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Why do road construction projects take so long? Lack of funding? Lazy government workers? Not hiring enough contractors? Government corruption? Union corruption? Everyone dragging their feet so they have employment for years to come? Or is it something reasonable like they don't want to disrupt current traffic flow? This project, which really needs to be done 30 years ago, is planning on taking 8 years to complete. With that kind of schedule, I feel like they only hired one guy to do it all by himself. Or maybe I'm just some guy who hates sitting in traffic. http://www.state.nj.us/transportation/commuter/roads/rt295/schedule.shtm
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Jun 24, 2013 20:21
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poo poo takes time man. Would you rather have a road that takes 20 years and lasts 150 or 1/5?
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Jun 24, 2013 21:15
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Yeah, uh, if you've been through there you should be aware just how much traffic that horrible abomination of an interchange has to handle every day. They have to do the work while still allowing the necessary traffic flow in all directions. If they were able to completely shut down 295, 76 and 42 in that area and provide alternate routes for all of the traffic, it could probably be done in like 6 months. But when would you ever be able to do that?
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Jun 24, 2013 21:18
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Lead out in cuffs posted:Wait - you were being ironic, weren't you? I was being sarcastic, yes. I'm not a hipster so I wasn't being "ironic"  FogHelmut posted:This project, which really needs to be done 30 years ago, is planning on taking 8 years to complete. With that kind of schedule, I feel like they only hired one guy to do it all by himself. Or maybe I'm just some guy who hates sitting in traffic. If it makes you feel better, Christie will probably decide to cancel it because ARE TAX DOLARS is an important issue in his run-up for office in the near future.
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Jun 25, 2013 01:21
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Volmarias posted:If it makes you feel better, Christie will probably decide to cancel it because ARE TAX DOLARS is an important issue in his run-up for office in the near future. This is unlikely, given that it's a highway expansion and has no public transportation component.
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Jun 25, 2013 03:58
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Lead out in cuffs posted:The question I have is, what would you do to make this road safer for cyclists (and pedestrians)? Would a railing be enough? Maybe separated paths for cyclists and pedestrians (but could these be put in place without cutting down trees)? The best thing to do would be to widen the sidewalk on one side of the road and make it bike-only. You might be able to grab another half meter out of the grass on either side, and a meter or more by narrowing the travel lanes. That'd give you at least some room for a proper fence or half-section concrete barrier. On the bridge, the road's a good deal narrower, so you might require bicyclists to dismount. None of them will, but at least you're covered, legally. If you've got some cash, you could build a parallel bridge or strap on an extra couple meters to the side, if the structure can take it. kastein posted:Someone didn't consider wind very much when they designed that, but at least no one ignores the sign. Unfortunately, our sign support standards are determined by trial and error. AASHTO came up with some more stringent regulations in 2001 to deal with intermittent wind loads. FogHelmut posted:Why do road construction projects take so long? Lack of funding? Lazy government workers? Not hiring enough contractors? Government corruption? Union corruption? Everyone dragging their feet so they have employment for years to come? Believe me, big projects take time. Rights-of-way take 2+ years to plan and obtain, and can't be done until the project's design is nearly final. Permits can take five years or more, though they can be done concurrently with the design. The design itself, for a large project, is going to be at least three years long, even if it's a rush. Then you're into construction. Construction for a big project is usually a decade-long process. In some cases, it can last 20+ years, so consider yourself lucky.
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Jun 25, 2013 12:24
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Cichlidae posted:
In 20 years it could be hopelessly outdated. 
