Talking To My Mom Pondering A Fort Worth Weekly String Of Pearls Disaster In Waiting

Today being Wednesday, this is the day I sometimes remember to walk to Albertsons to get this week's Fort Worth Weekly, which I did remember to do today.

I was going to sit outside at my picnic table and read this week's FW Weekly, but I called my mom first. That call went long enough for the shade to disappear. I decided to postpone reading this week's FW Weekly.

Last week's Fort Worth Weekly's cover article was a bit bizarre, with it being a propaganda puff piece titled "String of Pearls" with a sub-title of "Fort Worth's award-winning Trinity bridges connect trails, neighborhoods and history".

Anyone at all familiar with the topography of Fort Worth knows there are no great chasms requiring great feats of bridge engineering to span the chasms.

The award winning bridge is this little pedestrian bridge that is very pedestrian called the Phyllis J. Tilley Bridge. A blurb from the FW Weekly article about the Tilley bridge and the new 7th Street Bridge.....

Less than a mile to the north, the graceful curve of the 13-month-old Phyllis J. Tilley Bridge is the first long bridge in North America combining a steel arch and stress “ribbon.” In April the Tilley bridge received the Eminent Conceptor Award, the highest honor for engineering excellence bestowed by the Texas branch of the American Council of Engineering Companies. The bridge also received a gold medal in the group’s structural systems category.

Another few hundred yards down-stream, the newly opened $23 million Seventh Street Bridge is the world’s first precast-concrete network arch bridge. It’s noteworthy both for being Texas-designed and completed on budget and a month early.

I was surprised when I first crossed the Tilley Bridge. Surprised by what looked to be shoddy construction. The photo of this bridge in the FW Weekly was taken at night, with the shoddiness still visible in the dark. Or are crooked handrails part of the design? That is the FW Weekly Tilley Bridge photo below. Does this look like an award winning bridge to you?

You may be wondering about the blue color of this bridge. Below is FW Weekly's explanation...

After dark, LED lights illuminate the underside of the bridge casting a soothing blue glow across the understory and the water surface. It’s an eye-pleaser both day and night.

Eye-pleaser? Soothing?

Someone named Tony made what seemed to me to be an accurate comment about this particular FW Weekly cover article....

Tony October 16, 2013 at 3:18 pm
With the exception of the historic bridge in the park, who is giving these bridges awards? None of them are even remotely spectacular. They look like just what they are...plain ole bridges.

Did the Fort Worth Star-Telegram somehow takeover Fort Worth Weekly the week this Chamber of Commerce propaganda puffery was published?

This week Fort Worth Weekly appears to be back doing what it usually does, investigative journalism, as you can see by looking at this week's FW Weekly's cover with the cover article titled "DISASTER IN WAITING" with a sub-title of "Beneath North Texas' water-supply lakes run pipelines full of tarry danger".