I don't understand road crews

One of the roads I commute on has been turned into paved hell.

The one side they cut a bizarre quilt of rectangular patches onto. No rhyme or reason that I can see. Some patches are about 2" high, others are 2" low. So for several miles you get to go bouncing and pounding along.

The other side they did similar work on, but then they repaved it nice and smooth. Then they came back and took the repaving off. It was only in place for about a week. Now the subsurface is falling apart, leaving really nice chuck holes.

I thought maybe they were going to pave the first side, and fix and replace the paving on the other side. Nope, they've taken all their barrels and equipment and left. Job done apparently.

What was a perfectly adequate section of road has been most thoroughly ruined.

There are plenty of other examples. There's a section of interstate they've finished that's incredible for how bad they did it. About a half mile of hand tamped piles chip tar on a lane that has half its pavement ground off on one side, and an erratic stripe of repavement wandering along on the other. They too took their barrels and have left, moving on to wreck other sections.

Then there's that nifty exit ramp. They ran a high jersey wall right up along side the lane for about half a mile. There's a gap with a sign indicating that's where the traffic is merging in from, with no merge lane. Then they jog the lanes and wall to the left with no warning. They run the jersey wall all the way up to the exit ramp with no merge space, you just veer to the side. Surprise bonus, that merging traffic I mentioned before, it's fake, this is where they come in. You can't see them until you try to violently veer to the right to get off, while they blindly veer to the left, trying to get on. The roadway is littered with smashed car parts.

Shovel Ready.

…are you saying the government spent tons of money and greatly inconvenienced people only to make things worse?

IMPOSSIBRU!!!

Your tax dollars at work underfunding infrastructure projects. The patchwork of patches sounds like dig outs to remove damaged sections of road that had poor subgrade. I would bet another contactor will come in soon to do some sort of resurfacing.

No idea why they would pave, then remove it. Maybe the material didn't meet specifications and then the contractor got booted.

In Delaware. they do decent road work. The problem is they do it EVERYWHERE ALL THE TIME. There is not a place I can travel within 20 miles of my house that I don't encounter substantially torn up roads somewhere.

What they need to do is put the same number of crews on half as many projects and actually, you know, get something done. Same number of man-hours, half the inconvenience.

Was governor Christy involved in any of that lovely paving work? I've heard he likes to have a hand in New Jersey roadworks.

A point I thought of recently. Don't the guys who build the roads also DRIVE on them? You'd think they would have a vested interest in making them nice just for their own sakes.

They recently reworked 22 miles of Hyw 17 just south of Charleston. It took 4 years, but they went from 2 lanes to 4 and had to build 6 bridges. It was a royal PITA while under construction because of the 45mph speed limit but worth it in the long run. They actually did a really good job. 22 miles of smooth, 60mph, asphalt. All the work was done by a private contractor.

At the same time, the SCDOT started widening a 2 mile stretch of road using their own crews. They are going from 2 lanes to 4 and they had to build 1 bridge. They still haven't finished it. Looking at the speed they are getting things done, I'm pretty sure the crew is planing to retire from this project. By the time it's done, they will need to start all over and 6 lane it.

"SCDOT, berkeleying up roads at the speed of snail."

Just don't do this

Here they personally make sure it goes to E36 M3 in 2 years or less so they can rake in more taxpayer money.......unless a county commissioner or council member lives on it.. Then it gets completely repaved flawlessly every other year. I swear, those are the smoothest roads in the county.

2 summers ago, i went on a trip to Texas from MN, via St Louis and Memphis... the worst stretch of road in the entire 2900 round trip was a 20 mile section of freshly redone road on I55 in Arkansas between the Missouri state line and Memphis somewhere... it was fresh blacktop, and the road crews were finishing up painting the lines and taking down the construction signs when we were passing thru.. the poor exhaust on my Camaro was bottoming out (and hopefully taking a few chunks out of the fresh pavement) about every 100 feet or so.. I40 between Memphis and Little Rock wasn't much better, but that was so full of traffic that we barely got up to the speed limit.. i just figured that Arkansas either doesn't put a high priority into making roads smooth and safe or the road construction companies have connections that allow them to build crap roads then rebuild them every year..

bgkast wrote: Your tax dollars at work underfunding infrastructure projects. The patchwork of patches sounds like dig outs to remove damaged sections of road that had poor subgrade. I would bet another contactor will come in soon to do some sort of resurfacing. No idea why they would pave, then remove it. Maybe the material didn't meet specifications and then the contractor got booted.

