Dust Control – Soil Stabilization – Erosion Control

One topic the county commissioners, city Council members and mayors of Green River and Rock Springs will address at a workshop Nov. 6 is turning what remains of the old highway into a serviceable alternate road between the two cities.

The commissioners began planning the workshop last August.

“We do this kind of work every day,” Rock Springs Mayor Tim Kaumo said. “If we all come together, we can come up with a product that will meet the needs of our community.”

Opinions on how this might be accomplished vary. County Engineer John Radosevich envisions a crushed base surface, with a magnesium chloride treatment for dust control two or three times a year, depending on volume of use. Kaumo thinks milled up asphalt would work better.

This is the type of project SCI thrives on, by utilizing the soils that are native to the area we would be able to transform what is considered an unusable road into a very usable and manageable road for a fraction of the cost they are looking at spending. By the time this is published here we will have contacted the public workers regarding their options. dust Control is just another part of the benefit to using Top-Seal

Similarly, whether the 50-foot-wide easement the Wyoming Department of Transportation owns can accommodate a functional two-lane roadway raises more questions than answers. Beyond the customary 12-foot-wide lanes, Radosevich wants to see 16 feet on either side of the roadway for drainage ditches, which exceeds WYDOT’s easement by 6 feet. Additionally, given projected traffic volumes and the fact that, as Radosevich noted, “property develops once you have a road,”  he questioned the future utility of a road without shoulders or a turn-around lane.

But he doesn’t question the need.

Radosevich recalls the moment, at around 5 p.m. one year ago, when, returning to Rock Springs, and cresting one of the hills along the old road with about 30 cars behind him, he came headlight to headlight with a vehicle traveling in the opposite direction — also trailed by 30 cars.

“We couldn’t back down,” Radosevich recalled. “And the road wasn’t wide enough to pass. Two or three people trying to go around other cars had already slid off.”

Luckily 10 or 12 cars on one side of the hill were able to pull off the road onto an old sheepherder’s camp, loosening the flow of traffic enough to enable everyone to get home. But in the dead of winter an old sheepherder’s camp isn’t much fun, not to mention much of a refuge.

“Safety is going to drive the path forward,” Kaumo agreed. He and John Eddins, WYDOT Engineer for District 3, spent 3 hours on the old road during the most recent I-80 closure, monitoring traffic and “trying to make calls that made sense.”

One was to WYDOT, to issue a road closure for the route on which, by that time, dozens of motorists were stranded, including the now notorious U-Haul trailer. He and Eddins were in a 4-wheel drive truck and, Kaumo added, “it was iffy with that.”

“Whenever there’s a closure, I get out there if I can,” Eddins said.  Charged with maintaining I-80 between Rock Springs and Green River, he also noted that WYDOT is “not in a position to take over another route” and cautioned, “Everybody needs to be realistic about this.”
But WYDOT can assist with about $4 million in funding through the Industrial Roads Program, he said, and could also turn the easement over to the county, which would then assume responsibility for maintaining it.   

The Green River to Rock Springs Route Feasibility Study, completed by the Boulder group Short Elliot Hendrickson Inc. late last year, proposed three different connector routes between the two cities, with price tags ranging from $26 million to $65 million, depending on location and materials used. Citing cost, projected use, and the few times per year the stretch of highway between the two cities is actually closed — roughly four — the group also called the need for an alternate roadway “questionable,” prompting Kaumo to describe  the study as “an action plan that called for no action.”

He said the one issue with some validity is that enabling people to travel a road creates some liability, which the county could alleviate with warning signs. Radosevich agreed that liability could be a problem, referring to what the feasibility study identifies as horizontal and vertical “design standards” — that is, the sharpness of curves and peaks — to which the old road does not conform.

He emphasized the need for speed limits to compensate for the nonconformities, and also noted the necessity for supports over the utility corridor that grew up along the old highway, to disperse the weight from increased volumes of traffic.  He also predicted that controlling access to the road would remain difficult, warning signs notwithstanding:

“When the interstate’s closed, you’re going to get truck drivers who’re willing to take the gamble.”

But neither he nor Kaumo see the old road’s renovation as, necessarily, a multimillion dollar project. Although in his opinion “less design means more maintenance”, Radosevich estimated that any needed right of ways could be acquired, ground soil testing and dirt work completed, gravel purchased and laid, and missing guard rails replaced for about $600,000 a mile, or $3-$5 million. Kaumo added that most of the work could be done in-house.

“A project like this doesn’t need to be bid out,” he said. “We may need to purchase road base and the like, but we can use our own employees and our own equipment to build it.”

Kaumo thinks a road that’s “safe and passable” could be completed by fall of next year.
“All we want to do is what makes sense,” he said. “This won’t be the finest road. But it will definitely get you home.”