The Popperville Town Hall: Hinsdale Bridge Cover-up

Originally published on 6/14

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 12,275 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

Ok, from my indigent perspective…where do we stand on the Hinsdale Bridge from the early summer of 2013? So they threw at us a new wooden walkway supported by the dangerously corroded metal support brackets. Everyone wants me to spin this in an optimistic manner…make us feel better than the situation actually is. All the alarm bells should be ringing when you hear the NHDOT placed the bridge on the 2014 ten year plan…the House passed the plan and the Senate won’t pass it. It is the typical political shenanigans over fully funding our transportation needs as we have seen for last thirty years about this bridge. It is a 1921 bridge and we are crazy using it today! What does that say about our greater society? One year our bridge is in on the ten year plan and the next it’s taken off. You make a little noise, you get back a political promissory “maybe” response which is never fulfilled. Oh please, love and vote for us even if we are incapable of effecting change!

Where we sit right now, in the beginning of the summer of 2014 considering the political shenanigans in Concord and Washington…never has it been more pessimistic that we will get this bridge replaced in time in order to save the economies Hinsdale and the surroundings. This is going to end up terribly disrupting the lives of most of us, as it is always is with these things, it is more going to destroy the lives of the poor and weak more than the well off.

The local population is incapable of making the necessity level of political noise (attention getting tools) commiserate with the value of this transportation corridor and this bridge. You don't truely understand the value of this transpotation corridor. The background noise with events going on in Concord and Washington are so loud…they are incapable of hearing the little peeps of our vital societal needs and providing it for us. We are in the same boat as everyone else is.

You know, just go back to your happy beer drinking and summertime picnics…everything is beautiful.

This is my humble assessment of our pathetic plight!

The below picture was taken and placed on my blog in around the summer of 2013. The bridge is held up like a table with four legs...this is one of legs. The picture doesn't do the missing metal justice in the rust ring about this huge bolt. There is a enormous amounts of metal missing in this rust ring that is corroded away. Check out the white salt marks?

2013

Just checking, had my son take this below picture for me this spring about a week ago (2014). I am legally restricted from being this close to the bridge, well I have to keep moving. The pictures were taken one year apart. It is the exact same rusted bolt as the above. This is called major repairs on our bridge by our NHDOT. The NHDOT carelessly painted the bolt towards the end of summer 2013. They are suppose to sand blast all the rust away, put a primer on and then the regular coat. Look at the "rust through" in the new half ass paint job in "way less" than one year.

I am probably only one in the world with the capabilities of creating and capturing this by photography...provoking the NHDOT. It is a very sorry situation!!!!

But the NHDOT is paying attention to me...

(By the way, it is much like what the NRC is doing today with the nuclear industry.)

Spring 2014

I am so proud as hell of my hard work...

The NHDOT 2013 paint job is equivalent to Obama's quality and size of his infrastructure and jobs new program...

I believe this is the north side... the other side of the nut above! Check out those missing rivet heads...there are dissolved rivet heads and bolts all over this bridge!