Took these pics over the weekend. Please feel free to reuse as you like // Creative Commons with Attribution if pozzible. The MN GOP is slashing transportation money while this is the state of infrastructure on the Mississippi -- and of course things and people blow up in Africa. Pass these photos to anyone working on the transportation issue, I know a few peeps.
The Franklin Avenue bridge (built 1971) is having a hard time. This effect is called spalling, where the concrete comes off the rebar. This pier has water seepage and refreezing splinters away the concrete. All these pics are under the east end of the bridge. The good news is that the structure under the deck looked OK - these piers have had serious waterfail though:
There is a lot of spalling up high, you'll see on the other pics how the water gets in.
This whole surface is messed up, look how it gets bad at the seam below Moose. The culprit, this drainage pipe.
This thing has issues.
Water coming off the seams as it cracks & seeps in. Bad drainage from the bridge superstructure.
You can see where the water would cause it to crack by freezing & thawing. The bridge panels above looked in pretty good shape - compared to I-35W anyway.
Here was a big ol chunk of rebar.
I think it came from behind the tree there.
And also this fine tagging work on the I-94 pier - we'll see how it looks after the flood!
Now that I think about it, the sad thing here is that the bridge piers are rotting away because they didn't want to have the street rain runoff just dump straight through, and couldn't angle it well away to keep it off the piers. Then it leaks and the expensive prospect of fixing this mess comes up. Fail!