They really need to add a camera on the other side, so we can see the driver's reaction.

How hard is it to understand you always need to know the height of your vehicle?

Funny, yes. But, I wouldn't always be so quick to blame the driver (the rental truck drivers, Yes, they are "amateur" truck drivers). Many times, DOT will re-pave the road, increasing the height of the road; but, not up date the height limit sign. Did they do that here?

The good driver. And, I mean, the really good professional truck driver will be aware that signs are not always correct.

But, still funny - yep, just like a California highway chase.

If this happens as frequently as suggested, I think the city or whomever has built a shitty bridge and they shouldn't be so Rocky Theme proud of themselves.

Lift the bridge 6 inches, lower the road 6 inches, stop being a bunch of asshole bureaucrats.

Or just ban trucks from the roadway. There has to be another way around town.

Yes, my guess would be the bridge is a bit low. Probably it's just half a foot lower than the standard clearance height to which trucks are built/loaded. Also, just my guess, it's covered by some historic building restriction and that's a large part of why it hasn't been fixed.

In tunnels where I've done a lot of my work, overheight vehicles are a major problem. It's too impractical and expensive to provide the same clearance as on major roads. So we have detectors, flashing warning signs, even boom gates in one case, and the pricks still ignore all that and drive in anyway. Serial offenders are scrap metal trucks (sure, the truck is under, but about all that crap sticking up?) One of those assholes closed a tunnel in Sydney a few days ago for most of the day.

So provided the warning signs are accurate, I'm with luj.

And yes, I get a certain amount of satisfaction from watching the revenge of the bridge! In my case it's usually my stuff that gets damaged (signs, lights, etc).

If all the insurance companies that have had to pay out claims for the damage of that bridge dumped 10% of that money into a fund, it would probably be twice the amount needed to grade the road down 12 inches, tie into the sewer for drainage and re-base and re-pave underneath.

But somehow I bet the local government would balk at them using non-DOT workers to do it.

They should paint little truck silhouettes on the bridge, like they did on WWII fighter planes.

^^That would be hilarious, but I think they'd run out of room quickly.

"Lift the bridge 6 inches, lower the road 6 inches, stop being a bunch of asshole bureaucrats."

That train bridge was built 100 years ago when large trucks weren't really an issue. IIRC it's also really near the train yard so they'd basically have to shut down the city to train shipping and rip-up, grade, and lay a few miles of train track.

As far as lowering the street: there's a hundred year old sewer that runs right underneath it that's still in use. Reality, not asshole bureaucrats, is the problem here.

This is fun.

That train bridge was built 100 years ago when large trucks weren't really an issue. -- Elle at November 3, 2012 12:11 PM

Back in the early 70's my father drove truck, and he concentrated on doing home/local business delivery. Anyway one day he gets to work and they had loaded up his deliveries in a 12' high trailer. He tells the boss it won't work in the city he's going to. The boss tells him to take it anyway.

So he drives in and is popping phone, power and cable lines off the top of the rig all over the place. So he spots the home he needs to deliver to, drives up the street and turns around.

He comes back to the house and the owner is standing outside looking around and was glad to see the truck. His console TV had just slid across the floor and ended up against the inside wall of the house.

Back then, when they installed cable, they would just run it from the telephone pole on one side of the street to the other and then from that pole to a hole drilled straight through the wall. His trailer had pulled the cable and the TV. It freaked the homeowner out.

As far as grading the road down -- I'm sure the sewer pipe is farther than six inches down. From the looks of it, that would all that would really be needed.

For lots of reasons that I won't go into a lengthy post over, I suspect Elle is right and Jim P is wrong. Virtually anything can be done, but at what cost? And how many other projects don't get done because of it? It would probably be difficult and re-routing traffic is a better answer, for now anyway.

The de-facto standard for freeway height is 13' 10". Many people assume that, because this is the freeway standard, that it is somehow the standard everwhere. They are wrong, as is seen here.

Think about this for a moment. I'll bet that 100,000 vehicles a month pass under this bridge without incident - but for the one idiot in 100,000 that ignores the many and various warnings and does it anyway, the city and/or the RR have to spend hundreds of thousands of $$$ to insulate them from the consequences of their own inattention and/or carelessness? Once this has been done, we'll be hearing that the bridge columns need to be covered with Nerf to protect those drivers who can't keep it between the lines.

llater,

llamas