Let the states keep their tax dollars and fund state DOTs

Dale Conger, a P.E. in Houston, Texas, wrote a great editorial response to another article by another "can't wait to get federal tax dollars" writer at Civil Engineering magazine. The editorial is provided below.

As I read the special report [...] it struck me how quick we are to defer to the federal government in so many things. As a group representing the nation's infrastructure engineers, we are on record as looking for "increased federal leadership in infrastructure" and a need for a "federal plan" for a "national vision and focus" on "systemwide results."

Shouldn't we be working with our locally elected officials to provide this leadership and vision?

In most instances around our nation, infrastructure is a local issue, and it should be planned, funded, and constructed by state or local government. But over the years we have learned to defer to the federal government as it inserts itself into any and all issues concerning funding. Many local governments now use a lotto mentality toward planning infrastructure funding. The approach is to seek out federal funding and then sit back and wait for it to appear, courtesy of a local congressman. This, of course, does wonders for the re-election of congressmen, but is it really a plan for funding our infrastructure needs? I believe that a case could be made that the decline in infrastructure funding is related to the level of federal involvement.

As many engineers have found in working on federally funded projects and programs, the simple funding of a project is not the goal of federal involvement. These agencies react to the directions of Congress, which is not a body that can have any intimate knowledge of the infrastructure needs of our communities. Congress gives direction to the agencies in general program and policy terms, as well as earmarks. These then become the funding priorities that work to limit the use of desperately needed funds only to targeted projects. As the end of the day, those funds that really did originate from the local area of need are just returned with alot of unneeded and unwanted strings attached.

As just one example, the FHWA breaks its $42 billion federal aid highway budget into 4 broad strategic goals (5 if you count "organizational excellence" which is their term for their overhead budget) and 12 general line-item accounts, yielding 48 budget categories, which of course then have to be allocated to the states and territories. A project has to fit within one of thse budget programs to receive funding. So a project that actually has a higher need than another can go wanting because it does not fit the category in which funds might be available. This is after spending years in a planning and environmental process that hinders so many of our needed infrastructure projects these days. And this agency is only 1 of 14 covered by the DOT.

So do we as a professional society [ASCE] really need to be advocating the expansion of the system? Have we explored what the nation would be like if the FHWA disappeared and all of those highway dollars just stayed within the state DOTs? Now that would make for an interesting article."

Abolish the FHWA's funding function and return all those tax dollars to the states for their DOTs, now that is a great idea. How many tax dollars are lost in the system and lost to federal overhead costs as the feds manage and oversee a re-distribution of this money? I wonder.

Samuel Staley of National Review had this suggestion:

"Federal policy should be defined by constitutional principles and the concept that was the cornerstone of the justification for federal funding of the Interstate Highway System: interstate commerce. Congress should narrow the scope of federal transportation policy priorities to 4 core principles:

1) Fund only projects that have true interstate commerce ramnifications.

2) Fund only projects that have a significant impact on the national transportation system.

3) Enable state and private sector financing for transportation projects to leverage and in some cases substitute for national taxpayer funding.

4) Fund research into safety and technology that is beyond the scope and capability of state DOTs.

Ocean Tower Implosion Photos

The severely settling Ocean Tower condo building in Texas was finally demolished.  Another failure by Raba-Kistner (will need to be more careful with their geotechnical engineering performance in the future).

Value Engineered Home Depot cracks

I was the geotechnical engineer of record for the Shops at Arbor walk shopping center (strip center) at Mopac and Braker in Austin, Texas. The center included a pad site for a big box store, in this case Home Depot. Kleinfelder, a competing geotech firm, decided to "value engineer" the Home Depot foundation recs since Home Depot was a national client of theirs. I warned Simon Properties that Home Depot had a low tolerance slab movement spec (i think it is 0.25" per 50 feet) and that the proposed value engineered shallow foundation / limited soil improvement recs could not guarantee meeting that performance spec and that i could not stamp such a recommendation. Simon went with the cheaper alternative of course. Being inquisitive and upset at losing the QC testing portion of the project, i went back a couple of years later to check on the performance. Sure enough, the tall racks in the Home Depot were tilting as evidenced by inspection with a long level, the Home Depot manager on duty complained about uneven floors causing their low-riding equipment or forklifts to get caught scraping the floor or even getting stuck in localized areas, there were some minor cracks in the floor slab, and outside there was a large crack in the concrete pavement in the deep old fill area of the site.

Just another case history proving that "value engineeering" is really neither.

Ocean Tower Settlement and Implosion

In 2006 construction began on the 31-story condo building known at the "Ocean Tower" . The hi-rise included a 4-level parking garage immediately adjacent and connected to it. In 2008 construction was halted when large cracks were observed in parking garage walls and in beams in the hi-rise.

In July 2008 the developers filed a $125,000,000 lawsuit against Raba-Kistner geotechnical engineers and the structural engineer and the general contractor Zachary Construction. Zachary however was later dismissed from the lawsuit.

Although the facts of the case are not disclosed and difficult to obtain, the lawsuit does reveal that the exploratory borings were no deeper than 100 feet, and the design pile depth was 95 feet in the final construction drawings. I think 401 16-inch diameter auger-cast piles were revealed to be under the hi-rise building footprint. Settlement of the structures was indicated to be 4" to 8" under the garage, and 8" to 16" under the hi-rise, which is catastrophic so the "leaning tower of Padre" is actually a reasonable moniker.

I would love to see the calculations by Raba-Kistner and by the structural engineer to find out the root cause of the flawed design (errors and omissions anyone). I can hypothesize, maybe Raba's engineer(s) thought the piles would be 100% skin friction piles but over-estimated the skin friction developed? Or maybe they did include end bearing capacity but didnt realize that the piles would end up 95 feet deep, just 5 feet above deepest exploration depth? Or maybe Raba did not analyze "group pile" settlement models? I also question the length to diameter ratio, it is pretty slender (95/1.33 = 71). Who knows, right now all i can say is that a geotechnical report for a project of this magnitude is usually written by one engineer and reviewed by another more senior engineer. I don't know whose 2 signatures were on the Raba report, but i would never hire these guys to be geotechs on my projects.

In late 2009 the owner hired Controlled Demolition Inc to start planning the implosion of the building since it was too costly and impractical to try and repair the structure, much less get anyone to move in considering the stigma now associated with the building.

See photos here:
http://texasgeotechnicalengineer.blogspot.com/2010/01/ocean-tower-implosion-photos.html