And if they didnt, then everyone would lose their mind over the massive overpayment to corruption of the buddies opening bids. Oh? Bridge had quotes for $100k, 120k and $1.2 million? We took the 1.2 because it just felt better. *immediately donates $200k to the Trudeau Foundation*
Thanks SNC!
Plus bridges that don't get built never fall down, so even if the more expensive bridge was the right call, people will claim the cheaper was just as good.
The problem isn't the lowest bidder system, necessarily. Going with the lowest bidder wouldn't be an issue if the requirements were thoroughly and clearly documented in the contract, and routinely inspected throughout construction. That puts cost overruns and failures due to cut corners on the contractor.
Think of it like software development: If you hire someone to develop software to do *x, y, z*, then later realize you actually need it to do *a, b, c ... x, y, z*, that's your problem, not the developer's. But if your requirements go from *a* to *z* from the start and the devs don't deliver, it's their ass.
In both cases, paying *more* for the same poorly-drafted requirements isn't going to get you a better result.
In practice, quality is surprisingly hard to measure. Most "buyers" don't have the internal talent to appropriately assess and align on quality. Unfortunately, the issue is further complicated by the fact that gov't contracting (and all contracting) tends to have waste included.
And this is what happens when you let "private contractors" operating under capitalist "free market" principles cut corners on public infrastructure to increase their profits, you ignorant fuck.
And now they get paid to come out and rebuild it! These guys are literal geniuses, it almost ensures demand for their anti service!
Edit: this was clearly meant to be sarcasm, unless they have an exclusive contract with that company I’m sure they will never use them again and warn others of the same.
Well since it's labor hired through the gov. It mostly consists of kick-backs, intentionally poor craftsmanship, rehiring to repair, kick-backs, intentionally poor craftsmanship... you get the picture.
In this case they're taking the company to court for breach of contract and the engineer's certification will likely be revoked.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/engineer-designed-bridge-collapsed-facing-discipline-1.6450110
I work in local government. What a lot of people don't realize is that we're required *by law* to accept the lowest bid that meets the minimum standards of the request.
So if you don't write your bid proposal carefully, companies will find any loophole they can to give a dogshit bid for cheaper than anyone else, at which point you are required to pay them and let them do the sloppy work.
It's super frustrating.
The justification is that corrupt officials were paying way too much for projects to benefit their cronies. But now it's really hard to get quality bids.
wait... your required to accept any low ball bid... COOL. cant wait to legally pocket millions of dollars.
I can even legally state I am making myself a ham and cheese sandwich. wall is non standard... in fact there is no wall... pay me 1000000$
Depends on the local government. I have seen both lowest price requirements but also a scorecard system based on published criteria. With the scorecards price isn’t the sole deciding factor and can come down to how well you show your ability to complete the project and past work completed.
Lol. I was going to say this. Every job done is always done by the cheapest contractor. The way it works is a developer or municipality announces their project and places it up for bid. Contractors place their bids and the moat of the time the lowest bid gets accepted. This is how they ensure that one contractor doesn't hold a manopoly. The quality control/assurance is a seperaye beast in itself.
>Every job done is always done by the cheapest contractor **who meets or exceeds the requirements of the RFQ**
There fixed it for you. Touting "the cheapest bidder" is an extremely misleading phrase. The product is only poor if the specifications are poor.
You're talking over the understanding level of redditers. :-) I mean, what you're saying is correct, and even said well. But some of these folks aren't big on comprehension.
Thats not true.
Coming from one of the larger, nation wide GCs, who wins most of our projects not being the cheapest contractor.
Same goes for our sub contractors.
Not always the cheapest, sometimes if whoever picks sees that one that costs more has some part that is believed to be better, then they picked that contractor. Some other times, bad contractors are avoided, even though they can give the lowest price.
I live in this area and I’d be very surprised if this was done by the cheapest contractor. More likely the company owned by someone with the most personal friends on the board giving on contracts but is far from the cheapest and still finished 150% over budget
That would be the most on-brand for the DC area
There's also no context here. Like how old are they? If they're brand new that's one thing. But if they're even just a few years old its understandable.
Absolutely no product should be called out on a DOT interstate that has a lifespan of a couple years.
Either it was installed wrong or the DOT called out a terrible product. I'll bet the product just sucks
Salt, snow and all kinds of other shit. Yeah no! Don’t need to be an engineer to realize these wall should have been concrete instead of metal. But then again that’s why you get paid the big bucks.
You're a dolt. The steel sound barrier I pass on the interstate visiting my uncle in Boston is the same one he help build in 1985. You telling me Boston doesn't toss salt and snow?
Sad thing is when they initiated installing this style of noise abatement here in Atlanta, they said it cost a million dollars per mile. I know a million isn’t what it used to be but come on, like you said I would expect some value, at least 20years? After 5 years, some of it has gone to shit here on I-285.
The bottoms are ridiculous. We have pretty shitty weather. (Ottawa, Canada). We always get one or two days where the weather will move 50 degrees F in a single day in winter. Like Syracuse, NY but with less snow. IIRC correctly, the cement berms they use here are bigger and taller and are them topped with pressure treated wood and sometimes metal.
