Mail Bag: Why we use asphalt and not concrete

What work is currently happening at the turnaround by Ramsgate? Currently seeing it closed daily during the day.
Also, huge props to whoever finds the gifs for the blog!
- Kevin

Well, shucks. Thanks! We have fun with the gifs (and other graphics and references). We hope all y'all do as well.
The work at Ramsgate is a maintenance job to repair the concrete retaining wall and the bridge rail at and near the turnaround bridge. The work should be wrapped up by the first part of June. We know it's throwing off a few folks and their commutes - all highway maintenance tends to have that effect - but we're working hard to stay in touch with the USAA communications team to keep them in the loop. They are the top contributor to the traffic at the turnaround, after all, so we're doing what we can to coordinate the work with the good folks over there.


I travel Wurzbach Parkway to work. I see signs that talk about road closures beginning May 14. Can you tell me what to expect next week. Should I use 410 to travel to work?
- Rebecca
Rebecca, we're sorry this answer didn't come in time. We understand the work on Wurzbach has wrapped up at this point.
The closure was on Wurzbach Road and was done by the city of San Antonio, not us. They did a heckuva job getting word out and tried to be sure folks knew in advance of the closure.


Have they determined what caused the longitudinal cracking on I-10? I'm no engineer, but from the photos, it looks like when the contractors excavated material from the roadway edge, they failed to support that edge as it bore the weight of the Jersey barriers. Recent heavy rains probably didn't help either, eroding the exposed base material and surrounding soils.
- Mark

You kind of hit the nail on the head, Mark. The contractor is using, per plans, soil nail walls to support the edge of our excavation. In this instance the equipment for those soil nail walls bogged down and Flatiron's excavation team got a little ahead of things. This is a gamble literally every contractor takes on a project like this, and more than 99 percent of the time it pays off and we see no problems.
As you pointed out the rain didn't help here, and we saw a failure. It wasn't catastrophic, but any failure has potential of becoming that way. We worked hard to prevent the catastrophic failures that could have caused safety hazards.
Here's the silver lining: the delay is extremely minimal. Flatiron lost about a day and a half of production and that's it. On a three-year project that's amazing.
The long-term, permanent fix for the issue is literally designed into the construction plans. When it comes to roadway failures on a construction project, this was pretty much the best possible scenario.


Regarding the nearly complete NE 410/35 project between George Beach and Walzam, I give the project an A-. I no longer fear for my life on south bound lanes as the Rittman traffic no longer tries to zip across 5 lanes of traffic to get to 410 South and traffic seems to move pretty well through that section (the clog is now between Walzam and O'Connor on Northbound).
My only complaints are minor and as you have pointed out before, not necessarily needed. That is the street lights. Many in that section still don't work and one pole in front of Texas Thrift blinks constantly. And having some sodium lights and some LED is kind of tacky. Other than that, great job on this project!
- Jeff
Thanks, Jeff! We'll take it!

It kills us the project took as long as it has to finish, and we've done some internal reviews to see how we can prevent a lot of the delays we've seen on the job for future projects.
Having the new lanes open has been a huge milestone for us - and the big reason for the job in the first place. Well, those and the ramp revisions we've done along the corridor. With a little luck we'll have everything in place and be done - like done done - by mid-summer.
The includes the lights which, as we've said, will be burning as soon as we can get them connected to power. Thanks for your patience on it!


I know there a lot of construction going on 1604 between 90 and 151. Same thing for almost every intersection that have lights except Wiseman. It looks like they are not working on it and look pretty much the same for like couple months. Any idea what going on?
- Daryl
We had some work on retaining walls and drain structures that kept us from digging into Wiseman the way we've done at the other intersections over the last two months.
That will change here in the next couple of weeks, and southbound Loop 1604 will switch onto the frontage road just south of Hwy 151 here in June. That will let Zachry Construction go nuts on the new overpasses. Once the new southbound overpass is ready we'll flip traffic over - Zachry has been working on ways to provide incremental improvements to traffic as they're available (Webber also) on this project, effectively fast-tracking an already aggressive schedule.


The WB I-10 frontage road closure at Old Fred has caused the traffic to back up at the Fair Oaks Ranch bridge almost a 1/4 a mile. Having one exit/entry for 4 major neighborhood was the worst idea ever. Please open up the frontage road M-F 7-9am and 4-6pm. What is being done to alleviate this? This cannot be the norm for a month or more.
- Christina
This closure HAS to be a constant closure. Opening intermittently as you've suggested simply isn't physically possible. To install the pipes we're putting in the ground the road itself was torn up for about 500 feet.
Sundt is working to get this work finished quickly and should have it open by the end of this month. We know it has been really, really rough this month and we thank everyone for their patience.


