so I wonder if the consideration will be that the bridge just isn't needed and that'll be that?

[rhyds]

Also, lets not forget that a lot of the Railtrack faults were inherited from British Rail, who seemed to be in no rush to fix the problems either, despite being publicly owned. The answer isn't privatisation or nationalisation, its having accountability in law for gross negligence. Neither public or private sectors take any notice until something will cost them money out of *their* budget.

This. All of the bold bit.

Bridges don't just collapse. Something went wrong somewhere and a process or a person is responsible. It is not good enough to just say "oh, it was a tragic accident" and walk away from it as nobody is under any incentive to prevent a recurrence.

Grenfell Tower springs to mind.

There also needs to be an agreed method of dealing with the aftermath of major disasters like these. I'm no legal or technical expert, but I'd personally like to see a system as below

1: An independent public inquiry under the leadership of a judge (or other non-politico) that works to discover the facts (note: not the blame, the facts, as with CAA/NTSB investigations). This would need to be technical/administration minded, rather than a grieving/"feelings" led process, they would need to be dealt with of course, but not as part of sorting out the facts.

2: Once said facts are known, it should be up to the prosecutors to decide who to take to court to answer for the disaster now that the facts have been found. I'd also have it so that companies, government departments and possibly named individuals could be made to stand trial, but in the case of named individuals they would have to be shown to have had the ability to do something to avoid the disaster and positively didn't (to avoid e.g. the driver of a truck being held accountable for failures by maintenance and management)

[Bryn666]

The alternative route SS1 along the seafront seems to be fully dual, so I wonder if the consideration will be that the bridge just isn't needed and that'll be that?

Despite talk of a northern bypass, SS1 is no decent alternative to the A10. The main link into the city centre via the Sopraelevata is along the A10, and therefore this entire corridor is rendered redundant if you suddenly move everything to approach from the other side.

It'll be replaced in situ, there's too much hassle otherwise. If the western approach spans are in good health it is likely that the fix will be a new conventional box girder span across the gap with the remaining cable-stay tower given some serious renovation work.

[exiled]

The Napoli-Salerno corridor was reportedly plagued by mafia intervention in construction work.

Without wanting to cast aspersions on Italian life, if a structure was going to collapse due to dodgy dealings, your gut feeling would say it would be in southern Italy. The fact it happened in the north suggests the problems of investment and routine maintenance are nationwide and cannot be laid at the door of a local Don.

Though looking across the world, in the UK, elsewhere in the EU, North America, infrastructure construction be it roads, rail or air, seems to be more rife with corruption than other sectors of the economy, more chances for it to happen unseen.

[Robert Kilcoyne]

It is scary to think that the Morandi Bridge was still open normally last month when you see some of the photographs in this article:-

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-606454 ... mafia.html

[jgharston]

It's almost a Tinsley Viaduct situation, where I can't see any reasonably feasable direct replacement route. It looks like it will need a city/regional reassement of road routes and links.

[Bryn666]

It is scary to think that the Morandi Bridge was still open normally last month when you see some of the photographs in this article:-

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-606454 ... mafia.html

As ever with the Daily Mail, interesting photos but terrible journalism.