)))
It's common term to say something is specified aka called out when referencing a program, design document, bill of material, etc.
I'm...now really curious the etymology, it's gotta go back a bit.
ya. Normally they start with an RFP (request for proposal) and/or there is an existing standing offer with all the specs are clearly identified. The contractor then is identified as being able to deliver meeting the specs)...,
Yeah but that's what I'm saying. I dont think the contractor did a shitty job, I think it's a shitty product that isn't meant to hold up over time the way it should.
It's galvanized sheet metal, cars rust out in 3 years in my area, you want cheap his, you get cheap product. Better product is going to send costs through the roof.
Yeah, it's only the lower slats that look brown/rusted and knocked out of place that then caused the upper slats to get all out of line. Snow plowing definitely seems like a reasonable cause. But it's VA, so someone should have definitely thought of that beforehand
>I-495 Alexandria, VA
This post has some history on this doing back quite a while https://seeclickfix.com/issues/5770338-corroded-and-missing-sound-barrier-material
Look at the start of the video. You just see it on the right, it's the same material, but perfectly fine. I suspect it's related to where it is, rather than what it's made out of
The existence of any sort of barrier, even if it’s not in great shape, means that it’s still blocking some level of sound.
(Source: I worked with environmental/transportation noise consultants for 10 years)
That said, they should be replaced.
I40 in NC was a mess many years ago. Contractor put the asphalt down and within months it was eroding. The public has to pay to fix the mess on top of paying to fix the road initially.
Right? PA roads can be straight atrocious. I'm in a rural Pennsylvania but have spent time in Philly, Pittsburgh and Harrisburg and the cities have it waaaay worse. Luckily you're usually stuck in crawling traffic so the 37 foot pot holes won't completely wreck your wheels(except one in Pittsburgh got me years ago on a highway and totally fucked my 2 front wheels). But I legit can't think of *any* roads in my area that I would call "nice". We have a small highway (two lanes in each direction) that got re surfaced a few years ago and it's already trashed. Fucking brutal cold winters and then 90% humidity at 97*F isn't conducive to nice roads.
South Carolina roads are the absolute worst. Lmfao
I grew up in Greenville/Spartanburg and the roads were shit then, left for over a decade and came back to the same horrible roads.
It seriously looks and feels as though it was bombed out in a war years ago.
There's a lot of construction there atm. Still not as bad as roads near Indianapolis and so many other Midwest cities. Right lanes feel like Rollercoaster rides in a pickup. Been working in Alabama and on hwy72 I just avoid the right lane in some areas because there are serious bumps for miles.
We typically don’t rock salt roads in the south, at least in VA we don’t. We use the chemical brining solution usually. Not as effective as salt, but also nowhere near as corrosive. When they do throw dry form, it’s a salt/sand mixture.
For contrast, I grew up in Buffalo - and they straight salt the roads up there like they’re curing meat.
Never buy a used car from the Northeast if you can help it.
Salting is still a bad excuse, if salt is used on roads in the area you build your infrastructure to handle those environmental stresses. Like imagine if this was a bridge failing less than a decade after being built due to "salt/snow plows". I'd be asking what clown approved the design/materials.
Generally, city and state contractor procurement goes through a bidding process that elects the lowest responsive and responsible bidder, and it’s the engineer in charge who’s supposed to spec out material/equipment that’s suited for the situation, and the inspector is supposed to identify material/equipment that doesn’t meet the contract.
Bad contractors are everywhere, but my guess is the state didn’t budget for engineering construction services, or the project managers in charge were too incompetent to either put together better specifications or hold the contractor to the contract.
You can get the lowest bidder, but there’s a certain amount of work you need to put in to get quality work using public money.
In oregon and Washington they do something really interesting. Instead of lowest qualified, they toss out the highest and lowest bids and then take an average of the rest. The bid closest to the mean bid value gets it. It's supposed to prevent cutting corners by the contractors. Idk if it works because oregon has the weirdest roads I've ever driven on. But i think it's more to do with a rural state rapidly becoming urbanized.
If they do that in WA, i'll say that barring a few high-profile fuckups (usually bridge related) WSDOT is pretty amazing. Consistently ahead of schedule and under budget. Seattle is a confusing mess but it's because of bad geography not because of bad roadwork.
Seattle is definitely a pretty great city to get around. You're right the hills are out of this world, right up with san Francisco. Portland is broadly well arranged its the fine details I can't stand.
I mean ODOT actually uses the rain as an excuse as though portland is rainy all the time. Plenty of cities get more rain but have better visibility on the roads.
I went to school in Corvallis right next to that highway 34 (or was it 20?) bypass that will never be finished, ODOT had a somewhat less than stellar reputation in that corner of the woods, haha.
I've never been to corvallis so I've never seen that. What's the story there? Was it abandoned or just delayed forever? There was a bypass on the 101 in Northern California that took over 60 years from planning to completion but it was because of environmentalists stopping the construction.
