Since the terrible bridge collapse in Minneapolis, North American cities are re-evaluating the structural integrity of their bridges. In major cities bridges see hundreds of thousands cars in months and sometimes days. There challenge is volume, but what about the challenge of size?
Alberta has some of the biggest vehicles in the world traveling on its roads and bridges going north to work on the oil sands, experts fear that there may be good reason to worry about these roadways.
"About half of the province's bridges were built in the 1960s or earlier, and structures of that vintage normally have a lifespan of about 50 years..."It's not saying every bridge is unsafe, it's just saying that we do have a problem on our hands," "Professor Roger Cheng, head of the University of Alberta's civil and environmental engineering department
Even scarier...
According to a 2006 Statistics Canada Study Bridges in Canada have already reached 49 per cent of their useful life.
The tragedy in Minneapolis and in Quebec last year can only be thanked for raising awareness to this silent threat.
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