Interstates 40 and 55 co-exist for about 5 miles in West Memphis, Arkansas just west of Memphis TN. I have been traveling this stretch of road 6-10 per year for 25 years. And I don’t think there has ever been a time when this stretch of road has NOT been under construction.
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As I traveled this road once, I began to think of reasons why this road is always under construction.
Enormous Truck traffic. Interstate 40 is main East-West route between Jackson MS and St Louis MO. And I-55 is the North South route between the Western Gulf of Mexico and St Louis MO. It parallels the Mississippi River. And these two interstates join together in West Memphis. I would guess the ratio of Tractor Trailers to automobiles is pretty close to a Nationwide High.
Quality of the earth. This area is part Mississippi River Delta. Which is probably all silt and sand.
Construction never has 100% access to the road to do the job correctly.
Making ‘permanent’ repairs is cost prohibitive. So work is done with “duct tape and bailing wire”.
Construction is designed to fail. Job Security for the contractors.
The technology has not been developed to do the job correctly.
Well, that particular stretch wasn’t under construction 20 years ago, so there’s that, though nearby stretches have been. I grew up in the area and must have driven it thousands of times before moving away.
Beyond that, it’s been different short sections over different years, rather than the entire 5 mile stretch at once. And there have been periods when no construction was ongoing. That does slow down the overall pace, but you can’t just shut entire interstates down for months at a time, either. Also, both the Hernando de Soto and Arkansas-Tennessee bridges linking Arkansas and Tennessee were getting resurfaced for a couple years. Bridge work takes a while and gets annoying.
For what it’s worth, the parts that have been finished are noticeably better and have remained so.
You may also be conflating that construction with the nearby sections of I-55 and I-40 that have been worked on for the last 25 years. The Arkansas sections of both interstates have had different parts under construction for a long time, though any particular stretch of work is usually done within a year.
I know that stretch well. I’d say it’s a combination of they can’t just shut it down for as long as it takes to fix it properly and the State is unwilling to pay the contractors enough to fix it properly by piecemeal repairs. And Arkansas isn’t hiring enough inspectors to make certain the concrete being poured is of the proper consistency and the right thickness.
One which I’m familiar with has a pretty large amount of traffic, but mostly the problem is that it stands on gypsum. Every time there’s a big storm another chunk of the underlying floor gets washed away and potholes appear; thankfully, those only take place in the spring, so every summer there’s touch-ups. Avoiding the large gypsum flats would have made it 20% longer.
For comparison, most other roads in the same general area, but off the gypsum flats, get repainted more often than they get repaved.
I know where you’re talking about. Similarly, 64/40 in St. Louis has been under construction literally my entire life. I think they get the funding for upgrades and design them based on current traffic levels. Then it takes a year or two to do the paperwork and finish the job. By then traffic has increased 40-50% and it’s time to upgrade all over again. Also, I think construction companies like regular work, so there’s probably some lobbying to this end.
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Beyond that, it’s been different short sections over different years, rather than the entire 5 mile stretch at once.
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You’d think, but I’ve been frustrated many times watching construction crews close and demolish five miles worth of road at a time, only to rebuild it in 50 foot sections. :smack: Can’t say I’ve seen that on the interstate at least, so somebody’s using their thinker.
There’s a stretch of I-580 through Livermore, Ca. (just a ways east of Oakland) that’s been under continuous construction since the fall of the Roman Empire. They just can’t build new lanes fast enough to keep up with the commuting population in that area.
For ultimate in eternal road construction, I nominate Devil’s Slide along CA 1 between Half Moon Bay and Santa Cruz.
A road that should never have been built.
For worst combination of boring-as-hell drive and never-ending construction, I vote for I35 between Austin and Dallas. There’s always some 2-lane portion of it that is tore all to hell and about about 1.75 car widths wide, with concrete barriers on either side.
I’ve been driving back and forth between Massachusetts and New Jersey for well over 25 years, usually crossing the Hudson at the Tappan Zee bridge. I-270 as it approaches the bridge has been under construction for almost all that time. They re-routed several roads and widened it all, in both directions, all without shutting it down (it has to be one of the most heavily-traveled commuter routes in the country). That is almost certainly why the construction took so long.
