Shut down in October 2009 due to decaying concrete, The Champlain Bridge is due to be completely demolished in several weeks.
Do you have a dream for the new bridge? Six proposed designs are up on the NY DOT website and voting is open until midnight tonight December 14.
According to Dream Dictionaries, Bridge symbolizes Transition; crossing from one way of life to another or A rise in the level of consciousness on the part of the dreamer; heightened awareness.
What's your dream?
According to the Lake Champlain Committee,
New York and Vermont officials are looking for input today on the design for the new Lake Champlain Bridge. Six designs for a replacement bridge have been proposed and you can vote for your favorite.
Check out the designs and cast your vote. Maybe your envisioning will stand for another 80 years.
it would seem that the long-span steel girder bridge is the best choice…cheapest and fastest to construct with the best long-term performance. That appears to be the choice they want us to make. I’m no engineer, but I AM a born skeptic. I’m kind of curious to know more about the bidders and their allies.
If we were able to incorporate flights of fancy in the design, I think I’d ask for pendant tears raining down from the span. We should really weep for poor old Lake Champlain and for all the imperiled waters of the world.
that incorporates an arch to mirror the old bridge would be fitting.Maybe a toll designated toward maintenance would also be fitting.The old bridge had such a toll.It was handled by the Lake Champlain Bridge Commission until 1984 when it was eliminated and the structure started it’s 25 year decline.
As the platform bridges are easier to put up and easier to maintain, I think they should go that route. Modern day platform bridges look good in their purely utilitarian form, and with a little cosmetic work they can look really great.
If you’ve been to the Vermont Law School or area you can see a great example of how a plain jane platform bridge can be gussied up nicely.
In addition, I’d hope that the bridge is being designed for (a) higher water levels than the current lake’s water level, in case the predictions of more precipitation due to global warming are accurate, and (b) to accommodate bikes, pedestrians, roller-bladers, etc. in a separate lane with some kind of hard divider to prevent cars from hitting them.
I love the idea of using an arch as an homage to the old bridge, but if that design won’t hold up well over time, then perhaps stamping an image of the old bridge as a repeating pattern along the sides of the span would suffice. Adding a decorative flourish at each end (perhaps something similar to the big concrete balls on pedestals on the Ledyard bridge across the CT between Hanover and Norwich, or a bas relief sculpture, like the towers on the Longfellow Bridge across the Charles River in Boston, though smaller and more Vermont-y), might be nice.
Very simple. I think the arched designs look fine, but to me the most important thing is that the arches only be there if they are truly a structural part of the bridge.
In Montpelier, for instance, when they rebuilt the bridges on Langdon St. and School St. they put trusses on them, but the trusses are fake–the bridges are ordinary platform bridges, with the trusses just stuck on to look like the old-time bridges we used to have in Montpelier.
Avoiding that would be my number one priority.
and they’ve gone with the Modified Network Tied Arch Bridge. On the news broadcast someone said it was the least expensive to build and to maintain; but that doesn’t quite jive with the matrix analysis that was posted online. That assessment clearly stated that the first option, the long-span steel girder bridge, would be the quickest and cheapest to construct with about the same cost of maintenance of the chosen bridge. What’s the deal with that?
They did choose the most lyrical-looking bridg; but why are they now representing it as the least expensive alternative? Was the data they posted untrue?