I49 in LA

[Jordanah1]

i have been looking at google maps of the southern part, were US90 is being upgraded, and i want to know if anyone can explain to me why so much money is being waisted down in those compleatly rural areas with elevated sections of highway? at every interchange, the freeway becomes elevated  way before the road crossing, and is a complete waist of money. i can understand elevated sections in wetland areas, but not through farmland away from wetlands. my first thought was that it was for the evacuation of floodwater, but the ramps would be blocking that, so that isnt why. can anyone come up with an explanation for why so much money is being waisted there? because if they have extra fed money for the highway, and they are just burning it on useless elevated highway, i think it would be better spent somewere else, like helping boost the lack of Wisconsin freeways.  

[Anthony_JK]

Actually, there's a perfectly good reason why LA does their overpasses like that.

The soils down here are pretty wet due to being at or below sea level, and it is expensive to continuously truck better soil for filling over to cut down on building the elevated structures. So, in this case, it's more cost efficient to extend the elevated structures.

As far as US  90  and proposed I-49 South is concerned, the decision to go all elevated for the Raceland to New Orleans segments was motivated by Hurricane Katrina's aftermath, and the fact that the authorities wanted a highway built above the flood plain enough to survive a 100-year flood event and permit proper hurricane evacuation.


Anthony

[Jordanah1]

i thought about the dirt thing, but the approach to the bridge structures was all dirt, and even with that explanation, there is no reason for 1500ft long overpasses. and for the bringing in dirt, there are 2 interchanges next to eachother at US90-sth329, were the sth239 interchange is built with the extended overpass, and the other interchange to the north isnt, it has a normal dirt approach, and normal length bridge.

[Anthony_JK]

Are you talking about the LA 14 and LA 329 (Avery Island Rd.) interchanges on US 90 in New Iberia??

Those were some of the first interchanges to be built along US 90 in the 1970's.

The Lewis Street and LA 89 interchanges just south of those are more recently built, and contain the newer standards for elongated overpasses.

[Jordanah1]

alright, that makes sense because the pavement looked older, but why the elongated overpasses? it seems like a waist of money to me.

[InterstateNG]

It's waste not waist.

Can we have some standards around here, please?  There has been a whole lot of crap recently.

[qguy]

Maybe he meant that the money that was spent was piled up *to* the waist.      (Sorry.)

[Alps]

It's waste not waist.

Can we have some standards around here, please?  There has been a whole lot of crap recently.

Considering the poster is on topic and raises an interesting topic, if I were you, I'd forgive some degree of misspelling. Your post actually adds more crap to this thread than any of the others.

[Anthony_JK]

alright, that makes sense because the pavement looked older, but why the elongated overpasses? it seems like a waist of money to me.

As I said in my original answer to your OP, it's due to the recent lack of usable fill dirt for stable embankments. LADOTD finds it more cost efficient to use the elongated overpass structures....at least, in that region.


Anthony

[InterstateNG]

It's waste not waist.

Can we have some standards around here, please?  There has been a whole lot of crap recently.

Considering the poster is on topic and raises an interesting topic, if I were you, I'd forgive some degree of misspelling. Your post actually adds more crap to this thread than any of the others.

Then I guess I'm not going to be waisting any more of my fucking time posting here, trying to read garbage by teenagers or being the target of threats.

I advise you to work on your professionalism.  Good day.

[agentsteel53]

I advise you to work on your professionalism.  Good day.

I advise you to work on yours.

[NE2]

I tend to scroll past posts written in txtspk, since they're harder to parse.

[Sykotyk]

Dirt, oddly enough, is expense. A truck can only haul about 25 tons of dirt at a time. That's not really a lot, volume wise (plus, it's not packed down, it's loose). Now, imagine the cost of paying the trucks to haul dirt to the desired site. Unloading it. Compacting/rolling it until it's hard.

Now do that for both carriageways, for every non-swampland interchange. It becomes expensive, very quickly. A little steel rebar, some concrete, and you get the same setup.

Now, in Nebraska, it'd be a waste of money. But, not in areas where good dirt is hard to come by.