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Jun 25, 2013 12:29
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Cichlidae posted:The best thing to do would be to widen the sidewalk on one side of the road and make it bike-only. You might be able to grab another half meter out of the grass on either side, and a meter or more by narrowing the travel lanes. That'd give you at least some room for a proper fence or half-section concrete barrier. On the bridge, the road's a good deal narrower, so you might require bicyclists to dismount. None of them will, but at least you're covered, legally. If you've got some cash, you could build a parallel bridge or strap on an extra couple meters to the side, if the structure can take it. I'm not sure I like that idea, for the reason that pedestrians probably wouldn't respect it (and have nowhere to go once they've started walking along the bike-only side). What I'm leaning towards is expanding the downhill side, adding a bike-only lane there (yeah pedestrians would wander into it but at least they would have a painted pedestrian lane to dodge into), and railings on both sides. The bridge is a bit less of an issue (at least there's a barrier there, even if it wouldn't really stop a cyclist from falling over it). Forcing cyclists to dismount to cross 1.5km of bridge is simply not an option. The cycling advocacy organisations wouldn't stand for it, and cyclists simply wouldn't respect it. I'm also not so sure about legal coverage -- the City was sued a few years ago by a cyclist who fell into traffic on a bridge due to bad infrastructure. They settled out of court (and fixed the bridge by removing a lane of traffic and creating separated cyclist and pedestrian lanes on both sides). It wasn't a case of someone "successfully suing", but I think it shows that you can't just put up signage / make roads that you know won't actually work, and then expect to be protected legally when people get hurt. Anyway, thanks for weighing in. E: minor copyedit Lead out in cuffs fucked around with this message at 20:51 on Jun 25, 2013 |
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Jun 25, 2013 18:19
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Lead out in cuffs posted:but I think it shows that you can't just put up signage / make roads that you know won't actually work, and then expect to be protected legally when people get hurt. I'm not sure if it's a case of law or a case of common decency, but in Holland, if a road owner (city, province, country) just puts speed limit signs on a road that's clearly designed for higher speeds, the police usually won't enforce the posted limit. Often, when the owner wants to slow down traffic on a road (for instance because it's the old road through the city and there's a new ring road freeway) the road owner will combine the speed limit signs with traffic calming measures like bumps and narrowing parts of the road. In that case the police will enforce again.
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Jun 25, 2013 22:01
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Carbon dioxide posted:[...] the police usually won't enforce the posted limit. Hahaha ehhhh That'd really depend on whether or not there's some kind of quota they've got to hit 
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Jun 25, 2013 22:42
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More photos are trickling in...     
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Jun 26, 2013 03:16
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Non coated rebar? poo poo, I thought everyone in the northeast used the green epoxy coated rebar for everything in bridge building these days.
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Jun 26, 2013 03:28
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kastein posted:Non coated rebar? poo poo, I thought everyone in the northeast used the green epoxy coated rebar for everything in bridge building these days. It's only a temporary bridge. Then we bust it up:  Temporary sign support - cost $120k, got installed 2 months ago, will be ripped down in a month.  You can see the old cruciform sign support behind it, cut in half and still holding up the I-91 sign.
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Jun 26, 2013 03:51
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How does a single lane road have the appropriateness of an area for passing determined? Are the "recommended" areas (one dashed, one solid center line) supposed to even out in both directions?
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Jun 26, 2013 04:16
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Cichlidae posted:It's only a temporary bridge. I have driven by that second pic so many times. Not since the sign went up, though. Any chance you can make the temp sign supports to a reasonable number of predetermined widths/heights and just keep disassembling and reassembling them at different job sites? Seems like it would save some money in the long run.
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Jun 26, 2013 04:30
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Somebody at FDOT finally figured out that North Florida inconveniences the gently caress out of people that want to drive to Tampa and Orlando, plus I-75 and I-4 are fairly maxed out capacity-wise. The state is looking at two major projects: 1) Building the remaining portion of Florida's Turnpike from Wildwood to Tallahassee 2) Extending the Suncoast Parkway to the Swamp and Jax.  The associated studies are officially underway now, first phases of construction projected to begin in about 10-15 years, after FDOT finishes the current wave of projects and has no other option but to start building alternate routes. And that's not including other stuff still under study/construction, like completion of three separate beltways in the Orlando area, a potential I-275 extension from Bradenton to Lakeland in Tampa Bay and I-795 in Jax. We spend a lot of money on new roads, ya know? Varance fucked around with this message at 05:39 on Jun 26, 2013 |
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Jun 26, 2013 05:00
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AmbassadorTaxicab posted:How does a single lane road have the appropriateness of an area for passing determined? Are the "recommended" areas (one dashed, one solid center line) supposed to even out in both directions? Level of service on two-lane rural roads is determined by the time spent following other vehicles. For almost any road in a rural area, passing zones are installed wherever the passing sight distance is available. This doesn't necessarily balance in both directions (and doesn't need to), but it'll tend to be balanced thanks to the peculiarities of road geometry. If there is a very bad LOS, you should consider adding intermittent passing lanes. kastein posted:I have driven by that second pic so many times. Not since the sign went up, though. See, that'd be smart. The state had a set design for sign supports when this project was bid, but now, that's exactly what we'd do.
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Jun 26, 2013 12:18
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I made a diagram of the volumes on I-91 NB. Full PDF is here. Graphic design isn't the best, but there's only so much you can do in CADD.
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Jun 27, 2013 21:51
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Cichlidae posted:I made a diagram of the volumes on I-91 NB. Full PDF is here. That's pretty cool! What kind of use will this diagram see?