In your May 1 post, you talked about the traffic lights, but since you were talking about Buckskin, were the lights there? If so, what about the Fair Oaks Parkway lights?
Also, you talked about quadrants and stages, neither of which means anything to me without a definition. Also, the map showed some orange sections of roads with some white markings around them. What do they mean?
- Al Koppen
We are building traffic signals at Buckskin Drive. The construction contract doesn't have us turning them on - that will fall to our traffic operations folks.
Sounds convoluted, we know. It has to do with the warrant for the signal, which you can read all about here. Right now we don't have a warrant for the signal - mostly because the intersection doesn't completely exist. Once the intersection opens we're confident the warrant will be met, but we technically have to wait for that to happen.
Traffic signals are indeed being built at the Fair Oaks Parkway intersection and will become active here in June (based on the current schedule). The signal configuration will be identical to that of the current Ralph Fair intersection.
As for quadrants and stages, we apologize if that graphic wasn't clear enough. Here it is, once again, for your benefit:

The orange areas are the areas where work is being done. You'll note the white/orange markings are construction barricades, indicating the area is blocked off for construction.

Every intersection mimics the x-and-y axis planes we learn about in math class growing up. Each intersection has four quadrants. In the graphic to the left, these are labeled as Quadrant I (quadrant 1), Quadrant II (2), Quadrant III (3) and Quadrant IV (4). The first quadrant is where the X and Y axes both have positively valued coordinates. The second quadrant is where the Y axis coordinate is positive but the X axis coordinate is negative. The third quadrant features two negative coordinates and the fourth quadrant features a positive X axis coordinate and a negative Y axis coordinate.
Most of the time, when we talk of intersection quadrants, we talk in terms of direction so we can keep things simple
 For the intersection of Old Fred/Buckskin Drive and I-10 that means a north quadrant (where the work is happening right now as noted with the long horizontal orange mark), a south quadrant (basically between Buckskin Drive and Indian Hills), an east quadrant (the one that was closed for like four months) and a west quadrant (the one we opened up most recently).
We're sorry this description wasn't clear enough in the first post and hope this explanation helps you keep everything straight.


Regarding the 10 east frontage rds. In particular the frontage road intersection with FM 1516 and Green Rd:
It seems this one-way conversion has greatly inconvenienced people that live and work on Green Road. I often see people going the wrong way on the access road the short distance to 1516 so they can use the underpass to go west on 10. There is also a large dirt area in front of the truck dealership that has become an impromptu thoroughfare to cut over to 1516 from Green Road in addition to cutting through the truck dealership parking lot.
Is there a solution or idea in place to alleviate this inconvenience?
- Marshall
First of all, shame on all those drivers who are making illegal and, more important, unsafe driving decisions. Seriously - all that is to save what, two minutes of drive time? Five?
The long-term fix is to complete the project. That'll open the frontage roads to two lanes (still one-way) and an increased traffic volume here will prevent this heinous behavior. The wider frontage roads will mean effective turnarounds and an easier path to get to the main lanes.
In the meantime, stepped up law enforcement may help those sacrificing the safety of everyone around them for their own convenience make better choices.


I noticed all the new overpass additions/reconstructions have been done with concrete main lane approaches (Old Fred Rd/Buckskin and Boerne Stage/Scenic Loop. Why isn't the entire project from Ralph Fair to La Cantera not being completely converted to concrete? It lasts so much longer with less maintenance. This patchwork appearance looks cheap and out of date.
- Pete
You're absolutely right, Pete. Concrete paving has a better lifespan, requires less maintenance and has a bit simpler repair than traditional asphalt roads.

They're also exponentially more expensive up front.
There's a definite case to be made the cost for concrete paving is lower in the long run - say, over a period of 30 or 50 years - but that doesn't help us get the project done today.
The business savvy folks out there can see the difficulty here. In many industries it might make sense to go with the larger up-front expenditure to save money over the course of time. If we met our break-even point in the next three to five years the concrete option would probably make sense on all our roads.
That's not the case, though. Right now, as inexpensive as asphalt is, the break-even point is decades away.
Bridges and approaches have been and will continue to be done with concrete for a number of reasons. On stretches of road built on top of ground we can use the traditional asphalt, so that's what we're doing.


What happened to the project guide tour for the 410 to 151 flyover that was supposed to be out on Thursday per the report?
- Chris
We did it! We have it posted on YouTube as well. Take a look - although everything you're seeing is now wide open and in use (Chris wrote us a couple of weeks ago).


