This is a crock of bovine excrement. According to the engineers on the television news reports, these bridges all started to fall apart this past year.
Sorry, but they were flagged as being dangerous while I was still working and before. I remember hearing about the Cemetery Road bridge losing major chunks on concrete at least ten years ago. Dan Rider's solution was to string some netting underneath the bridge to catch the pieces of concrete so they wouldn't hit any cars. This was in around 2001. Before him, Dave Commerford ignored the problem that was just starting to become apparent.
By waiting and waiting, they've managed to throw the ball into another court. Because the state can't afford a gallon of gas and a match, much less rebuilding a major bridge, it's somehow not the county's fault that the bridge won't get fixed.
Once upon a time, the staff of the Highway Division would have redesigned the bridge and gone ahead and built it at minimal expense; now everything has to be done through private consultation (who do NOT work cheaply) and who take years to get a project drawn up, and are usually so rediculously overdesigned as to be unusable. This is because they are paid a fee based on a percentage of the final cost of the project. Picture needing a new set of steps on your back porch. By having these guys design your project they'll set up a set of plans that will cost more than the value of the rest of your house and your car thrown in for good measure. They do this because thay can and because most of the engineers downtown originally came from these same consultants.
I really had to laugh however, when that well-known bridge engineer Sam Hoyt came out and said that maybe we shouldn't be building any new roads or bridges anymore; instead we should be doing band-aid repair work to these structures. I don't think that he'll hold himself responsible when a heavy vehicle like a school bus or a fire truck causes the bridge to collapse when it tries to cross over.
I really love this area; you people didn't want an active Civil Service because you thought we were all tax eaters. Well this is the result.
Be careful of what you wish for; you might get it.
God Save Erie County!