Ask the Road Crew
Ask about holiday travel, construction projects and anything else about your STL area commute . Join the Road Crew's weekly chat on Wednesday, Dec. 12 at 1 p.m. and get expert advice from MoDOT, St. Louis and St. Louis County.
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For the state - MoDOT recently completed some maintenance work and upgrades under I-44 at Berry Avenue. Among the "improvements" was the addition of some new concrete paving and curbs to create a bulb-in (?) where large trucks were apparently driving over the old curb and onto the gravel to make their turns. While this is certainly nice, given the limited amount of truck traffic, here, and the ongoing mantra that MoDOT "has no money", I would have thought that this would have been a much lower priority. -
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A while back, I asked the state why the outside lane on I-270 had been restriped, as part of the repaving project, between I-44 and Manchester (for severl miles) with short dashes to indicate (I presume) an exit-only, accel/decel lane, when, in fact, it's continuous through two intermediate interchanges, at Big Bend and at Dougherty Ferry?
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For the state - you've done a good job with the I-44 bridge rebuilds in the city - in and out in a timely fashion and good quality work. However, in contrast, every time I travel through the I-44 and 141 project, I feel like the design-build process resulted in a much-poorer-quality project, on multiple levels.
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You didn't really ask a question here, but there are significant differences between the design-build process and the design-bid-build process. In the design-bid-build process there is usually a set scope and a set end result. With the design-build process, there are established goals for the project with the intent that Missouri taxpayers will get the most for their money, using innovation and out of the box ideas that still meet the requirements for design and construction standards. One of the goals, typically, is a set budget for the project -- i.e. -- out of this huge list of desires, what can we get for $X amount? You don't get everything you want, but you often get some creative ideas and you get a lot more than you would typically get with design-bid-build. Andrew Gates, MoDOT Communciations
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We have crews out at night, when weather permits, moving the barrier wall that had separated eastbound traffic from the westbound lanes. We are hoping to be able to stripe westbound Saturday or Sunday, weather permitting. We are still talking with the contractor about the traffic control plans for next year, but we haven't decided anything concrete yet for the work on the westbound bridges. However, eastbound traffic is significantly higher when you consider both morning and evening rush; westbound is slightly higher in the evening, but much lower in the morning. Andrew Gates, MoDOT Communications
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It was intended to help drivers avoid jockeying for position as they were entering the park area -- by letting them know how long it would take to get into the park in each lane. It became obsolete, but rather than replace the sign, (which is still good), we were waiting until the sign had to be replaced normally through our regular sign maintenance. Andrew Gates, MoDOT Communications
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Is there a particular stretch of I-270 you are speaking about? For the most part, we mix reflective beads with the paint to make them more reflective at night; however, the rain also reflects back light from headlights. We are also working around the region, placing new reflective pavement markers on the interstates. That should improve seeing the lanes at night, and especially in the rain. Andrew Gates, MoDOT Communications
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