Welcome



Greetings and welcome to our first of many monthly e-mail updates. We thought you might be interested to hear what is going on in Eastern Region and hope to keep you up to speed on transportation issues on a regular basis. If you have any comments or questions, let me know.

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Keith A. Metcalf, P.E.
Regional Administrator
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Thanks for the Rumble Strips

In 2003, as part of a safety enhancement project, centerline and shoulder rumble strips were placed along State Route 904 between Cheney and Four Lakes. The hope was to reduce the occurrence of centerline crossover collisions.

Here is a note we recently received from a State Route 904 driver:

Hello,

I just wanted to thank DOT for the SR904 improvements made in recent years. When I was driving from Cheney to Four Lakes on April 30th, the oncoming car started to veer towards me. As I began evasive action, the front left wheel of that car went over the center rumble strip. The driver re-focused on the road and corrected the car’s path. If that rumble strip wasn’t there, a head-on accident may have happened or I might have been forced to run off the road to avoid being hit.

Please convey my thanks to the people who ensured that rumble strips were part of the SR904 improvements.

Jeri Morgan

Thanks you, Ms. Morgan.  These are the e-mails we enjoy getting.
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NSC now on video

The WSDOT Eastern Region recently completed a four-minute video about construction progress of the North Spokane Corridor. Aerial footage of the work underway is interspersed with animation of the completed freeway segments. The narrated video is available on the WSDOT website and “YouTube.”

To see the new video, go to the WSDOT North Spokane Corridor website at:
http://www.nscfreeway.com/ and click on the Aerial Construction and Animation link on the left hand side of the page.

For the YouTube connection, go to: www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqIt84cyEHg

We plan on updating the video as construction progresses.

Speaking of construction, the Burlington Northern Santa Fe tunnel project continues. The footing placement is underway and the contractor should start placing the arch sections in August. Our target date for opening this section to traffic is mid-2009.

Two additional contracts remain with one starting later this year and the final job getting underway next year. These include construction along US 2 where the new freeway crosses that highway and the final paving and bridges to connect the NSC to existing US 395 at Wandermere.

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Paint striping season underway

Every spring, the Eastern Region paint striping crews get started on their annual trek to re-stripe every one of the 1,600+ miles of state highways in our seven-county region. It takes the crew several months to paint everything, usually finishing up just before the fall rains. The team in the paint truck sprays the yellow and white pigments on the centerlines, fog lines, lane skip stripes, and freeway exits. Combined with every gallon of the reflective paint are thousands of small glass beads that raise the paint above the surface and help in reflecting the color back to drivers at night.

The crew usually starts with Interstate 90 in the Spokane metro area, then spreads out into the rural corners of the Region. Finally, they finish up with a second coat on I-90.

Along with the crew in the paint truck, area maintenance personnel paint crosswalks and other markings on state highways that pass through many of the towns in our area. These include the hundreds of “stop bars” at county road intersections along the highways.

The Region paint crew uses between 70,000 and 80,000 gallons of paint every year.

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Heavy snow runoff washes out SR 206

Water cascading through small creek tributaries washed out a section of State Route 206 on Mt. Spokane late Sunday, May 18. About 1,000 feet of the roadway was totally destroyed.

WSDOT maintenance and engineering crews surveyed the damaged area and set up for emergency repairs. On Monday, May 19, the S.A. Gonzales Company was engaged to excavate and place a temporary culvert pipe across the highway down the hill slightly from the location of the current pipe that had been overwhelmed by the heavy runoff. By Thursday afternoon, May 22, these temporary repairs allowed local traffic to resume through the damaged area on a gravel surface.

Late Wednesday, May 28, the roadway was opened to general traffic. The surface was gravel, but safe for vehicles to cross.

During the emergency repair process crews filled and placed about 1,400 sandbags to redirect the water flow across the roadway. That flow was estimated at approximately 38,000 gallons per minute. A standard large tandem axle water truck carries 4,000 gallons. This flow could have filled up about 10 of these every minute.

It took over 200 dump truck loads with 3,000 cubic yards of fill material to bring the roadway back up to a useable grade. Then another 20 truck loads of large sized base gravel and smaller gravel was hauled in to create the driving surface. There were also 30 truck loads of “riprap.” These are the very large rocks that were used to stabilize the slope below the roadway and hold the fill material.

The final phase of this repair project will consist of final grading, paving, and other finishing items. This work will be scheduled a little later this summer in coordination with an already planned road rebuilding project inside the State Park boundary. Estimated costs for the complete repairs are in the neighborhood of $1 million.