Anyone at the Strib got a calculator?

This AP report seems to confirm what structural engineers have been theorizing since a week after the I-35W bridge collapse.

The likely problem was the size of gusset plates used to hold the steel beams together. Here's a photo showing an example of what gusset plates are; conveniently, this is a pier of the 35W bridge. The plates are the rectangular pieces full of rivets.

So, the probable impetus of this tragic collapse was set in place in 1967, when the bridge was built. According to Wikipedia, Carol Molnau was born in 1949. So she was about 18 when it all began. Any one at the Star Trib paying attention?

Oh, I know. The complaint isn't that she actually made the bridge fall. It's that she didn't spend enough to update the bridge, which had been declared "structurally deficient". Of course, Carol started her MN/DOT position in 2002, and the first declaration of structural deficiency came from the Feds in 1990. That's 12 years prior to Molnau taking the lead.

I was a JMC major at Iowa Sate in the 1990's, so I know that all Journalism students are told, you don't have to use math, but I always took it as tongue-in-cheek. A little math, and a bit of logic would tell us that if we had $715 million to spend on LRT through the Ventura administration, we probably could have fixed our bridge 10 years ago... well, if priorities had been straight anyway.

The Metropolitan Council proudly claims 9.4 million LRT riders for 2006, which is more than double of expectations. Let's assume that all 9.4 million paid a fare, a big assumption, since the ride between MSP's Lindburg Terminal & Humphrey Terminal is free. Let's also assume that none of these 9.4 million fare payers used a transfer ticket, meaning that part of their fare would also have gone to cover the cost of riding the bus route. At a normal fare of $1.50, this pie-in-the-sky scenario brings us $14.1 million dollars per year. At that rate, the initial building costs will be paid off in 50 years. Of course, the operating costs will be piling up over this time, as will maintainance costs, labor costs & all other costs associated with the line.

9.4 million divides out to 25,753 people per day on LRT. The 35W bridge carried 140,000 vehicles per day. Many of those carried more than one person. Each of those vehicles had gasoline onboard, bought by the vehicle's owner, who paid the gasoline taxes that fund both roads & mass transit. There is no freeloading for the occupants in the vehicles, in fact, they are paying the bulk of the true cost for 9.4 million annual LRT riders.

The Star Tribune was a major proponent of our little train. As the news paper of Minneapolis, they also knew the bridge was structurally deficient. Does anyone else think that the Stribs vendetta against Carol Molnau is little more than a serious case of projection? Maybe, if they were honest, they might see whose priorities have been misplaced.