Hinsdale Bridge Vibrations

2009@5300 vpd  for a year gives us 1.9 million cars

2012@7300 vpd    2.7 million cars

2013@ 9700 vpd    3.5 million cars

2015@12775 vpd  4.7 million cars

There is an anomaly between the environmental assessment and the state count.

Average annual daily traffic counts in 2010 for the main artery between Hinsdale and Brattleboro stood at 9,700. Projected counts for 2032 increase to nearly 15,000.

Well, they estimated in 2012 the traffic volume would be 12,775 in 2015…

According to the NHDOT at Pierce Road and Brattleboro Road the average daily traffic rate was:

1) 2009 at 5300 vehicles a day

2) 2012 at 7300 vehicle

So it averages 667 vehicles a day increase per year.

Now the most recent Hinsdale bridge project estimates in 2013 it is 9700 vehicles per day…

That is a difference on average of 4400 more vehicles a day going across the Hinsdale Bridges in one year verses 667 vehicles on average a day per year in between 2009 and 2012.

You see the amazing increasing trends…the rate of change of vehicles going across the bridges are staggering.

*** 9700 vehicles per day gives us a 3.5 million (3,540,500) vehicles going across bridge in one year at a 2013 year rate.

This isn't including the "Tractor Supply" store and this place just opened. 

June 16: 

It is common knowledge to everyone in our surroundings our bridges bounces up and down and sways terribly as cars a trucks use the bridge. People in buses notice it when they are stopped on the middle of the bridge, as with everyone in the cars. It makes everyone terribly nervous! Everyone involved with this should spend time on the walkway of the bridge.

The enormously dangerous situation most people don't "get"... understand ...is the traffic volume across this bridge is trending up at a fast rate. The rate of change intensified with the new Walmart and now the recent business development such a "Tractor Supply". It is going up a a fast rate. God knows what is going on in other development. And many big corporation look at the functionality of the Hinsdale bridge with future economic development and better jobs. Why build a big and expensive facility next to a dilapidated bridge that you need to get to the interstate. You can't predict the life of the 1921 bridge based on the traffic rate of two years ago. This is absolute and utter insanity! Just think of the increase of tractor trailers and cars these bridges have seen in the last few years coming out of these stores...

Right, people who hate government so much they are domestic terrorist...instead of aiming 911 airplanes at NYC skyscrapers, they blow up our government by defunding it and turning everyone else against government.

I do get it, not many media people have the technical capibilities to be able to protray these events to the public in a way they understand...

And a trillion dollars wasted on Iraq and climbing...

 

Originally posted on 9/26/13

 

Sept 30: This kind of crap is going on throughout NH government...these are domestic terrorist trying to disassemble NH government... 

　

NH Corrections: “We often wonder where the breaking point is going to be,” he said.

NHDOT: This is a message I got out of him: “Many years ago when I first got here we had about 120 employees. We have now around 70 employees.

N.H. Corrections Staff Feels Budget Losses

By Jeremy Blackman

Concord Monitor

Monday, September 30, 2013
(Published in print: Monday, September 30, 2013)

Concord — Patrick Bettens didn’t become a corrections officer for the overtime. But in the past six years, as budget constraints and declining staff counts have gripped the New Hampshire Department of Corrections, it has become a defining facet of his career. Nearly every week Bettens is asked or told with little advance notice to tack four, sometimes eight hours onto at least one of his five eight-hour evening shifts.

Walk into any division of the state prison and one theme will eventually surface: getting by with less. Education and vocational training programs have fewer instructors, industry facilities are open fewer hours per day, mental health and substance abuse services have been trimmed, correctional councilors are in short supply.

It seems unlikely it will get any easier. According to Department of Corrections spokesman Jeffrey Lyons, the department’s operating budget for the 2012-13 biennium was cut by $13 million after it passed, and the new, 2014-15 budget is $2 million less than that.

“We certainly have gone past trimming the fat and gone into cutting into the meat of the system,” Bettens said.

The Effects

His division has perhaps felt the greatest strain. Corrections Major Jon Fouts, who oversees security at the state prison, estimated that he’s lost more than 100 officers — about a third of his staff — through layoffs and attrition in recent years. As a result, he and other watch commanders are left with few options other than to compel existing officers to working extra hours just to meet what he called “safe minimal” staffing.

Security is not in jeopardy, Fouts insisted, but morale and workplace effectiveness has taken a hit.

“We often wonder where the breaking point is going to be,” he said.

Overtime expenses have also blown a hole in the department’s budget, swallowing nearly $8 million in the last two years and projected to do much the same through 2015, according to legislative finance documents.