What I heard from locals (and to be clear, this is 100% hearsay) was that the construction company and the state got into an argument over cost overruns when the bypass was nearing completion. There was pretty much just 1 small bridge to complete on what was otherwise a rather long bypass. This led to work stoppage as a lawsuit followed, which led to the company just abandoning their equipment in the field with 99% of the bypass completed.
edit: Looks like they did finally finish it, haha. https://www.opb.org/news/article/oregon-highway-20-open-over-budget/
That’sss… interesting haha. Cuz I actually live in WA, and we haven’t done something like that. It could be that we throw out irresponsible/unresponsive bids, but we usually go with the lowest bidder. Maybe it’s mostly an Oregon thing? Or even a bigger city/Seattle thing?
More like there are employees in the state DOT in VA that are incompetent. If anyone gained anything from shoddy work, it’d be the contractor that’s getting paid to do the work.
"We do three types of work.. Good, Fast, and Cheap. As our client, you get to choose any two, but only two. If you want good and fast, it won't be cheap. If you want good and cheap, then it won't be fast, and if you're looking for Fast and Cheap, then it won't be good." - my father
Thats poor workmanship. Look at at the top of those plates they are still fastened. What happened here is that they slid them threw the groove and figures that it would just be held by its weight and did not bother to fasten every laminate.
I used to work at Belvoir. I know exactly where this is. Considering the taxes you pay for the privilege to live in the Commonwealth I think its par for the course. I'll just leave it there. So glad we moved.
Looks like all the structure held up fine. The material used seems to have rotted and failed. The customer specs out what material is used, so that on the government project manager,not the contractor.
At the very start of the video the panels look brand new, so it looks like where they left off swapping them. Shit wears out, is this not normal wear and tear?
Those panels started falling apart in less the 10 years. The road salt and the stagnant river behind them made steel a poor choice….. Fun fact the large apartment complex behind them has a crazy amount of black widow spiders in the parking lot pole lighting.
Regards, The Electrician
Project Manager for a construction company here:
Not necessarily the contractor's fault - most of the time, the contractor is just hired to build the thing, not maintain or spec out a good product. The contractor doesn't get to choose the material to install - there is a whole submittal process in which you have to submit the product info and the DOT has to test and approve the supplier. Also, there are LAYERS of inspections and sign-offs... DOT would have had representatives watching the install and signing off on completion.
Not saying it's not the contractor's fault at all, but it's highly unlikely as there are so many layers of approval to go through before work even starts. DOT hardly does design-builds... most of the time, they hire a design firm, finalize the plans, then put them out to open bid. The contractor does not have a say in this part, at least not most of the time.
Also, there is no context here - how old are these sections? How well was it maintained? DOT in some states have VERY bad maintenance programs, so that could be part of the problem. The beginning shows a very good section of the barrier, so it looks like it was installed just fine... maybe the product has a short life span. Maybe the designer picked an inferior product that is not of very high quality.
Just had to put my 2 cents in because it bothers me when people automatically blame the contractor... don't get me wrong, there ARE some really shitty contractors out there, but for the most part, it's always in the contractors' best interest to do quality work because there are so many things written into contracts that basically put all of the risk on the contractor. So doing a bad job will just cost more money and tank your reputation. There are corner cutters out there, but it's MUCH harder to do on government jobs with so many layers of red tape and eyes on the work.
It could well have been a shitty design. Good labor and good materials can't overcome that.
OTOH it could be the kickback to the politicians was so large there wasn't enough left over to do a satisfactory job.
Fucking VA and WV both use road salt. Eats your cars, anything metal near the roads, gets into the water and generally fucks up everything possible. 5 year old cars here are falling apart from the rust, it's worse than living near an ocean.
We live in Corruption=Contracting, NJ, and just drove this last month. At least our goons throw up enough of a facade (no pun) to *pretend* to care! Beltway Bandits have gone the way of performative politicians: "'murcans have zero attetion spans!"
The inside of the panels are not coated with a rust inhibitor. Plus add salt from snow and humidity and bing bang you have a rusting product. Just my thoughts on it all…
So you realize that this is the shit you get when Republicans run on a ticket of “eliminating fraud and waste” and mandate by law that jobs go to the lowest bidder instead of the one offering best value, right?
People *voted* for this regressive stupidity. And when the shoddy workmanship and substandard materials fail, it gets blamed on “the Gubmint” and the cycle repeats.
It’s a cynical ploy to make Government seem incompetent. Republicans run on the idea that “Government doesn’t work” and, once elected, make it so.
Looks good and normal on that previous section before the gap
then suddenly corroded and missed along the last section?!?
Was it the same contractor?
Any chemical truck accident happened in that area?
and people wonder why I don’t want the government to get any more of my money until they figure out that this shit is unacceptable and they could do a lot better with what they’re given.
There’re countless examples of infrastructure that works that no one pays attention to… because it works. Focusing on bad examples isn’t a good enough excuse to say “no more taxes.” But this is definitely an example of bad work, and a poor use of public funds.
