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Stealth paving

Many weeks ago, several work zones popped up on the interstates around Charleston. The usual orange signs, orange barrels, and the automated "you're speeding" carts which flash your speed up in digital numbers as you pass by. It was like this for a long time. Eventually they scraped a lot of the asphalt off, leaving a rather bumpy surface for people to drive on — and it was like that for a long time.

Last week, the actual paving began. Compared to the rest of the project, this part was finished very quickly... literally overnight. On the morning of September 2, the road was bumpy, and on the morning of September 3, it was covered by a fresh coat of smooth pavement. I passed by some of the paving crew on my way home last Tuesday night so I saw the work in progress. There were a bunch of high-power spotlights, lots of trucks with flashing yellow lights, lots of dust and smoke, a few cops, and only one lane open to traffic. It reminded me of the Twilight Zone episode "A Matter of Minutes" except without the creepy blue guys running around.

(Some trivia. First, this was my favorite episode from the 1980s Twilight Zone series. And second, the actress who plays the heroine in this episode is from Welch, WV and was once under consideration to play Captain Janeway on Star Trek: Voyager.)

Here are a few weird things I noticed about the paving in these areas.

There was a long gap between the prep work and the real work. Why not just do it once the prep work was finished? Why wait around?

They didn't do the bridges at all, so there's a bump at the beginning and end of each bridge as you cross the threshold. The bridges were never scraped either, so I get the feeling there's still some work to do there. Maybe it's harder to do that kind of work on bridges, maybe scraping them would compromise their structural integrity, maybe there's a different procedure that needs to be followed so the bridges don't collapse. I don't have the answers, I'm just pointing these things out.

They didn't do the whole road... just parts. Outside the work zones, everything is the same as it ever was. Relatively speaking, only a small area was affected. It was mostly confined to where I-64, I-77, and I-79 all meet and extended a little further west along I-64 into South Charleston. I can see that possibly being the most heavily-traveled part of the interstate around here and perhaps needing the most work, but it really doesn't jive considering my next point:

The parts of the road they worked on really didn't need work, as far as I can tell. The parts just outside the work zone are in decent shape, as were the parts they worked on. Sure, the new pavement is smoother, but that's mostly because it's, um, fresh pavement and hasn't been through a winter of frost-cracking and subsequent spring patching. But beyond making for a smooth ride in the areas they touched, there didn't seem to be any real point to it all.

The work was done quickly, in the middle of the night, all at once. That is definitely outside the norm for Charleston. The norm here is to close off a lane at a time and do it during the day, because working at night is overtime, and that costs extra. I just can't emphasize the quickness enough. The whole interstate was shut down to one lane, and the real work (once begun) proceeded very quickly — again, quite literally, overnight. There was an unprecedented amount of heavy equipment present in the work zone. With the dust flying and the lights flashing, you'd think they were tearing the entire road down to bare earth and laying everything down brand-new — drainage, signs, guard rails, everything — and trying to get it all done in one night.

It almost felt like they were working covertly.

Here's the last thing, the part that makes it all the more puzzling. The layer of pavement they put down isn't level with the bridges, but that's fine — I'll make a few reasonable guesses there. But in addition to this, the shoulders were neither scraped nor paved, so they aren't level with the new pavement either — and now the pavement is below the shoulders. Which means the layer of pavement they applied is less than was there before.

So after a significant delay, this job — paving a seemingly insignificant section of interstate — was done in the dark of night, very quickly, all at once, using much less material than was removed — and it's questionable whether it needed to be done in the first place.

Call me crazy, but something doesn't add up here.

Posted September 8, 2009 @ 19:49:34 EDT. 1 comment.

Comments on "Stealth paving":

Yeah, there's still a huge bump on my exit ramp where the unpaved meets the paved. I have to slow down almost to a stop to go over it, as I'm concerned about my tires (which are $129 apiece ON SALE).

Also, about the speeding carts, the other day the traffic on the way home from work was so slow, that when I passed the cart, it flip-flopped between 10 and not displaying anything. So apparently it won't register single-digit speeds. I almost snapped a photo, I was so amused.

# Posted by Lisa on September 9, 2009 @ 09:17:19 EDT.

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