Yeah, so yet another weak San Francisco freeway has collapsed under pressure. This time it was a simple big-rig fire....one that was carrying a few thousand gallons of precious California gasoline.
I don't get it. We know the freeways are old and crumbling before our eyes. We know that they're weak and suspect to failure. We've had 3 other freeways collapse, break, and weaken to the point of unusability in the last 15 years. Not to mention other minor freeways like Devil's Slide (CA hwy 1). When are we going to figure it out and just rebuild the damn things? If things get old, tear it down and rebuild it better!

So, here's the Japanese angle (since that is where I am right now). The highway overpass is "closed indefinitely"; it took 10 years to repair I-880 after the 1989 earthquake. The Japanese have no public highways that old. (That highway was built in 1950!) The oldest piece of public infrastructure I've seen here is the Tokyo Ginza subway line, built for the 1964 Olympics (in only 2 years) and closes every night for a VERY thorough inspection and maintenance. I was on a bus through the Japanese alps, and there were 12-km-long tunnels through portions of the mountains....built in only a single year.....because: They needed to be built. It was cheaper to build them well and build them quickly than to debate and argue and try to make everyone happy. I've seen them building new tunnels and bridges just to pass a single section of hillside that had the bad habit of falling on the road: but we've been debating the Devil's Slide tunnel/bypass for 30 years, and it will take another 15 to build it!

Then there's the New York Times article (link above) that quotes a CA highway official as asking the governor for "tens of millions of dollars" for repair and "environmental damage".... uh, ok.... it was gasoline....but it's an overpass over a DIRT PLOT next to a WATER TREATMENT PLANT....WHAT ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE???? No other country on earth would even consider "environmental damage" in this situation.

What's wrong with this picture? If California continues dragging it's heels on every public works project, it's no surprise that the infrastructure will never be repaired or improved. If we'd just stop the bickering and get this shit done, California could get moving again, and there'd be no problem paying for all the social services the democrats seem to feel are a human right, we could invite all the illegals and give them full pensions, we could afford to pay teachers, and we could have universal california healthcare; and there'd be plenty of money left over....