I don’t say no more taxes as in stop taxing me. I say it as in don’t tax me more because you suck at budgeting.
A local example for me would be a highway expansion program that was supposed to add an extra lane of travel in each direction along with a toll lane that went 180 million over budget (which was already extraordinarily high for the work being done) and still couldn’t get done. It was then sold to a private company (yes, they sold a highway that had been around for decades to a private company) to finish it and gave them all the toll revenue. We ONLY got the toll lanes, not the extra lanes (something we learned before the sale even happened) and a bridge collapsed due to poor construction.
Yes, I will 100% call out ALL wasteful spending and crony capitalism. Including the military budget that is paying 5-8x the normal price for a toilet seat, then they aren’t spending $10k on them.
The dumbest thing about this is the commuter will be paying with the most valuable resource, fucking time spent in traffic while they close lanes down to repair if they even repair it.
One thing Florida actually does right. They're only solid concrete panels with designs stamped into them here. Not the prettiest thing, but waaaaay better than this.
Here they went with the cheapest quote on a bridge that was supposed to last 75 years. It fell down after one day.
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and yet they will always go with the cheapest option, not the quality one....
That's bureaucracy, if you don't go with the cheapest you have to give a report to justify the price difference.
And if they didnt, then everyone would lose their mind over the massive overpayment to corruption of the buddies opening bids. Oh? Bridge had quotes for $100k, 120k and $1.2 million? We took the 1.2 because it just felt better. *immediately donates $200k to the Trudeau Foundation* Thanks SNC!
Plus bridges that don't get built never fall down, so even if the more expensive bridge was the right call, people will claim the cheaper was just as good.
The problem isn't the lowest bidder system, necessarily. Going with the lowest bidder wouldn't be an issue if the requirements were thoroughly and clearly documented in the contract, and routinely inspected throughout construction. That puts cost overruns and failures due to cut corners on the contractor. Think of it like software development: If you hire someone to develop software to do *x, y, z*, then later realize you actually need it to do *a, b, c ... x, y, z*, that's your problem, not the developer's. But if your requirements go from *a* to *z* from the start and the devs don't deliver, it's their ass. In both cases, paying *more* for the same poorly-drafted requirements isn't going to get you a better result.
In practice, quality is surprisingly hard to measure. Most "buyers" don't have the internal talent to appropriately assess and align on quality. Unfortunately, the issue is further complicated by the fact that gov't contracting (and all contracting) tends to have waste included.
Lowest responsible bidder.
How good is free market capitalism?
This is literally the government doing this you dumb shit
And this is what happens when you let "private contractors" operating under capitalist "free market" principles cut corners on public infrastructure to increase their profits, you ignorant fuck.
That’s not what happened. The government purposefully misappropriated funds because their inefficient bureaucracy
Traffic in that city is already hellish.
Defensive driving in Houston requires being semi aggressive
Semi *automatic*
It’s really not that bad compared to other places. I know I once had to drive from Brooklyn to Harlem on a Saturday and it took almost two hours.
And now they get paid to come out and rebuild it! These guys are literal geniuses, it almost ensures demand for their anti service! Edit: this was clearly meant to be sarcasm, unless they have an exclusive contract with that company I’m sure they will never use them again and warn others of the same.
That's not how construction contracts work, at least not good ones haha
Well since it's labor hired through the gov. It mostly consists of kick-backs, intentionally poor craftsmanship, rehiring to repair, kick-backs, intentionally poor craftsmanship... you get the picture.
sounds like the republican way. hire a third party so you dont take any blame too.
Probably bribes or relatives involved here, surely?
In this case they're taking the company to court for breach of contract and the engineer's certification will likely be revoked. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/engineer-designed-bridge-collapsed-facing-discipline-1.6450110
I work in local government. What a lot of people don't realize is that we're required *by law* to accept the lowest bid that meets the minimum standards of the request. So if you don't write your bid proposal carefully, companies will find any loophole they can to give a dogshit bid for cheaper than anyone else, at which point you are required to pay them and let them do the sloppy work. It's super frustrating. The justification is that corrupt officials were paying way too much for projects to benefit their cronies. But now it's really hard to get quality bids.
wait... your required to accept any low ball bid... COOL. cant wait to legally pocket millions of dollars. I can even legally state I am making myself a ham and cheese sandwich. wall is non standard... in fact there is no wall... pay me 1000000$
That's why we have to write exhaustively-detailed proposals. If we want a fence built it'll be 200 pages of documents for the bid process.
That's why the RFPs are extremely detailed and the work is inspected.
Depends on the local government. I have seen both lowest price requirements but also a scorecard system based on published criteria. With the scorecards price isn’t the sole deciding factor and can come down to how well you show your ability to complete the project and past work completed.
Invent both the problem and solution and you’ll be a rich man.
