Road Construction: Collateral Damage

NYS DOT installed rows of street lamp foundations along both sides of Rt 376 as part of the intersection reconstruction that will eventually put a fourth traffic circle along Raymond Avenue. Until the intersection of Rombout House Lane with Rt 376 vanishes, this lamp base at the corner sits well within the turning radius of the heavy trucks entering & exiting the contractor’s material dump & equipment marshalling yard:

The fluorescent paint appeared after something heavy ran over the base and bent two of the bolts that should secure the lamp post.

A few days and a few more passes killed those bolts dead:

The barrier barrel in the background sat atop the base for a few days, but obviously didn’t affect the outcome.

A few hundred feet south, a heavy metallic mass sheared off another pair of bolts and bent the survivors:

Someone eventually moved the sheared bolt atop the base, so perhaps the damage has been noted where that note will have some effect.

The “bolts” are the threaded end of long rods embedded in the three or four feet of pre-cast concrete forming the lamp base. The concave concrete mass to the right in the first picture is residue from the poured concrete in the hole anchoring the base to the ground.

A four foot deep trench along the row of lamps holds electrical conduit between them for the wiring that will eventually surface through the conduit covered by the duct tape. The white-and-blue cord hauls the pull tape from one base to the next to pull the conductors through the conduit.

Replacing those cast-in-place bases won’t be a trivial (pronounced “inexpensive”) operation and I suspect a powerful motivation to just un-bend the wounded bolts and pretend they’re not severely weakened. I doubt a base with just two bolts will pass final inspection, but maybe the inspector won’t look inside the lamp pole covers.

Nah, that sort of thing never happens …