Culverts?

Things seem to have dried up fairly well and some maintenance to the roads is underway. In my last post I mentioned that the Highways dept. has turned down request for culverts for this area??????? Now I want to show you a culvert on the Bells Lake Road.

If you have been following this blog, you will have seen some pictures of Bells Lake road in my Apr 15 post. The following pictures and comments relate to this area.

After the wash out and flooding the highways group put down some decent gravel and did a fairly nice job, particularly in relation to the previous years repair (?).




Take a look at the picture above. What you see is a damaged culvert. Do you think that this had anything to do with the flooding? Although it is not evident in the photo, the broken piece is laying in the mud.


You get a better idea what the catchment area looks like in this photo. Also note the angles of the 2 culverts. Hmmmmm!

In this photo, the other side of the road, the culverts are some what parallel although they do not appear to be the same hight. Is this an engineering decision? Also if the culverts are parallel on this side of the road and not so on the other side what does that tell you?



Now take a look at this rather blown out photo of the current running out of the culverts. The one on the right is moving a fair volume of water while the one on the left is moving very little. What does that tell you?

This should be an alert that the culverts and the catchment area's on these and ALL other culverts need to be attended to. I would suggest in a month or two would be ideal times as the water level should be at it's lowest. BEFORE WINTER PLEASE.

I have mentioned before that it appears that there is not a maintenance plan in place. It would be nice if I am wrong but it appears that I nor others will never know. It is absolutely amazing what a little communications can do. Let us know, Highways, what you are doing and what you plan for the year. We have a number of print media that I'm sure would be happy to print such information.

Until next time

In the scheme of things

On a recent trip to Kamloops there was a lot of construction on 97. Fortunately there were few delays as I had an early start. Even if there was I would not have been put off as we really need improvements on that highway.

On the other had I have been told that the local highways crew requested a number of culverts (see my last post) and were turned down flatly. Now when you take a look at the number of culverts in this area and in particular the large number of damaged ones, it becomes a concern. The question begs: why do we have damaged culverts in the first place?

I suppose that when you look at the big picture, highway 97, gravel roads in the Horsefly area, who do you think is going to win! As the rancher would say: it looks like we are going to have to continue to suck the hind teat. Maybe if everyone contributed to fixing up the road in front of and along there property line, then maybe we would get some good roads to drive on??

As an after thought, I just had to have some work done on my car's front end, a 2008. As I said to the service rep, these cars were not designed to be driven continually on or roads. He agreed. I guess it's back to the fuel gobbling truck.

In the scheme things I guess we are insignificant.

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

Preventive Planning?

I travelled to and from Williams Lake the other day and noticed around the Pioneer log house building site, they have cleared a large area behind it. I also noticed, what I thought at first, was a large herd of cattle. Taking a second look it was not cattle but deer. It's been a long time since I have seen so many deer together in one place.

Now this got me to thinking: What is going to happen come spring? Oh yes it will eventually come. Very likely the deer will be heading down to the road. You all know what this means. Dead deer, and lots of vehicle damage. Hopefully that will be all.

It would be nice if the highways folks, or the contractor for that matter, used a little bit of common sense and forethought. It would seem logical that the placing of deer reflectors at that location would go a long way to cutting down the potential carnage.

Some food for thought!

And the snow continues to fall

I have just returned from a stay (month long) in the Punshaw area SW of Prince George. Other then the
cold weather, a few days anyway, it was not all that bad. What makes it not that bad was the very good
condition of the roads, especially for the winter.

Having had to make a number of trips into Prince George I had to drive on the Punchaw Rd, then onto
the Blackwater Rd, approximately 1 hour drive from Prince George. In short, the roads were extremely
good, well maintained, and seemed to always be plowed out right after each snow fall. Not only were
they plowed out, they were sanded and pushed right back. No getting narrower with each snow fall.
One of the enjoyable (?!) parts of the winter driving, being to Prince George or Quesnel, was that each
cattle guard I came to: guess what? They were properly plowed out, the cattle guards were set at the
right height. No bone jarring hits and very likely easy on the suspension.

When I returned to this part of the country I was surprised to see the roads well plowed out. But quess
what has not changed? If you guessed cattle gruards, you are right. Come on folks (IRS), this is not
rocket science. Any graderman I have talked to tells me this. I also have talked to some former
employee's of mine, professional drivers, who have had YEARs of plowing experience, all tell me the
same thing. There is no excuse for the condition of the roads around all our cattle guard's.

One last thing: On my return, I had to dig out the enterance to my drive. In the Blackwater country, all
drive way's were plowed out by the highway crews. That little bit of effort goes a long way to
maintaining a good customer relationship. It's little things that make a big difference.

A nice touch in the Blackwater/Prince George area: All logging company vehicles are marked with a
placard displayed on the fround of the vehicle. Pick ups included. I also understand that a couple of the
bigger operators have hired road cops. What a novel idea, policing speeders. Sounds like a good idea to
me.

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