Maybe, but the road seemed to be in fine shape. Nice and smooth and level. I suspected the removed pavement they had just put down was substandard, but then they all left. Though maybe they're going through a bidding process to replace them. That actually kinda makes sense.

Everything is this thread describes City of Tucson road conditions and levels of "repair" to a T.

Potholes are filled by just shoveling loose asphalt into it with a nice mound on top then left for passing cars to flatten out. Then it collapses after a week to a nice smooth bottomed pothole while having loose asphalt being slung up by passing cars.

If the roads get too E36 M3ty to shovel E36 M3 into then they reoil/condition the surface. So it looks like a nice new road but its still pock marked and berkeleyed up ribbon of E36 M3ty pavement that has new paint on top of it.

And that's when they actually do get off their asses and do some road work. The city and the county piss away their road budgets on moronic feel good do nothing pet projects then have the berkeleying balls to say we have to hold a bond election and pay more taxes to get money the fix the roads. Then the county wants to take a couple million from the road budget to put new grass on a soccer field for a local semi pro club.

berkeley Tucson city council and berkeley Pima County board of supervisors. Sorry if I should have put this into the rant thread instead...

ok.. you guys are making me happy to think they are -not- repaving the roads around here. though they are due to start redoing the "strip" in AC

You gotta leeeeeeeaaannnn on that shovel.

Well at least their actually working, even if slowly. There is one 5mi. Section of highway my house that has been a 45mph construction zone for the past 7 YEARS and shows few signs of progress!

Construction zones make me appreciate the German work ethic wherein the workers take great pride in their work no matter how unskilled. In America, it's as though the construction workers see how little work they can get away with.

Fox, it's Pennsylvania. You know we have some of the worst roads in the entire nation. It's easy to tell when you've crossed the line into another state...the car suddenly rides smooth and quiet.

I've noticed it also matters on the subcontractor that wins the job. If I see our local guys (McMinn's) doing the paving, I know it'll be VIR smooth. If it's some company I've never heard of, time to install the rally car suspension.

It's amazing to me how my dopey little Township guys can replace a drainage pipe in only a day and have the pavement patch be a smooth transition, but it takes PennDOT two weeks and the resulting pavement joints are bone-jarringly painful.

I hate living here except for the proximity to good motorcycle riding and race tracks. In my next life, I won't marry a woman who lives here and won't move.

Mmadness wrote: Well at least their actually working, even if slowly. There is one 5mi. Section of highway my house that has been a 45mph construction zone for the past 7 YEARS and shows few signs of progress! Construction zones make me appreciate the German work ethic wherein the workers take great pride in their work no matter how unskilled. In America, it's as though the construction workers see how little work they can get away with.

the workers probably take pride in what they do and want to do their best, but their bosses pinch pennies and tell them to cut corners to get the job done faster and assure more work in the future..

the technology and materials do exist to build smooth roads that will last a generation in even the harshest of climates- i know of a few heavily traveled roads here in MN that were built 20 years ago that are still very nice- but it costs more up front to do it and it would cost government contractors jobs in the long run, so it isn't done.

Anyone else seen these new automated pothole repair trucks. I swear I saw six guys just riding in one the other day and the truck does all the work

The concrete that was put down for a new section of five lane interstate is actually pretty smooth. Then, about 10 miles away, they've repaved a section of two lane interstate (asphalt) and it's bad enough my car feels like the wheel weights fell off both front tires. They did this on a section of road that was just fine to begin with. Some things I'll never understand.

Caution: Men loafing

There's a section of I-65 that is all concrete for about 10-12 miles near me. I swear those dicks made it concrete so they can dig it all up every two years for "repairs" that aren't any better than before.

ddavidv wrote: Fox, it's Pennsylvania. You know we have some of the worst roads in the entire nation. It's easy to tell when you've crossed the line into another state...the car suddenly rides smooth and quiet.

I've always thought the worse part about pa roads are the way you guys do ramps, on or off. Bad enough in daylight, but at night, oy vey!

If they don't tear the roads up this Summer, they don't get any Fed money to tear the roads up next Summer. It's a viscous cycle, I tell ya.

We have a couple roads around here that are like that and they are hell on your suspension. I am kinda worried because they currently have the freeway between here and the pass over the mountain to the next major town all tore up and are supposed to be repaving it over the summer. That road wasn't actually all that bad to begin with.