We’ve all seen them. Concrete barriers used to demarcate lanes on the highway during construction projects. Typically 4 to 6 feet long, around 3 feet tall, made of concrete, possibly with reflectors attached. Obviously heavy, needing heavy equipment to move. Laid end-to-end, sometimes for miles on major projects. Individual states or transportation departments must have thousands, maybe tens of thousands of them that they deploy as needed.
Where do they keep them? Where are the concrete barriers stored when not in use? They use a LOT of them. They won’t fit in a storage shed and they need heavy equipment to get them where they need to be. Yet I can’t think of anyplace that I’ve seen where they could be stockpiled. Do states have “construction equipment” properties (they would need to be huge)? Or are the barriers made on-site and destroyed or recycled after? Do they hang out with the baby pigeons between jobs?
Inquiring minds have been stuck in too many traffic jams. Anybody know?
Highway barriers are made of prestressed concrete (reinforced with rebar and designed to shrink during cure sufficient to have an internal stress to make them stronger). Note the two slots at the base, allowing them to be picked up by a large forklift and placed onto a heavy flatbed trailer. They are stored at maintenance stations, which are large depots where road clearing equipment, aggregrate, emergency patching equipment, salt (in states which salt icy roads during ice storms), and other supplies are stored, usually just off of a highway, or otherwise at set asides impending use.
I’m sure there are multiple designated lots for storage but you do often see them arranged face to face on shoulders and pullouts for weeks or months before or after roadwork. I suspect most just get moved directly to the next project.
This. The highway department, whether state or local, pretty much is always working flat-out someplace. As soon as one project ends, the next one begins. The same people, machinery, and barriers, get moved to the next job.
Around here I often see those barriers stacked two by two 3 or 4 layers high crosswise to the layer below, sorta like Jenga.
And they may seem short when you’re whizzing by, but the standard length is eight feet, and they’re 24 inches wide at the base.
You’re right about needing heavy equipment to move them around, but that’s generally not a problem, since the people who use them have a lot of such equipment.
If you google “jersey barrier storage”, you get some useful photos showing that by using 4x4 timbers, you can stack them four high, meaning you can pack 16 of them (enough for 128 linear feet) into an 8’ x 8’ space. If 64 square feet of space in a field is enough for 128 linear feet of barrier, then for a mile if barrier, you’d need 41.25 such spaces, which works out to 2640 square feet, or 0.06 acres. If you have an acre of land (a parcel ~206 feet on a side), you have enough space to store 16.7 linear miles of barrier, if you’re careful about packing them tightly together.
I’ve seen that used a few places, like on the Tappan Zee Bridge about thirty years ago. It allowed for an extra lane in one direction in the morning and an extra lane in the other direction in the evening. Except the machine broke down at least once, as I remember due to extreme cold.
I’m not in the roadway construction and repair business, but I do believe that these barriers are often just leased for the duration of a project (or for whatever event requires them) from companies that specifically provide barriers, temporary signs, light trees, etc. I’ve seen the facilities where these are stored. People who are in the industry have told me that it doesn’t make much sense for the construction company to rely on their own stock of this type of equipment. In fact, several of them refer to portable lighting units as “money trees,” meaning that somebody bought the units and leases them out at hefty prices. Trailer them to the site, set them up, and send a bill every month.
The same thing may be true of the temporary fencing around a construction site. I’ve seen the names of the rental companies on these. And of course the port-a-potties are often rented out.
They’re stored in the yard or paddock of the company or agency. Other things similarly stored in vast amounts if you know where to look are railroad rails/ties, utility poles, pipe section, fleet vehicles.
Just talked to my brother, a manager for a large district for the state of Washington Department of Transportation. He said for his area, the state rarely uses concrete barriers, it’s the contractors that are doing the actual work that use them. He said the occasions when they do need them, they rent them. He does have a couple thousand of the orange and white plastic barricades, most are water filled, others are full of sand. The water filled barricades are nice, they are relatively light when empty and can be moved by one worker. They place them then bring in a water truck to fill them about half full. When they are done, they open a valve and drain them where they sit. My brother also had some news that has him excited, he put in his notice that he will be retiring from the state in March, he will have 38 years in.
The same quantity and storage issues apply whether the barriers (and all other road construction paraphernalia) belong to a contractor or an agency. They need X amount regularly, and sometimes they need more than X and sometimes they need less than X.
Finding a source during surge demand and a storage place during slack demand is just one more aspect of running a civilization.
Before road zippers and similar mechanical solutions, when lanes demarcations had to be changed frequently, like in the daily traffic tidal flow for bridges during morning and afternoon peak hours, you’d have a truck crawling down the changed lane with one person reaching over and pulling out short rubber lane marker stakes, and on the other side another trying to insert them in holes in the pavement. Probably never a candidate for world’s funnest job.
I’ve been under the working theory that there are no storage areas for those barriers, and that’s why construction never seems to end. Or, why when a project accidentally does finish, another place gets torn up immediately. It’s so they have a place to send the barriers.
Down here in sunny California, we don’t call 'em Jersey Barriers, we call 'em K-Rail.
The barriers are also known as a K-rail , a term stipulated in the California Department of Transportation specification for temporary concrete traffic barriers which first started using concrete median barriers in the mid-1940s.