Someone posted this question on nextdoor.com, and I am curious as well (and would like the correct info instead of people's opinions on social media):
Anyone know why the several miles of asphalt that was laid down between Boerne Stage and La Cantera mall was all ripped out? Also, any idea how far back that puts the construction timelines?
- Leslie

We asked our project staff about this question and they said they don't have a long stretch of asphalt we've torn out on the main lanes of the highway. We think he question is likely a reference to asphalt laid down during a previous project. We've taken out parts of the shoulders to tie the existing road with the expansion to the inside and the outside of the road.
We've also got some spots we're putting some temporary pavement on each side of the road so we can shift existing traffic lanes over to give our crews some elbow room to safely build what we're building.
This project - to widen I-10 between La Cantera Parkway and Ralph Fair Road - is still running on pace to finish up early 2020. We've not had anything that's pushed our construction timeline back - not even the asphalt issue from earlier in the month.

Mail Bag: Traffic signals, Spring Branch Post Office, a whoopsie and more.

This is somewhat random, but I am curious how TxDOT decides whether a new traffic signal will have metal arms or a cable to hold up traffic lights.
For example, the new light at SH 46 and FM 758 in New Braunfels utilizes cables, while the recent install less than a mile up the road at Avery has metal arms. I notice similar discrepancies at FM 1101 and FM 306. I find the metal arms more attractive, but is there a huge difference in installation and maintenance costs? Any consideration for consistency along the same road or within a city?
- John

You didn't ask the question outright but others may ask; we posted before on how we determine when or where to install a signal. If you've not read it yet, John, you may find in it an interesting (hopefully) read to set the foundation of a conversation on signal installation.
Down to your actual questions. Determination between use of span wires or mast arms most often boils down to engineer discretion. They have a number of options they can use for a number of reasons. More often than not it boils down to money, though. Using span wires saves us about 20 percent over the mast arms and this is an easy way we're able to trim costs to keep a project under budget.

Existing electrical wiring plays a factor in the design; if the wires are in the air at a particular location it's highly unlikely we'll use mast arms. The last major factor is the plan for future development. If we know one of the intersecting streets is to be expanded in the relatively near future we may choose the span wires. This helps during construction and makes arranging the intersection a lot simpler for our contractors.
Hopefully that helps!


With all of the major construction taking place on I-10 and Foster Road area, many drivers (including me) are starting to avoid the congestion on I-10 by taking FM 1346 to I-410. I live in St Hedwig and travel FM 1346 to 410 daily and then continue my drive to the NW side of town for work. Since more traffic has decided to go FM 1346, this has created a serious bottleneck, sometimes a mile long of cars waiting to go through an old 4 way stop design (flashing yellow light). What puzzles me is that if I turn on Foster Road to head back towards I-10, there is presently a traffic light at a non busy intersection of an industrial complex. Do you have any immediate plans to put a traffic light at this busy intersection to help ease some of the congestion that exists daily, and not to mention the safety factor of all this as well? There is also a new beginning stage of a multi-home subdivision at that intersection. Please let me know, thank you.
- Wesley
It sounds like a temporary situation has been developed at that intersection resulting from folks seeking ways around a construction project, and we would need to be sure that situation won't disappear when the project on I-10 finishes and traffic returns to its old pattern.
As we mentioned above we have strict requirements dictating when and where we install signals.
The signal on Foster Road at Cal Turner is not on a state-maintained road. While local municipalities typically turn to our Texas Manual for Uniform Traffic Control Devices for guidance, that isn't always the case. You'll have to reach out to Bexar County or the city of San Antonio to determine what factors played into approval of that signal.
We've added the intersection of FM 1346 and Foster Road to our list of intersections needing a warrant study - we'll see what the actual data looks like. If a signal is indeed warranted we'll install it.

Any update when 281 north bound lanes at the Spring Branch Post Office will start up to eliminate the bypass around the Spring Branch Post Office?
- Ray
As of the moment we're writing this answer we expect to receive bids on this project in March (yes, this year) and should be underway with construction by mid-summer. The nearly $800,000 project should last no more than a year.


A few days ago a question was posted regarding the I-35 project and the concern about the left lane on northbound 35 before Walzem. The answer given was that with the work over the weekend the project should be completed. The northbound lanes still have the issue where the left lane disappears at Walzem. There appears to be room for the lane to continue but it essentially ends. Is this going to be the final project? Thank you for your time.
- Brian
You're absolutely right. We were operating on old information here in our public information office and the work we had on our schedules didn't end up happening. We are told it will happen within the next month and a half, opening up that lane that's sorely needed and giving drivers the final configuration they've been waiting about four years to enjoy.