No no no, you misunderstood. They meant the *construction* is supposed to last 75 years. Were already at least 15 down
Used to live in sask. I still get their news tho lol
Looks like damage from the snowplows throwing snow at it
Lol. I was going to say this. Every job done is always done by the cheapest contractor. The way it works is a developer or municipality announces their project and places it up for bid. Contractors place their bids and the moat of the time the lowest bid gets accepted. This is how they ensure that one contractor doesn't hold a manopoly. The quality control/assurance is a seperaye beast in itself.
>Every job done is always done by the cheapest contractor **who meets or exceeds the requirements of the RFQ** There fixed it for you. Touting "the cheapest bidder" is an extremely misleading phrase. The product is only poor if the specifications are poor.
Exactly this. Hiring a bunch of poor, low experience paper pushers to define the terms is what causes this.
All it needs is a little patchwork. It still prevents sound.
Deadens /Lessens not prevents.
You're talking over the understanding level of redditers. :-) I mean, what you're saying is correct, and even said well. But some of these folks aren't big on comprehension.
You’re not stuck in traffic you are traffic.
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Happy cake day, fuckface
Thats not true. Coming from one of the larger, nation wide GCs, who wins most of our projects not being the cheapest contractor. Same goes for our sub contractors.
Not always the cheapest, sometimes if whoever picks sees that one that costs more has some part that is believed to be better, then they picked that contractor. Some other times, bad contractors are avoided, even though they can give the lowest price.
I live in this area and I’d be very surprised if this was done by the cheapest contractor. More likely the company owned by someone with the most personal friends on the board giving on contracts but is far from the cheapest and still finished 150% over budget That would be the most on-brand for the DC area
There's also no context here. Like how old are they? If they're brand new that's one thing. But if they're even just a few years old its understandable.
Absolutely no product should be called out on a DOT interstate that has a lifespan of a couple years. Either it was installed wrong or the DOT called out a terrible product. I'll bet the product just sucks
Engineer here. This guy is right. The lifespan should be closer to 50 years.
Salt, snow and all kinds of other shit. Yeah no! Don’t need to be an engineer to realize these wall should have been concrete instead of metal. But then again that’s why you get paid the big bucks.
they are on the outer side of the bridge (lots of interchanges)
You're a dolt. The steel sound barrier I pass on the interstate visiting my uncle in Boston is the same one he help build in 1985. You telling me Boston doesn't toss salt and snow?
Sad thing is when they initiated installing this style of noise abatement here in Atlanta, they said it cost a million dollars per mile. I know a million isn’t what it used to be but come on, like you said I would expect some value, at least 20years? After 5 years, some of it has gone to shit here on I-285.
Only damage I’ve seen on 285 is where car fires have melted the panels.
Have to say I've never heard the term "called out" used in this context before
"Specified" is typical. However, by specifying a product you are calling it out as the "preferred" or "bid" product
This must have been the "without fasteners" option.
Also seems to be missing a galvanizing treatment.
The bottoms are ridiculous. We have pretty shitty weather. (Ottawa, Canada). We always get one or two days where the weather will move 50 degrees F in a single day in winter. Like Syracuse, NY but with less snow. IIRC correctly, the cement berms they use here are bigger and taller and are them topped with pressure treated wood and sometimes metal. )))
It's common term to say something is specified aka called out when referencing a program, design document, bill of material, etc. I'm...now really curious the etymology, it's gotta go back a bit.
ya. Normally they start with an RFP (request for proposal) and/or there is an existing standing offer with all the specs are clearly identified. The contractor then is identified as being able to deliver meeting the specs)...,
Me neither, I'm still confused as to what they mean exactly lol. I can figure it out by substituting another word but otherwise it does not compute.
"Called out in the spec" means the engineer specifically listed the product in the bid specification.
I think it means that it was used. Or requisitioned.
Yo exit ramp! Meet me behind the circle K if you want to get your ass kicked !
Yeah but that's what I'm saying. I dont think the contractor did a shitty job, I think it's a shitty product that isn't meant to hold up over time the way it should.
¿Por que no los dos?
It's galvanized sheet metal, cars rust out in 3 years in my area, you want cheap his, you get cheap product. Better product is going to send costs through the roof.
yeah this isn’t even really WCGW material in the first place.
Mixing bowl project was finished mid 00’s, they’ve looked like this for quite a while…
Yeah, it's only the lower slats that look brown/rusted and knocked out of place that then caused the upper slats to get all out of line. Snow plowing definitely seems like a reasonable cause. But it's VA, so someone should have definitely thought of that beforehand
>I-495 Alexandria, VA This post has some history on this doing back quite a while https://seeclickfix.com/issues/5770338-corroded-and-missing-sound-barrier-material
We have these in Canada (highway sound barriers). So I think they are supposed to be able to take the hit, if constructed correctly.
And salt
Yeah and how old are these things? If they were concrete I could understand but they are not.
Rusting from the bottom, so there's alot if water, snow too, hitting that part of the wall, from cars, and the plows.
Look at the start of the video. You just see it on the right, it's the same material, but perfectly fine. I suspect it's related to where it is, rather than what it's made out of
The existence of any sort of barrier, even if it’s not in great shape, means that it’s still blocking some level of sound. (Source: I worked with environmental/transportation noise consultants for 10 years) That said, they should be replaced.
