Biking home on river road, stopped to see the old 35W bridge parts. This one could be a piece of art for a memorial, maybe.
Steve Berg has a similar idea, after hearing news that MnDOT will soon cut up and transport the pieces of bridge wreckage from its fenced-off resting place at Bohemian Flats on the West Bank to a site in Afton:
My nomination for locating this stark piece of public art is an empty lot at the north end of the bridge, at University and 10th Avenue S.E. Everyone crossing the new bridge could see a remnant of the old one. No one could forget the horrible events of August 1, 2007, or the heroic rescue of survivors, or the absolute shock that such a thing could happen in a supposedly advanced country. And no one could fail to see the consequences of neglecting basic infrastructure, a topic too boring for most people to care about.
[T]ransporting all of the wreckage “out of sight, out of mind” satisfies an opposite political impulse, one that suggests that the bridge collapse was just a random act of fate, a “natural disaster” best forgotten. Any governor with an eye on the White House, for example, might try extra hard to get the bridge pieces crated up and carted away to a remote hiding place. All those memories would be systematically disremembered: no recollection of badly designed gusset plates and buckled chords, of inadequate inspections and postponed repairs, of a MnDOT politicized by an unprofessional (at the time) commissioner, of repeated opposition to raising the revenue required for bridge repairs.
Read more from Berg here.
Good post by Berg. Seriously! Minnesota artists should create art out of the wreckage for a 35W memorial. I’d think The Walker or other local artists and Mayor R.T. Rybak could get this done.