Interstate highway conditions
After traveling from North Idaho to Florida towing our trailer---I have to say the Interstate highway system is horrible! Dwight Eisenhower would be ashamed of the way our states and federal governmen...
Forum Discussion
Here's another, much smaller, but typical example of how far behind WA state is and how they can't seem to "scrape up" enough money to do things right.
I have another project that is wrapping up this fall (should have been last year, but WSDOT shut down all projects that weren't part of the Federal injunction to save fish. Because apparently the Covid wasn't an issue with those projects.) Or more specifically, the lawsuit against the State is large enough that the perceived "safety" of stopping work during the pandemic breakout was not as important as the pending suit.
Regardless, my project involved mostly, rehabbing 4 bridge decks.
To do this and not inconvenience traffic, over $5M of this $14M project, which is now over $16M due to bridges being in worse condition than the state "anticipated", was to provide temporary bridge crossings. (Even though it was obvious the direction provided in the original plans and specs was inadequate to fix even what you could see with the naked eye.)
Now that the structure work is "done", the things we pointed out as being still an immediate issue were ignored, and we are now re moving work we just completed to repair deeper issues.
None of this is that astounding, but what is, is that the cost of constructing 2 NEW bridges, in between the existing 4 bridges would have been roughly the same as the cost to put a $16M cheap bandaid on the existing ones.
Yes there was room, without demolishing the existing structures and yes the demo of the existing structures would have added another 30% or more to the bottom line.
But simply, there could now be new structures there with a brand new born on date and 75 year design life, with the same traffic capacity with the ability to economically expand later for additional lanes, for about the same cost as the bargain bandaid.
But to WSDOTs credit and thanks to the lib WA agenda, the REAL reason this didn't happen was because WDFW and WA DOE would not "approve" yet another structure or permanent impedance in the Yakima River without an egregious charge to WSDOT for "mitigation" fees.
7 figure mitigation fees. Heck, WDFW charged us $200k to do work outside the prescribed in-water work windows, which are designed around periods of low fish traffic and no spawning, even though we proved that the extra in-water work window we needed was also during non-spawning periods, with actually less fish activity.
Money just flies into the hands of others who don't have an actual verifiable impact or claim to it....and that affects how much gets done.
I could provide dozens of similar examples that are just mind blowing and have no logical or sound reasoning other than govt entities with their hands out, taking money form each other.
I have another project that is wrapping up this fall (should have been last year, but WSDOT shut down all projects that weren't part of the Federal injunction to save fish. Because apparently the Covid wasn't an issue with those projects.) Or more specifically, the lawsuit against the State is large enough that the perceived "safety" of stopping work during the pandemic breakout was not as important as the pending suit.
Regardless, my project involved mostly, rehabbing 4 bridge decks.
To do this and not inconvenience traffic, over $5M of this $14M project, which is now over $16M due to bridges being in worse condition than the state "anticipated", was to provide temporary bridge crossings. (Even though it was obvious the direction provided in the original plans and specs was inadequate to fix even what you could see with the naked eye.)
Now that the structure work is "done", the things we pointed out as being still an immediate issue were ignored, and we are now re moving work we just completed to repair deeper issues.
None of this is that astounding, but what is, is that the cost of constructing 2 NEW bridges, in between the existing 4 bridges would have been roughly the same as the cost to put a $16M cheap bandaid on the existing ones.
Yes there was room, without demolishing the existing structures and yes the demo of the existing structures would have added another 30% or more to the bottom line.
But simply, there could now be new structures there with a brand new born on date and 75 year design life, with the same traffic capacity with the ability to economically expand later for additional lanes, for about the same cost as the bargain bandaid.
But to WSDOTs credit and thanks to the lib WA agenda, the REAL reason this didn't happen was because WDFW and WA DOE would not "approve" yet another structure or permanent impedance in the Yakima River without an egregious charge to WSDOT for "mitigation" fees.
7 figure mitigation fees. Heck, WDFW charged us $200k to do work outside the prescribed in-water work windows, which are designed around periods of low fish traffic and no spawning, even though we proved that the extra in-water work window we needed was also during non-spawning periods, with actually less fish activity.
Money just flies into the hands of others who don't have an actual verifiable impact or claim to it....and that affects how much gets done.
I could provide dozens of similar examples that are just mind blowing and have no logical or sound reasoning other than govt entities with their hands out, taking money form each other.
