The original 180 miles of the Penn Tpke, from Carlisle to Butler was completed in just over 2 years. Not just making some of the deepest cuts east of the Rockies through the Alleghenys Mtns, but of the original 7 Tpke tunnels, 4 were part of a bankrupt, abandoned RR built by Cornelius Vanderbilt in the 1880’s that were refurbished and stabilized, the rest were were all new construction. And it was one of the few gov’t projects that was completed ahead of schedule and UNDER BUDGET. An amazing feat considering the technology available in the 1930’s. I see the same thing here in FL. Relatively simple road widening projects taking years to complete, as if the workers and engineers are making carreers out of them.
76 in Stuart, FL just off i-95 is a joke, they been working on it for over 10 years and it still has cones and 3 lanes to two. somebody is making big bucks off of this work.
Impala64ssa said...”The original 180 miles of the Penn Tpke, from Carlisle to Butler was completed in just over 2 years......”
Up here in Carbon County PA the world famous Delaware and Lehigh Trail (D&L) 140+ miles runs through our area. From Lehighton to Jim Thorpe the trail uses the old Lehigh Canal towpath. The trail abruptly ends at the waste water plant in Jim Thorpe, the D&L continues on the opposite side of the Lehigh River through the scenic Lehigh Gorge State Park for another 26 miles. Thus there is a gap of about a mile between the Canal and the Gorge which if closed would make the trail roughly 60 miles long with no interruptions. It would also put a lot of adventure seekers from New York City with spending money right into the downtown of Jim Thorpe. As a point of information, anyone using the trail looking to travel through this gap needs to be shuttled the approx. 4 miles from Lehighton to the Gorge as there isn’t a viable route between the two points for use by bicyclists.
So the County Supervisors applied and received a bunch of grants to construct a bridge over the river to connect the two trails. The actual span (250 feet) is in place at a cost of 3.1 million dollars. The awesome bridge is also closed because they want to make some improvements to the water treatment plant and install a sea wall to abate flooding. Nothing was said about this work until a month or so before the dedication of the bridge span.
When ground was broken on the bridge, the project was already almost 2 years behind schedule. Ground breaking was I think in March 2017, the dedication was June 2018. No one is stating when the bridge will actually open for use by the public although the D&L would like us to believe that it will open in the Spring (2019). The earliest in my opinion is 4th quarter 2019 and I’m a optimist. The trail improvements and sea wall cost is another 1 million dollars making the total cost 4.3 million.
There is another problem in that on the side of the river opposite of the water plant the D&L trail will traverse a large parking lot owned by the county. There is another half million dollars of grant money in the bank to improve the trail in the parking lot but there are other projects in the pipeline that will push the completion date of that part of the trail well into 2021. So in summary the bridge is 2 million dollars over budget and as we speak 2 years behind schedule, will be between 3 or 4 years behind schedule when it is finally complete.
There is of course a reason for this story telling. The bridge is located right at the exact point where the historical Lehigh Canal had it start point. About 500 feet from the bridge are the remains of lock #1 and they had demolish part of the old slack water dam to build the eastern abutment. The irony here is that the original canal from (present day) Jim Thorpe to Easton PA (45 miles) was built in two years between 1818 and 1820 with picks and shovels at a cost of <7 million dollars. A single modern foot bridge 200 years later using cranes and bulldozers will take twice the amount of time to construct and when it’s all said and done cost almost the same amount of money.