Life at 60mph

Wichita Eagle reporter Ron Sylvester writes about his week of driving 60 miles per hour -- and increasing his gas mileage by 6 miles per gallon! -- in his blog.

HNTB: Envision transportation as utility

HNTB, consulting engineer for the Kansas Turnpike Authority, recently encouraged transportation planners and users to "Envision transportation assets as utilities." Click here to read the entire article or go to the "Think" point of view page on HNTB's web site.

Winter weather is coming!

Winter weather is coming! Take The Weather Channel’s Extreme Weather Driving Quiz to brush up on what to do in a variety of weather situations.
http://www.weather.com/activities/driving/extreme/text_quiz1.html

Kansas River Bridge Project Completion

Statement from Michael Johnston:

Thank you for coming to share what’s truly a milestone in the history of the Kansas Turnpike. Nearly 57 years ago at a location nearby, ground was broken for the Turnpike itself and a little less than two years later the roadway opened from Kansas City to Oklahoma.

Today, with this ribbon cutting, we’re officially and fully opening the Turnpike’s two new bridges across the Kansas River. At a cost of approximately $130 million, this project is the single largest ever undertaken by the Kansas Turnpike Authority.

To give an idea of its scale, the bridge project cost about the same to build as the entire Turnpike — grading, pavement, bridges, and all — did back in the Fifties. And just like back then, Turnpike customer revenue, not tax dollars, will pay for these bridges and other Turnpike improvements.

Replacing the bridges was a necessity, as our consulting engineers concluded in 2002 that the existing two-lane spans were nearing the end of their useful lives. Much has changed since those bridges were built in the mid-1950s, especially the amount of traffic.

The new bridges allowed us to widen the roadway to three lanes each direction in the Lawrence area.

We know that getting to this point today wasn’t easy for our customers and it certainly wasn’t easy for us as well, as is the case with any extensive roadway project, travelers are often inconvenienced, confused and occasionally infuriated.

And for all that, we have genuine regret. But since all of our projects must be done under traffic, there is simply no way to remove all the inconvenience that our customers have experienced these past three plus years. But, together with the plaza improvements, the bridges make travel safer and easier for our customers.

This project could have been the mother of all inconveniences. But the planning, good work and innovation of all our partners helped keep inconvenience to a minimum. I’d be quick to point out that there were times when our customers experienced frustration, especially during events — in fact, we shared every one of them. You probably never noticed that on Friday evenings — our busiest day of the week — we routinely had a wrecker on site to quickly remove disabled vehicles.

I’d like to recognize and thank our engineers and maintenance staff who were on-site every Friday evening and gave up so much time away from their families.
· KTA Chief Engineer David Jacobson
· Kansas River Bridges Project Engineers Luke Coltrane and Rex Fleming
· Design and Construction Engineers Rich Olson and Shannon Moore
· KTA Director of Maintenance Eric Becker
· Maintenance Supt Doug Walbridge
· Structures Supt Ed Patterson
· Utilities Supt Brian Neiberger
· I’d like to direct your attention to the program and a variety of other people who were our indispensible partners.
· We know your time is valuable and this was such a large project, I won’t list everyone involved. Many of our large project partners are listed in the program.

I’d like to sincerely thank the Lawrence community for its cooperation and support. We reached out to the community well in advance of this project to build bridges that permitted us to exchange information that was crucial to the success of the project.

I know each one of you here played a part in making this project a success and we appreciate your time in helping us celebrate.

U.S. Deer-Vehicle Collisions Fall 7 Percent

For the third consecutive year, the number of deer-vehicle collisions in the U.S. has dropped. Read on for information on this and tips to help avoid deer-vehicle collisions from State Farm.  http://www.statefarm.com/aboutus/_pressreleases/2011/october/3/us-deer-collisions-fall.asp