It’s hard to believe we have made it through another year and are faced with the challenge of dating our checks 2023 (those of us old-fashioned enough to still use checks to pay our bills). The past year wasn’t quite as difficult as its predecessors. Covid is still with us, but fatalities have finally decreased enough to make it seem almost endurable.
For us structural engineers it will always be the year of the Fern Hollow Bridge. Early Friday morning, January 28, I received a text message from Don Toney, “Turn on your TV, a bridge has collapsed in Frick Park!” Sure enough, that had occurred, and I watched more television that day than I do in a normal week. By coincidence President Biden was here in Pittsburgh to promote his infrastructure program; he promptly visited the site and announced that Federal money was available to replace the bridge on an expedited basis.
Even though it was a city-owned bridge, PennDOT was designated to be responsible for the replacement. Contracts were issued without competitive bidding, most of the permitting process was bypassed, and construction of a nondescript three span pre-stressed precast concrete girder bridge begun. The good news is that the new bridge was opened for traffic on December 22, less than eleven months after the collapse, proof it is still possible to accomplish things in response to an emergency. The bad news is its appearance — “very similar to any highway overpass”, according to the Pittsburgh Art Commission – and the possibility of potential problems that normal permitting would have prevented.
The bridge that collapsed was a welded steel rigid frame with sloping support legs, sometimes called a “K Truss”. We are still awaiting the final report of the National Transportation Safety Board regarding the cause of the collapse. The combination of remarkably poor maintenance and incompetent repair by the city is speculated to be the culprit. Five other local bridges of similar design, including the Canon-McMillan Alumni Bridge over I-79, have been inspected since the collapse, with no evidence of problems. In 2017 the reinforced concrete Greenfield Bridge over the Penn-Lincoln Parkway was replaced by a welded steel arch bridge of similar appearance, because of deterioration of the concrete; this year we replaced a steel bridge with concrete, because of deterioration of the steel.
Switching to a different subject, 2022 was the year when most of the youngest Baby Boomers reached retirement age and passed the torch to Generation X and the Millenials. For years I have been interested in the concept that each successive generation has unique characteristics that are formed when its members are adolescents and that these characteristics heavily influence society when they become middle-aged. I was a member of the “Silent Generation”, a generation born in the Depression and growing up during World War II. We were so grateful for the efforts of the “Greatest Generation” that preceded us that we were content to do what we were told without questioning the society that ruled us. There were no draft resisters in our generation – that was a characteristic of the Boomers years later (“Hell no, I won’t go!”).
A comparison of the effect of technology on past generations is interesting. The Boomers grew up during the massive expansion of television; Generation X’ers witnessed the introduction of the personal computer; Millennials watched the Internet explosion; and Generation Z members have seen it all coalesce into an information world focused on cell-phones. Accompanying this have been revolutions in entertainment, information retrieval, and analysis, as well as in communication.
My four older grand-children are all Generation Z members, having been born between 1997 and 2012. Spending a week with them got me wondering if they really are significantly different than the Millennials, the X’ers, or the Boomers.
When I was still teaching at Pitt, my colleagues and I were convinced that traditional methods had to be streamlined to accommodate the Z’ers. They were accustomed to “Googling” for information; why bother memorizing anything? For that matter, why bother learning anything? The obvious consequence of this attitude, of course, is a failure to develop comprehension, which after all is the principal goal of education. Judgment and independent thinking are additional casualties.
This led to consideration of radically different approaches to teaching, like the “flipped classroom”. This approach builds on the capability Z’ers have to acquire information independently, thus freeing up classroom time for the practical application of the information. The concept is fine, assuming all the students competently do the independent work required and come to class prepared to apply the knowledge they have obtained. I suspect it is perfectly effective for all the “good” students and a complete disaster for the underachievers. I will concede that my greatest success as a teacher was on explaining how a problem should be attacked rather than on transferring information.
It would be inappropriate for me to close a New Year’s Day column without at least a weak attempt at resolutions. The longer I live, the more convinced I become that society fares best when we focus on moderation. Change, and especially progress, is certain to occur; it seems to me that it is most successful when it occurs gradually. Hence, I label myself a moderate and resolve to focus on compromise and finding areas of consensus. This means I must do a better job of understanding the things that motivate extremists and of tolerating the ones with which I disagree.
Associated with tolerance is the necessity for forgiveness. That has always been a tough thing for me, but they certainly are corollaries. The Good Book suggests we forgive “seventy times seven” times; I probably would be satisfied if I can get past the first few times. At any rate, to make it official, I resolve that I will work on tolerance and forgiveness in 2023.