Road Building ?

Last year, 2008, some long awaited repairs were done to 108 rd from Bells Lake road to approximately the 20 board. We all wondered about these repairs as they put done approximate 6 to 8 inch's of sand with a little bit of gravel. Most who live in this part of the world have never seen this type of road repair before. The general consensus seems to be that it will not stand up and I think this time of year, April, we are seeing the start of the deterioration. Only time will tell, hopefully not to soon.

Now when you go back and look at some of the work that has been done you begin to wonder what else will go wrong. I am, of course, speaking about a culvert at Malcolm Creek.

When we take a look at the following photo, all does not appear to be that bad. Right?

Now let's take a closer look.

The depression you see is where there is a culvert running below the road. The only problem is it is approximately 1/2 inch below the surface. Remember the road was resurface last year and this depression started to show up approximately 2 to 3 weeks after the project was completed??????

Now lets take a closer look.

The yellow line represents the edge of the road. What is that you say? A hole in the side of the road! Remembering of course that the road was resurfaced last summer, how could this be? Now let's take a closer look:

The yellow line is the same one in the photo above. So what do we have here. A culvert and it does not reach the side of the road. What you don't see is that a piece of culvert was added but not attached ie welded together. Then to top it off, they tried to cover up the error (?) by covering it with an abutment sign. That is the type of sign that they put on the ends of bridges, the yellow and black stripes signs.

As this road is narrow, if you were to meet an oncoming vehicle at this point and you moved over so that you could both pass, I think you would be in serious trouble. It is a SAFETY ISSUE.

You would also think that if there was any QC (quality control) during and after the project that this SAFETY ISSUE, would have been caught and rectified IMMEDIATELY.

I guess that this is the quality of construction and other things that we will have to continue to put up with.

Same old, Same old. Still lots to report on including road flooding etc. etc.

Comments

Same old - Same old

Well it's that time of the year again: Floods and washed out roads. It seems to me that if you have a problem EVERY year in the same spot that you fix the problem.






If you look back in past posts you will find a similar picture. Now what is wrong with this. Well for starters it's a safety hazard. Secondly it is a money problem. The money problem might not be the case because all it takes for this to be temporarily fixed is a load of gravel and some signs. You will notice no signs when the picture was taken but they did appear later in the day. I might add that this situation started 4 days earlier (safety hazard).







I talked to a highways employee to ask why it had not been signed. I was told that they had run out of signs because they need so many on other roads. They had to drive to Williams Lake to get
some more???????










Now this particular problem can be fixed. The problem I see is that it would cost more money in one year to do it right then they are willing to spend on it. If you ignor the problem, spend as little money each year only when it is brought to the attention of the government, then you will not have to spend much money each year. Has anyone tallied up the cost over the years.









You can see in this picture a couple of culverts. The interesting thing here is that there is not that much water flowing through them. I wonder why. Back to the preventive maintenance problem I have spoken about earlier. Clean out the culverts in the fall and guess what. You just might have fewer problems in the spring.












I have to wonder when the amount of money spent on proper maintenance to our roads out weighs the safety of the travelling public! I narrowly missed this travelling along this road late one night. If I had hit it what level of damage would my vehicle have sustained? What level of injuries would I have received?

Again just the same old, same old, in the continuing saga of poor road maintenance in the Horsefly area.

Comments!

PM #2

Well spring has sprung, at least on some days. I titled this entry PM#2. For those who might not be familiar with the term PM, it would appear obvious that the road contractor does not, it means Preventive Management. The concept behind PM is to get things fixed before they go wrong. The "dahhhhh" factor is, get this: IT SAVES MONEY. Yes it does and guess who's money it is saving. Right again: yours and mine ... the tax payer.

I was travelling down Bells Lake road a couple of weeks ago. There were a lot of bare spots and of course there were spots with a fair depth of snow still on the road. Now it seems to me that if one was in the PM mode, there would have been a plow truck out there moving the snow of the road. It was soft as could be seen by the ruts and of course felt at night and early morning by the deep ice ruts. Now correct me if I'm wrong, if the snow had been taken off then the current mud holes that are there now might not be there and the road might be dry. With a dry road there is a remote possibility that there would be less pot holes. Get my drift.

In the same light, PM, it would seem to me to be logical, that if you filled some of those GROWING holes at the cattle guards they might be less dangerous then they are now. I wonder how long it will be before someone figures out how to fix cattle guards. Of all my travels, and I have been doing a lot lately, the cattle guards in the Horsefly area are hands down the worst.

Feel free to jump in with your story's ... I'm sure that they will be good ones.

Drive safely