This week, the latest transportation news here in Georgia has been over the falsification of bridge reports by 2 Georgia DOT bridge inspectors.

After hearing this news, many Georgians, including yours truly, are asking the same general question...

How safe are Georgia's bridges?

In the wake of last year's tragic collapse of the I-35W bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, this is not exactly comforting news to the traveling public.

According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC), the inspectors in question had apparently fallen behind in their inspection assignments, and when faced with a Federally-mandated deadline to file the appropriate reports, they had decided to falsify reports on over 50 of their assigned bridges. Their territory included Gwinnett County, North Fulton County, Rockdale County, and parts of DeKalb County. Here are the AJC articles...

- DOT employee falsified bridge inspection reports (AJC, February 4, 2008)

- DOT considers charges against bridge inspector (AJC, February 5, 2008)

- DOT: Reports on 11 faulty bridges were fake (AJC, February 6, 2008)

Given that their territory included North Fulton, I thought about one bridge on US 19/GA 400 that I travel across as I go to and from my "real job"... the bridge over the Chattahoochee River between Roswell and Sandy Springs.

That particular bridge sits up fairly high and crosses a fairly wide section of the river. I do not know the exact vehicle-per-day count for that bridge, but I can safely say that tens-of-thousands of vehicles cross that bridge every single day. If, heaven forbid, that bridge were to collapse, I would expect the casualty toll to be comparable to that of Minneapolis, not to mention the impact it would have on traffic going to-and-from Roswell, Alpharetta, and points northward. Roswell Road (GA 9/Old US 19) is a congested stretch of road on a given day during the rush hour. If it had to take up the slack for the loss of a section of 400, then I forsee near total pandemonium in terms of traffic.

I do consider it fortunate that GDOT's Commissioner, Dr. Gena Abraham, had taken steps to remove these individuals from the Department and applaud her for doing so. Furthermore, I hope that the inspections of their assigned bridges are done by someone who is not only competent, but most important of all, meticulous in the process. With the explosive growth of Metro Atlanta and North Georgia in general, traffic overwhelms many roads that were originally built when much of the outlying area 20 miles from Downtown Atlanta was rural farming country. Now that much of the area such as North Fulton County has become suburban enclaves with hundreds of thousands more residents, it is extremely imperative that the existing infrastructure be both inspected regularly and improved to handle the extra stress and strain. It's going to cost us a heck of a lot of tax dollars, but I'd rather see my tax money spent to improve, inspect, and repair rather than having to recover from a Minneapolis-like bridge disaster.

On a much lighter note, here's a YouTube video I found that features Gordon Lightfoot's "Carefree Highway" (one of my "roadgeek" jukebox and iPod favorites)...



And finally, thanks to Jerry Grillo of Georgia Trend magazine for interviewing me last November as part of an article he wrote about the new direction at GDOT. Please click here to read it.

For my next blog, I will give you my review of the 2008 Official Georgia Highway Map, which I just picked up today at the GDOT office in Chamblee.

That's it for now, thanks for reading, hope you enjoy the video I found, and please come back again.

 

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