On: Italy bridge: Genoa motorway collapse kills at lea...

[frostburg]

It's a bit long to translate while typing on a phone, but the main takeaway is that it was build in the sixties with then-novel and not fully understood material engineering practices which then forced frequent and expensive extraordinary repairs, to the point that it would soon have been economical to just demolish and rebuild it.

As for people asking why the highway needs to go through Genova instead of around, it's probably the same kind of reasoning that leads to using nuclear bombs to build harbors and the like.

[24gttghh → frostburg]

>As for people asking why the highway needs to go through Genova instead of around,

Mountains. And a few of the major highways actually go under Genoa, via tunnels.

[rullopat → frostburg]

A very small piece of land on the sea with a very steep 1000 meters tall mountain next to it, that's why.

[frostburg → rullopat]

I know, but are you familiar with how terrible it looks, even when it doesn't collapse? Genova hasn't ever been the prettiest city, but still.

[wickedsight → frostburg]

People tend to pick an ugly city over hours of traffic jams in a pretty city.

[toyg → wickedsight]

It's more that people in Italy like to live and die close to where they were born. Genoa also was a very busy port until relatively recently, which is a natural population magnet.

[sabas_ge → toyg]

It's the biggest port in Italy, and 63rd worldwide. The population increased when the big public industrial complexes were active, now it's declined.