Road Construction

On her blog at the Courant, Loretta Waldman has posted pictures of a proposed overpass for the US44 / Route 10 intersection at the foot of Avon Mountain.  The intersection is infamous as the site of a couple of spectacular crashes in the past few years, due to trucks’ brakes failing on the steep downgrade.

This problem was supposed to be resolved by an ugly runaway truck ramp recently installed, but apparently ConnDOT still has some grand plans.  "Before" and "after" pictures are up:

Back to India this week:

Northwest of the center city of Kolkata there is an interestingly-named neighborhood called Dum Dum, best known for the being the home to a Royal Artillery armory in the 19th Century, and more recently the site of Kolkata’s international airport.

Pictured above is a random, under-construction interchange on National Highway 34 as it passes just to the west of the airport. It’s not terribly exciting, but I just had to feature the Dum Dum neighborhood.

As a former resident of the Wiregrass region of southeastern Alabama, it’s nice to see some (admittedly slow) progress being made on connecting Dothan to the interstate system. From the Dothan Eagle:

ALDOT is currently soliciting residents’ opinions of three possible routes for the freeway, and no route will be chosen until the department is able to review the feedback.

“I don’t have any exact time frame,” Biddick said. “We have to look at any potential issues brought up in the feedback, then address those to determine which route would be the best.”[...]

ALDOT expects the project to greatly reduce through traffic in the city.

“I think it’ll help reduce a lot of the congestion on Ross Clark Circle and allow for a lot more development around here,” Biddick said.

For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure (misfortune?) of experiencing the Ross Clark Circle, especially when hordes of folks are headed to/from Panama City Beach and the Redneck Riviera…the Circle can be bad.

Dothan has a surprising amount of commercial development for a town its size. Admittedly, a lot of that is the result of Dothan being the only town its size within some distance, and therefore is able to support quite a bit of commercial development due to its role as a regional economic hub.

Talk of connecting Dothan to the Interstate system, either with its own spur, or as part of a larger project extending up to I-185 outside Columbus, GA; or to the new bypass being built around Montgomery, AL, has been around for quite a while.

However, I wonder if regional planners might be asking for trouble by promoting a new freeway as an excuse for more development. After all, even though Dothan is commercially more significant than its census figures would suggest…there is a limit to the amount of development it can sustain.

If local leaders encourage development along a new freeway bypass, I can’t help but expect that the Circle will start to be as blighted as downtown Dothan became when businesses shifted to the Circle.

I’ve written previously about the runaway truck ramp being built on US44 in Avon in the wake of a couple of nasty accidents. It’s open for business.

From the Courant:

Construction on the $2.8 million project—the first of its kind in Connecticut—began Nov. 19 and required the seizure of five properties, including two homes, according to state officials. A ban on trucks over 13 tons that has been in effect since September on the stretch of Route 44 traversing the mountain will be lifted with the opening of the ramp.

The idea for such a ramp, a series of nets and cables that slow down and eventually stop a truck, was proposed in 2005 after a horrific truck crash killed four and injured 11, capturing national headlines.

Meanwhile, regular traffic enforcement of that stretch of US 44 is still somewhere between slim and none.

I wonder if the state will finally realize that it needs to do something more substantial about the underbuilt transportation infrastructure in/around Hartford the first time a runaway truck driver fails to use the ramp.

For this week’s highway feature, I thought we’d head to India.

India’s still developing its highway system.  In fact, when trying to find aerial footage of a highway in/around Delhi, I ran into problems in finding anything more significant than an arterial route.

The exception to that would be NH-8, which is being upgraded to the Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway.  The upgrades are so new that, as of this writing, Google Maps imagery hasn’t quite caught up to the construction:

Seen in the Courant:

Gov. Rell today announced she intends to disband the state DOT by 2010, splitting the agency into two separate departments: a Department of Highways, and a Department of Public Transportation, Aviation, and Ports.[...]

Genuario said “The old DOT has become too bureaucratic, too inefficient and too single-minded in its approach to problem solving.”

“Bold reforms are necessary if citizens are to obtain a level of transportation services to which they are entitled and if the state is to realize intended results of initiatives adopted over the past three years,” Genuario said.

Also included in the transportation section of the Governor’s State of the State address was a proposal to make Bradley an independent operation.

