Wow, the I-70 through Colorado is horrible!

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We have a friend that was a truckdriver, drove for Walmart for a long time.  He was driving up north and had gone across that span that
collapsed the day before.  I think it wasn't long after that he retired.  That would scare me to death.

I came out of Michigan on I 69 parts of it was just awful, beat my coach to death.  Then around Indianapolis, decided to go through on I 70
same issues on part of it.  And yes they are repairing the seams or something on some of the roads and everyone you hit just takes its toll
I'm sure.  The new air bags and things helped but that doesn't stop the coach from getting beaten.

I hope they further the repairs.  They are working on I 70 from Terre Haute to Indianapolis and there have been wreck after wreck with truck drivers getting killed.  They have signs for miles so I'm not sure why they don't see them.
 
Traveling across 40 from CA to Little Rock, the 40 in the Mojave in California was the WORST!

But we all know our state here in CA is broke....
 
When I left Breckenridge headed east back on I-70 it was the same old horrible road surface until I got to the Eisenhower/Johnson tunnel. When I came out the other side the road had improved a bit.  It seems like it is that stretch of road just outside of Vale, then all the way up the mountain and to the tunnel that is in such poor shape. 

I will avoid this route on the way back from Florida.  Why hit it again on purpose. And with winter around the corner I don't see Utah starting any big road projects at this time of year.
 
Ned said:
Can you show that the road replacements aren't being built to better withstand the higher loads and increased traffic?  In many places additional lanes are being added and that will reduce the wear on the individual lanes.  I would think our engineers are smarter than you give them credit for.
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I have not seen very many road repairs done where they replace the road base.  The load rating of a highway is largely determined by the road base.  Just chip coating or putting a new layer of thin asphalt on top of the existing surface will not significantly increase the load rating.

Many sections of interstate highway here in Idaho have deep depressions in the wheel paths (ruts) from the heavy truck tires.  It has displaced the road base.  The repair has been to fill in the depressions and some of those areas are already showing new depressions in less than 2 years from the repair.

Some of the wheel ruts in sections of the Oregon trail that has been preserved are not much deeper than some of the ruts I have seen on I84 here in Idaho.

Unfortunately the traffic engineers have no say on what the load limits will be.  That is determined by legislators that have no clue what they are doing and are only influenced by the trucking industry wanting load limits up or beyond 100,000 lbs.  As Rush Limbaugh once said follow the money and most questions will be answered.

In order to have a highway that can handle 100,000 lbs would require complete replacement of the road base.  That is not going to happen on 90% of our interstate system.
 
I would have to agree that I-70 is a horrible drive through the Rockies. There are several factors that come into play here. One is the shear volume of heavy truck traffic. Not many choices around here when you need to go west from Denver. In fact, there is no other choice. You would have to go all the way north to Wyoming and I-80, or south to New Mexico and I-40. Really no other options for the truckers. Another factor is the extreme weather at 10,000+ feet elevation. Freeze and thaw cycles occur practically daily up there for about 8 months of the year. The short construction season, combined with the huge amounts of traffic, makes maintenance difficult, and complete reconstruction nearly impossible. Heaven forbid we inconvenience someone's drive to try and repair the roadway. Working for a heavy civil company (in fact, we rebuilt I-35W after the collapse) gives me some insight to the issues facing our highways. Unfortunately, there is no easy answer, and most states don't have the necessary funding to repair their crumbling bridges and highways.
So just remember the next time you get stuck in a cone zone, they are trying to improve your drive, so sit back and be patient and let them do their work.
 
Ned said:
The highway system is being repaired, but the biggest emphasis right now is on the older bridges. 
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The infrastructure problem is not limited to highways. Sewer systems, water treatment plants and airports all need massive investment. There seems to be plenty of money to build sports stadiums and equip the police with questionable hardware, though.
 
So just remember the next time you get stuck in a cone zone, they are trying to improve your drive, so sit back and be patient and let them do their work.
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A lot of the time, that's fine, and long term that's certainly true. But it does get very annoying when there's a 12 mile stretch of cones, and there is only an indication of work having been done at one or two small spots along the way, sometimes with no current sign of work (weekday). It'd be a lot easier to take if they only coned the area they're working, extending it only when needed.
 