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Jun 28, 2013 09:14
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Hippie Hedgehog posted:That's pretty cool! What kind of use will this diagram see? There are at least three uses that I can think of. For us in traffic, it can quickly identify where the volumes are highest, and where they change, which makes determining allowable work hours much easier. The second use is for the guys in Planning or Project Concepts, because they need a way to easily identify bottlenecks or major trends in traffic. I'll update this every couple years. Already, since the 2006 numbers, I can see that traffic has gone down about 5% south of Hartford, and up 5% north. And finally, I'll use it for meetings to show, at a glance, how traffic varies around the state.
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Jun 28, 2013 12:15
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Cichlidae posted:I made a diagram of the volumes on I-91 NB. Full PDF is here. It would be really fun to put a spreadsheet together to convert excel traffic volumes into a Microstation script to draft the volume line on that graph. Assuming you otherwise do it manually, and that it's not created by some other automated program.
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Jun 28, 2013 16:07
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Devor posted:It would be really fun to put a spreadsheet together to convert excel traffic volumes into a Microstation script to draft the volume line on that graph. Assuming you otherwise do it manually, and that it's not created by some other automated program. I do it manually, and it's tedious. I do have all that data in a spreadsheet, though. I spent a day building that drat thing up so I could make some Google Earth overlays out of it. ----- Anyway, let's have a little look at stuff I do on a day-to-day basis. First off is a sign structure inspection report:  Looks good, looks good, oh... the structure's rated a 3. This huge, critical sign support's got lots of holes in it, and it's swaying in a moderate breeze. Not good. So if anyone's wondering why the big ol' sign support at the Route 20 exit on I-91 SB is missing, well, now you know. ----- Here's another thing that I do for every project: set allowable hours for lane closures. On a local road, it's as simple as pulling up a nearby count station and extrapolating its one day of data. If the job involves a freeway, though, you've got a lot more work to do. First off, pray that there's a continuous count station nearby. For this project, there's one a mile away, which is extremely fortunate. Some freeways don't have any, and you have to guess. Next, grab the count station's monthly volumes for a year. For most of our CCS, you'll get all zeros, and have to use a previous year. They're frequently broken, you see. For this particular project, I had to use 2011 data, as it's been broken since. You choose the highest volume month. If there's a big swing between Summer and Winter, then you'll want a few months. Open up the monthly counts, and pick a nice average week with no special events. In this case, there was a week where the detector was broken, so I had to choose carefully. And then you get this:  The mark-ups are mine, of course. Let's go over them in painful detail! First up, at the top of the page, I wrote down the number of lanes in the project area. Next to that is the unidirectional volume at the site, divided by the volume at the count station. The site volumes are about 12% lower than at the station, so our "1500 veh/lane" standard has to be revised accordingly. Anything less than 1710 vph only needs one lane. 1710-3420 requires two lanes. 3420-5130 requires three. 5130-6840 requires all four, and for anything above that, we'll want them to keep the shoulders open, too. I then sorted the volumes into these groups and color-coded them. Sometimes, I'll also outline the peak periods: 6-9 am, 3-6 pm, weekdays only. These will usually require keeping all lanes and shoulders open, even if the volumes aren't too high. Now before we go on, let's have a look at these volumes. There are a couple things that stand out. First off, see how the morning peak on Tuesday is significantly lower than on the other days? Furthermore, see how the volumes rise, drop off, rise again, and drop off again? This is a clear sign of a traffic accident upstream. It's a bit like a tsunami: traffic gets backed up, the volume making it past the count station drops, and once the accident's cleared, it jumps back up again and stays above the baseline until the queues are all clear. I looked through our handy crash database, and found two crashes upstream of the station:  Yup... 7:54 and 8:13, both injury accidents. The second one was probably a secondary incident that wouldn't have happened without the first. These accidents would completely explain the anomaly. Now, a bit trickier is what happens the next morning: the 5 am and 6 am volumes are higher than they were on Monday and Tuesday. This is most likely a reaction to the previous day's mangled morning commute. People leave home earlier, get to work earlier, all to beat that mess they were stuck in the day before. Anyway, when that's all done, we get this:  The Limitations of Operations chart, which goes in the contract documents. If the contractor doesn't follow it, he gets assessed liquidated damages up to $100,000 per hour. You might notice that the chart doesn't exactly match what the volumes require. For example, on the left graph, there were a few hours we could've gotten away with closing a lane during the middle of the day on weekdays. A 3-hour lane closure window, though, is just about useless to a contractor. It's better just to keep things consistent and avoid confusion and trouble in the field. Also note that on Monday, we could probably let them close 2 lanes from 9 pm onward. Since we're not letting them work at 9 on Tuesday or Wednesday, though, it's best not to make an exception for Monday. And finally, we'll ignore those quirks on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings. And with that, we're all set. Cut and print.
