I-80 Construction

[almighty_tuna]

Maybe I'm not looking in the right places to find out, but I'll take the chance and ask anyway.  What is with the giant "construction zone" on I-80?!  When I drive home from downtown all I see are barrels and no construction!!  What are they doing?

[Erik]

Maybe I'm not looking in the right places to find out, but I'll take the chance and ask anyway.  What is with the giant "construction zone" on I-80?!  When I drive home from downtown all I see are barrels and no construction!!  What are they doing?

I know that they are building a second bridge from Iowa, and from what I understand there is going to be an offramp that is going to make it much quicker to jump from I-80 to I think I-75? or another major highway going into Bellevue..

[Coyote]

From what I see - it looks like they are blocking off the two far lanes at night and filling in pot holes. You can see the pink paint markers and the places they have already filled in. It looks like they also smoothed out some bumps as you can see the markings at places.

[Brad]

From 50th to the JFK/480 interchange they are getting ready to do the surface milling like they did between 50th and Highway 50 last year.  Its really nice when they are done and less you drive it overnight, you will never see them working.

[almighty_tuna]

Maybe I'm not looking in the right places to find out, but I'll take the chance and ask anyway.  What is with the giant "construction zone" on I-80?!  When I drive home from downtown all I see are barrels and no construction!!  What are they doing?

I know that they are building a second bridge from Iowa, and from what I understand there is going to be an offramp that is going to make it much quicker to jump from I-80 to I think I-75? or another major highway going into Bellevue..

Yeah, sorry, should've specified that I was looking at the 480/80 split out to 84th St.

Thanks for the info everyone - I was starting to think it was just a ploy for speed traps since there's no "construction" during the day when I'm tooling around.

[BRoss]

http://www.omaha.com/article/20121009/N ... 9949/1707#

No major projects that could cause detours or major traffic tie-ups are on the state of Nebraska's agenda for I-80 in Omaha for now, a Nebraska Department of Roads official said.

“We don't have anything on I-80 for this winter or next summer,'' said Tim Weander, an engineer with the District 2 office in Omaha.

However, he said, the Roads Department is planning these major projects during 2014:

» Adding a westbound lane on I-80 from the I-480/I-80 interchange west to 60th Street.

» Adding an eastbound lane on I-80 from 126th Street to 96th Street.

» Adding a northbound lane on I-680 from West Center Road through Pacific Street.

[TitosBuritoBarn]

http://www.omaha.com/article/20121009/N ... 9949/1707#

No major projects that could cause detours or major traffic tie-ups are on the state of Nebraska's agenda for I-80 in Omaha for now, a Nebraska Department of Roads official said.

“We don't have anything on I-80 for this winter or next summer,'' said Tim Weander, an engineer with the District 2 office in Omaha.

However, he said, the Roads Department is planning these major projects during 2014:

» Adding a westbound lane on I-80 from the I-480/I-80 interchange west to 60th Street.

» Adding an eastbound lane on I-80 from 126th Street to 96th Street.

» Adding a northbound lane on I-680 from West Center Road through Pacific Street.

At this point, adding more lanes is just going to encourage more cars instead of ease congestion. There's already 8 across? It will just draw cars from other routes.

It's also discouraging to know that NDOR thinks that these are congestion points.

[Linkin5]

http://www.omaha.com/article/20121009/N ... 9949/1707#

No major projects that could cause detours or major traffic tie-ups are on the state of Nebraska's agenda for I-80 in Omaha for now, a Nebraska Department of Roads official said.

“We don't have anything on I-80 for this winter or next summer,'' said Tim Weander, an engineer with the District 2 office in Omaha.

However, he said, the Roads Department is planning these major projects during 2014:

» Adding a westbound lane on I-80 from the I-480/I-80 interchange west to 60th Street.

» Adding an eastbound lane on I-80 from 126th Street to 96th Street.

» Adding a northbound lane on I-680 from West Center Road through Pacific Street.

At this point, adding more lanes is just going to encourage more cars instead of ease congestion. There's already 8 across? It will just draw cars from other routes.

It's also discouraging to know that NDOR thinks that these are congestion points.

Adding a lane is going to encourage people to drive on the interstate?  How?  As someone that drives to and from Council Bluffs quite frequently, this is a welcomed addition.

[iamjacobm]

I fail to see how the westbound 480 to 60th lane will do anything to ease congestion.  All I see happening is a bottleneck at 60th street.

[BRoss]

There's already 8 across?

Actually, it's 11. Six eastbound and five westbound.

[TitosBuritoBarn]

http://www.omaha.com/article/20121009/N ... 9949/1707#

No major projects that could cause detours or major traffic tie-ups are on the state of Nebraska's agenda for I-80 in Omaha for now, a Nebraska Department of Roads official said.

“We don't have anything on I-80 for this winter or next summer,'' said Tim Weander, an engineer with the District 2 office in Omaha.

However, he said, the Roads Department is planning these major projects during 2014:

» Adding a westbound lane on I-80 from the I-480/I-80 interchange west to 60th Street.

» Adding an eastbound lane on I-80 from 126th Street to 96th Street.

» Adding a northbound lane on I-680 from West Center Road through Pacific Street.

At this point, adding more lanes is just going to encourage more cars instead of ease congestion. There's already 8 across? It will just draw cars from other routes.

It's also discouraging to know that NDOR thinks that these are congestion points.

Adding a lane is going to encourage people to drive on the interstate?  How?  As someone that drives to and from Council Bluffs quite frequently, this is a welcomed addition.

The faster moving traffic could encourage people who would normally take Dodge, L, or some other thoroughfare to switch to I-80. Or it could encourage people who otherwise would have taken the bus or not gone out at all to get in their car and go somewhere because travel time is reduced. That in turn slows it back down again because more traffic is being added.

Even if that didn't happen, with the level of congestion Omaha has, a whole new lane for about a mile would save you....10 seconds? A minute tops if it somehow causes you to catch the tail end of a yellow light down the road.

There's already 8 across?

Actually, it's 11. Six eastbound and five westbound.

Ah yes. Now I remember.

I'm not anti-car by any means, I don't often take transit around Chicago, but freeways are ugly monstrosities. Wwwhhhy do people continue to insist on making them larger instead of invest in other modes of transit that are easier on the eyes?

[BRoss]

I'm not anti-car by any means, I don't often take transit around Chicago, but freeways are ugly monstrosities. Wwwhhhy do people continue to insist on making them larger instead of invest in other modes of transit that are easier on the eyes?

I personally love the CTA lines in Chicago and wish we could have something like that here. Maybe someday...

Now if you think adding one lane is bad, they have it planned to add two additional lanes going west from I-480 to 60th St in the Long Range Transportation Plan.

[S33]

Wwwhhhy do people continue to insist on making them larger instead of invest in other modes of transit that are easier on the eyes?

Because of the way the Omaha metro was planned and built over the course of the last 50 years, it's the only affordable alternative. And it's not likely to change any time soon.

[cdub]

This is what NDOR does.  Its all they do and all they know.  


As for why this would add more traffic, its called induced demand and its pretty well documented.  Widening rarely helps for long.  We don't do a very good job of calculating costs vs benefits and hardly look at long term maintenance cost at all.

[S33]

Hmmm, the private sector seems to do very well calculating cost verse benefits, so as long as they aren't just handed a big check from the feds, instead, rewarded by results.

Privatize this type of planning with a business model that rewards firms for planning transportation systems which actually ease congestion and offer a multi-layered mode of transportation approach, and I think we start seeing results. That is why government sometimes doesn't work, it's partitioned off into different agencies, all who push their "ideas" to promote larger budgets.