I Wonder Why The Citizens Of Fort Worth Can Not Vote To Be Part Of A Global Transformation?

I am backing up a backlog of material for my continuing series of bloggings about the building of bridges and other feats of engineering which took less time to build than the four years Fort Worth's Trinity River Vision Boondoggle is projected to take to build three very simple bridges over dry land.

The last blogging about this serious subject was about the Astoria-Megler Bridge crossing the Columbia River, which was built in less than four years.

That blogging generated a comment that pointed me to another interesting bridge construction project...

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "North America's Longest Continuous Truss Bridge Took Less Than Four Years To Build While In Fort Worth....":

Just another bridge story:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/04/a-bridge-too-low/386261/ 

This bridge story Anonymous is pointing us towards has to do with a bridge modification project on the Bayonne Bridge which crosses the tidal strait known as Kill Van Kull, connecting Bayonne, New Jersey to Staten Island.

This bridge work is being done over the waters of one of the busiest shipping channels in America. This big project is projected, at five years, to take slightly longer than it is projected to build Fort Worth's little bridges which are not being built over tidal straits.

This Bayonne Bridge modification is the most ambitious bridge modification ever engineered. It is part of the massive upgrades that have been taking place on the Eastern seaboard to get ready for the big ships which will soon be sailing through the Panama Canal, which is in the process of being widened.

The two sentences below, gleaned from a paragraph about the Panama Canal in the Atlantic Magazine article about the Bayonne Bridge modification, are interesting due to an element one would likely not read pertaining to a Fort Worth public works project. Read the two sentences and see if you can spot the part that would not happen in Fort Worth...

The project is part of a global transformation. In 2006, the citizens of Panama voted to build a wider and longer set of locks on their famous canal. 

I just realized there are two elements in the above two sentences that one would likely not read in reference to anything to do with Fort Worth.

I had not noticed the being "part of a global transformation" element, til second glance. I was focused on the "citizens of Panama voted" element.

Imagine that. The citizens of a functioning democracy voted on a public works project and that project is well underway to transforming international shipping. Can you imagine anything in Fort Worth being part of a global transformation after a vote by the citizens of Fort Worth?

Me either.

Speaking of the Panama Canal, and who isn't? Awhile back I blogged about that canal as yet one more example of a massive public works project being built in the same time frame in which Fort Worth's Trinity River Vision Boondoggle has dithered.

That blogging was titled The Panama Canal Was Built In The Time It Took Fort Worth To Begin Construction On Three Bridges Over Dry Land and made the point that the Panama Canal began construction in 1904 and was completed and floating boats by 1914, while the Trinity River Vision Boondoggle began Boondoggling in 2004 and never got around to starting to build its Three Bridges Over Nothing til 2014, ten years later.

Who knows how many years it will be, if ever, that boats will be floating on the Trinity Canal, under the three bridges currently being built over nothing.....

The Panama Canal Was Built In The Time It Took Fort Worth To Begin Construction On Three Bridges Over Dry Land

No, on the left you are not looking at the Trinity River Vision Boondoggle's un-needed flood diversion channel under construction.

The Trinity River Vision Boondoggle's un-needed flood diversion channel, under construction, won't be anything anyone could possibly see for at least four years.

Before construction on that all important flood diversion channel can begin three bridges have to be built.

Three bridges which are such complex feats of engineering that they will take four years to build.

Over dry land.

What you are actually looking at above is the Panama Canal under construction. The Panama Canal was an actual vitally needed public works project, engineered by real engineers, with no congresswoman's son anywhere to be seen.

Construction on the Panana Canal began about 100 years before the Trinity River Vision Boondoggle began boondoggling, as in construction began in 1904, with the first ships floating through the Panama Canal ten years later, on August 15, 1914.

Are we all seeing the irony here?

One of the largest and most difficult engineering projects ever undertaken was completed in the time it has taken Fort Worth Trinity River Vision Boondoggle to start construction on Three Bridges Over Nothing.

Does anyone know of any public works project anywhere that has as slow a pace of construction as Fort Worth's Boondoggle?

If the Trinity River Vision Boondoggle is such an important flood control project, protecting downtown Fort Worth from flooding from which it has been protected by existing levees for well over a half century, and if The Boondoggle is such an important economic revitalization project, then why is it being built on what must be one of the slowest construction paces in the world?

Can you imagine Teddy Roosevelt signing off on building three bridges over dry land before the Panama Canal could begin to be dug? Can you imagine any sane, responsible person signing off on something so nonsensical?

I can not be the only person looking at this ongoing absurdity who is perplexed by this ongoing Boondoggle....