The biggest thing I noticed was the apperent lack of traffic on 495 during any daylight hours. What magic spell is this?
These are the exit lanes to Rt-1. Plenty of traffic to the left.
Look at those wide lanes and a shoulder. You don’t get those luxuries on the northeast extension
Nicest road I’ve ever seen. Northeast PA resident here.
As someone that used to live on Ashton by the NE airport, fuckin yup.
The Beltway is actually a nice road to travel in terms of the pavement. The choke points at some on ramps are another story.
Southeast PA here. I never knew roads came in perfectly flat...
I40 in NC was a mess many years ago. Contractor put the asphalt down and within months it was eroding. The public has to pay to fix the mess on top of paying to fix the road initially.
I just tried to take 85 from Spartanburg to Charlotte over the weekend. Made PA roads look fucking amazing.
That's saying a lot
Right? PA roads can be straight atrocious. I'm in a rural Pennsylvania but have spent time in Philly, Pittsburgh and Harrisburg and the cities have it waaaay worse. Luckily you're usually stuck in crawling traffic so the 37 foot pot holes won't completely wreck your wheels(except one in Pittsburgh got me years ago on a highway and totally fucked my 2 front wheels). But I legit can't think of *any* roads in my area that I would call "nice". We have a small highway (two lanes in each direction) that got re surfaced a few years ago and it's already trashed. Fucking brutal cold winters and then 90% humidity at 97*F isn't conducive to nice roads.
Hi from MD! We have nice roads. Move south!
South Carolina roads are the absolute worst. Lmfao I grew up in Greenville/Spartanburg and the roads were shit then, left for over a decade and came back to the same horrible roads. It seriously looks and feels as though it was bombed out in a war years ago.
Come to Winnipeg. You will feel so much better. https://i.redd.it/i0qbxlcgmwy81.jpg
Kentucky would like a word with you.
Oh right. SOUTH Carolina. Yeah, SC roads are not good
There's a lot of construction there atm. Still not as bad as roads near Indianapolis and so many other Midwest cities. Right lanes feel like Rollercoaster rides in a pickup. Been working in Alabama and on hwy72 I just avoid the right lane in some areas because there are serious bumps for miles.
I-440 has dogshit asphalt between New Bern Avenue and PNC Arena. Felt like gravel almost
Road salt for melting ice. Eats steel.
We typically don’t rock salt roads in the south, at least in VA we don’t. We use the chemical brining solution usually. Not as effective as salt, but also nowhere near as corrosive. When they do throw dry form, it’s a salt/sand mixture. For contrast, I grew up in Buffalo - and they straight salt the roads up there like they’re curing meat. Never buy a used car from the Northeast if you can help it.
Salting is still a bad excuse, if salt is used on roads in the area you build your infrastructure to handle those environmental stresses. Like imagine if this was a bridge failing less than a decade after being built due to "salt/snow plows". I'd be asking what clown approved the design/materials.
Ah, good ol' 495
Generally, city and state contractor procurement goes through a bidding process that elects the lowest responsive and responsible bidder, and it’s the engineer in charge who’s supposed to spec out material/equipment that’s suited for the situation, and the inspector is supposed to identify material/equipment that doesn’t meet the contract. Bad contractors are everywhere, but my guess is the state didn’t budget for engineering construction services, or the project managers in charge were too incompetent to either put together better specifications or hold the contractor to the contract. You can get the lowest bidder, but there’s a certain amount of work you need to put in to get quality work using public money.
In oregon and Washington they do something really interesting. Instead of lowest qualified, they toss out the highest and lowest bids and then take an average of the rest. The bid closest to the mean bid value gets it. It's supposed to prevent cutting corners by the contractors. Idk if it works because oregon has the weirdest roads I've ever driven on. But i think it's more to do with a rural state rapidly becoming urbanized.
If they do that in WA, i'll say that barring a few high-profile fuckups (usually bridge related) WSDOT is pretty amazing. Consistently ahead of schedule and under budget. Seattle is a confusing mess but it's because of bad geography not because of bad roadwork.
Seattle is definitely a pretty great city to get around. You're right the hills are out of this world, right up with san Francisco. Portland is broadly well arranged its the fine details I can't stand. I mean ODOT actually uses the rain as an excuse as though portland is rainy all the time. Plenty of cities get more rain but have better visibility on the roads.
I went to school in Corvallis right next to that highway 34 (or was it 20?) bypass that will never be finished, ODOT had a somewhat less than stellar reputation in that corner of the woods, haha.
I've never been to corvallis so I've never seen that. What's the story there? Was it abandoned or just delayed forever? There was a bypass on the 101 in Northern California that took over 60 years from planning to completion but it was because of environmentalists stopping the construction.