SeilerBird said:
But then I started driving on them and I was amazed. They are the smoothest and best maintained roads I have ever driven on. The tolls aren't cheap but they are cheaper than replacing suspension parts so now I have a SunPass and use the toll roads all the time.
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Florida's toll roads are in such peachy condition because they are priced out of most people's range, so they are little used. And they are new. Wait a few years.
 
Dan23 said:
The infrastructure problem is not limited to highways. Sewer systems, water treatment plants and airports all need massive investment. There seems to be plenty of money to build sports stadiums and equip the police with questionable hardware, though.
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The stadiums are being built with private funds for the most part.  The police are getting the castoff military hardware free from the government.  Why not add a 50% contribution to your income taxes to help pay for these infrastructure improvements?  Nothing is free.
 
Dan23 said:
The infrastructure problem is not limited to highways. Sewer systems, water treatment plants and airports all need massive investment. There seems to be plenty of money to build sports stadiums and equip the police with questionable hardware, though.
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Gotta love our aging infrastructure.  You would think with all of this money the government is spending on unemployment, paying people to stay home, that they could put them to work repairing/rebuilding the infrastructure.  Earn the money their getting.  I'll bet many of them would find employment no problem if they did that.

Mike.
 
We're headed to Moab in Oct from Minn. Would hwy 50 work from Pueblo west back to I 70 with Monarch Pass being the only grade?
 
Becks said:
We're headed to Moab in Oct from Minn. Would hwy 50 work from Pueblo west back to I 70 with Monarch Pass being the only grade?
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Should be no problem.  I did that route in May of this year.  Road in very good condition and little to no truck traffic.  Monarch is no problem as long as you make sure your speed is under control going down into some fairly tight turns.  Monarch also has adequate passing lanes  Be mindful of the weather as Colorado can have snow anytime after mid September.  Actually anytime year round at the elevation (11312 ft) Monarch is at.
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Becks said:
We're headed to Moab in Oct from Minn. Would hwy 50 work from Pueblo west back to I 70 with Monarch Pass being the only grade?
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You could go that way, but I wouldn't. It's not like I-70 is impassible, it just has it's rough spots. I make that trip over I-70 several times a year, as do millions of other vehicles. Detouring around via Hwy 50 would add at least half a day to your trip, if not more, not to mention most of it is winding two lane road. One section of Hwy 50 west of Gunnison is under construction and can have delays of over an hour. If you do decide to go that route, a stop at the Black Canyon is worth your time.
 
Dan23 said:
I cannot disagree with your post, but the deplorable condition of all the country's infrastructure is a well-known fact that will only get worse if out nation continues to cast a blind eye on it.
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So very, very true.  Sadly the investment in US infrastructure remains a conscious decision though.
 
I made the trip across Snoqualmie Pass on I-90 about a month ago...just about shook my teeth out in the Minnie. Fortunately, :p much of it is under construction...hopefully to make things better.  ::)
It's been nearly 40 years since I made that trip...it's not gotten much better in that time.
 
I spent the last 2 days on I-70 through Kansas.  While there isn't much in the way of scenery, the road conditions were night and day. There were some rough spots here and there, but nothing like in Colorado. 
 
A lot of Colorado's road repair money goes into clearing rock slides (and rebuilding them after last September's flooding washed out a bunch of them), though there's certainly plenty of road construction around, too. But some places are pretty sorry, I agree. Southern states are usually better because they don't have to fight as much of the freeze/thaw cycle. A lot of places also have fewer trucks. I-70 and I-80 seem to have the heaviest east/west truck traffic, and it doesn't take long for roads to get beat up that way.
 
Larry N. said:
A lot of Colorado's road repair money goes into clearing rock slides (and rebuilding them after last September's flooding washed out a bunch of them), though there's certainly plenty of road construction around, too. But some places are pretty sorry, I agree. Southern states are usually better because they don't have to fight as much of the freeze/thaw cycle. A lot of places also have fewer trucks. I-70 and I-80 seem to have the heaviest east/west truck traffic, and it doesn't take long for roads to get beat up that way.
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You need to travel I40 and I20.  They have some very heavy truck traffic.
 
lavarock1210 said:
You need to travel I40 and I20.  They have some very heavy truck traffic.
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I'm not familiar with I-20, but I looked on a map and it seems to merge with I-10 in west Texas, going west. While I-40 does have a fair chunk of truck traffic, it hasn't been nearly as heavy as I've seen on I-70 and I-80, the times I'm on it. Of course I've not been full length on it in recent years, so maybe some of it has changed.
 
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