| Road Work 101: Must have beginners on this one !!! | |
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+7$F-5$ Inc. Riptide Dr.Auto zinda1 ProOnThaSnow b1r - TS BUZBYU 11 posters |
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BUZBYU [WEEKEND WARRIOR]
Age : 57 Join date : 2010-03-20 Posts : 641 Location : Billings, MT
| Subject: Road Work 101: Must have beginners on this one !!! March 17th 2011, 12:45 pm | |
| 24th Street and Grand Ave. Turn Lane in front of Don's Car wash, southbound on 24th. This is at leas a 4-5" rise. I guess it's better than the pothole that used to be there. | |
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b1r - TS [WEEKEND WARRIOR]
Age : 41 Join date : 2009-09-28 Posts : 625 Location : Billings
| Subject: Re: Road Work 101: Must have beginners on this one !!! March 17th 2011, 12:48 pm | |
| you just missed the point... they were trying to build a jump! | |
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BUZBYU [WEEKEND WARRIOR]
Age : 57 Join date : 2010-03-20 Posts : 641 Location : Billings, MT
| Subject: Re: Road Work 101: Must have beginners on this one !!! March 17th 2011, 1:00 pm | |
| - b1r - TS wrote:
- you just missed the point... they were trying to build a jump!
LOL!! | |
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ProOnThaSnow [WEEKEND WARRIOR]
Age : 38 Join date : 2009-10-07 Posts : 664 Location : Billings
| Subject: Re: Road Work 101: Must have beginners on this one !!! March 17th 2011, 2:04 pm | |
| I posted about that "fix" yesterday on my facebook page. Its horrible! | |
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zinda1 [STUDENT]
Age : 41 Join date : 2010-02-23 Posts : 117 Location : B-town playa
| Subject: Re: Road Work 101: Must have beginners on this one !!! March 17th 2011, 2:08 pm | |
| Wow. Can 24th possibly get any worse? Over the course of the last couple years they have taken one of the best and smoothest streets (also the main drag) into a complete cluster f*ck. Not only have they destroyed it with the damn water main project they half ass every repair whether it be potholes or the water main project. Dodging potholes and horrible repairs can lick my sack! Rant over. | |
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Dr.Auto [GARAGE NUT]
Age : 45 Join date : 2009-09-24 Posts : 977 Location : Lockwood, MT
| Subject: Re: Road Work 101: Must have beginners on this one !!! March 17th 2011, 2:37 pm | |
| Well you see.....
It's inevitable that its going to get tamped down.... just give it time. lol | |
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Riptide [GARAGE NUT]
Age : 48 Join date : 2009-10-20 Posts : 734 Location : Billings
| Subject: Re: Road Work 101: Must have beginners on this one !!! March 17th 2011, 3:03 pm | |
| I hate 24th. And I agree over the last two years it has been trashed completely. The concrete work they did when they finished the water main installs was garbage. It was never smooth to begin with and is coming apart already. The intersection at Central is a damn mess. Not to mention the fact it took them fucking FOREVER to finish that job in the first place. I don't know what the problem with Billings is. They either have union rules in place preventing them from getting jobs done quickly by having crews work nights or they are just to damn cheap to spend the money on it. | |
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$F-5$ Inc. [STUDENT]
Age : 40 Join date : 2010-09-14 Posts : 112 Location : SATAN'S TAINT,MT
| Subject: Re: Road Work 101: Must have beginners on this one !!! March 17th 2011, 3:20 pm | |
| i will take a couple pics of the "fixed" roads in my neighborhood! no dis-respect to any construction workers on here but montana road contrucion is the biggest fuckin joke i have ever seen. almost 5yrs for what less then a dozen roundabouts? the gfs dad works for the state and said the average intersection with lights is 1.6mil and a roundabout is $200,000. well i think they are still out money cause in the amount of time it took them to finish they would have saved money if they had jut put lights in..... and all road construction in mt takes multiple YEARS not months. except 1 co. whoever redid 27th about 10yrs ago or so did it in 2 whole months it was fast and they did a great job. we should only hire that co. | |
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ghost [GARAGE NUT]
Age : 44 Join date : 2010-02-04 Posts : 922 Location : billings
| Subject: Re: Road Work 101: Must have beginners on this one !!! March 17th 2011, 10:03 pm | |