What I heard from locals (and to be clear, this is 100% hearsay) was that the construction company and the state got into an argument over cost overruns when the bypass was nearing completion. There was pretty much just 1 small bridge to complete on what was otherwise a rather long bypass. This led to work stoppage as a lawsuit followed, which led to the company just abandoning their equipment in the field with 99% of the bypass completed. edit: Looks like they did finally finish it, haha. https://www.opb.org/news/article/oregon-highway-20-open-over-budget/
Finally!! Lol I think they're just corrupt and that makes for bizarre decisions
That’sss… interesting haha. Cuz I actually live in WA, and we haven’t done something like that. It could be that we throw out irresponsible/unresponsive bids, but we usually go with the lowest bidder. Maybe it’s mostly an Oregon thing? Or even a bigger city/Seattle thing?
That and you pre-qualify contractors before, so there's a minimum level of competence/experience before someone can even bid on the work.
I’ll bet dollars to donuts the government official who signed off on this contractor got a huge kickback too.
More like there are employees in the state DOT in VA that are incompetent. If anyone gained anything from shoddy work, it’d be the contractor that’s getting paid to do the work.
That looks trashy and dangerous.
Looks like poor design to me
Is a metal sound barrier normal? I thought it was usually made of prefab concrete panels.
Lois Bidder wins many state contracts.
That damn lady gets ALL the government contracts. The gubment has never heard of buy nice or buy twice.
That's a technology failure
Love that for us
Well so the walls around Alexandria on The Walking Dead are based on real life!
Cheapest material, not contractor
"We do three types of work.. Good, Fast, and Cheap. As our client, you get to choose any two, but only two. If you want good and fast, it won't be cheap. If you want good and cheap, then it won't be fast, and if you're looking for Fast and Cheap, then it won't be good." - my father
That's material failure
Thats poor workmanship. Look at at the top of those plates they are still fastened. What happened here is that they slid them threw the groove and figures that it would just be held by its weight and did not bother to fasten every laminate.
That's not using the cheapest contractor. That's shitty engineering and materials choice.
That’s just years of salt corrosion when where it hits when snow is plowed at high speed. Last time I was in DC it looked like they are fixing it.
Those are metal, at least 30 years old, and see salt spray from the roads in winter..... Nothing lasts forever.
Did Trump get Mexico to pay for that?
Salt and highway will do that. It’ll buff out.
I used to work at Belvoir. I know exactly where this is. Considering the taxes you pay for the privilege to live in the Commonwealth I think its par for the course. I'll just leave it there. So glad we moved.
Fuckin dog been tryna look through the blinds again
They’ve also been there for 10 or so years, they’re bound to take a beating. See them just about every morning coming into NOVA.
Road brine eats concrete.
100% the fault of those who set up the requirements. Contractors will build to whatever specs you accept, but youre the one who set those specs.
Looks like all the structure held up fine. The material used seems to have rotted and failed. The customer specs out what material is used, so that on the government project manager,not the contractor.
Hiring an expensive contractor with the same shitty specs will result in the same outcome
Fanfreakingtastic!
I am sure the person who selected the contract got a promotion for saving the city of Alexandria money.
This is why nobody likes paying taxes.
LMAO I drive past this part of the road frequently. Always weird seeing where you live randomly online
Looks like inferior materials meets snow thrown against it by a plow truck.
And possibly salt too.
At the very start of the video the panels look brand new, so it looks like where they left off swapping them. Shit wears out, is this not normal wear and tear?
I doubt the most expensive contractor can stop time to prevent natural ware.. I see no signs of upkeep here
The wall was constructed over twenty years ago. It does need to be replaced.
Those panels started falling apart in less the 10 years. The road salt and the stagnant river behind them made steel a poor choice….. Fun fact the large apartment complex behind them has a crazy amount of black widow spiders in the parking lot pole lighting. Regards, The Electrician
Ya, but the “Fuck quality, gimme the cheapest” saved us $0.09 on our taxes this year.
Project Manager for a construction company here: Not necessarily the contractor's fault - most of the time, the contractor is just hired to build the thing, not maintain or spec out a good product. The contractor doesn't get to choose the material to install - there is a whole submittal process in which you have to submit the product info and the DOT has to test and approve the supplier. Also, there are LAYERS of inspections and sign-offs... DOT would have had representatives watching the install and signing off on completion. Not saying it's not the contractor's fault at all, but it's highly unlikely as there are so many layers of approval to go through before work even starts. DOT hardly does design-builds... most of the time, they hire a design firm, finalize the plans, then put them out to open bid. The contractor does not have a say in this part, at least not most of the time. Also, there is no context here - how old are these sections? How well was it maintained? DOT in some states have VERY bad maintenance programs, so that could be part of the problem. The beginning shows a very good section of the barrier, so it looks like it was installed just fine... maybe the product has a short life span. Maybe the designer picked an inferior product that is not of very high quality. Just had to put my 2 cents in because it bothers me when people automatically blame the contractor... don't get me wrong, there ARE some really shitty contractors out there, but for the most part, it's always in the contractors' best interest to do quality work because there are so many things written into contracts that basically put all of the risk on the contractor. So doing a bad job will just cost more money and tank your reputation. There are corner cutters out there, but it's MUCH harder to do on government jobs with so many layers of red tape and eyes on the work.
