Bridges

Moving from engineering to planning, learn how we decide whether a bridge is worth building in the first place, learn about controversial features of cost-benefit analysis, and about the transportation models by which planners forecast bridge effects on traffic patterns. Investigate a sometimes intractable problem: why a project often creeps along for a decade or more to get from initial studies to the day the ribbon is cut, undergoing vast cost escalations. Also explore the environmental impact of bridges, and the meaning of a "sustainable bridge," and whether bridges could once again be built, like ancient Roman ones, to last a thousand years.