[mtrovo]

With the 250M price tag I really keep thinking how we in the west just accepted such a massive cost for infrastructure development, especially considering the cost of living has gone down and the Victorians typically built this things by hand.

[renewiltord]

Most people who say these things frequently do want all the other functionality one buys with that money, though. As an example, in times with lower safety standards, many projects proceeded without incident. The point of modern safety standards is to guarantee to a greater likelihood that a project will proceed without incident. Would you be willing to give that up?

Another concern is the loss of a historically listed structure. Most people today prioritize historical structures over any modern structure. Would you be willing to demolish the bridge? You certainly can't rebuild an identical one because we don't have that many expert workers of wrought iron.

It will have been built to older standards. You'll have to convince a lot of people that the weight standards of then, the fire standards of then, and the disaster management standards of then should be exempted from modern controls and in order for them to be exempted you need to create a framework for exemption if it doesn't already exist. Coordination costs a lot of time and money. Even deciding that you don't need coordination for this project requires coordination because without a framework for exempting coordination you can't do it without allowing for always exempting coordination.

You will have seen this in any other realm. The more people have an opinion on something the harder it is to get done. The union of all requirements creates a project that is the intersection of all possibilities enabled, which combined with the classic aphorism about every additional percent taking as much effort as everything before, means that things cost more now.

We can build better and faster when we don't have to listen to anyone. This happens in emergencies. Take a look at the US MacArthur Maze tank truck fire and rebuild.

[SoftTalker]

I don't see the value in preserving obsolete infrastructure for historical purposes. Photograph it, document it, open a museum to commemorate it if you want, but blow it up and build a modern bridge that doesn't have all these problems and benefits from an additional 100+ years of progress in engineering and materials science.

[gambiting]

Well like the article points out - even that outrageous cost of 250M is nothing compared to the national budget. We as a country could easily afford it - but this is the second part of the whole problem, not just that things are expensive, but that no one is willing to actually sign off on any solution, so we just end up with the default of doing absolutely nothing. In a way it would have been better if the bridge actually collapsed(with no injuries to anyone, of course) because then it would have been much easier to replace it or repair it. Right now it's usable at least somewhat so there's all kinds of reasons why nothing should be done(money being just one of them).

[fragmede]

It's expensive because we don't want the people who are doing the actual work to be living in a shantytown tent with no sewage.

[quickthrowman]

It’s just another example of Baumol’s cost disease: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect

Very few efficiency improvements have been made in bridge building over the past 150 years aside from prefabricating sections offsite and using hydraulic cranes. Inflation pushes wages higher, making it seem more expensive since there’s no efficiency gain, just higher wages for the workers. It’s good that the people that build bridges and roads and buildings can afford to live.

Preserving a 150 year old bridge gets complicated as it’s virtually bespoke work, problems are uncovered as the project continues, ballooning costs.