Well it's been great construction season this fall with no rain and a long string of sunny days. I took some pictures of the new diverging diamond interchange under construction at Platte Purchase and Route 152. This project is being done in anticipation of the new Central Bank Sporting Complex, planned new Platte County R-3 school facilities, and commercial development. The project will be under construction until the middle of next year but was closed to allow work to accelerate and have the off-ramps open before Thanksgiving.
This picture was taken from the the north side of the interchange and looking south from Platte Purchase at freshly poured and sawed concrete.
I thought the paving machine left an artsy path. This shows the path for someone going south on Platte Purchase and how they will cross over to the "wrong side" of the road.
The gravel base has all been put in place and compacted. This is looking southwest at the WB on-ramp which pavement is already completed. The pipes sticking out of the ground are conduits for the traffic signals which take a while to get on the job site because there's a 4-6 month lead time on ordering and someone fabricating the metal poles.
This is looking east towards the WB off-ramp (ramp for those of you coming from Liberty or 169 to get to that large wholesale club) and the off-ramp pavement work is all done. The wood stakes you see were placed by a surveyor to help set up a string line which the concrete paver uses to guide the curvature and elevation of the new pavement.
Since this is one of those diverging diamond (DDI) interchanges, this is looking south at the east side of the bridge approach where southbound traffic will be driving on the "wrong" side of the road. I'll point out that the concrete contractor left the gap in the middle because they have to install steel bars along the concrete joint lines and by doing it this way, they can come in, drill and grout the steel bars in, then use the new pavement as the edge forms. See the green bars sticking out? Those are rust inhibiting material covering metal reinforcing bars.
This below is a concrete drill. I haven't seen one of these in action but the hydraulic drill would drill two bar holes in what seemed like just under a minute.
I also took a shot of the concrete paver. Basically it's an expensive "Play-Doh" machine that takes the concrete, shakes it up to get the air out of the concrete, and smashes it flat.
I noticed some pink markings on the bridge showing the location of the new concrete barriers that will keep cars on the right side of the road. See all of the green rebar? That all goes into making a concrete median barrier. Ironworkers will grout the rebar into the existing bridge deck and then a concrete machine with a steel template will take the concrete from a concrete truck and slither it into the form. Concrete is simply heavier "Play Doh" and the physics is the same.
Now I have made it to the south side of the bridge and this is looking south at the southern cross over.
This is looking west at the eastbound off-ramp which has all of the concrete in place.
This is looking east at the eastbound on-ramp. Again all of the ramp pavement is done.
The project also includes an underpass for the Route 152 Trail. One of the problems with DDI interchanges is the number of bike/ped crossing points and vehicular conflicts. They are set up for free-yielding traffic flow which is why they work so well where people are trying to get off and on a freeway. They are set up for pedestrians continuing on an arterial street. However, I can't think of DDI's that have been built where bike/ped users are crossing the arterial which is the case here so while the road is all torn up, it made sense to put in an underpass to eliminate any possibility of vehicular accidents on the free yielding merges and also not cause substantial delay in someone pushing a walk button to cross and causing all the cars to have to wait at the stoplights. The grade of the trail and the interchange being much higher than the surrounding ground worked well in this case.
I also saw an operator using a remote controlled dirt compactor. A big problem in civil construction is settlement and it's always hard to get compaction of the soil placed to where it doesn't settle the pavement. This is common right before bridges or over cross road pipes where the dirt isn't compacted to the right density and dips in the road develop. Using a remote controlled compactor eliminates the chance of the operator getting squeezed and hurt or killed if the compactor happened to trap him/her against something immovable like a concrete box culvert.
This is a joint partnership project between Kansas City and MoDOT and I know it's hard to see progress from Route 152 or Platte Purchase so I just wanted to share what the project is looking like. It will be nice when it's done.
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