Now, a dumb question: If part of the problem with ConnDOT is that it’s too bureaucratic, how does replacing one bureaucracy with two improve the situation?

For those of you who may be so inclined, Alex has posted report and photos of progress being made on bridge reconstruction in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Florida in the wake of Katrina and Ivan.

I’ll be down visiting Lower Alabama and the Emerald Coast of Florida in about a week. I may try to get a few photos up myself, if I have the opportunity.

In the wake of a couple of spectacular accidents on US 44 between Avon and West Hartford (”Avon Mountain”, featuring up to a 10% grade going over a local ridge), which lead to trucks being banned from that stretch of highway, ConnDOT is finally getting around to building a truck runaway ramp. From the Courant:

Construction started Monday on a runaway truck ramp that transportation officials hope will prevent, in part, crashes that have plagued a dangerous stretch of Route 44 at the base of Avon Mountain.[...]

Carpenter initially hoped the $2.8 million ramp would be completed by January, when a state ban on trucks weighing more than 13 tons using that stretch of Route 44 is slated to end.

But the ramp is now expected to be finished on April 30, which will likely prompt the state to continue the ban and keep large trucks off the mountain for an even longer period.

One westbound lane of Route 44 is closed due to the construction, just in time for fun wintertime commuting on the mountain, as well as increased traffic as folks go over the mountain and through the woods to grandmother’s house (or wherever) for Thanksgiving.

Avon Mountain includes some of the area’s most expensive residential developments. As you might expect, the eminent domain procedures aren’t going all that well. Again quoting the Courant:

The state offered to pay Kathleen Conran, 76, $425,000 for her house and her 2.9 acres of property. She rejected the offer, state officials say, and has previously said that she and her husband built the house 40 years ago with painstaking care, adding such details as wood flooring taken from a house built in the 1700s. Nursick said Conran will stay in her house until the end of December.

Hunter’s Run Condominiums rejected $3,900 for 1,558 square feet of land.

And, finally, Avon Old Farms Inn, a popular restaurant at the base of the mountain, has rejected an offer of $1,015,000 for a 5,288-square-foot piece of its property.

So, is it cynical for me to speculate that the next runaway truck incident will occur shortly after the ramp opens…and that the ramp might not get used for some reason or another (lack of driver education…runaway eastbound…)?

Seen in the New York Times:

The first sign that things were going to turn ugly was after the California Department of Transportation allowed drivers to use the highway only during rush hour last summer, with traffic flowing in one direction at a time and creeping along behind escort vehicles.

One person called and said he would climb a water tower and shoot workers. Next came angry exchanges, with one driver tossing a burrito at a construction worker. Vandals tore down barricades, and construction equipment was stolen.[...]

This year, another worker felt a stinging sensation on the back of her leg. She looked down to find a BB pellet on the ground, said Terri Kasinga, a spokeswoman for the state transportation agency.

Citing the clashes and the need to expand the construction zone, the state shut the road last month.

The road in question is one of a limited number of routes used by commuters to get across the San Gabriel Mountains into the Los Angeles basin. In other words, they’ve got a nasty commute.

It’s understandable that they might be unhappy with road construction, but when you’re shooting BB’s at the workers, perhaps it’s time to reconsider the level of stress in your life.

As reported by Xinhua:

China will begin Monday building a “highway” on Mount Qomolangma, the world’s tallest peak, in southwest China’s Tibet Autonomous Region so as to ease the path of those bearing the Olympic torch.

Budgeted at 150 million yuan (19.7 million U.S. dollars), construction of the road will kick off at Qomolangma Base Camp 5,200 meters above sea level.

The project aims to turn a 108-km rough road linking Tingri County of Xigaze Prefecture at the foot of the mountain to the Base Camp into a blacktop highway fenced by undulating guardrails.

(The local name for Everest is Qomolangma. Also, the 2008 Olympic Torch run will apparently include an ascent of Mount Everest.)

Treehugger points out the environmental concerns:

The highway is only the latest symbol of China’s fast-expanding highway network and an unsustainable (and politically charged) development that is tarnishing some of the country’s most valuable cultural and natural sites. For instance, the Qinghai-Tibet railway, completed last summer, has been blamed for threatening both the culture and nature of the Tibetan landscape and for strengthening China’s grip over a province that some insist should be independent.

I do have to admit to shaking my head at the inconsistencies over developments in what was supposed to be the “Green Olympics”.