[AusNOG] OT: Re: Pipe hiccup in Melbourne

[Paul Julian]

Hey Karl, that's called fixing something properly, unfortunately the Australian government isn't at that point in evolution as yet, they still spray tar on some dirt and drop some rocks on it and call that a road LOL.

Regards
Paul

-----Original Message-----
From: AusNOG [mailto:ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net] On Behalf Of Karl Auer
Sent: Tuesday, 10 February 2015 5:05 PM
To: ausnog at lists.ausnog.net
Subject: [AusNOG] OT: Re: Pipe hiccup in Melbourne

On Tue, 2015-02-10 at 16:05 +1100, Mark Tees wrote:
> If a sizeable tunnel was built on either side of roads where all the 
> common utilities go

I lived for nearly a decade in Forn Parts (no Spoonerisms, please!) and lived beside a fairly important road into the city. Over winter, a bit of a pot-hole developed, maybe a foot or two long and maybe a couple of inches deep. Not really a pot-hole - more of a crack, or rift. One day City Works showed up to fix it. In Australia you'd expect a shovel-full of gravel to be chucked in, plus a quick spurt of liquid tar. It would last one or two days, then there'd be a pothole again for a couple of months. Rinse and repeat.

Not here. Oh no. They re-routed traffic around the block, then dug up the road almost the whole way across it, and for two metres along it, over two metres deep. Then they started layering various soils, sands and gravels back into the excavation, building it all back up to the proper street level. Each layer was carefully compacted. Finally they layered tar on top of it all, and rolled it flat. You could barely tell there had ever been a hole. A week after I thought they were finished, they came back - and added about a centimetre of tar mixture to account for where the traffic had slightly compressed the new section. They did that again about six weeks later. Driving over it, you really had to know they had repaired the section, then if you concentrated you could sense the slightest difference in road noise, perhaps feel the slightest of slight bumps. But not after the third lot of tar mixture. Then it was absolutely imperceptible.

Now, this was a pretty big operation, right? So it would take many weeks, right? And hugely inconvenience the commuters, right? Wrong! They worked on it only at night, from about 10pm through to 6am. They covered the hole up with massive steel plates during the day, and let the traffic flow again. And the whole thing (bar the two followups) was done in about a week.

I'm sure it was very expensive indeed to fix the road like that. But I'm just as sure that that section of road will not need further attention for about a hundred years, so I'm guessing the investment was worth it.

Regards, K.

--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Karl Auer (kauer at biplane.com.au)
http://www.biplane.com.au/kauer
http://twitter.com/kauer389

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