| speaking as a construction guy i have to agree the city and county workers here are sum of the laziest people i have ever met, they never meet there budget , the work is shoddy at best . and the time involed is just retarded ,
for years billings has been asked where all the road tax goes , cause it doesnt go back into the road , they wont even respond when there asked at a city counsel meeting
on a similar note the yellowstone county tried to pass a junk car ordance which was shot down this last meeting , there goin to do another study on it, basically its no junk or what they consider junk cars anywhere in county . even if its one vehicle this would be horrible for anyone who actully works on cars , please keep your ears out there, cause there gonna try this again , and it would destroy a our hobby in this county , just a heads up for all you guys cause this would have passed if not for alot of people showing up to shoot it down . | |
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ProOnThaSnow [WEEKEND WARRIOR]
Age : 38 Join date : 2009-10-07 Posts : 664 Location : Billings
| Subject: Re: Road Work 101: Must have beginners on this one !!! March 17th 2011, 10:32 pm | |
| - Riptide wrote:
- I hate 24th. And I agree over the last two years it has been trashed completely. The concrete work they did when they finished the water main installs was garbage. It was never smooth to begin with and is coming apart already. The intersection at Central is a damn mess. Not to mention the fact it took them fucking FOREVER to finish that job in the first place. I don't know what the problem with Billings is. They either have union rules in place preventing them from getting jobs done quickly by having crews work nights or they are just to damn cheap to spend the money on it.
I think a lot of it had to do with the crews milking the jobs. I live right on 24th and day after day I'd look out my window to see 4 or 5 guys talking on their cellphones while 1 was working. There was a period of about 2 weeks when I could not even get my car out of the driveway, and if it weren't for having a truck to go through the 10" drops they'd leave in the road I would have been stranded. The equipment operators were constantly pulling 5 yard loaders onto our driveway (cracking it worse than it already is, but at least its a rental), and they would pile gravel IN FRONT of my driveway blocking vehicles in. I actually had to tell them one day they had an hour to have my driveway cleared, because if I were to get called to work and couldn't get out shit was going to hit the fan. Word is that they are supposedly going to repave 24th from grand to damn near walmart this summer. I know it needs it, but I hope to god it is no where near as time consuming as the job was last summer. Oh, and for what its worth - that job they did last year. My brother's old company would have had that whole stretch completed in 3-4 weeks max. Those guys were lucky to lay 60' a day. And then it would take days to get backfilled and days after that to be paved. In theory, the pipelaying crew should be about 100 yards ahead of the backfilling crew, 100 yards ahead of the paving crew... but how many times did they pave areas, just to tear them out 3 days later? You guys may not have noticed, but I sure as hell did. I'd leave my driveway going one way that was paved the day before and have to turn around because there'd be a 6' open hole in the ground. And them not plating the open holes is completely irrisponsible to boot. If someone had dropped a car in one, they could have had quite the lawsuit on their hands. | |
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04 Wagon Boy [STUDENT]
Age : 32 Join date : 2009-10-01 Posts : 247 Location : Billings/Bozeman
| Subject: Re: Road Work 101: Must have beginners on this one !!! March 17th 2011, 11:13 pm | |
| I work construction as well and I can attest to the cities poor use of money and time.
24th will be getting repaved this summer but it will all be night work. Depending on what we do traffic wise, and if Knife River is doing the job or not, the paving shouldn't take longer than 2 or 3 nights. I would lean more towards two because they will probably get fined if its not done in a certain amount of time.
When they did main street like 6 years ago or whatever it was it didn't take them very long at all to get it all paved. Those paving crews can lay down stretches really quick when there aren't any hiccups.
