A minor mystery solved.

[jennlk]

So they're laying a large oil pipeline through the utility easement behind the house. (We've known about it for over a year, so it's hardly a surprise. And they've done a reasonably good job of taking out no more trees than necessary.) Along with all the standard accoutrements of heavy construction, there's a fairly large pile of used car tires, the use of which was perplexing me. I just discovered what they're used for. The tires get laid down on the road so that the large triangle tracked bulldozer can cross the street without tearing up the road, or requiring a large trailering rig. ingenious! (there's also a few sheets of 1" plywood that go under the tires, no doubt intended to disperse the load even further.)

Comments

[traveller42.livejournal.com]

We have to do similar things to get heavy equipment on/off aircraft. We have multiple classes on preparing for and executing this function. Flight crews really don't like their plane to get scratched (or worse).

[rono-60103.livejournal.com]

I'm sure the airfield owners/maintainers appreciate it too.

[rono-60103.livejournal.com]

Nice that they are accounting for the regular users of the area.

My building at work is in the middle of an expansion (it is growing a third wing, a parking garage and an updated cogeneration facility).

So far in about 4 months of construction they have:
- Taken over half of what parking was not in the footprint of the new buildings with their portable offices
- Blocked off the pathway from the parking lot of the adjacent building to my building forcing people who parked at one building to go through it to get to their building. (This has since been resolved)
- Extended fencing to close down all of the parking spaces equipped with charging stations (something that didn't impact me once we decided the Prius V was a better choice than the Volt)
- and most recently, closed off a chunk of public sidewalk between where the bus drops me off in the morning and where I can walk up to the entrance to the building, forcing me (and other bus commuters, not all of whom work in this building or for this company) to either walk into the street, or walk around to the adjacent building and through the maze of pathways connecting them.

Most frustrating, the closure of the sidewalk seems to be solely for the purpose of turning a driveway into a driveway.

[jennlk]

enh. I suspect it's because they know that if they tear up the the road they'll have a lot more people pissed at them, plus they'll have to fix it. NOW, thank you very much. (And winter is a crappy time for roadwork, so they'd probably have to do it twice, once now to get it passable and again after the frost lifts.) It's a well-travelled road, and really the only plausible way to get from point A to point B

[norfacoflandra.livejournal.com]

If the model ends in an R or a T, I probably had a significant hand in the electrical side of it! :-) At least you've got different backyard entertainment for the moment?

[jennlk]

It's not bad, other than the occasional house rattling THUMP. But they seem to be done with starting holes and have moved on to trenching. And as I type that, there's another THUMP as the backhoe starts another hole in the frozen ground. The big bulldozers/earth movers are now all on the other side of the road so I can't see their model numbers....