Road
test
SUV
filled with high-technology gear checks condition, value of city streets
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By
Rosemary Shinohara
Anchorage Daily News
(Published: September 9, 2002)
Somewhere
in Anchorage, a big SUV equipped with $420,000 worth of technology more
commonly associated with airplane navigation and eye surgery is cruising the
streets.
Its
mission: to chart the ruts and bumps on the 800 miles of city pavement.
For
the first time ever, the city is measuring the value and condition of its
roads, aiming to tally its assets, said Kate Giard, the city's chief fiscal
officer.
This
will give citizens an idea of what they own, she said, and will help road
planners decide what to fix next.
The
city conducted a test run on Lake Otis Parkway on Tuesday, then planned to
begin two weeks of data gathering.
The
SUV, a Ford Expedition owned by the state, comes packed with gizmos, most of
them hidden inside an imposing metal bar that takes the place of a front
bumper.
Two
accelerometers track the truck's movements in space, said Bob Briggs of
Dynatest, an expert who came from Florida to set up the city road test. The
accelerometers, 3-inch square boxes full of wires, coils and a magnet, detect
up and down movements.
Accelerometers
are also used to measure earthquakes and for airplane navigation, Briggs said.
Beneath
the accelerometers, seven lasers send out pinpoints of red light. The lasers
measure the distance from the road to seven receivers mounted in the bar. The
differences from one laser reading to the next tell where the ruts lie.
Inside
the SUV, a global positioning system device shows where on earth the vehicle
is at any given moment, down to the lane it's in. This is the most expensive
piece of equipment, about $250,000, and is rented for the two-week city test.
The state owns the accelerometers and lasers.
All
of the information this equipment gathers appears on a computer screen in the
front seat.
When
the test vehicle hits bumps in the road, a wavy red line moves across the
screen like the signal from a beating heart.
In
places where tires have worn parallel ruts into the pavement the screen shows
a white line that looks like a squat W. The bottom points show the depth of
the rut.
It
may seem like overkill to use this fancy machine to find ruts and bumps. Many
drivers would surely report road conditions for free.
But
it's important to catch rough roads early and to collect measurements that can
be compared with standards, Briggs said. Once a road's condition starts going
downhill, loaded trucks hammer up and down and damage it more. The
deterioration speeds up.
"It's
a cost to society. The rougher the roads are, the sooner your vehicle wears
out," Briggs said.
The
state, responsible for 3,000 paved miles including most of the main roads in
Anchorage, bought the Expedition and road-measuring equipment in May 2001.
It
uses the equipment both to plan specific repair jobs and to decide which roads
need attention first, said Newt Bingham, paving manager for the state
Department of Transportation. With the data, the state produces color-coded
maps. Green sections need preventative maintenance, for instance, while red
sections need to be patched.
The
Glenn Highway from Muldoon to downtown, for example, is mostly green. But Lake
Otis Parkway between DeBarr Road and Northern Lights Boulevard glares red.
After an earlier survey, the state noticed that Dimond Boulevard had some
rough stretches but was not scheduled for any improvements. So it put Dimond
on the list, Bingham said.
The
state has posted pavement condition information at www.alaska.gov/pavementmanagement.
The
city will use the information it is collecting to plan road construction too,
Giard said. The city study was propelled by new standards set by an
independent accounting board. To meet the standards, cities must evaluate
their assets, from roads to buildings to land. The city is renting the Ford
from the state for $12,000, Giard said. The road inventory all told will cost
less than $100,000, she said.
And
the total value of the city's assets, Giard projects, will be at least $400
million to $500 million. That's a conservative accountant's view, she said.
City
materials supervisor Michael Krueger, in charge of the actual pavement,
guesses the city's roads could be worth a billion dollars or more."No one
has a very good idea. It will be a very large number," Krueger said.
Reach reporter Rosemary Shinohara at rshinohara@adn.com and 907-257-4340.