Between 2004 and 2012, the department eliminated nearly 250 positions, including 25 percent of its corrections staff and instructors, 52 percent of its administrators, 22 percent of shop supervisors and 17 percent of its correctional counselors and case managers. The department had 97 staff vacancies last year, according to department records.

Despite the reductions, about 75 percent of the Corrections budget is allocated for personnel expenses.

“Other departments have been asked to live in their means, but the Department of Corrections is at a disadvantage, in my opinion, because when times get worse their job grows in demand,” he said.

Feb 27:

There was one more issue I wanted to talk about but forgot to mention it. If a problem ever came up that your bosses wouldn't let you touch and your conscience still bothers you...I could be a conduit to leak NHDOT documents and issues to the public. I am a well know nuclear whistleblower. A lot a employees leaked document or issues to me. I raised publicly a lot of big issues. I told them in order to protect your identify, I would gladly go to jail indefinitely before I would give up you name. You need a really sexy issue to get the public's attention...something really controversial.

The largest whistleblower issue I ever singerly instigated...it was American Tissue and  it involved $500 million dollars. Put a lot of bad guys in jail. I am afraid of nothing (except my wife).

I talked to Dave this morning. He was a really nice guy.  We talked for an hour or so...he would have let me talked longer if I wanted too.

He says the vibrations are normal. They basically stand up on the deck during an inspection...if it doesn’t sway or vibrate noticeable it gets passed. I basically said vibrations are an indicator of bridge deterioration.  I am one for science...I need a detector measuring and recording vibration for a prolonged period of time. Then you monitor the vibration trends. He basically said there are no state and federal requirements with vibrations or movement requirements. I’d like to see them do a vibration test once a year.

So what is the science and engineering that guides the NHDOT into making a judgment about the strength of a totally 1921 rusted gusset? They would remove old rusted gussets,  then measure the forces it would take to when a gusset fails. Right, an assortment of rusted gusset, maybe even intentionally corroded, maybe rusted 10%, 20% or 50%, whatever, rusted in a assortment of areas (top)...where we got the data, science and engineering knowledge to be assured we know "when" a rusted gusset would fail.

Check out the vertical member...there are holes that are just corroded through the iron beam. Look at the rivet heads...you got to know a lot less force than when new would pop those rivets  So we see a diagonal and vertical rusted member attached to the gusset...along with the vertical outside member...with all that rust, how do we really know the real force it would take to fail these connecting members?

 Basically they are washing away the uncertainty(not disclosing) on these degraded areas...while unjustly amplifying the certainty (the wasted away top doesn't matter) with the gusset's structural integrity.

  Got any independent academic reports or government studies...destructive testing... on the integrity of rusted gussets like this? When an old rust gusset will fail?

We talked about my grossly corroded gusset...he says it mostly on the top. It hasn’t much degraded the strength of gusset. They are working on getting a sonic metal detector to inspect the gussets with heavy rust. I asked him according the Minneapolis NTSB findings on their bridge collapse...did you carry out the required gusset inspections. He said they did!

Come on, that horizontal runner under the gusset...from footing to footing all across the bridge..with all that debris and dirt covering up the member, how strong is that member? Right, that dirt or debris says wet for a long time, along with the salt...you know that is a intensely corroded area. 

Don't get you panties wet...I took these picture in the spring...

They are still in the 19^th century paperwork world...all their paperwork isn’t digitized yet.

I told Dave the NHDOT is as much a victim to our dysfunctional political process as Hinsdale NH...

...I decided  to bug the NHDOT about bridge movement, sway and vibration today. I always had issues in any NHDOT agency getting to talk to the right person. Once you say I got a problem, then all you get is everyone is out of the office.

I called the district 4 people asking to talk about the Hinsdale Bridge vibration problems. She said nobody is in right now, can I take you name and number? I say irked, I leave my name and number, then nobody ever gets back to me. There is a pause; she then says maybe you need to speak to Mark Richardson over in bridge inspection and she gives me the number. I call up the number for inspections,  but bridge new construction office answers. I give him my spiel, he says the bridge inspection office is not available...we are just answering their phones. I go into irked, I always have so much trouble getting to talk to the right people in any NH agency.  He says are budgets are tight, bridge inspection only has one secretary, and she is out. So we got into a little conversation about the NHDOT. Anyways Mark is not around, you can call him in the morning...but the real guy to talk to is Dave Powelson.

This is a message I got out of him: “Many years ago when I first got here we had about 120 employees. We have now around 70 employees. He says they perform an inadequate amount of inspection on new bridge construction...we are so overloaded and overwhelmed we can’t adequately vet the designs and oversee even the construction of new bridge. Many things are getting passed us.

This is the “ New Hampshire Advantage”...