This is AM with your CC (listen to the radio read here, Tues May 20th )
Two years ago a friend asked me to look into why it was taking so long for the County to build the McCann Bridge replacement, a new bridge that would replace the summer bridge spanning across the Eel River in Redcrest -- the West McCann Bridge replacement road.
Like many construction efforts, This project suffers from the usual nonsense required for a public works project: The math adds up -- 2/3 of the time goes to consultant study while the remaining 1/3 is the actual, physical construction of a bridge. The first two phases involved a lot of permits and studies and would take up to 6 years while the construction itself is only estimated to be two years.
Sadly now many years has passed and there is no visible evidence of any success. The County website assures that the first phase is complete — it took them four years to have a public input meeting and produce a couple documents.
Instead of taking the lead--having the county make a public announcement, they decided to quietly change the language on the official website, pushing the project phases out several more years, with no explanation as to why.
I proved this using the internet's Wayback Machine, which is a fantastic tool for checking the content of specific websites, you can see how a site looks in 2012, 2017 or even exactly how it looked yesterday. Wayback Machine is a fun tool if you've never heard of it. {(I’ve attached the before and after to the end of this article)}
The best I can tell, the county quietly made the change April of last year, pushing out that construction might start in 2028-to year 2029. (proof provided at end of page) Residents living on the remote side of the bridge have now patiently waited for many years — now are being asked to basically wait another 5-10 years.
While changes can happen, the lack of clear communication is one of the problems. With public works projects you should not be able to just quietly edit a website and hope no one notices.
The Large corporation that owns the engineering firm tasked with getting the McCann Bridge permitting done, got my attention two years ago because as they have been aggressively buying out engineering firms across America. They bought out a firm in Texas this year. (2) Hopefully they are not just using our grant money to do it.
From bridges to potholes, roadways to bypasses — It's ridiculous that we have put so much time energy and emphasis on environmental reports, surveys impact statements, biological reviews and even worse that we have become conditioned to accept that these documents can take decades to accomplish.
Twenty years ago I had a lunch with a Russian immigrant. He made the point that in the time it takes Americans to build one section of a monorail, Moscow had built three complete monorails.
And of course this exponential difference is even worse when you compare how much more China builds compared to us.
It's very frustrating because Americans are historically some of the best builders in the world, but we have allowed paperwork to take the majority of our time and not the actual construction.
and now the Switcheroo….
SOURCES:
MCcann Bridge Replacement Project:
https://www.mccannbridge.com/
2) https://theconstructiondata.com/engineering-company-consor-announces/