As far as that pot hole goes, I bet that's just one of their temporary fixes that they are required to do. They are supposed to go back in the summer and make proper repairs to all of the ones they put bandaids on. | |
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ts4l [GARAGE NUT]
Join date : 2009-09-25 Posts : 904 Location : Billings, MT
| Subject: Re: Road Work 101: Must have beginners on this one !!! March 21st 2011, 10:43 am | |
| The roads in our whole country are just going to get worse because all our Presidents are too worried about getting re-elected and so they bring up Ideas like high speed trains and other ideas that get people excited. However they still have yet to fund the Highway bill and will never raise the gas tax because with gas prices already high they know they won't get elected if they do.
Interesting fact: The original 3 cent gas tax that is still in effect was started back when a stamp also cost 3 cents. As the price of a stamp has raised no President has raised the gas tax to help fund the Highway bill because American's don't like what we think is expensive gas. If you look at the gas prices in any other country it is double or triple what we pay. No wonder even so called 3rd world countries have better roads than we do.
It kills me that we have hundreds of lobbyists for things like green energy, but only 1 register lobbyist for highways. Yet everyone always complains about the roads. I think its weird politicians don't see infrastructure as a way to increase our economy and make transporting goods easier. If you look at unemployment compared to the funding cuts to the construction industry you can see that for every dollar taken out of that industry that ends up losing another job. If we fixed the roads we have now they would last 3-4 times as long as they did before and allow us to continue growing our highway network. The other issue is are roads are designed for truck loads that are typically way under what a track is capable of hauling these days. In Europe most trucks haul double or triple the weight we allow here because the roads are not designed for it. This just makes shipping less efficient and adds to the costs we pay at the store. Not to mention wasting gas for repeated trips. If the gas tax was raise 1 cent it would be enough to bring the highway funding back up to a level that could increase jobs by 200,000+. Why would a president not want that? Oh yeah because he wants to build trains that will probably never matter for a huge majority of us, because him and his vice Pres. grew up riding trains. | |
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Riptide [GARAGE NUT]
Age : 48 Join date : 2009-10-20 Posts : 734 Location : Billings
| Subject: Re: Road Work 101: Must have beginners on this one !!! March 21st 2011, 12:37 pm | |
| Most of the complaining is about local roads in town. I could be wrong but AFAIK that is mainly a city issue and not a federal thing.
I would be ALL for voting in a local tax increase to help fund better roads in Billings. It never seems to make it on the ballot. Instead we get 12 million dollar bullshit baseball stadiums and "sky sculptures" down town costing hundreds of thousands. The city and many of it's residents are good at one thing other than drinking and driving: wasting money. | |
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ts4l [GARAGE NUT]
Join date : 2009-09-25 Posts : 904 Location : Billings, MT
| Subject: Re: Road Work 101: Must have beginners on this one !!! March 21st 2011, 1:49 pm | |
| Very correct but the state funds still get a lot of their "cues" from Federal funding. I agree its crazy that some things get so much money and then schools, roads, and many things that we need are cut short.
In China for instance they spend 30%+ of their GDP on building better infrastructure, while the US spends less than 0.3%. Any wonder why China is growing so much faster? Its crazy gong to China each year and seeing how much its changed. | |
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repsofchrist [STUDENT]
Age : 43 Join date : 2010-04-27 Posts : 135 Location : Billings, MT
| Subject: Re: Road Work 101: Must have beginners on this one !!! March 21st 2011, 3:54 pm | |
| I watched a lady drive her car into one of those huge holes on 24th last year. The cones had been knocked down or moved out of the way. She went one way, I went the other. Luckily I guessed right. Both her airbags deployed and it shredded the underside of the car. She was ok, but there has got to be a better way to do this stuff. | |
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| Subject: Re: Road Work 101: Must have beginners on this one !!! | |
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| Road Work 101: Must have beginners on this one !!! | |
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