Motor home stuck under Flintshire bridge

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hextal said:
There is no EU law relating to bridge height in the UK.

The height is still governed by the DMRB (design manual for roads and bridges). The requirement is that existing bridges have a minimum maintained height of 5.03m. if they do not then a risk assessment and strategy is adopted to suit. If there is a lot of hgv traffic or it is a high load route then a higher bridge may be opted for.

A significant amount of bridges on minor roads are below this height and the cost involved in raising them all would be astronomic. They are more often than not, associated with railways. Now my pway design is rusty but the gradient change on a line is incredibly restrictive, so raising a bridge is a real big issue. While swapping decks can be achieved in a weekend, modifying the approaches is a different kettle of fish.
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I here what you are saying,but when a bridge or road under one is being altered here a big sine is up saying being rebuilt with eu funds to comply with eu regs & compleation date and cost.
 
trevskoda said:
I here what you are saying,but when a bridge or road under one is being altered here a big sine is up saying being rebuilt with eu funds to comply with eu regs & compleation date and cost.
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If it's a new structure it will be designed to eurocodes (which have replaced British standards), however within the UK (and I believe Eire NRA still) the DMRB still dictates headroom. The DMRB is kinda the mechanism for application of the Eurocodes, and it is currently the dictating document for headroom (amongst many other things).

Essentially, the DMRB is the go to document (it's actually a rather large suite if documents), setting out what is needed. These things are then delivered by eurocodes.

Each Eurocode comprise (generally) 3 components. The Euronorm (the main technical body), the national annex (comprising locally applicable factors, temperatures, wind etc) and the NCCI (non contradictory complimentary information), which is essentially a best practice document (though non mandatory, unlike the other 2).

Changes to the DMRB (which constantly evolves) have to be run through the EU to ensure that they do not conflict with the Eurocodes.

Now, as we have only recently swapped to Eurocodes and all of my design work was to British Standards I'm not as hot on them, however, the DMRB element covering headroom is still current, which means it is not contradictory to the Eurocodes. This means that the Eurocodes either have left that element 'open' or simply adopted the existing local requirements within the national annex (couldn't tell you which, though can check on Monday).

Incidentally, the real fun begins when strengthening bridges....

See, we still assess to British standards, albeit British standards that are now incorporated within the DMRB documents.

So we assess a bridge to BS and find it weak, but we can't strengthen to BS as we have to use Eurocodes, but we can't strengthen to Eurocodes cos they differ notably in places to BS, so we don't know what the Eurocode shortfall is. So, we then have to reassess to Eurocodes. We then strengthen to Eurocodes.

Why not just assess to eurocodes? Well, depending on the element, they can be more or less onerous, so you may fail a bridge to eurocodes that would pass BS.

Just one of the fun elements of trying to standardise everything across the EU.


Edit... good god I'm dull.
 
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tezza33 said:
I said I should change that to just 'Obviously I cannot say certain things, one of our members delivers low bridges'


my favourite list gets shorter
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Oh, you've removed me from your favourites list? You fickle thing! 😕
 
hextal said:
If it's a new structure it will be designed to eurocodes (which have replaced British standards), however within the UK (and I believe Eire NRA still) the DMRB still dictates headroom. The DMRB is kinda the mechanism for application of the Eurocodes, and it is currently the dictating document for headroom (amongst many other things).

Essentially, the DMRB is the go to document (it's actually a rather large suite if documents), setting out what is needed. These things are then delivered by eurocodes.

Each Eurocode comprise (generally) 3 components. The Euronorm (the main technical body), the national annex (comprising locally applicable factors, temperatures, wind etc) and the NCCI (non contradictory complimentary information), which is essentially a best practice document (though non mandatory, unlike the other 2).

Changes to the DMRB (which constantly evolves) have to be run through the EU to ensure that they do not conflict with the Eurocodes.

Now, as we have only recently swapped to Eurocodes and all of my design work was to British Standards I'm not as hot on them, however, the DMRB element covering headroom is still current, which means it is not contradictory to the Eurocodes. This means that the Eurocodes either have left that element 'open' or simply adopted the existing local requirements within the national annex (couldn't tell you which, though can check on Monday).

Incidentally, the real fun begins when strengthening bridges....

See, we still assess to British standards, albeit British standards that are now incorporated within the DMRB documents.

So we assess a bridge to BS and find it weak, but we can't strengthen to BS as we have to use Eurocodes, but we can't strengthen to Eurocodes cos they differ notably in places to BS, so we don't know what the Eurocode shortfall is. So, we then have to reassess to Eurocodes. We then strengthen to Eurocodes.

Why not just assess to eurocodes? Well, depending on the element, they can be more or less onerous, so you may fail a bridge to eurocodes that would pass BS.

Just one of the fun elements of trying to standardise everything across the EU.