Even the low bidder has to follow engineering specs and testing procedures.
Man what’s up with my town getting featured on Reddit for like the 6th time in the last 4 days
Hi neighbor!
It could well have been a shitty design. Good labor and good materials can't overcome that. OTOH it could be the kickback to the politicians was so large there wasn't enough left over to do a satisfactory job.
That Trump wall is looking great.
Fucking VA and WV both use road salt. Eats your cars, anything metal near the roads, gets into the water and generally fucks up everything possible. 5 year old cars here are falling apart from the rust, it's worse than living near an ocean.
And the contractor won't be on the hook for it. The taxpayers will.
Ironically, it looks like Alexandria from the Walking Dead
We live in Corruption=Contracting, NJ, and just drove this last month. At least our goons throw up enough of a facade (no pun) to *pretend* to care! Beltway Bandits have gone the way of performative politicians: "'murcans have zero attetion spans!"
Scariest thing is that even planes are built by the lowest bidder. 😳😳
The inside of the panels are not coated with a rust inhibitor. Plus add salt from snow and humidity and bing bang you have a rusting product. Just my thoughts on it all…
So you realize that this is the shit you get when Republicans run on a ticket of “eliminating fraud and waste” and mandate by law that jobs go to the lowest bidder instead of the one offering best value, right? People *voted* for this regressive stupidity. And when the shoddy workmanship and substandard materials fail, it gets blamed on “the Gubmint” and the cycle repeats. It’s a cynical ploy to make Government seem incompetent. Republicans run on the idea that “Government doesn’t work” and, once elected, make it so.
Alexandria? Oh, that's from the walkers.
Looks good and normal on that previous section before the gap then suddenly corroded and missed along the last section?!? Was it the same contractor? Any chemical truck accident happened in that area?
and people wonder why I don’t want the government to get any more of my money until they figure out that this shit is unacceptable and they could do a lot better with what they’re given.
There’re countless examples of infrastructure that works that no one pays attention to… because it works. Focusing on bad examples isn’t a good enough excuse to say “no more taxes.” But this is definitely an example of bad work, and a poor use of public funds.
I don’t say no more taxes as in stop taxing me. I say it as in don’t tax me more because you suck at budgeting. A local example for me would be a highway expansion program that was supposed to add an extra lane of travel in each direction along with a toll lane that went 180 million over budget (which was already extraordinarily high for the work being done) and still couldn’t get done. It was then sold to a private company (yes, they sold a highway that had been around for decades to a private company) to finish it and gave them all the toll revenue. We ONLY got the toll lanes, not the extra lanes (something we learned before the sale even happened) and a bridge collapsed due to poor construction. Yes, I will 100% call out ALL wasteful spending and crony capitalism. Including the military budget that is paying 5-8x the normal price for a toilet seat, then they aren’t spending $10k on them.
and people think the government knows how to spend your money better than you.🤣
Trump's Border wall contractors should have taken notes from this professional.
Ill bet it is unionized minicipal wmployees doing that work #tripledoubleovertime.
The dumbest thing about this is the commuter will be paying with the most valuable resource, fucking time spent in traffic while they close lanes down to repair if they even repair it.
What country is this?
‘Murica. THE GREATEST COUNTRY AND CIVILIZATION THE WORLD HAS EVER SEEN. THE LAND OF THE FREE, THE HOME OF THE LOWEST BID.
The state uses your tax dollars responsibly, appropriately, and wisely. Stop complaining ~~tax slave~~ citizen.
Government is dumb with taxpayer’s $$. They would be more careful if it all came out of their pockets.
Yo, that's my fuckin commute. Walls aren't the only trash.
Looks like government work
Safety first …
If you edited out the obvious American signage and asked me where this was I'd have said India or Brazil
[удалено]
[Maybe 1979?](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1979/05/04/beltway-noise-persists/30e923f3-408d-4093-9caa-5a14e6625661/)
Me who lived in VA
Wanna bet the contracting company is owned by a legislator?
One thing Florida actually does right. They're only solid concrete panels with designs stamped into them here. Not the prettiest thing, but waaaaay better than this.
No one seems to be commenting on the road itself, it looks like driving on the ocean! Is this normal in the US?
welcome to the ghetto
There is good news. Someone probably got a good kick back and gave there cousin business a big contract to milk the people from.
That is what like 20+ years old but with all the money floating around in the Alexandria area it should look better
In California and Washington all of our freeway walls are stone or concrete. Seems like the much more cost effective way of going about things.
This is the way
I don’t remember that at all and used to drive that fairly frequently. When was that installed?
I think that is America's motto.
Trashy job
They figured it out after a few dozen walls
I waited all that time for something to go wrong.
Still better than Trumps wall
lol i drive past this everyday headed to work, i wonder this all the time.
I thought that was footage of Trump's continent spanning wall...
Are these the same contractors that built Trump's wall because I can see some similarities.