Seven Engineers Suspended After $2.3M Bridge Includes 90-Degree Turn (vice.com)

<< According to official records, the design for the bridge shifted multiple times over the past seven years, largely due to conflicts between the Public Works Department (PWD) and the Railways. The two agencies couldn’t agree on how to share land, and in trying to work around both railway property and the new Metro line, they ended up producing a final layout with an abrupt 90-degree angle.

I love that mindset. Europeans would have simply refused and 100 years later it would have probably been build after all legal has been cleared. Indians instead never say no. That's how you build software, so why not bridges.

Engineering by committee

Bad engineering or impossible constraints?

I'm sympathetic, in that I can easily see a situation where they were given constraints that kind of forced this. Still more than a little eye opening to see it actually built.

I see this and I raise you this Lake Shore S-curve

https://chicagoyimby.com/2023/08/lost-legends-8-the-lake-sho...

The feeling I get from the article is that the engineers basically received specs that were nothing short of idiotic, were given no choice but to implement it and now are getting the blame.

It's easy to point the finger at them and say "why did you greenlight this?", but I'm quite sure they are completely expendable in this shitshow and the people actually responsible would've simply gotten some batch of new engineers who would've greenlit it in the end anyway.

Are cars intended to drive on that or just pedestrian walking / bicycling?

They chose the right angle. They chose the wrong angle.

Can we blacklist websites that hijack the back button like this? Makes it very frustrating to browse on mobile.

It looks stupid, but in practice is it really much different from an on/off ramp?

So they didn't spot this 'problem' in the design review?

That's who should be fired.

What are the 90-degree turns of software engineering? Plaintext passwords?

Why is it named "Rail Over Bridge", when the picture clearly shows the bridge is over the railroad? What's with the need to define acronyms all the time in writing like this ("ROB"? "Public Works Department (PWD)" for example?)

Engineers are rarely making these kind of high level decisions. Next time they can fire workers who built the bridge.

This isn't really a 90 degree turn. The photo is just taken from an angle that makes it look that way.

It's more like 120 degrees which is still bad.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/9PAhGVaVzCRv1hfx7

Personal anecdote: As a child I played a lot of Sim City. In those games bridges must be perfectly straight and as a result I developed a mental model that curved bridges simply don't exist. When I first drove over a gently curved bridge in my late 20's I felt a serious disturbance to an irrelevant worldview that I never questioned.

I refuse to believe there were any actual engineers involved in that

There's a bridge with TWO 90-degree turns in Athens, Greece. I've always thought it was an odd design: https://maps.app.goo.gl/j4hzcGKH8b2XdFbJ8

Nice jugaad

There is a town in North Wales with a bridge called “The H Bridge” (presumably because it is shaped like the letter H) so four right angle turns!

if ai agents built bridges

I built bridges like this all the time in the level editor of the ancient racing game Stunts

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stunts_(video_game)

Reminds me of this overpass in Lynnwood Washington.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/CKrJFsAjcTd6wbYn6?g_st=ipc