A viewer that wrote in said he saw a very disturbing crack on a bridge on Loop 1604 over Babcock Road and Walter Brennan Avenue, so we went to TxDOT to get some answers to find out if that was indeed a problem.
The quick answer, no. But we wanted to know what these cracks were all about. So we asked TxDOT Engineer Christen Longoria to explain why cracks like one I spotted -- and several others I crossed over within seconds of each other -- are there.
Longoria said: "The bridge has expansion joints every 300 feet, and that's to allow the concrete and the rebar inside the bridge to expand and contract."
That's the part of the roadway you really can't see. What you can see is the asphalt and a small break in the asphalt that is supposed to be there. "When we put hot mix asphalt on top of the bridge, what we usually do is go right over the joints. We paper them so the asphalt doesn't fall through the cracks. They are also sealed," Longoria told us.
Later in the project, TxDOT comes back and cuts out about six inches on either side of the expansion joint where you're seeing the cracking, and seal it with something else, permanently. "A header material which is somewhere in between a flexible and a rigid material, and it allows for that expansion to happen," Longoria said.
TxDOT says you are their eyes and ears, so if you see anything suspicious on the highway they would like you to call. That number is 210 615-1110.