Low-cost fix for a low bridge

I had this thought to make one of those fake Twitter pages for the Glenville bridge. The idea was that every time a truck hit this poor little overpass on Glenridge Road, I’d post something like “Ouch!” or, “Ooo, that’s gonna leave a mark.” I figured it might at least lighten the stupidity.

There were two problems with the idea, unfortunately. One is that I’ve been determined not to patronize Elon Musk after he welcomed back insurrectionists, white supremacists, neo-Nazis and other assorted ne’er-do-wells in the name of profits — sorry, I mean, healthy, democracy-enriching conversation.

The other reason was that I really don’t want to spend my golden years having to maintain a gag page that would involve keeping up with all the hits this bridge takes, because inevitably I’d miss a strike and someone would post a comment like, “What, are you too busy hating freedom to keep up with the news?” and within five or six comments it would devolve into something involving Nazis or fascists or Donald Trump.

Still, pity the Glenville bridge. For all the hits it takes it isn’t even listed in the Wikipedia “List of bridges known for strikes,” although in fairness whoever created that page in July 2022, possibly as a pandemic boredom project, quit after only eight entries. If ever the bridge gets a real name, it would no doubt be the Rodney Dangerfield Memorial Bridge. We’re talking no respect, no respect at all.

The whole thing, frankly, baffles me. I was raised to believe that there was something magical about truckers. My dad told me that if you wanted to know the best place to eat, look for the one with tractor-trailers in the parking lot. That whatever speed trucks were going it was safe to go without getting a ticket. That there was a sweet spot behind a truck where your car would actually be pulled along by the wake of air and you’d get phenomenal gas mileage. That if you were ever in trouble, you could trust either a cop or a trucker, but also you should never get into a fight with a truck driver because they could crush you with their bare hands.

And I’m sure all those and many other things about truckers are true. The only thing I really question is their spatial awareness.

Science is on my side on this. A 2016 study by Bela Nguyen and Ioannis Brilakis of the department of engineering at the University of Cambridge, England, noted that only 12 percent of truck drivers could correctly estimate how tall their vehicle was, and only 27 percent could estimate it within 3 inches. Trying to account for this lack of seemingly essential knowledge, transportation experts in the United Kingdom routinely post bridge heights three inches less than the actual number, and in the United States, some states shave a full foot off bridge heights on warning signs. The problem is, the study noted, word got out and truckers don’t take the signs seriously. Oddly, though, word doesn’t seem to have gotten out that the Glenville Road bridge REALLY IS TOO LOW FOR YOUR TRUCK. Maybe reality just isn’t as fun to talk about as a government signage conspiracy whose nefarious purpose is to keep you from shearing off the top of your $50,000 trailer.

I’ve long thought this could be solved by simply putting up some overhead bars or chains that would bang into trucks that were too tall for the bridge and wake up — I mean, alert! — the drivers who somehow miss all the signs and flashing lights. I roughly priced this at under $1,000 at Home Depot.

Silly me! No solution can cost THAT little when New York state is involved. So instead, the Department of Transportation is installing a much more sensible $1.4 million “electronic overheight vehicle detection system” that will use lasers to vaporize oversized trucks — wait, no, I mean to measure the height of the truck and trigger flashing lights to warn drivers of an impending strike.

Seriously, $1.4 million on lasers and nothing gets vaporized?

I was recently in Costa Rica, an extremely rugged land of hairpin turns, single-lane bridges, and a remarkable lack of guard rails to keep you from plunging to your death. The Airbnb we stayed in was in a somewhat gated community in that it had a gate with a counterweight on it and a guy who came out of a building every time a car was going in or out and raised the gate. I got to practice nearly all my Spanish with him on a daily basis:

Me: Hola! Gracias!

Him: Con mucho gusto! Which gave me a thought about the Glenville Bridge: Why not put a couple of huts on either side of the bridge and hire some folks to watch for oversized trucks and run out and lower a gate and wave their arms frantically and shout through a megaphone, “Low bridge! Buddy, turn around!” to the tune of “The Erie Canal Song”? I’m telling you, it would get those truckers’ attention. You could pay the attendants, say, $45,000 a year each and have enough for five years before you’d reach the cost of the laser system. Which, given the history of the Glenville bridge, will almost certainly be hit by a truck.