A few thoughts.

I feel a compulsion to go visit the bridge site.   Not to gawk at the debris or recovery operations — that is more the stuff of my nightmares than anything I want to remember.  I think it’s because I have such a strong mental memory of the way the area used to look, I know that I will eventually have to replace that image with what it looks like now, and I’d like to get it over with.

The Star Tribune headlined that MnDOT chose the most "cost-efficient" means of controlling the bridge’s decline.  If you’re thinking like an engineer, you might think that the Star Tribune was trying to praise them; where I come from, cost-efficient means optimizing one’s main objective within the given constraints.   But of course you need to think like a journalist, and "cost-efficient" is code for "they were thinking of money instead of our safety."  Read a little more deeply into the article and you will find that the stated reason for rejecting the first recommended solution — reinforcing the structure with steel plates — was the fear that drilling thousands of holes into the steel to attach said plates might weaken the bridge, a fear that I judge reasonable. 

I can’t muster any blame for the people at MnDOT, at least until we know more.  Maybe if it was a bridge in the middle of rural outstate Minnesota, maybe then I could believe nefarious things about them.  But you know what, those people live here too, and they drive across that bridge, and their sons and daughters drive across that bridge.  Nobody knew the bridge was dangerous.  Perhaps they should have known, but I take them at their word when they said they did not.