The Romans Built Better Bridges than the Tennessee Department of Transportation

So, downtown in the Big-City-Down-The-Pike (Knoxville, Tennessee) they are pretending to rebuild a bridge.  The history of this bridge is shrouded in mystery.  For starters, we know original construction began on September 30, 1930.  That date is recorded in numerous places, including Wikipedia.  However, ground breaking was on September 24, 1930 in the midst of, apparently, endless scandals.

Progress photo, 1 DEC 1931

Now the rest gets murky.  The completion "date" was somewhere in 1931.  Apparently December 1931, because every reference says it was "completed in 1931," or something similar, and a little digging uncovered the photo above, where it does not look quite complete on the 1st of December.  So-far, no source is owning up to a precise completion date.

Fast forward to the 21st century: Big-City-Down-The-Pike decides to "restore" the big bridge.  With modern equipment and engineering, the Henley Street Bridge Project began sometime in 2011, as you can see from the link.  Silly me, I thought engineering involved exacting specifications.  I suppose noting the beginning of the project within a 365 day window is close enough, and an order of magnitude greater than merely mentioning the decade.  The photographic evidence seems to indicate somewhere around January 3, 2011.  Completion date?  Sometime in 2013 February 24, 2014.  So, let's figure out the calendar, that is roughly three times as long as it took in 1930/31.

In the course of researching this story, and hearing about this public works project on the radio every week, there seems to be some sort of concrete preservation strategy going on.  Rather than knocking down the old bridge and building an identical one, or [gasp!] building a better bridge, the bureaucrats-that-be decided to chip away the bits that are crumbling, presumably to preserve the endangered concrete, then weld in some new re-bar and pour new concrete over it.  As of this writing, and two years of reconstruction, it looks like this:

7 FEB 2013

One would think that some sort of technological advances had happened since 1930.  Unemployment is not much different, so there were plenty of construction workers available at rock-bottom rates (if taken) both times.  But, somehow, some way, this bridge takes three times as long to build in the 21st century as it did in the 20th.

The latest news is: endangered concrete is not the sturdy stuff that lasts forever under water as originally thought.

Henley Bridge opening delayed to February 2014; piers work another $6 million

When authorities closed the bridge in January 2011 for the $24.7 million renovation, they expected the structure to reopen no later than June 30 this year.

Workers in December, however, discovered deterioration on the three sets of pillars in the water that exceeded expectations, said Wayne Seger, director of the bridge division for the Tennessee Department of Transportation.

The troublesome piers are 3, 4 and 5, which are numbered from the north side of Fort Loudoun Lake.

Seger said authorities decided it best to rebuild the three piers rather than try to patch them.

The Romans built bridges better!  They were probably quicker about it too, but I've not been able to find how fast they worked.

The Alcántara Bridge, Spain, a masterpiece of ancient bridge building via Wikipedia

 

Green Mountain Coffee: A Modern Lesson In Sucking Up

I've been waiting to write about Green Mountain Coffee (GMCR) for a while, but my insider wanted me to wait a while.  Just got the green flag, so Boogitie Boogitie Boogitie!

There has been some growing discontent with the stock market writers, investors, and others.  Seems a bit of it has spilled into court too.  This relates only slightly to all that.

Happy GMCR workers

My source was working in the Knoxville, TN plant and mentioned something that struck me as odd.  The company had one of those Town Hall type meetings where the whole shift was herded into one room and shown a video of what a bang-up job all the workers were doing and what a fantastic job management was doing.

What both I and my source found odd was how the overflowing warehouses were addressed.  Some corporate bigshot (source could not remember precisely) spoke of warehouse workers complaining that aisles were full of stock.  The explanation given was that they had a lot of sales, so the employees should expect that they have a lot of stock.  Source thought that was odd, I thought it was total BS.

A GMCR warehouse.

If you have loads of orders and are outstripping your production, then your warehouses should be going empty, not filling up.  That is unless you have a shortage of warehouse space to begin with, then the warehouse workers would be used to overfilled warehouses.

Some "Fair Trade" propaganda.

I will not give away too much detail, least source get in trouble, but another big item was the drop in overtime accompanied by letting-go of temps after the overflowing warehouse information was set wild.

Green Mountain tries to cultivate an aroma of environmentalism, community, and being the "really nice" coffee company.  Of course, the people who fall for this crap are willing to pay $100 - $180 for a coffee maker that only makes one cup at a time vs. a $20 coffee press that can do the same thing better.  Plus, the Green Mountain K-Cup packaged coffee costs a lot more than regular coffee.

GMCR's K-Cup

Another item I just discovered, GMCR's K-Cup (proprietary single-serve coffee containers) patent is set to expire in September, 2012.  From my amateur observation, those cups and filters can be replicated quite easily.  My source says the packaging machines have gone through several evolutions in the Knoxville plant.

My analysis is nothing new, Green Mountain was the early adopter and endured the high cost curve that early adopters usually take.  Remember your friend who bought the $800 home CD player in the early 1980s?  Same effect.  Soon competitors can move in, buy better equipment, man a plant with experienced former GMCR temps and clean up.

Clean up if this fad of single-serve plastic coffee packs continues, which seems improbable.  The "green" of Green Mountain has the markings of an illusion, a fad, for people to have the 'cool looking' coffee maker in the kitchen next to the recycle bin for all of the little plastic and aluminum cups.  The same folks with the Leaf in the driveway and neon light-bulbs throughout the house.

You know who else was big on greenness, don't you?

Examinees

What does this have to do with Socialism?  Another thin link, probably nothing to be alarmed about.  The new mayor of Knoxville crowed during her campaign that Green Mountain located in Knoxville, TN partly because the unemployment center gave the Career Readiness Certification Exam, from the American College Test folks.  Every new machine operator and quality control tech. (the mayor said 300 to open the plant) needed that certification and there was a government office in Knoxville handing out the paper.  Why couldn't Green Mountain have ACT show up and give the tests to their candidates?  The typical rent-seeker answer is, 'why should we do it when the government can do it for us.'

Green Mountain Coffee Roasters is shaping up to be the Solyndra of the brewed beverage industry, with a cheaper bill to the tax payers.