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Jun 28, 2013 21:08
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Cool stuff, never thought so much work went into this. Is this public domain? I want to know how Caltrans thought that closing the 405 in both directions at 11pm, seemingly every day, was a good idea. (for locals, it's 405 in Long Beach at 605/22)
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Jun 28, 2013 21:21
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If you've got access to the BBC iPlayer, there's a fascinating documentary about traffic management in London here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b02yyh1c featuring a Victorian cross-river tunnel, several thousand CCTV cameras, instant-ish traffic re-routing and a helicopter crash.
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Jun 28, 2013 21:30
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Mandalay posted:Cool stuff, never thought so much work went into this. Is this public domain? I want to know how Caltrans thought that closing the 405 in both directions at 11pm, seemingly every day, was a good idea. (for locals, it's 405 in Long Beach at 605/22) Almost anything a state agency does is public, though you may have to submit a FOI request to get it. For ConnDOT, the raw data is available to anyone who goes to the planning website. Turning it into usable limitations, as you've seen, takes a bit more work, and may not match what's in the contract.
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Jun 28, 2013 21:40
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So today I received a letter from the local government, apparently sent to everyone living in the area. They are turning a standard traffic light intersection into a roundabout, but this project has been going on since autumn, and after they closed off everything and removed much of the old road, the whole thing seemed to stop. They promised it would be done this month, but it clearly isn't done yet. It's all quite annoying because it's one of the major local roads. Anyway, the letter says that before they could build the new road, the natural gas company had to remove an old pipe which was under some part of the intersection. The town council had agreed with the gas company that this should be finished in May. The gas company actually finished their work last week. Now that that's been done, the contractor can finish their work on the intersection. Usually, this wouldn't be finished before the builders go on holiday (for some reason the country has a few set weeks every year on which nearly all building work stops), but the town council apparently got them to work on weekends as well, which means it will be finished before the holiday. The letter also said that the government doesn't really have any way to make the gas company keep their promises. Council members will have a talk with the company about the delay, but it won't change much. So, assuming that the letter is a honest report of events, it seems that - The town council is trying their best to minimize road blocks. - The road contractor is doing their work properly. - They are gonna save some time by working on weekends. - The town council is also nice enough to keep their citizens informed. - The gas company consists of a bunch of assholes who can't keep promises and cause delays that are troublesome for everyone involved. - The government can't do anything to 'punish' the gas company.
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Jun 29, 2013 21:26
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I've chatted with a friend about this before(hi Dominus_Vobiscum), but I figured I'd post my local hopeless highway intersection/interchange here. Google Maps is already showing a fair bit of congestion before we get to the intersection itself. It's not always this bad, but it's pretty consistantly congested on my way to work in the afternoons. Culprit identified. That 14ft clearance bridge is actually a private railroad, which is loving up any chance of improving this mess. The one small mercy here is that since clearance is unusually low, you're not dealing with much truck traffic. There are no turn lanes for either direction, meaning that people going straight are held up by people turning. Westbound is mysteriously always 10 times worse than eastbound; I'm guessing this is because eastbound people already had a chance to get onto I-94 a couple miles away, so there are no people trying to reach 94 & fewer people jockying to turn onto 41(which mostly runs parallel to 94, and eventually joins up with it in either direction). This is rather unfortunate, since the westbound lanes are the ones where nothing can be added thanks to that railroad. During rush hours, split phasing is used so that the left lanes aren't gridlocked from people trying to turn. This means that you end up waiting a very long time, since obviously both directions can't simultaneously have a protected left while also letting both ways go straight. (Not that the alternative would be much faster for people in the left lane) How long? I've had instances where it's taken ten minutes to get from here to the other side of the 41 intersection. Why is this interchange even here if it's so hard to make it flow smoothly? Grand Avenue leads directly to Six Flags Great America and Gurnee Mills, two popular tourist spots. Can't do anything that would force the tourists to get off at a much simpler interchange 1 minute south, then take one of the many roads connecting Washington to Grand!  (I loving hate the tourists)
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Jun 29, 2013 22:08
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Carbon dioxide posted:local government woes Petition them to change the regs about who gets to dig up roads. I don't know you're here you are, but the Westminster City Council (so, London) got annoyed about exactly that happening and now if a utilities provider wants to do repairs the pay a nominal fee for a license to dig up the road for a certain timespan, but if they don't complete works by the time the license ends they have to pay a penalty for every extra day they overrun. Here's a rough overview - http://www.westminster.gov.uk/services/transportandstreets/permit-scheme/
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Jun 30, 2013 00:28
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Carbon dioxide posted:Utility-related construction problem. Utilities in general tend to be dicks about this sort of stuff and do things on their own schedule. It gets worse when you have other utilities that have to do stuff before the first utility can do their job. Varance fucked around with this message at 01:10 on Jun 30, 2013 |
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Jun 30, 2013 01:08
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Varance posted:Utilities in general tend to be dicks about this sort of stuff and do things on their own schedule. It gets worse when you have other utilities that have to do stuff before the first utility can do their job. On one hand, I really understand the pragmatic need for the pseudo-monopolistic position utilities hold in our society, but on the other...they're really good at abusing it sometimes.
