They reported in the local paper that a hazardous hole had formed on the I-44 bridge over 161st E Avenue, and that the lane had been closed because some cars had been damaged.
(Photo from the Tulsa World)
I think that calling this a hole is as much of an understatement as The Black Knight calling the loss of a limb “merely a flesh wound.” A hole? Are you friggin’ kidding me?
No, my friends, this is more than a mere hole. This a what is commonly known as, “A big-*** chunk of the bridge is missing!” You are not supposed to be able to wave at the traffic down below through a mere “hole”.
What’s sad, is that this bad boy has a twin on the same bridge! This, my friends, is bridge replacement, Oklahoma-style. Yes, here in the Sooner State the bridges fall Sooner than later, because we don’t spend any money on maintenance. You think I jest, but I do not. Thanks the how the budgets are set up, you can have a bond issue and have hundreds of millions of dollars for replacement in a capital budget and not a penny for maintenance in an operation budget, and it against state law to transfer money from the capital budget to the operational budget.
The solution to this dilemma? Quite simple, actually. Just don’t maintain anything, and sooner rather than later whatever it is that you’ve failed to maintain will fail and can be replaced with capital funds. Neat how that works.
And by the way, they are passing out hard-hats at the state for those passing through our great state so that you won’t get killed by falling bridge decks on your way to see the Sooners and their multimillion dollar coach, or the relocated Seattle SuperSonics that our legislature insisted on spending 30 million taxpayer dollars to lure to Oklahoma.
Yes, we do have our priorities right!
