Oh come on Mr. negativity. I have no doubt that it will be completed with all the speed and efficiency that has been evidenced in the rebuilding of the Henley Street bridge.

It's all about about dealing with the water flow and supporting the mountainside still hanging on just above the road. And anyway, the truck lobby is far more powerful than the concrete lobby.

When you need them?

I would think building a wall with fill behind it would be cheaper, easier, more stable, and create less of a footprint.
(and that's speaking as a civil engineer)

wants it done even faster. Need those Gatlinburg tour buses to fill the casino so the motive is there to complete quickly.

...NPS and Federal Highway officials plan to fill in the slide with rocks and rebuild over it. I thought they would need a bridge or something. And wouldn't a bridge be cheaper than hauling in 9,000 truckloads of fill?

I don't know about cost, but my first reaction when I saw that picture a few days ago was that I would not trust a fix attempted with fill dirt. I have trouble understanding it anywhere, but that's what developers love to do nowadays. It seems like a bridge would be not be as likely to washout again.

I'm looking again. That's just nuts. How could fill dirt be as good as God's own original earth that was stable basically forever until we destabilized her climate? It's even worse if there's some kind of sinkhole thing going on. Jeez.