[mgk920]

Dirt, oddly enough, is expense. A truck can only haul about 25 tons of dirt at a time. That's not really a lot, volume wise (plus, it's not packed down, it's loose). Now, imagine the cost of paying the trucks to haul dirt to the desired site. Unloading it. Compacting/rolling it until it's hard.

Now do that for both carriageways, for every non-swampland interchange. It becomes expensive, very quickly. A little steel rebar, some concrete, and you get the same setup.

Now, in Nebraska, it'd be a waste of money. But, not in areas where good dirt is hard to come by.

There are some overcrossings like that on I-75 between Saint Ignace and Sault Sainte Marie, MI, too.

Mike

[Jordanah1]

there are 3 or 4 of them, and i think those are there because they probably built them, intending to continue the extreamly wide median past were the median narrows, were the long overasses are needed, although i think it would have been cheaper to put the freeway over those roads rather than have 1 long overpass. and they are the oposite of what im talkin about in Louisiana, were the freeway is going over the road, with a very long overpass, that has a dirt aproach, so again it still has a dirt approach, and all that concrete and gravel still has to be trucked in anyways, just for the roadbed itself. so it still cant possibly be cost effective.

[codyg1985]

This soil is really poor for building anything on. Most buildings down there are built on pilings so that there isn't a need to rely on the poor bearing capacity of the soil (instead, it relies on friction between the piles and the soil around it). It isn't practical to build a soil embankment on pilings, hence why bridges are used.

Even if you hauled in dirt from somewhere else to create embankments, that doesn't take care of the underlying soil that would settle after a load is placed on it. Settlement would occur over years. You could build the soil embankment and wait for it to settle (a process called surcharging), but this would take a considerable amount of time and it wouldn't guarantee that there wouldn't be any additional settlement.

Any land reclaimed from wetlands generally isn't great to build on without a lot of work going into the foundation.

[bassoon1986]

This was mentioned in the SE Louisiana section about I-12, but I saw this past weekend where new mile markers are being constructed in North Louisiana. I saw them on 20 coming across from Texas and along I-49. Only in Caddo and Desoto Parishes so far. They are the new ones with "South" or "North", I-49 shield and the mile marker

[Jordanah1]

This soil is really poor for building anything on. Most buildings down there are built on pilings so that there isn't a need to rely on the poor bearing capacity of the soil (instead, it relies on friction between the piles and the soil around it). It isn't practical to build a soil embankment on pilings, hence why bridges are used.

Even if you hauled in dirt from somewhere else to create embankments, that doesn't take care of the underlying soil that would settle after a load is placed on it. Settlement would occur over years. You could build the soil embankment and wait for it to settle (a process called surcharging), but this would take a considerable amount of time and it wouldn't guarantee that there wouldn't be any additional settlement.

Any land reclaimed from wetlands generally isn't great to build on without a lot of work going into the foundation.

thats a better answer for me than its expensive, because i see it on other interchanges in the area.

[UptownRoadGeek]

thats a better answer for me than its expensive, because i see it on other interchanges in the area.

It may not be a good enough answer for YOU, but it's true. There are also very few dirt embankments south of I-10 that I know of. By the time you get to New Orleans there aren't any at all.

[Gordon]

I FOUND THIS ON THE INTERNET. HOPE THIS CAN BE ACCESSED. http://theadvocate.com/news/683744-64/forum-sees-roadblock-to-completing.html

[rickmastfan67]

Gordon,



Thanks.

[codyg1985]

But most expensive segments of the project have been stalled – the estimated $1.1 billion for the stretch through Lafayette and the estimated $3.6 billion for the 36-mile portion from Raceland to New Orleans.

That is $100,000,000 per mile. I guess the entire thing will be elevated from Raceland to New Orleans.