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Jun 30, 2013 23:19
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It really varies by area you're in; up here what tends to delay projects is issues with the DNR more so than any utility company moving their stuff around or initiating repairs prior to putting in a new road.
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Jul 1, 2013 14:44
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Haifisch posted:Culprit identified. That 14ft clearance bridge is actually a private railroad, which is loving up any chance of improving this mess. The one small mercy here is that since clearance is unusually low, you're not dealing with much truck traffic. No reason the DOT can't pay for a new railroad bridge or a slight reroute or something, if it's cost effective.
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Jul 1, 2013 15:25
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Utilities are a constant source of delay, and tend to introduce it in any project unfortunate enough to involve them. It's gotten to be so bad that we tend to break out utility work as a separate contract, and wait for it to finish before bidding the actual job. ----- I've mentioned before that a trained eye is very important when you're doing field visits. Even before a project begins, there's a lot you can tell just by looking around. Here are some pictures for you guys, all from US 44, which crosses the state from West to East, typically as a rural roadway.  What do the wear lines on the road tell you about the way people drive here? This, by the way, is one of the most accident-prone spots in the state.  See how the shoulder's been worn down? What does that mean to you, and what could've caused it? Also note, even in the middle of nowhere, it's never safe to assume peds are absent.  At this corner, there are deep ruts right alongside the road. Why do you think that is?   In urban and rural areas alike, keep a look out for dented guiderails. These are both at high-accident locations that've been completely redone since Google's cameras came through.  Skid marks, especially on fresh pavement, are something to look out for. What could they tell us about the intersection?
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Jul 1, 2013 22:47
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Cichlidae posted:
Obviously they know how to take the best line through a chicane for maximum speed onto the straight  And it looks like a fair number of them don't even bother to stay on the pavement on the way out, although I guess that could be a truck artifact...Cichlidae posted:
Trucks trying to take a turn way to narrow for them? Cichlidae posted:
While I'm imagining to myself that people are so freaked out by turns they're crashing before they even get there, I'd guess the real reason is people in the interior lane (ie, young men) taking the turn to fast. Or people swerving to avoid those people.
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Jul 1, 2013 23:04
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Cichlidae posted:
I'll put my money on people driving around vehicles that are waiting to turn.
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Jul 1, 2013 23:12
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Looks like a streetwalker scene from Romania.
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Jul 1, 2013 23:18
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FISHMANPET posted:No reason the DOT can't pay for a new railroad bridge or a slight reroute or something, if it's cost effective. Government waste! 
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Jul 1, 2013 23:27
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Volmarias posted:Government waste!  I'm also not sure when they'd time a project of that nature to avoid hindering the all-important tourists; summer is busiest for obvious reasons, but that's also when construction likes to be in full swing. Maybe just tell everyone to suck it up and pay the (pretty small, especially with i-pass) toll to use 94 instead? Driving on 94 is ten times nicer(and faster!) than 41 anyway.Cichlidae posted:
Haifisch fucked around with this message at 00:09 on Jul 2, 2013 |
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Jul 2, 2013 00:03
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A long-proposed project to replace the I-5 bridge between Portland and Vancouver, Washington was officially canceled today. It faced ferocious opposition from Washington Republicans due to its accompanying light-rail extension. This is the most I can say about it right now without bursting into tears. 
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Jul 2, 2013 02:54
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Hedera Helix posted:A long-proposed project to replace the I-5 bridge between Portland and Vancouver, Washington was officially canceled today. It faced ferocious opposition from Washington Republicans due to its accompanying light-rail extension. When Googling for news on this, the first article I found had this image of the senator leading the effort to get the plans scrapped:  That does not look to me like the face of a sane person. The worst part is that it sounds like they're going to have to redo $170 million in planning just to satisfy what I'm sure is nothing more than naked populist haymaking. But hey, identity politics apparently works, at least in the short-term.
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Jul 2, 2013 06:01
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