Sign Error may delay I-485's opening in Charlotte

Hard to belive that I have yet to do any commentary on my second home of North Carolina and their transport issues until today.

From today's Charlotte Observer:

The opening of a little over two miles of I-485 in Northwest Mecklenburg County may be delayed because the steel structures that support overhead signs have yet to be constructed. The structures, which the overall design was approved by the state in May, are now being delayed by the steel fabricator who wants an additional $86,000 on top of the $242,000 budgetted by the state for them.

The delay could last anywhere from two weeks to three months, and no solution has been determined.

Commentary:

It looks like a game of "Not My Fault/Not My Job" is going on between NCDOT and McWhirther Grading. John Parker, who is the NCDOT engineer overseeing the I-485 project, claims that the state approved the designs in May, and the DOT did their part. Ken Stayley with McWhirther says that the state did not provide the specs for constructing the structures. Parker says it wasn't the state's responsibility.

So will someone please own up to what was wrong, come to a solution and move forward?!?! Better yet just say ok there was an error somewhere lets stop pointing fingers and fix it?!?!?! The comments by readers of this article in the Charlotte Observer were very hostile and cynical.

Also, throw in the fabricator for wanting another $86,000 (on top of $242,000) to create the structures. Parker doesn't feel it is the state's responsibility to pay the extra money. Nor does he think taxpayer money should go to it.

Well a lot of "not my faults" from the NCDOT, the contractor, and an un-named fabricator wanting more money. Residents say they don't need signs for two miles of road, they can figure it out on their own.

Stay tuned....

Comments

Paper Highways: The Unbuilt New Orleans Bypass (Proposed I-410)

There are many examples around the United States of proposed freeway corridors in urban areas that never saw the light of day for one reason or another. They all fall somewhere in between the little-known and the infamous and from the mundane to the spectacular. One of the more obscure and interesting examples of such a project is the short-lived idea to construct a southern beltway for the New Orleans metropolitan area in the 1960s and 70s. Greater New Orleans and its surrounding area grew rapidly in the years after World War II, as suburban sprawl encroached on the historically rural downriver parishes around the city. In response to the development of the region’s Westbank and the emergence of communities in St. Charles and St. John the Baptist Parishes as viable suburban communities during this period, regional planners began to consider concepts for new infrastructure projects to serve this growing population. The idea for a circular freeway around the southern perimeter of t

Hernando de Soto Bridge (Memphis, TN)

The newest of the bridges that span the lower Mississippi River at Memphis, the Hernando de Soto Bridge was completed in 1973 and carries Interstate 40 between downtown Memphis and West Memphis, AR. The bridge’s signature M-shaped superstructure makes it an instantly recognizable landmark in the city and one of the most visually unique bridges on the Mississippi River. As early as 1953, Memphis city planners recommended the construction of a second highway bridge across the Mississippi River to connect the city with West Memphis, AR. The Memphis & Arkansas Bridge had been completed only four years earlier a couple miles downriver from downtown, however it was expected that long-term growth in the metro area would warrant the construction of an additional bridge, the fourth crossing of the Mississippi River to be built at Memphis, in the not-too-distant future. Unlike the previous three Mississippi River bridges to be built the city, the location chosen for this bridge was about two

Memphis & Arkansas Bridge (Memphis, TN)

Like the expansion of the railroads the previous century, the modernization of the country’s highway infrastructure in the early and mid 20th Century required the construction of new landmark bridges along the lower Mississippi River (and nation-wide for that matter) that would facilitate the expected growth in overall traffic demand in ensuing decades. While this new movement had been anticipated to some extent in the Memphis area with the design of the Harahan Bridge, neither it nor its neighbor the older Frisco Bridge were capable of accommodating the sharp rise in the popularity and demand of the automobile as a mode of cross-river transportation during the Great Depression. As was the case 30 years prior, the solution in the 1940s was to construct a new bridge in the same general location as its predecessors, only this time the bridge would be the first built exclusively for vehicle traffic. This bridge, the Memphis & Arkansas Bridge, was completed in 1949 and was the third

Gribblenation

Search This Blog