UPDATE: Ridiculously Bizarre DFW NBC TRV Bridge Boondoggle Propaganda
Way back in early July, after receiving photo documentation from Captain Andy, and after reading a bizarre article in the Fort Worth Business Press, I blogged J.D. Granger Spews Trumpish Bridge Propaganda Exposed By Captain Andy.
In that blogging we learned about the absurd means by which J.D. Granger claimed he and his minions had assembled a scale model of one of the Trinity River Central City Uptown Panther Island District Vision's bridge V-piers, which Granger then claimed was dissected to prove to Doubting Thomases that the design of the forlorn bridges was workable.
And that construction could resume on the long stalled bridge building project, the construction of which began years ago, with a then astonishingly long project timeline which way back then had the bridges completed by 2018.
And now we are past the middle of 2017 and the non-existent bridges of what has become known far and wide as America's Biggest Boondoggle are still in stall mode. We learned this yesterday from Captain Andy, who messaged the following report, which Captain Andy indicated, in his opinion, was not worthy of a Bridge Boondoggle Update. I thought otherwise, hence what you are reading now.
Below is what Captain Andy had to say about J.D. Granger's still stalled bridge construction....
Still nothing. Someone posted that they finally poured a pier. I drove by this afternoon and no v-pier has been poured. The site looks abandoned and with all the rain, the weeds are slowly reclaiming the site as the rebar begins to show signs of rusting. Not worthy of a new bridge update imo, but just wanted you to know, whatever column they may have finally poured, it wasn't one that mattered. When this debacle finally ends, I'm wondering if we will find out what the heck happened. If I had to guess, I'd say the v-piers are structurally deficient and can't be redesigned. But that's just speculation.
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The reason, in my opinion, making mention of the still stalled bridge construction was a worthy thing to do is the fact that this bizarre reality does not seem to be newsworthy to any of that which passes for news sources in the Fort Worth zone.
America's Biggest Boondoggle is headquartered on the ground floor of the Star-Telegram building. Is that what prevents that sad excuse for a newspaper from acting like one regarding what one would think a legit newspaper would consider to be an issue of great public interest, the facts about which the public has a right to know?
Even though the public has never been allowed to vote on this public works project which has become America's Biggest Boondoggle.
Why has the town's "independent" news source, Fort Worth Weekly, not done some investigative journalism looking into Fort Worth's notorious bridge mess?
Regarding the apparent engineering problem with the Boondoggle's bridges, just look at that V-pier form in the photo above. Imagine that form filled with concrete. And then the supports removed. What happens then. A quick crash to the ground? How were/are these V-piers supposed to support themselves?
Fort Worth's Graveyard of Broken Promises, that being the location of multiple rusting rotting V-pier forms, has become Fort Worth's top tourist attraction, with visitors having little interest in the nondescript downtown, instead asking how to get to the location of the million dollar Homage to a Trash Can and Ground Zero of America's Biggest Boondoggle.
Fort Worth has long sought something to make the town "special" to the rest of America and the world.
Being the location of the world's biggest experiment in urban gas fracking did not do the trick.
But being the location of America's Biggest Boondoggle with its bridges stuck trying to connect the Fort Worth mainland to an imaginary island, seems to have given Fort Worth a tourist attraction the likes of which the town has not had previously.
Add to that the spectacle tourists get to witness when throngs of Fort Worth natives float the polluted Trinity River on inner tubes, listening to music coming from an imaginary pavilion on an imaginary island.
What is the actual problem with the stalled construction of these simple little bridges? Does anyone know?
UPDATE: Ridiculously Bizarre DFW NBC TRV Bridge Boondoggle Propaganda
The propaganda just gets weirder. local/Plans-from-Two-Cites-on-the-same-Trinity-River-438424123.html I'm thinking that is stock footage of someone grinding rebar.
ReplyDeleteThe Weekly's commitment to muckraking didn't die when Gayle Reaves was relieved of editorial command, but it took a pretty harsh beating from which it hasn't yet recovered.
ReplyDeleteI feel the explosion of McCondos has some correlation.
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