Why was the exit ramp from Loop 1604 west to Gold Canyon closed and removed during the direct connect project?
- Marshall
That was about safety and redundancy more than anything. Bear with us here.
We'll start with a look at the layout of Loop 1604 between Gold Canyon and Redland Road. At that stretch there are three lanes - two normal through lanes and an auxiliary lane at the far right of the road.
That auxiliary lane ties the entrance ramp from Redland to the exit ramp to US 281. Adding an extra ramp would add another conflicting traffic pattern to an area already laden with three directions of traffic.
Hopefully that makes sense. If not ... let us know and we'll give it another go.


Has there been any mention of possibly opening sections of the new I-10 lane expansion between the RIM and Ralph Fair as they're completed? Or will the lanes open once the entire project is completed?
- Mike

Glad you asked. The plan here is to open the lanes as they're finished - so an incremental opening. This means about halfway through the project we'll have three lanes in each direction - all general purpose, open to everyone.
At the end of the project we'll open up that HOV lane in each direction, making I-10 four lanes each direction between Ralph Fair Road and Loop 1604.
It seemed like a good idea to us at the time, and we are going to work hard to ensure it goes well in practice.
By the way, that first incremental gift is still about a year away from happening ... but you'll see our crews working to prepare the overpasses for expansion over the next several weeks.


When is FM 1376 in Kendall county repaired and ditches along shoulders repaired. With the increase in traffic of large vechiles moving over is not an option; the washouts would cause blow outs.
- Olin
Thanks for letting us know about the issue, Olin. We don't have any plans on the books for reconstruction of the road at the moment, but we'll pass your note along to our planners and maintenance crews to see if we can get it on the list!

Seal coats - what they are and why we do them

We've received a slew of comments and complaints about seal coat projects across the region over the last several weeks. It's an annual occurrence for us, answering these questions. Each of them typically echo much of what John, who submitted this question late November, has said:

Recently TXDOT hired some contractors to lay down a layer of rocks on FM 758. The road is now worse than ever. I drive the road daily. Prior to this I never had rocks hitting my car. I have had 5 rocks hit my car in the last week alone from cars passing while waiting to turn onto the road or by cars passing in opposite lane. I now have 2 new chips in my windshield. I have never seen this surface on a highway before. Is it temporary and why not replace with a smooth surface like it was?
- John

The elements of the complaint are fairly easily broken down:

• The road is in horrible shape and covered in loose gravel
• Rocks are spraying cars damaging windshields and paint jobs
• This is poor workmanship the likes of which has never been seen

The truth is most people don't understand what exactly has been done. That's fully on us, by the way - it's up to us to let folks know what's going on, and it's clear we missed that boat (though others have taken the issue up...). Late is better than never, though, correct?

What is a sealcoat?
Sealcoats are intended to moisturize the road to prevent crumbling and extend the life of the pavement.

Asphalt is an amorphous solid dependent on a level of wetness for its structural integrity. Just like our skin, it chaps and cracks in the hot Texas sun. While many add lotion to preserve soft and silky smooth skin, highway engineers add a cocktail of oil and tar to the road to preserve its shape and smoothness. Over time the cocktail seeps into the road, but when we first apply the mix it sets on the surface of the road.
Anyone who has seen a James Bond movie or played Spy Hunter knows how treacherous a road with oil concentrated on the surface can be. To keep a road we've done a seal coat on safe and to improve traction we lay a thin, sparse layer of gravel atop the seal coat mix.

Why not just resurface?

This is a common solution posed by most who drive these newly sealed roads. Heck, we'd love to be able to resurface or reconstruct each road every time we see wear and tear, but the cost would be astronomic. We reserve resurfacing for about every 7-10 years, and seal coat about every 3-5 years.
The cost difference is huge and cannot be overstated. A seal coat will cost literally pennies on the dollar we might spend resurfacing the road. While we are committed to providing and maintaining a safe and reliable transportation system, we are tasked and trusted to be extremely prudent with the limited taxpayer dollars we are given.

The bottom line: sure, resurfacing the road would look a lot nicer. This practice about doubles the lifespan of a road, though, and cuts costs by nearly 20 percent over a 40-year timeframe.

What about the slinging gravel?

The result is a road that looks really dark, like a new road, but has a bit of what looks like loose gravel on its surface. That gravel is mashed into the road surface, typically, using rubber-tired pneumatic rollers.

Although the result is a louder ride with road noise, the biggest problem for drivers comes from the gravel kicking up with the large knobby tires from the trucks on the road. This is why we typically keep "Loose Gravel" warning signs up while we're doing the work, letting drivers know to take care and increase following distances.

After a few short weeks that gravel gets pressed and ground into the road surface and becomes a non-issue.