[Grzrd]

Today's Houma Courier has an article regarding the struggle to find the $5.2 billion to complete I-49 South.  One option mentioned is to look to Leeville Bridge on LA 1 as providing a good model for implementing a toll on at least part of I-49 South:
http://www.houmatoday.com/article/20111114/ARTICLES/111119753?p=1&tc=pg

The article also indicates that a $1 million study paid for by LaDOTD to consider ways of reducing the "tremendous cost" of upgrading US 90 between the Westbank Expressway and Raceland should be complete by "early 2012".  Here is a link to a map from an Oct. 12, 2009 Times-Picayune article which estimates the construction cost of that section of I-49 South to be $3.6 billion (as well as estimating costs for other sections of I-49 South):
http://blog.nola.com/graphics/2009/04/I49040609.jpg

That is $100,000,000 per mile. I guess the entire thing will be elevated from Raceland to New Orleans.

Here's a link to the Oct. 12, 2009 Times-Picayune article itself:
http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2009/04/plans_for_interstate_49_corrid.html

The biggest challenge is upgrading and replacing a 36-mile segment of U.S. 90 from the West Bank Expressway to Raceland: now estimated to cost about $3.6 billion, a figure that will probably swell to $5.2 billion, said Department of Transportation and Development Secretary William Ankner.
Another major money hurdle, he said, is a segment through the city of Lafayette, which will cost about $1.1 billion. Based on department estimates, about $694 million has been spent or committed for improvements along the southern leg of I-49, and almost $5.1 billion is needed to finish it.
"That is beyond our capacity given the current (budgetary and economic) constraints" on state and federal money, Ankner said. "I don't have $3.7 billion or $5.2 billion (for the New Orleans area to Raceland link). That kind of an investment is a killer. . . We don't have that kind of coin." ...
The main obstacle to building the stretch from the West Bank Expressway to Raceland is that the roadway has to be elevated and built through marshy areas, Ankner said. Building a road at ground level will not suffice because the area floods, he said ...

EDIT

Here is a link to Nov. 15 Houma Courier editorial making point that using tolls on I-49 South to entice federal spending would be problematic; nevertheless, in opinion of editorial staff, feds need to go ahead and dedicate some money for I-49 South:
http://www.houmatoday.com/article/20111115/OPINION/111119716/-1/sports?p=1&tc=pg

... One possibility would be to implement a toll system to raise local money. That might give federal decision makers more reasons to pay for this project over others.
That prospect, though, brings other difficulties.
At least one area legislator has said he will not ask local people to pay another toll after the toll system that is helping to pay for the new Leeville Bridge has been so fraught with problems.
State Sen. Norby Chabert, R-Houma, also makes the valid point that local people have already paid "too much of their own money for projects that should be paid for by the federal government."
There is no way to argue with that sentiment. However, there has to be a way to make the case for bringing the I-49 corridor to fruition.
So far, this region has hoped the federal government would do what it should. And we're still waiting.

[codyg1985]

^ And building the road on fill wouldn't suffice due to geotechnical reasons. It's a swamp; you don't want to build directly on that. I am also guessing that even though US 90 doesn't flood very often, this road needs to be able to withstand a 100 year flood so that is why it is also going to be built higher and elevated.

[Anthony_JK]

The main justifications they gave for wanting to elevate I-49 South between Raceland and the Westbank Expressway was for hurricane evacuation and to raise the roadway at Barataria enough to clear the 100 yr. flood plain.

They could have shaved a billion or so off the costs by using existing US 90 from LA 308 to near Des Allemands, as well as upgrading and raising existing US 90 from just east of Willowridge Blvd in Mimosa Park to the Westbank Expressway...but, they still want to elevate the entire highway on structure.

Some have suggested saving money by truncating the project at I-310 near Luling, and overlaying I-310 to meet I-10 west of Kenner. That would fulfill the bare basic requirement of a Lafayette/NOLA freeway, but it would shortchange the Westbank Expy., which needs to be completed to US 90 to coordinate with the Huey P. Long Bridge upgrade.

Personally, what I would do is focus on the segments in Lafayette Parish (I-49 Lafayette Connector and US 90 from the airport to LA 88) and completing the segments from Lafayette to Morgan City first, then completing the WB expy segment (probably as a signed I-910 initially), then the Raceland to I-310 connection, and then cap it off with the I-310 to WB segment. You might not be able to complete it in one bite, so why not smaller chunks??


Anthony