It’s finished now. There are changes I’d make (there’s a single lane from the Hutchinson Parkway to I-270, which has to cross two lanes of traffic in a very short distance if the driver expects to actually get onto 270, for instance), but I’m glad the construction is finally over – so you see that it DOES end.
For my state, Michigan, I’d say it’s a combination of points 1, 4, and 5. Trucks are frequently overloaded, because almost no effort is ever made to enforce loading regulations. The electorate, and by extension the state government, doesn’t want to pony up the money necessary to repair stuff properly, so “repairs” rarely consist of anything more than patching potholes. Actually resurfacing the road is pretty much a once-in-a-lifetime event. And we have shady, unionized (and probably mobbed-up) construction contractors who do a crappy job of building the roads in the first place. (Honestly, guys. Other places with cold winters manage to build roads that don’t crack & heave within 5 years. Why can’t you? :dubious: )
There’s an 8-mile section of I-95 in Philadelphia that will have, at least parts of it, literally under construction for at least 12 years by the time it’s done.
It started in 2008 (from what I recall, that site is devoid of a full timeline) and is currently projected to go through 2020. The problem is it’s mostly elevated highway and associated bridges/etc that need to get replaced as they near the end of their original effective life.
There’s pretty much a multi-mile-long traffic jam in that section all day long.
Why not? A few of my coworkers are bummed out that they have to come to work a different way because they got notice that the well-traveled bridge they’d typically drive over is going to be closed for at least one and up to three years while necessary repairs are made. Why can’t a section of a highway be similarly closed for as long as it takes to fix it? No alternate routes to its destination points?
Did they ever finish Tropicana BLVD in Vegas? It’s been a few years since I was there, but there was always construction…for a couple of decades it seemed
Can the alternate route take the traffic volumes? Can it handle trucks and their much larger turning footprint? Any vertical clearance issues on that route? Can it handle permit loads? How much will it cost to repair all the damage to the roadway on the alternate route from the additional traffic? Got any environmental studies on the sound/air quality issues that will be generated from the much higher traffic volumes on that alternate route?
I’ve detoured traffic before – it’s not easy. It’s generally simpler to stage it and keep traffic moving.
For the road mentioned in the OP, not really. There are alternatives for the odd car, but those local roads can’t handle the sheer numbers or weight of all the 18 wheelers that go through there. I-40 and I-55 both naturally get tons of truck travel.
The OP is a bit technically off, too. The overlap is actually about 3 miles and then I-40 and I-55 split again and each goes another 4 miles before hitting their respective bridges across the Mississippi River into Memphis.
That 3 mile overlap hasn’t been under anything like continuous construction, though it (and each of the separate I-40 and I-55 4 mile legs into Memphis) has had some significant construction work at various times and at various sections over the last 20 years.
It is true that various other sections of both I-40 and I-55 further into Arkansas have been under construction pretty much continuously over the last 20 years, but it’s never been the same stretch continuously. The I-55 section up to Missouri was finished up a while back, so it’s good to go. I haven’t been on I-40 between Memphis and Little Rock for a while, but it wouldn’t surprise me if some section of that 150 mile stretch was being worked on.
One of the schools in my county has had to shut down because of floods that closed the nearby freeway. The detour goes right by the school, and it can take the buses hours to get through.
yes, there may have been a little hyperbole in my OP about near constant construction. But I have traveled that road 10-12 times per year since 1990 and I cannot recall a time where it was not under construction, in at least one direction. Maybe I am just that unlucky to catch it when it was under construction.
And yes, I-55 from Marion to Blytheville is not currently under construction, but I think there is more to do near the Missouri border.
And FWIW, I was talking about the overlap (3 miles or 5 miles, I have never measured it). I travel from Missouri so I know the I-55 portion very well.
The Tractor Trailer to Car ratio is particularly high on East-West I-40 artery.
Add I-90 in Ohio between Mentor and the Pennsylvania state line. ODOT has been rebuilding the road, in 10 mile sections here and there, continuously since 2006.