Interstate 82 in Washington and Oregon

[Bruce]

$83,580 + $4,290 = $87,870 paid by WSDOT. Not millions, but it's a good down payment on a house. It is kind of hard to justify spending $87,870 in taxpayer money on a project whose only benefit would be compliance with an arbitrary executive-branch policy that was never enacted by Congress, however. This also elides over the fact that someone has to plan and program this project, which is labor that must also be paid. And the DOT public relations team must spend time explaining the change to the general public, which is labor that must also be paid.

You're missing the $500,000 bribe to the contractors. /s

The real spending shows up when you try to update ancient software. For example, renaming one of our light rail stations was projected to cost $5 million for some reason.

Is CA-99 already a full freeway? If so, adding the I-7 designation to the freeway stretch shouldn't be as expensive, right?

Irrelevant to this thread.

[FrCorySticha]

Don't worry. The renumbering will happen when I-11 is completed through central Oregon from Reno, and I-82 becomes a part of I-11. /s

[Rothman]

Jake Bear will sell you a fancy 24-inch Interstate shield for $199. Now, his are a bit more expensive than highway-grade signs, since they're made of steel rather than aluminum and are meant to be used as home decor items, but let's use that as a baseline since I have the number right here.

Now, let's look at a typical interchange signing plan. Fortunately, the MUTCD has one we can use as reference:


That has five shields in it. You'll have to sign the other direction, too, of course. And include two shields on the mainline interstate for reassurance. That's 12 shields per interchange.

I-82 has 35 interchanges in Washington state, so you'll need 420 shields. At a cost of $199 per shield, you're looking at $83,580 in materials.

Now, suppose it takes 15 minutes to install a shield. You can't send just one guy in a truck out there to do it; that's unsafe, he needs a partner to hold the ladder and make sure nobody steals the truck while they're working. So each shield takes 30 man-minutes to install. 30 minutes times 420 shields equals 12,600 minutes, or 210 hours. They will also have to be paid for their time traveling between shields. I-82 in Washington is 137 miles long, and let's suppose they average 60 the whole way, so that's 4½ hours more labor we need to tack on (2¼ hours per person), for a total of 214½ hours. Suppose WSDOT employees make an hourly wage of $20/hour. That's $4,290 in labor.

$83,580 + $4,290 = $87,870 paid by WSDOT. Not millions, but it's a good down payment on a house. It is kind of hard to justify spending $87,870 in taxpayer money on a project whose only benefit would be compliance with an arbitrary executive-branch policy that was never enacted by Congress, however. This also elides over the fact that someone has to plan and program this project, which is labor that must also be paid. And the DOT public relations team must spend time explaining the change to the general public, which is labor that must also be paid.

WSDOT is not the only one who bears the cost of a highway renumber, however. Oregon DOT does too, of course, but also so do all the business owners along the route who now have to buy new advertising materials. And all of the mapping services that must update their maps. And all of the users of those mapping services that must now obtain new versions of the map (sure, Google Maps updates are free, but Google Maps doesn't have the data commercial drivers need to make route decisions; they must pay for other mapping services that do).

There's no way to know what the total cost on the private side is because it is broken up across so many shareholders. But it's clear that highway renumbering is not free. Even if you just take into account the costs the government bears, it starts to get difficult to explain how the people will get $87,000 of benefit from spending $87,000 to renumber a road. This is why highway renumbering is basically never done anymore except as a companion to real improvement of a corridor (like adding an Interstate number when a road is upgraded to freeway).

Um...given the actual amounts for ground mounted sign contracts that I've seen...you're a real lousy estimator.

$90K for a corridor is ridiculously cheap and actually goes against the argument you're making.

[kkt]

$20 an hour doesn't sound like much, for hazardous roadside work with a fair amount of independence required, especially since the workers are probably unionized and have medical benefits and maybe pensions or at least a matching 401K.

[Bruce]

That would solve the I-82 problem, but personally I would be satisfied if I-11 only went between Pheonix and Reno. I-82 was supposed to be the proposed route from Hartford to Providence in New England anyway, so no need for that extra duplication in Washington State.

I-82 was assigned in 1958, reusing a number originally used for the Portland-Utah freeway now known as I-84.

There's no "supposed to be" here. It's been I-82 in WA/OR for far longer than the New England version, which never really got finished, so clearly it's less important to note.

[MultiMillionMiler]

$20 an hour doesn't sound like much, for hazardous roadside work with a fair amount of independence required, especially since the workers are probably unionized and have medical benefits and maybe pensions or at least a matching 401K.

I agree, and truckers should make six figures as a starting salary. Not joking. Obtaining a commercial driver's license is hard. Road repair workers should make at least $25-30 an hour for the risk of being run over and fixing potholes that eat our cars, potentially saving thousands of lives.

[Scott5114]

Um...given the actual amounts for ground mounted sign contracts that I've seen...you're a real lousy estimator.

$90K for a corridor is ridiculously cheap and actually goes against the argument you're making.

Well of course I am, I'm not a professional like you are

I mostly just wanted to make the point that renumbering isn't free.

[Bruce]

Decided to quickly look at some highway worker salaries, and it seems to be $23.66/hour for an equipment operator. Field leads can get over $26/hour.

Not bad, especially for more rural areas where cost of living is pretty low.

[kkt]

Decided to quickly look at some highway worker salaries, and it seems to be $23.66/hour for an equipment operator. Field leads can get over $26/hour.

Not bad, especially for more rural areas where cost of living is pretty low.

Is that take-home, or fully loaded?

[Amaury]

I-82 has 35 interchanges in Washington state, so you'll need 420 shields. At a cost of $199 per shield, you're looking at $83,580 in materials.

I'm impressed that you know the number of interchanges it has.

[US 89]

I-82 has 35 interchanges in Washington state, so you'll need 420 shields. At a cost of $199 per shield, you're looking at $83,580 in materials.

I'm impressed that you know the number of interchanges it has.

I don't think he did before he looked at Wikipedia and/or Google Maps.

[Bickendan]

I-82 has 35 interchanges in Washington state, so you'll need 420 shields. At a cost of $199 per shield, you're looking at $83,580 in materials.

I'm impressed that you know the number of interchanges it has.

I don't think he did before he looked at Wikipedia and/or Google Maps.

More like counted the number of points in Travel Mapping, I'd wager.