Edit... good god I'm dull.
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Thanks for the insight, like many people cross bridges go underneath them totally oblivious to the science involved.

Another great example of what we perhaps perceive as layman is totallydifferentin reality.

channa
 
Yes, never really seen the issue with metric/imperial, tend to work with both as many bridge designs predate metric so you tend to be converting things a lot.

The BS/EC issue is a little less than black and white, I think it's fair to say. It's main purpose was not to necessarily improve standards but rather standardise them to simplify trade/services. As such, lower performance characteristics were sometimes adopted in order that existing suppliers did not find themselves excluded.

The problem here is that in certain areas this meant adoption of products/methods/concepts that were not seen as safe within the UK. I cannot go into great deal, but have been (in a prior role) privvy to investigations into certain CE testing of products from outside the UK for the highways/structures sector and it's fair to say that "interesting" would be a mild term. Not just in terms of performance, but in the auditing of the CE compliance.

So, 'gold plating' can sometimes be people just digging their heels in for no great reason, but sometimes it can be because there are genuine issues.
 
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I have to take my truck under this one regularly, it can be interesting after heavy rain! access to Viridor Crayford.
 
Bayblue said:
The motor home got stuck under the bridge on Broughton Hall Road in Broughton at about 6pm today.
Can't see one of our stickers on it

Motor home stuck under Flintshire bridge blocks road - Daily Post

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I used to live on the estate in Broughton just up the road from there & used to go under the bridge daily to the BAe/Airbus factory that was over 30 years ago, in the early days so many vans hit the bridge that they put flashing warning lights on both sides of the bridge. I had a Renult 12 estate & having my Topper sailing dinghy on top used to set the lights off even though I knew I could get under.

Even shows it in old feet & inches on street view Google Maps
 
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carol said:
I can't bring myself to say it, Jeanette but it involves Rouen, underpass and high top t4 🙁
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Tom Tom nearly had me down one last week and i thought i knew my way around Rouen :scared::scared:.(not usually on that side of river )
 
rebbyvid said:
Tom Tom nearly had me down one last week and i thought i knew my way around Rouen :scared::scared:.(not usually on that side of river )
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Is that a standard TomTom or a Truck version, I use a Truck version and it guides me through Rouen and other places with low bridges perfectly
 
Standard ish , a go live, tend to ignore it if i know where im going :scared:
 
Problem is some people seem to believe the sat nav rather than what they can see out of the windscreen, also there seems to be a fear of disrearding a computer telling you what to do. Maybe sat navs should have a warning when turning on saying that they are only advisory & you should use common sense. I've had sat navs of one kind or another for years, first real one was a Garmin GPS V, tiny mono chrome screen & just beeps to warn you to turn. Caught out loads of times being sent the wrong way or down unsuitable roads, try to use a bit more common sense now.
 
hextal said:
Absolutely.

I have circa 900 bridges/tunnels that I'm currently managing across southern England and an annual budget that would cover maybe 2 of the above described options whilst leaving zero funds for anything else.

So it tends to be minor maintenance schemes rather than large scale works.

Essentially, the government love ploughing money into blingy new schemes as they can pin their names to it and the public see that something has been built for the money. Maintenance is very much the poor cousin, it's dull, it's not good for getting Ministers noticed, and if done right, the public won't even be aware that anything has been done at all. So, it doesn't attract much money.

It's also something of a circular argument because statements along the lines "look at the state of our ageing infrastructure - we need a brand new road/railway/etc" can then be used.
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It is odd what they spend money on at times. The A47 locally had an enormous amount of money spent on changing the seemingly perfect central metal barriers for concrete ones. Then they decided to do a huge amount of work on the bridges. Added a few hundred meters of extra lane however until recently, they seemed to ignore the appalling state of the road surface.

Richard
 
Again, all down to budgets for maintenance. Most of the UK highways infrastructure, as a result of way too little budget, is managed on what you could call a 'controlled deterioration' basis. As such it tends to be H&S issues that get tackled, whereas preventative measures that will save a fortune over the mid to long term (such as replacing bridge joints so that the bearings/abutments don't deteriorate due to deicing salts, or maintenance painting steelwork) get ignored. There is also a bigger issue of certainty of budget allocations. Lots of agencies are essentially on a yearly allocation, so don't know what they will get till they get it. So large/costly schemes are somewhat unworkable.

As mentioned, big budgets for new schemes, but nobody wants to allocate for up-keep.

The link is to an 'american series, but the basics of what he is saying are largely true for the UK - also very funny.

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Infrastructure (HBO) - YouTube


The driving factors on concrete step barriers are safety to the public due to higher containment and reduced chance of crossover, safety of the workers and public as a result of not having to regularly change sections of barrier, and long term maintenance costs.
 
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