General @ Friday May 09, 2008 12:31 pm by WunderKraut
I once told my wife that my engineering training and work experience had ruined me.
It is impossible for me to drive down the road, pull into a parking lot or walk into a building without noticing all the mistakes, flaws and just plain bad design.
One way I stay awake while driving on long trips is to pay special attention to new road construction or newly completed projects. If I had a notebook, I would take notes.
I know, I’m a huge dork…
My former job with the City had me reviewing site plans for new development. It proved that there are two ways to do things in this world: The right way and the half assed way.
Unfortunately, what separates the two always seems to come down to money. It costs money to do things the right way. What often isn’t known is that your “cost savings” for doing something half assed may not be real savings at all. Sometimes the savings is lost because of more frequent maintenance because you went with the cheaper unit. Sometimes the savings is lost because choosing to omit something has caused damage to be done to the site or facility.
One of my biggest pet peeves is with curb and gutter.
Concrete is expensive and forming and pouring curb and gutter isn’t cheap. In the City, all new subdivisions are required to have curb and gutter installed. It really adds to the look of the subdivision. The County, however, allows a ditch section to be utilized. This is much cheaper for the developer, but the long term aesthetics of the road are not great.
First off there is the added maintenance to the County to maintain all the roadside ditches. In reality, the ditches are not maintained. As a result, the ditches fill in and the home owner ends up with a nice parabolic, grassed swale from their yard down to the “ditch” and back up to the road. This looks nice and is easy to mow, but the problem is that the ditch is no longer conveying all the water. As a result, water stands in the ditches and then people start to complain. Then the County finally goes out to re-grade the ditch.
Let me tell you, re-grading a ditch pisses off home owners. There are two ways to do it. The County can take dozers out and they can reshape the front and back slopes of the ditch. This will give nice tie back slopes for grass to grow on, but it really tears up a yard. What usually happens is the County sends out a gradall with a bucket and they then re-grade the ditch by scooping out bucket loads. This impacts the least amount of yard, but leaves a very ugly ditch with near vertical sideslopes. As a result, grass is not able to grow and the finished product looks like a scar on the earth.
Not having curb and gutter also allows people to run off the road or park on the grassed shoulder. Over time, the constant parking kills the grass and bare dirt spots and ruts begin to form. Again, this becomes a maintenance issue for the County.
The County tried to make it easier for a developer to build a subdivision because the County desperately needs/wants the added tax parcels. This made it cheaper for the developer, but it has real long term costs to the County.
One more thing about curb and gutter: in parking lots, anywhere there is an island, there needs to be curb and gutter. Often times the developer will forgo curb and gutter at these locations in order to save money. The end product looks terrible and creates a maintenance issue from then on.
We went to my daughters 3-K program at the local Baptist church yesterday. They have constructed a new facility that is a thing of beauty. The layout is great and there is adequate parking….
BUT….
They obviously tried to save money by not installing curb and gutter around the parking islands. Bad move guys. Bad move.
Here are some pictures.
Nice curb and gutter at the front of the building
Why? Why?
That last picture shows what not to do. Notice the car on the right is already in the island. It won’t take long for every island to be rutted up. They already had ugly orange cones up at the ends of each island in an attempt to keep people from running over them. Good luck. It won’t work.
Next time, spend the extra money for the curb and gutter.
8 Responses to “Doing Things Right”
GEEK ALERT. All other readers may want to move along. Nothing to see here.
So Mike,
On one of these posts I want you to give us (probably only me) an analysis of Concrete versus Asphalt construction for pavement.
In the 80’s I used to remember that a great deal of highways, and even parking lots were concrete. But things changed sometime later, where asphalt became prevalent. Maybe it was lower oil costs, or that they are able to better recycle old asphalt. I always thought (probably with ignorance), why a building whose foundation is concrete, as well as the curbs, but then they have an asphalt parking lot. It seems like too many steps. I have also noticed that concrete, due to lighter more reflective shade, tends to require less overhead lights. I wonder if there is electrical savings in this as well. And if I am not correct concrete, if built well, has a longer life, with lower maintenance.
Sorry. I am geeky too. But more having to do with money/budgeting. People of my kind are the ones you probably hate dealing with.
But I am not cheap for the sake of being cheap. I do appreciate efficiency, and process management, if long term costs are lower.
-Tejash
Ooooo, I’ll get right on this!
Hummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm This post explains alot Mike. Stay focused.
PAPAPA
3 minutes of my life…to each their own! I do so love you and your boring post still.
It’s the same all over South Florida. A lot of neighborhoods have a long grassy swath between the sidewalk and street, and people invariably park on them because the residential streets are often too narrow.
Some of the towns (my Mom’s neighborhood, for example) have gone back and added curbs and gutters, but they also left the long grass patches. And wouldn’t you know it, but when there’s a lot of company over, you’ll see people simply roll their pickups and such over the curb and park half on the grass, half on the street.
This would be a good application for parking bumpers.
Nancy, you are right. At the VERY least. How much do those suckers go for?
Oh BINGO, Nancy!