I have a friend who lives in Stockbridge (Stuckbridge, she called it) who couldn’t drive out of town for 4-5 days. They finally let them take a very rough dirt road that was still connected to civilization once they were sure drivers wouldn’t block to only route that construction and emergency workers were using.
There’s a reason the old cliche “Can’t get theahr from heahr.” was born in VT…
I always thought that was Maine.
Anyway Vermont is pretty good at fixing roadways and can even do it in a timely manner. This example made the Rachel Maddow show not to long ago.
I don’t see why they would be baffled by the problem in the pictures. They just need to put the engineers on it.
The only problem I see is preserving the natural look, specifically from the river, that’s a bit more time consuming because then you’re trying to appease people’s find more architectural senses. Then you have committees, approvals and everyone wanting to give their opinion. Making it a Massachusetts project…
An ugly straight forward solution could be done in a few weeks.
Same thing happened on roads in western Mass and they were fixed with similar speed and efficiency as the washed out roads in NH, VT, and NY as far as I can tell. Most of the major roads are already fixed.
Here’s the latest official news I can find-
http://www.weathersfieldvt.org/news/875-route-106-washout-update-as-of-9142011
The following was written by a representative from the Vermont Agency of Transportation.
I want to provide you with an update of our activities and direction for the route 106 repairs. Initially there were a few options coming from the field regarding this site, cut the approaches, acquire ROW and move the road completely, rebuild/repair in place etc. Yesterday a VTrans Geo-technologist and Geo-morphologist were brought in to investigate the site and advise on the preferred way forward. From their analysis and collective thinking, the best and right way to address this slide (shy of total relocation) is to initiate a permanent fix in place from the onset. Due to the magnitude of the slope the river bank must be armored and erosion control must be achieved. Gurney Brothers has begun to divert channel waters to allow safer access to the base of the slope. The final plan on the fix might be ready within two weeks+/-. VTrans is moving forward to develop this plan and initiate the permanent repair. Once this plan is developed, we will certainly share the plan with you so that you in turn can make it available to interested parties in the town. We think we can have the roadway up to grade by late November+/-, barring any significant high-water events that would impede or destroy progress made.
So it’s going to take two weeks to formulate a plan, and the work may be done by late November. Guess it’s not as easy as some of you think! And FYI, also read that bank is 200 feet tall! That’s a lot of fill to dump in.
Read where? From those pictures, it looks less than half that.
Here’s how they do it in North Carolina, but the water level is a tad higher and they have more room at the side.
http://www.sbckiteboard.com/video_display/video:3894/TEMPORARY-BRIDGE-TO-RESTORE-LINK-TO-OUTER-BANKS
I don’t think anyone claimed that this was going to be easy, but the work doesn’t seem to be significantly different than we described. It’s just the scale of the 106 work is pretty large.
Flying car
That’s what I figured. It wasn’t that they didn’t know what to do, it’s that the site hadn’t been fully evaluated and the cost of the various possible fixes hadn’t been calculated and compared. If, for instance, the geotech had found that both sides of the break had been undermined for half a mile in each direction in ways that didn’t readily show, that would have raised the cost of a re-build.
Not knowing the cost of land acquisition in the area, or whether that pole means there’s a utility easement that can’t be messed with without a fight would have also left the cost of one option in the air.
Now that they’ve chosen a type of fix, they can start estimating the cost of different particular ways of achieving the fix. Maybe J Cubed’s suggestion is one possible method of shoring up the road. But it may not be the most reliable in this situation and it may not be the cheapest. And maybe the cost of some materials has risen due to other needed damage repairs.
Only two weeks of estimating and analysis and writing the recommendation report to be used to justify the request for funds, not to mention routing the report for quality review and authorization, is pretty fast. I don’t see them mentioning whether they have the funds available or whether they’ll have to apply to a program for money. Sometime that takes longer than the planning does.
And planning isn’t design. Design will come next, then review, then advertising for bid, then issuing the contract, then the construction will start. If it’s an emergency, they might be able to contract the construction without a 4 week bid advertisement. November’s not bad for all of that.
Irene hit, what?, August 28? I know it’s easy for me to say I can live with that speed, but they don’t sound outrageously slow to me.
Lots of good suggestions, but before one of them is implemented I recommended a couple of well-placed ramps 
If there’s no practical detour then I’m surprised they don’t temporarily take that land on the side and create a gavel lane to loop around the bad area. They could fix the road and still let limited traffic through.
Later, they could remove the gravel and sod with grass. Property would be good as new.
States imminent domain rights are pretty powerful.
A few years back my road got undercut and washed out by the creek and they used panels similar to these (PDF) but thicker and made of iron to create a barrier, backfill, and repave it. Slightly smaller scale, though.
You’d think it would be easy and quick to fix, but this is Vermont, after all:
The environmental review process will have it wrapped up in court for twenty years.