this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2024
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The bridge is basically valueless compared to everything else about the ship and cargo plus the lawsuits from various contract breaches and other damages. Port shutdowns, environmental cleanup, insurance losses. $100m is a rounding error.
It was worth $110M in 1977. Probably a couple $Billion now.
That's not how rusty decaying infrastructure works.
Not sure what you're trying to say. The new bridge will cost far more than the old one, and the insurance settlement for the loss of the bridge will far exceed the original construction cost.
Wouldn’t they only have to pay the depreciated value? After all, a replacement bridge will be more valuable than the one that was destroyed.
Legitimate question btw, I have no idea how… bridge finances work.
Present value
Right, is this not the same thing as cost minus depreciation?
Again, I don’t know the first thing about this subject, so I’m trying to relate it to, like, home insurance. If your roof starts leaking all over, they don’t give you the full amount required to replace it, since shingles need to be replaced every couple decades. They give you the amount minus a linear multiplier of how long it’s been since they were last replaced.
Present value is more like replacement cost minus depreciation but ask an insurance adjuster.
That isn't how damages work either. They can't reuse anything so it's the price of what it costs to rebuild the same bridge in the same place with current prices and the estimated cost of cleanup and whatever business damages are claimed which almost certainly exceed the cost of the bridge.
You're causing me to question their tech nerd wizard credentials
Which is what I said. The cost of the bridge is a rounding error. The cost of the damages resulting from its collapse both on land and in the waterway is the real damage.
Reading comprehension in the states is very low.
Multi billion dollar material costs are hardly valueless. Less than you'd think given everything else but still absurdly costly quick is why Baltimore never replaced it.
Explain real estate prices then?
Explain how the cost of your driveway does not appreciate over time.
The replacement cost goes up with what the current prices are. But a 8k driveway does not become a 200k driveway just because the house it's going to is a mansion.
That bridge is a shitty old rusty bridge. It may be economically valuable, the waterway may be valuable, it may have large opportunity cost for the city. But it's still a hunk of old steel.
The cost of the bridge, is the old steel.
The cost of the insurance layout is the old steel PLUS all the other factors.
You Americans are so stupid.
Your point is as valid as saying a person is worth $27 because that's the cost of the elements they're made up of.
Location, replacement cost, possible cash flows: all of these are possible additions to the value of something. Even just the value of the permit to have such a bridge would exceed the value of the metal.
I suppose there's a difference between the resale (or original) value of the material, and the abstract value of having an, any, bridge in that location.
There's also the concept of forward replacement value, which is the cost of replacing something like for like.
If you lose control driving and knock over an old tree and out lands on my house, you're not only responsible for the tree - you owe me a house.
The economic damage of destroying a bridge that'll take years to replace plus blocking a major port until debris can be cleared is going to be at least 10-figures - probably more.
Nobody is disputing that.
The value of the tree ironically does go up a lot over time. But it's still the value of the tree. The value of everything else is still a cost and that is EXACTLY THE POINT I MADE. The cost of the tree is insignificant compared to the house and you're hotel bills.
Reading comprehension... It's a glorious thing, and lost on Americans.
My fellow lemming. You made a terse comment that was prone to misinterpretation. People misinterpreted it.
I see what you're trying to say, and I see how people are understanding it differently than you may have intended.
I'm not saying your underlying message was wrong, certainly a rusted old bridge is momentarily not worth the same money that it was when it was installed, but that's not how you seem to have been interpreted.
I won't tell you what to do, but if I may make a suggestion: it may be prudent to be a little less terse.
Have a good day.
The point you made?
Someone said replacing the bridge would cost billions and you called them out saying that it's rusty and decaying.
And the value of trees is a complicated subject. A significant part of my life is dealing with trees and the laws surrounding them for a municipal government.
My friend, your xenophobic comment makes me sad.
It's cost is both material and in the business of links from one side to the other. It's almost certainly worth multi billions at this point.
And not just the business from one side of the land to the other, but also from the port to… everywhere out in the ocean. With the old bridge remnants blocking ships, that’s a LOT of lost business…