> The new pedestrian bridge was designed to connect the campus to student housing in a dramatic, sculptural way and also to showcase the school's leadership in the ABC method of rapid bridge construction.[16][17]
And from my recollection of coverage at the time - FIU's administrative pressure to deliver their dramatic & leading-edge-construction bridge, quick and cheap, lead to all sorts of corner cutting in the engineering & fabrication.
To me the root cause was they just could not see a way to inconvenience even one single driver ever. They had to grade separate pedestrians from cars over a freeway and a gigantic parking lot. Universities should be pedestrian focused.
The bridge could have been designed correctly. But the fundamental issue was the bridge didn't need to exist.
I think that's more of an auxiliary issue than the "fundamental" one. Space is limited, and a nice (and non-collapsing) bridge could be more convenient for pedestrians than however things would be laid out on the ground even if there wasn't a road there. Safe bridges should be able to exist, whether one would have been needed in this exact spot in an alternate reality or not.
It's also very telling for you to condense "a freeway and a gigantic parking lot" down to "one single driver ever." Five motorists wouldn't have been killed by the collapse alone if "one single driver" was the only one who ever used it.
And from my recollection of coverage at the time - FIU's administrative pressure to deliver their dramatic & leading-edge-construction bridge, quick and cheap, lead to all sorts of corner cutting in the engineering & fabrication.