Making features like our Bridge Tracker easier to use

Rob Wilkens, Levittown, NY — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 00:53:44 GMT

For planning cross country trips, that might've been fine, but as I recall, if you wanted to just zoom in on a 'general area' to get information on the bridges on the map it wasn't quite as useful. For example, I live in central long island, going _anywhere_ from here (depending on traffic conditions) I could travel on Southern-State-Pkwy/Belt-Pkwy (same road), Northern-State Parkway/GrandCentralPkwy (same road), or Long Island Expressway (495). To get details I had to enter a start location and an end location and it 'picked' which of those three roads to show me results on, rather than giving me all the information for all the roads (there is no hard and fast rule as to which to take "all the time").

Making features like our Bridge Tracker easier to use

Dana, Longwood, FL — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 01:51:48 GMT

Wow, Phil! The bridge tracker is really great and useful. Thanks so much for working so many months on it.

Making features like our Bridge Tracker easier to use

Bill Dedman, msnbc.com, investigative reporter — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 03:00:58 GMT

For Rob and others who want the full list of bridges in your state, msnbc.com also made avaialble the info on every bridge in the nation. These files include the condition and inspection information, from the msnbc.com analysis of National Bridge Inventory through 2006, as reported by states in April 2007.

So you have the route map, but you can also look up any bridge.

Here are those files, in Excel format:

http://powerreporting.com/files/msnbc

Making features like our Bridge Tracker easier to use

Michael Beury Jr. Wrightsville, PA — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 13:20:40 GMT

Very Interesting! I really like the information I can read about the1 bridge I travel everyday. I could not get it give information about the other bridge I also use. On the map they are right near each other. Maybe I did not put in the right information. I will try again.
Again, Great Work!

Making features like our Bridge Tracker easier to use

Stan Hamlett, Bridgewater, New Jersey — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 13:35:08 GMT

I was impressed with the results of your efforts and wondered, as I do about other works of this type, whether they will be accessible after that day. As it was, the work was visible for three of four days. But is it possible to access these types of things several days or weeks later when a conversation might come up...

Making features like our Bridge Tracker easier to use

Jim, Albion, CA — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 18:12:26 GMT

This is a great tool and you've all done a great job. I'm a web developer too, and I agree, it's an exciting time to be doing our job, but all of the new technologies can exert a toll.

Curious...I live on the coast in rural Northern California. There are approximately 25-30 bridges between where I live and Fort Bragg (the nearest big town). Only a handful of these show up, and the most significant bridges on our coast (Albion River Bridge and Navarro River Bridge) aren't displayed.

What is the criteria you're pulling data for? Which bridges make the list and which don't? Mostly curious...

Making features like our Bridge Tracker easier to use

John Butler — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 01:07:41 GMT

The problem with your bridge tracker is that the definition of what bridges show up (with over X amount of traffic) makes it non-functional for most of the country. While it correctly displays problem bridges in the north east and California, since it won't show "low" traffic bridges it leaves out large portions of the nation (midwest, south, etc.). I typed in my home in Bloomington Indiana and chose a state highway to the next county seat, Nashville, Indiana and none of the bridges showed up on the route. The only bridge that showed up was the Bloomington bypass bridge, which I wouldn't even cross on this route, but was the only one to meet your traffic criteria. What a useless tool.

Making features like our Bridge Tracker easier to use

Barb Stevens, Caro, Michigan — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 15:21:15 GMT

The bridge tracker is only as good as the information in the database. In my area, it shows one bring to be on the brink of collapse when it actually was replaced a couple of years ago and has an incorrect build date for another bridge with a glowing reference when at the time the bridge was built (8 years later than the date shown) there were several problems and speculation the bridge would continually suffer with repairs. It's a cool little geek device, but unfortunately relies on faulty U.S. government data.

Making features like our Bridge Tracker easier to use

Phil Zepeda — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 23:05:33 GMT

I'll try to respond to as many of these as I can, so bear with me:

Rob -- would you have rather been able to enter a location and view all bridges within a certain distance? This tool was designed for road trips but perhaps this would be a good feature to add next time around.

Stan -- you will be able to go back to this at any time. Just go to http://www.bridges.msnbc.com for the main package or http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21840954 for the Bridge Tracker.

Jim -- our criteria for bridges to be included was that they had to have an average daily traffic of at least 10,000 vehicles. One reason the bridges might not be showing up is that the latitude and longitude data might be slightly off -- this comes directly from the states, and some are more accurate than others.

John -- you are right, this is definitely a shortcoming of the application. We couldn't include every bridge in the country because that would have increased processing time dramatically. So, we tried to reasonably limit the number of bridges by establishing this traffic criteria.

Making features like our Bridge Tracker easier to use

Rob Wilkens, Levittown, NY — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 11:42:07 GMT

Phil -- Yes, I think like if I punched in a town I was in or going to, and selected either like "5" "10" "25" or "50" mile radius, that might be a good feature to have.

Making features like our Bridge Tracker easier to use

Robert, New York — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 16:52:21 GMT

The overlay that pops up after a mouse roll-over gets cutoff at the right edge of the window. This behavior along with the default starting position of California tells me the software and testing engineer(s) probably live on the west coast! It becomes annoying for those of us on the East coast to have to manually side the image over to the left so we can see the contents of the pop-up. This could be easily rectified by programatically adjusting the location of the pop-up based on the distance to the window edge. Rendering issues aside, the tool is useful. Now if I could only get this into my GPS software so it could generate a route using the best rated bridges :-)

Making features like our Bridge Tracker easier to use

Tony DiFelice, Denver CO — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 19:19:18 GMT

What about viewing bridges you go UNDER as an option?

I would also like to omit bridges that are 'not deficient', as an option. Different icon shades (or different icons altogether) should be used for deficient bridges (it seems that currently the icon shading is used to indicate the last inspection)

Making features like our Bridge Tracker easier to use

Nona Cole — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 06:13:50 GMT

Wow, this was a neat tool to try! I plugged in a trial trip from Waco, Tx to Corpus Christi, TX. I know from experience that there are a lot of bridges up and down IH35 and IH37 but I wasn't prepared for finding so many on the map. The one curious thing I noticed is that the county listed for the bridges in the segment going south out of Waco was Matagorda, which is incorrect. Waco TX is in McClennan county. Matagorda County is on the Gulf coast southwest of Houston and was not part of the route I selected. I think the concept is great but the database may need a bit of work.

Making features like our Bridge Tracker easier to use

Joseph, Birmingham AL — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 15:10:30 GMT

The problem I encountered was bad data. I keyed my route to work that includes an interstate bridge. But when you look at the detailed information on the bridge, it quickly became apparent that the bridge being reported was acctually a near-by bridge on a parallel highway and NOT the interstate bridge shown on the map.