The infamous 11’ 8" underpass in Durham has been raised eight inches. The guy who runs the website and YouTube channel was, of course, on hand.
After a lot of prep work the railroad bridge was jacked up and shims placed under the original piers. A track alignment/ballast tamper on the railroad them raised the track eight inches, the same height as a grade crossing a block away to the left, a distance on either side of the bridge. The sacrifice bean was also replaced with a shiny new, painted traffic yellow, one.
The railroad and city had done what they could. A block up from the underpass a height detector was placed. When triggered, the traffic signals at the underpass turn to red and an electric Overheight / Must Turn sign starts flashing. The hope was that during the pause sitting at the red light the drivers would recognize the error of their ways and turn right or left. About once a month, one wouldn’t – to say nothing about the ones who instead sped up when the traffic light went yellow.
It will be interesting to see what the crash frequency at the now 12’ 4" underpass will be. I’d bet it won’t be zero.
I read somewhere that the cost for this conversion was around a half-million dollars. Wouldn’t it have been cheaper and simpler to lower the under-bridge roadbed eight inches?
AIUI, there’s too many conduits, piplines, cables, etc. too close under the bridge to do that inexpensively. $500K for elevating it is actually pretty damn cheap, honestly.
It really is the end of an era. I think I’ve watched every single victim at least twice, and watching a truck’s container getting peeled back like a can of sardines is incredibly satisfying.
There’s information on the same page about why they don’t raise the bridge, but the FAQ is talking about raising it a couple of feet costing millions. Shimming it up 8 inches was far less expensive.
I travel under that bridge about once a month; it’s a really cramped area. I’ve been on that road when a truck got stuck under there, and the sound of it is incredible.
We have a bridge here in Syracuse (Onondaga Lake Parkway Bridge) that is 11 foot 9. Just had another truck get stuck under it last week. It happens two or three times a year.
The entire stretch of road has warning lights, signs, etc., but some trucks still hit it. Back in 2010 a megabus hit the bridge, and four people were killed (they were in the top part of the bus). They put they put the driver on trial for manslaughter but he got acquitted.
The problem here is that we can’t lower the road as that area would flood (and icing in the winter), and they can’t raise the bridge because of the steepness of the grade.
So a few times a year someone tries to drive under it.
In Boston and Cambridge Mass, Storrow Drive and Memorial drive run along the Charles river. Both of them have very low underpasses. Perhaps the worst is when Memorial drive goes under Mass. Ave. in the heart of the MIT campus with a 9 foot clearance. Trucks are prohibted on Memorial Drive, but Most of MIT’s dorms are right on Memorial drive. Every fall and spring when students are moving in and out (Harvard is right up the road as well), things like this happen. https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=884855
In fact, in the Boston area this is known as a “storrowing.”
Don’t the truck drivers know the height of their trucks?
There was a low overpass in Philly when I was growing up. It was where the Market St. subway was becoming the el around 31st. But they had a hanging gauge a bit before it and if you hit the gauge, which did happen from time to time, you knew not to try the underpass. Eventually, they extended the subway past 40th and the new ramp was off the road.
Many of the trucks running into the bridge are rental trucks. The drivers are probably inexperienced when it comes to driving trucks and aren’t used to needing to worry about how tall their vehicle is. They’re most likely just not paying attention to the low clearance signs, because they’re never needed to pay attention to them before.
Indeed, there are a ton of low clearance bridges on that rail line in Durham.
-The one at S. Roxboro St. is actually lower, at 11’4".
-W. Chapel Hill St. is 12’0".
-The Erwin Rd. crossing is also 11’8".
-Following the tracks west to the outskirts of town, at Neal Rd. there’s a super low 11’0" crossing.
From what I gather from the 11’8" site, the first two get hit fairly regularly as well; they just don’t have cameras pointed at them. The last two look like smaller streets that probably don’t have the same level of traffic as Gregson, S. Roxboro, or W. Chapel Hill Streets. The thing about the famous bridge is that it was right outside Jurgen Henn’s office, so he could just stick a camera outside his window. I’m not sure where he’s put a camera near the other bridges (or if he could even get permission to put one there).
I, too, kind of like the drawn out R-u-u-u-nch of a peeled back top than the Bung! of a solid hit. Besides, the truck comes to an abrupt stop and could hurt someone. I’m also partial to watching a rooftop AC unit on an RV get popped off like tin can on a target shooter’s fence.
This was probably one of the most satisfying and spectacular examples: https://youtu.be/TvxDhgDjVCA
It happened just earlier this year. We won’t be seeing too many more of these, alas.
Along these same lines, when a lake’s boat ramp has a long line of boaters waiting to launch, there’s always some wise guy who decides he’ll step his mast on the road to the ramp, forgetting the power lines that he’ll need to get by.
The ones where the top gets peeled back like a sardine can? Bonus if it hangs from the beam!
The ones where the truck does a wheelie as it stops?
The ones where the truck is just theeeeesssse much too tall, and it looks like only the paint comes off?
Or the air conditioners being removed from campers slicker than scum off a Louisiana swamp?