Wed
Jan 23 2013
09:47 am
Alcoa Highway rockslide, another $300,000
By: bizgrrl

It only took about 13 minutes to get from Power Equipement Park (Maloney Road) on Alcoa Highway to UT Hospital, 2.5 miles. I thought for sure the rockslide was in a different area than the spot that was fixed last April, 2012, at a cost of $511,332. But no, according to this report it is the same spot.

"In recent years they put the mesh on there, which seemed to deter things, but with the torrential rains recently, it gave way,"

Falling rocks tore through the mesh in this latest slide

TDOT expects to pay an additional $300,000 to fix the fix.

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R. Neal's picture

Will they hire the same

Submitted by R. Neal on Wed, 2013/01/23 - 5:59pm.

Will they hire the same contractor to fix it?

Factchecker's picture

A news organization should do more

Submitted by Factchecker on Wed, 2013/01/23 - 8:39pm.

Apparently so. Kay & Kay per the above link and today's announcement. I'm not suggesting they didn't do a good job. Maybe they did as well as feasible, or better than the higher bidders would have. But I do wonder how much scrutiny the entire work project gets from TDOT vis-a-vis the bottom line $ amount. Do they do detailed design reviews? Or is it TDOT's design that all the contractors are working to? Is there a failure analysis being done?

Good questions for KNS. Wish they'd pursue. Maybe they've only got enough reporters anymore to cover stuff like this.

Rachel's picture

I don't think the problem is

Submitted by Rachel on Thu, 2013/01/24 - 1:27am.

I don't think the problem is the contractor. The problem is an inherently unstable soil/rock formation, along with extreme weather.

Like all the slides on I-40 at the NC state line, this is likely to keep on happening.

Factchecker's picture

Probably right on both,

Submitted by Factchecker on Thu, 2013/01/24 - 9:28am.

Probably right on both, though once there's been a fix, especially a recent one, one must wonder whether it was extensive enough. There are practical limits, obviously, but it would seem they didn't design for accepted failure this soon. That's a HUGE boulder that posed significant lethal risk.

Now I'm sounding like a developer, I know!

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