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Happy Crossings! Local Bridges Deemed Generally Safe
Photo by LU5H.bunny via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr
If your commute includes a drive over one of the hundreds of bridges in Los Angeles, you can breathe a sigh of relief: Our bridges are pretty much safe! A report issued today by the city's Bureau of Engineering includes letter grades for all of our area bridges, and fortunately, none of them got an F,according to CBS2.
Older bridges, built in the 20s and 30s, weren't made to withstand earthquakes, but still might not collapse, but will more likely "have localized damage, like the railing may be knocked off, but the bridge may not collapse," in a significant temblor, says Shailesh “Sunny” Patel of the bureau's Structural Engineering Division.
24 bridges received a D grade, which means "poor," though more than half earned an A, a quarter earned a B, and over 100 were marked as average, with C grades. Overall, Patel says "our bridge system is at C-minus, which is not really bad considering half of our bridges are above designed life expectancy of about 50 years."
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