I live in mid-Michigan and there is a beautiful stretch of freeway running from my house to work that is about 24 miles long. It is all concrete, only 4-5 years old and looks and rides beautifully.
Every Spring since it was poured the road crews come along and shut down lanes for 2-4 miles. Then, they randomly break up small sections which look to be 3′ wide x 10′ long by about 20-24″ deep. After they dig all of that out, they pour new cement and move down the freeway about 30 feet and do it again. It’s only in the right lane too.
When you ride over these new spots, they are bumpy and wavy so it’s like they have made the freeway worse for some reason.
What the he11 are they doing?
Replies
trying to make it like the NYS thruway!
;)
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Looking for Jimmy Hoffa?
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Ahhh...that is an excellent possibility! This stretch of freeway is on a few miles from the restaurant he was abducted from (no kidding)!
Maybe Bin Laden?
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Upside down speed bumps? Nothing would surprise me about the MDOT!
U mean the crete doesn't come witha lable saying, "This side up"?
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There are standards for roads, like how much of a dip they can have in them, how hard the concrete has to test at, etc.
My guess would be that something about these sections don't meet specs, and they have to replace them.
Wow, that would be amazing. There must be hundreds of them now, and they're all in the right lane, the same lane the over weighted semi's drive all the time.
I've emailed MDOT twice in the last two years and asked them but get no response. I'm sure it's costing me tax dollars.
Don't forget those overweighted trucks pay heaps of road tax! The repair probably isn't costing you personally as much as the stamp you used to write them about it.
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>>on't forget those overweighted trucks pay heaps of road tax! The repair probably isn't costing you personally as much as the stamp you used to write them about it.
In MI there is no "roads tax" for truckers - their piece comes throught he $.15/gal on diesel.As to how much that 15c covers --not much:"a recent Federal Highway Administration study ... estimates that commercial trucks are responsible for up to 40 percent of the cost to design, build, maintain, and repair roads and bridges; in 2000 the trucking industry contributed only 16 percent of Michigan funding for such work."http://www.michiganinbrief.org/edition07/Chapter5/Highways.htm
With my mouth I will give great thanks to the Lord; I will praise Him in the midst of the throng. For He stands at the right hand of the needy, to save them from those who would condemn them to death.
- Psalms 109:30-31
Well, that's just lovely...
"I'm sure it's costing me tax dollars."
Maybe not.
If the contractor who put it in originally didn't do it right, the state could be forcing them to do it on THEIR nickel.
A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul. [George Bernard Shaw]
ouch!
As a total guess, I'll speculate that they have developed hollow spots under those sections, and need to be redone. It's more likely that the hollows will develop under the lanes with more/heavier traffic.
That's an absolute guess. But I'd be very curious to know the true answer.
Evidently the engineer in charge traveled through Ohio and thought "Wow! I can mess up our roads just like this."
I have always marveled at the condition and cleanliness of Michigan highways. It's a shame when someone messes up a good thing.
cleanliness of Michigan highways
That's because we have a "bottle bill"--get money back when you return most bottles and cans.
As far as making the contractor repair out of specs work--I find that hard to believe, many one year old Michigan roads look like they're 20 years old and never maintained and I don't see contractors out repairing them. More than likely some MDOT official or a road commissioner lives on that stretch of road!
There's some really bad chip and seal work near Flint that they can't seem to get anyone to fix. I've also seen concrete roads where the re-bar is coming through after two years. then In Muskegon there were city streets where weeds were growing up through new roads. I once asked the engineer what they used for base and he said, "Base? We strip the top soil and lay the road."
QUOTE
Evidently the engineer in charge traveled through Ohio and thought "Wow! I can mess up our roads just like this."I have always marveled at the condition and cleanliness of Michigan highways. It's a shame when someone messes up a good thing.
END QUOTEEvidently, you've never traveled east from Ohio.
With my mouth I will give great thanks to the Lord; I will praise Him in the midst of the throng. For He stands at the right hand of the needy, to save them from those who would condemn them to death.
- Psalms 109:30-31
Well, I was just in Pennsylvania Sunday. It's been a few years since I had the pleasure of traversing New York's pavement. I really like Michigan's clean highways. I spent eight months in Detroit and Pontiac. I don't remember any roadside litter. Certainly no popcans. Now, take Cleveland's interstates. Scraps of tires will be alongside the roads for days (weeks?). McDoggie beverage containers, bags and wrappers abound. Dead deer sometimes rot away or get eaten before the highway department gets to them. I travel through four counties to get to work and occasionally hit a fifth one to avoid traffic. Service departments are polite when contacted about litter. Politicians acknowledge a problem and promise action. The roads are still a dirty shame.
I lived in PA for a number of years before moving to NW Ohio - Ohio roads beat PA roads hands down. (A fraternity brother of mine, Bill T. was a great party many, anchored his class's GPA, and went to work for PennDOT. Figures...)
