It is Sunday and we should be spare of stupid news, right?
Jet Skis, waverunners and other personal watercraft shooting salt water up at the underside of the MacArthur Causeway have caused extensive corrosion on one end of the bridge, necessitating repairs to beams and columns
Waverunners, Jet Skis, to Blame in Miami Bridge Corrosion
This is a picture of the part of the causeway I am thinking they are talking about.
So, where is the McArthur causeway built that it may encounter corrosion? Lemme check a map really quick:
The Google orange marker shows the causeway on Biscayne Bay and that big field of blue to the right? It is a clue called the Atlantic Ocean. Since it inception 90 something years ago, the McArthur causeway has been standing over sea water. Now, it may be news to the latest crop of both journalists and engineers, but stuff that is prone to corrosion will do so in the proximity of an ocean shore.
I am sure there are other reasons why there are corrosion issues with the overpass, but jet skis are not it.
I need more coffee.
Coffee helps, but it just makes it easier to deal with stupid-at-large, it doesn’t really make it go away.
It is possible, maybe, that jetskiers blitzing through at high speed and kicking up lots of spray (“No-wake zone? What’s that?”) could help hasten the process. But, yeah.
Actually it global warming [climate change] and Bush’s/Trump’s fault. Higher ocean levels, fish swimming in the streets of Miami, more and bigger hurricanes, etc.
Surprisingly there is a kernel of truth and logic here. Jet Skis and Wave Runners do shoot a stream of water straight up while running and the corrosion is localized to a specific area close to the water with heavy Jet Ski traffic. So the designers built the bridge in the expectation of normal coastal conditions and got caught out by the unexpected circumstances of thousands of Jet Skis power washing the underside of the bridge where normally it would only get occasional spray and storm waves. In the engineers defense the rest of the bridge that only sees normal boat traffic doesn’t have corrosion issues so they did follow standards for salt water bridges and just hit a corner case.
Joe, this is Biscayne Bay, South Florida: Home of water spouts, winds, tropical storms and the occasional hurricane. Stuff got badly corroded before the advent of personal watercraft.
Just an excuse to ban personal watercraft
I would put it more towards the normal maintenance of cleaning and repainting hasn’t been done on the proper schedule, and that’s what is causing the damage.
As anyone who has ever lived near the ocean knows, salt-spray will just cover everything. The causeway being over an estuary right next to an inlet just intensifies the spray action.
As malidal1 says, just an excuse to ban personal watercraft. I’ve seen big boats go flying up the intercoastal and tossing huge spray fans and wakes. Don’t see anyone from DOT bitching about those.