3 Years to Fix the 210 Bridge? The Eiffel Tower Was Built in Two
According to a report from sulphurdailynews.com, a DOTD engineer recently stated that the I-210 Rehabilitation Project will “cost as much as $30 million” and take “close to three years” to complete. During the project, both sides of the bridge will be reduced to one lane, with all heavy trucks prohibited.
Now, we’re not even going to comment on the wisdom of “rehabilitating” the 210 bridge when it has a 73.9% Sufficiency Rating before the I-10 bridge, or question how routing all heavy trucks and increasing traffic over an older bridge with a 6.6% Sufficiency Rating is a good idea. Sure, it might seem like it'd be a better idea to repair the bad bridge before the good one, but we’re not highway engineers or anything, so there’s probably solid reasoning we don't understand. Probably. Maybe. Whatever.
What we will do is compare the estimated three years it will take to complete the rehabilitation project against how long it took to build other things from scratch.
Why, you ask?
Why not?
Keep in mind, we’re only talking about “rehabilitating” the 210 bridge here. It will take an estimated three years just to make improvements to something that’s already there. The following list contains only things that were built in their entirety, from the ground up.
EMPIRE STATE BUILDING
Standing 103 stories tall, the Empire State Building in New York City took only one year and 45 days to build. It was the tallest building in the world at the time of its completion in 1931.
CHRYSLER BUILDING
Completed in 1928 after a construction period of two years, the Chrysler Building in New York City is the tallest brick building in the world with a steel framework, and the fifth-tallest building in NYC.
TITANIC
The famous ocean liner was actually built alongside her sister ship, the Olympic. Both ships took just over two years to build.
EIFFEL TOWER
Built in 1887, the Parisian landmark was built for the 1889 World’s Fair and took two years to construct.
PETRONAS TOWERS
These two towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia took three years to complete in 1996, and were the tallest buildings in the world until 2004. They remain the tallest twin towers, and the structures contain a double-decker bridge connecting them.
The following things technically took over three years to build, but considering the difficulties involved, it’s safe to say they were built at a faster pace than the 210 project will be.
GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE
It took just over four years to build San Francisco’s Golden Gate bridge, all the way back in 1933. The bridge spans 8,981 feet across the strait between San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean. In contrast, the I-210 bridge spans a comparable 8,500 feet and was built in 1962.
BURJ KHALIFA
The tallest building in the world stands at 2,717 feet in Dubai. It was completed in 2004 after five years of construction.
SATURN V ROCKET
Technically not a structure, the Saturn V is what took mankind to the moon, so it’s still a pretty big deal. Planning for the Saturn V began in 1962, with the first unmanned test flight of the completed rocket launching five years later in 1967. The Apollo 11 moon landing took place two years later, in 1969.
ROMAN COLOSSEUM
The largest amphitheater ever built, construction on the Colosseum in Rome began in 72 AD, and was completed eight years later.
GREAT PYRAMID OF GIZA
Made up of around 2.3 million stone blocks, Egyptologists have determined that the Great Pyramid took anywhere from 10 to 20 years to complete, from start to finish. Splitting the difference for a construction time of 15 years would mean that an average of 153,333 stones weighing approximately 2.5 tons each were quarried, hauled, and set in place every year, at a rate of around 420 stones and 1,050 tons per day.
Over the three years it’s estimated will be required to complete the I-210 Rehabilitation Project, ancient Egyptians were able to set 460,000 stones into the Great Pyramid, weighing a total of around 1,150,000 tons, all without the aid of any modern construction equipment.