🚀 go-pugleaf

A watchdog group probably wouldn't do any good.  However, here are some
past technical errors to suggest things to try to catch.

1. The nasty combo of entrance and exit ramps on I-90, both eastbound
and westbound, west of I-787.  That's a textbook case of bad design.

2. The type of concrete used in most of the elevated roads, e.g., I-787
in Albany.  It was a new format, at least in this area.  It was cheaper,
and, I think, had been used farther south.  They "didn't have the time"
to test it here, but went ahead and used it on a large scale.
Unfortunately it was very vulnerable to salt.  That's why those roads'
surfaces were being torn up and rebuilt a year or two ago.

In my classes, students who don't have the time to test their programs
get lower grades.  However it's ok not to do this in the real world, it
seems.

3. The design of the I-90 -- Northway exit 1 interchange.  They just
spent $44M recently rebuilding it, partly because trucks who ignored the
speed limits would fall off some of the ramps.  Now, maybe you should
have ramps that allow trucks to speed, or maybe you need not.  However,
to build it one way, and then decide to change it is frivolous.


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By the way, I'd thought that the Northway exit 3 was intended to connect
to the Corporate Woods exit of I-90.  That interchange was built and
then sat vacant for years.  However, I could be wrong.

There's still a big, largely useless, interchange in southern Vermont.
I heard a story that NY agreed to build a highway east from I-87 to
Vermont, then reneged since they didn't want to make it easy to get to
the Vermont ski resorts.

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One idea might be to lobby for a requirement that an endowment be
created to maintain new facilities.  They should not be allowed to build
a new bridge w/o budgeting maintenance money for the next 50 years.  I
do a slow burn every time I see a rusty bridge.  When I buy a new car, I
consider the fact that a more expensive car costs more to maintain, and
then buy a cheaper one.  These jokers don't give a damn.  In fact it's
worse than that.  Given two alternatives, they'll take the more
expensive one, lest they lose the cost-sharing money.

/Randolph
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Wm. Randolph Franklin,  wrf@ecse.rpi.edu, (518) 276-6077;  Fax: -6261
ECSE Dept., 6026 JEC, Rensselaer Polytechnic Inst, Troy NY, 12180 USA