With my mouth I will give great thanks to the Lord; I will praise Him in the midst of the throng. For He stands at the right hand of the needy, to save them from those who would condemn them to death.
- Psalms 109:30-31
I worked in Williams, Paulding, Van Vert, Fulton and other NW counties for five years. Great roads there, especially the names (A, B, C, 1, 2, 3...) Much better than the eastern counties. No hills to contend with in the winter either.
As a fellow Michigan type that used to travel up north a lot let me point out that what they are most likely doing is taking out sections that have fine cracks in them. These cracks will expand the next winter of not fixed. Someone decided that they can be best fixed in this dumb way. You see this a lot in roads that they are going to black top the following year but they do it to a lot of roads. I have spent a lot of time stuck watching them do this.
As for why the right hand lane, please remember that in our state the trucks are supposed to stay out of the left most lane unless the road only has two. Then they can use the left lane to pass but are supposed to get back over so the left lane has more cracks from the extreme weight of the trucks.
As for the weight of said trucks well I am shocked that anyone would think it is to much of a price to pay so that we can help win the war against the mean and evil Germans under that fellow Hitler. (I kid you not we have a temporary increase in wight per axle to help with WWII)
Doug Meyer
So I'm stuck in this traffic every year for hair-line cracks in a section that is 5 years old? Wow!I'm talking about the stretch between Fowlerville and Brighton. It's a beautiful stretch of freeway that we can never utilize fully because it's either too icy in the winter or down to two lanes in the warmer months for repairs. Amazing.
Yeah that is not a big shock, My brother and my sister live in the Howell area. (I live in Lyon Twn) And yes that is most likly why you are stuck in traffic. Of course the concrete we use now of days seams be be junk. So that may help. Of course you will not get that area turned into three lanes until we get a new gov. As the lady in Lansing says she will not aprove one new mile of one new lane of one expressway as it promote urban sprall.
Of course the fact that my folks moved to Livonia in the 50s and Novi in 60s was helped by the expressway that put in in the 70s so I am sure this idea will stop peaple from moving father out.
And the money we save on the cheep concrete will help some how I am sure.
Of course it could be worse. A friend of mine live on Farmington Rd between 8 and 9 mile and they put in a completely new conc road a few years back (5 lanes) and two weeks latter cut a 6' wide strip out of it from one side to the other for utility work (and as it turned out this was planed work) and for a couple years it was a HUGE drop in the road.
Doug
When I was growing up, Chicago was famous for scheduling underground utility work to be done *after* road repaving, guaranteeing a) that the roads would always be closed or partially closed construction, b) that the road repair contractors would have a steady supply of projects year-round, and c) that no road stayed smooth for long -- between the patch jobs (varying in quality from adequate to incredibly bad) and the winter and spring freeze-thaw cycles, we were guaranteed pot-holes all the time.
Best guess is some similar sort of scheduling snafu -- some type of underground work that either got the contract signed or was scheduled after the paving job was already compelted.
Rebeccah
Amazing. That sounds exactly like the situation here every year.
I remember 2 years ago when I was commuting to Chicago once a week for 8 months. They finally finished the work on the Skyway bridge that had taken what seemed like years. I kid you not: every single week after it was "complete" I drove there they had lanes of it shut down to paint lines, change bulbs, check this or that...unbelievable. I never actually once saw it open 100% in that six months.
More than likely, their installing "keyways" in the road.
Heavy tractor trailers cause compaction of sub soil & each section begins to dip & peak at the joints.
They did this to I-5 in Wa state about 10yrs ago----- what really sucked was my schedule at that time was a swing shift job, so when I got off work I had to drive through that bottle neck every night----- 5 lanes down to 2.
I fear no man & only one GOD. Me
"Heavy tractor trailers cause compaction of sub soil & each section begins to dip & peak at the joints."
Actually this is called pumping and is caused by the fines being literally pumped out of the base material when water and heavy vehicles rolls over the concrete joint. The typical fix for this is to insert a dowel to connect the panels together such as what they did in Washington. Then of course they still need to go back and replane the concrete surfaces to smooth out the panel joints.
With the road only being 4-5 years old, I find it difficult to believe that the concrete panels aren't properly dowelled. I would tend to believe there is some other issue with the road. If the surface was asphalt I would say the issue is just regular expansion contraction problems, which it may be with the freeze thaw cycle in Michigan.
Probably the best way to find out what is going on with your road is to contact the local MDOT district office. That is usually your best bet.
And as a side note, a semi on a road is equivalent to 100,000 cars when it comes to designing road surfaces for structural requirememts.
Leland
"Probably the best way to find out what is going on with your road is to contact the local MDOT district office. That is usually your best bet."
I'm going to try that.