Dayton Construction

Here's the last Dayton construction post.

A city worker with a backhoe showed up yesterday and poured dirt on many of the bad spots created by previous construction, some over a year old. I guess they wanted to do this before large crowds going to the Greek Festival saw the crummy state of the park.

Dayton Construction

Here's the previous Dayton Construction post.

They finally got the sidewalks finished in McKinley park. They poured the last sections Friday. They were dry Saturday, but since government workers don't work weekends, they didn't remove the tape until today, this afternoon, not in the morning when they could have. It took them nearly two months to do what should have taken a of couple days. The park is still a wreck. The heavy machinery has torn up tons of grass created mud holes whenever it rains. There's still piles of rocks like land mines waiting to break somebody's ankles. I wonder if they'll ever clean that up or just leave it. This park has been under construction for two years, including putting in Great Miami Blvd., to do what should have taken a few months at most. And equipment sat idle the vast majority of the project time.

Dayton Construction

Here's the link to the last Dayton Construction post.

The city started laying new sidewalks in the park today. They're framed, unlike the last sidewalks. It took them two weeks to get around to it. They had heavy equipment sitting idle in the part the entire time, and the park had no sidewalks for two weeks.

Contrast that with a private project. A private owner would have had framers following the team that tore up the sidewalks and another team laying new sidewalk following the framers. They'd have torn up the old sidewalk and laid the new sidewalk the same day. It would have cost only one day's worth of heavy equipment and the customers would have only been inconvenienced for one day.

They didn't finish. They might be 1/3 of the way done. Maybe 1/4.

Dayton Construction

Here's the last Dayton construction post.

The city tore up the sidewalks in the park today. The park has looked like a mine field with furrow and debris since they put in the lights late last summer, and now it looks even worse. It'll be interesting to see how long it takes them to replaces the sidewalks.

Dayton Construction

Here's the last Dayton Construction post.

Government is cutting down the last three large trees on the levee.

Dayton Construction

Here's the last Dayton Construction post.

UPDATE 10/20: They haven't put new blacktop on the road yet, it's still torn up, but today they put up new signs saying the road work will be the 23-25. The first day, everybody moved their cars, but now it's like the boy who cried wolf. Nobody believes they're coming to do the work so they're parking on the street. I'm telling you, whoever manages these pseudo-projects should be fired.

As if they hadn't messed things up enough the Great Miami Boulevard project, this weekend they put up temporary no parking signs for the 16th and 17th on our little street, so everybody had to find other parking places in the neighborhood. Then they didn't do anything on the 16th, so that was a waste. On the 17th they stripped off the the blacktop and put out new signs saying no parking from the 17th to the 20th.

Our road didn't need resurfacing. It's just a one block dead end street. It's not a through road. Nobody can drive fast on it. But they're resurfacing it anyway. It's another wealth destroying project that inconveniences everybody on the street.

As if that wasn't bad enough, they started cutting down trees in the park again.

It's a disaster around here.

Dayton Construction

Here's the link to the last Dayton Construction post.

Yesterday the politicians and bureaucrats got together and patted themselves on the back for successfully spending so much of other people's money on the Great Miami Boulevard project. Here's a picture of the ribbon-cutting ceremony.

This is the public celebration where they pretend that they did this project for the people of Dayton. I bet they also had a private party funded with other people's money where they be honest.

Now seems like a pretty good time for an informal postmortem on the project. Politicians and bureaucrats don't think like people in the private sector. If this project been done in the private sector, the project manager and probably others would have been fired for managing such a poor project. A private company would have scheduled this project to take three months or less, but the government took 17 months. A private sector company would have scheduled the playscape to be moved in a week or less, but the government took 16 months. The vast majority of days this project was being undertaken, nobody showed up to work on it. And I'm just counting winter months. I'm talking about during the "construction season", whatever that is. And last winter was the mildest winter we've had in many years. During the winter I was concerned that bugs would be bad in the summer because we had only a couple of freezes of short duration, none of them hard freezes. But the government still didn't do any construction because it wasn't during the "construction season". By the way, they have yet to put a flag on the flag pole.

But the schedule and the squandering of materials and equipment during that schedule weren't the only problems with this project. While it was going on I noted they had created a water backup problem that they would have to fix. As this picture shows, they didn't fix it.

This is after minor sprinkles. It's going to be a serious problem during actual storms. It's going to rapidly degrade the intersection at Great Miami and Grand.

I also pointed out that they put a park on a valuable piece of property. This picture shows the extension of Grand Ave. down from the I-75 ramp where it intersects with Great Miami Boulevard.

This would be a perfect place for one of those gas station/quick mart/ fast food combination stores, but they city won't let that happen because it put some shrubs and flowers there.


They also managed to severely screw over a local business.

There used to be a cut through the median so cars going both directions could go down that spur and get to the local grocery, but the city cut that business off from traffic flowing from Riverview to Main. Grand Ave. is just to the left of this picture, so they also cut the business off from all traffic on Grand. It's terrible. It would have been such a little thing to allow cars to turn left into that business. The designers were probably afraid traffic would back up into the intersection with Grand. I doubt this business will survive being cut off like this. The designers probably killed it either through negligence or on purpose and don't care. Had the project manager done it right, he would have provided access to this business and allowed a business on that corner, and the two businesses would have boosted each other and provided a nice economic boost to the neighborhood. People could have purchased gas and some fried chicken then picked up some milk and bananas on the way home. But no. This project insures the neighborhood will be more depressed than ever, and it made every person in Dayton except the politicians, bureaucrats and their cronies poorer.

And the new stop light at Great Miami and Riverview is a pain. Very little traffic flows along Great Miami up Riverview to or from Salem. Most of the traffic goes from Forest down Riverview to and from Main, but the light is green significantly longer, I'd guess at least twice as long if not three time as long, for the lighter traveled direction.


The people who designed and managed this project should be fired, not celebrating.

Dayton Construction

Here's the link to the previous Dayton Construction post.

When they first brought in wood chips to finish the ground under the playscape, they didn't bring enough. So they brought more chips in a week or more ago. But when they brought them in, they took away the little bulldozer that they had used to spread them previously that they then left sitting idle for weeks. So finally yesterday, after 16 months, they managed to complete moving the playscape about 20 feet.

The city took 16 months to complete a project that probably could have been done in a day and definitely could have been completed in a week.

They're going to have a ribbon cutting ceremony for the Great Miami Boulevard project on Monday. Isn't that special. Apparently the project started in May, not June as I noted, so the whole thing took the city 17 months to do about three months of work. Taxpayers paid $3.6 million. Of course neither our park nor the new decorative park along closer to Main are complete, and the construction created problems for locals which I'll document later.

Now they've torn up all of Riverview along the McPherson Town levee to put in new decorative street lights.

Dayton Construction

Here's the last Dayton construction post. I took a couple pictures of the intersection. Here's a picture looking north along I-75.

Here's the picture from a similar perspective I posted in my first post about this Great Miami Boulevard project after the trees separating I-75 from the park were cut down.

Here's a picture of the intersection looking from the Art Institute side toward I-75.

While the road is finished, the project is not. They still have tape on the play scape. The wood chips don't cover all the grounds of the play scape. The little bulldozer is still sitting where it was in the last picture I took of it, unmoved for weeks. They're adding new parks with flowers between the I-75 ramp and Great Miami Boulevard back toward Main Street. I doubt that will get finished before winter, so this project is likely to stretch out to two years.

And here's a picture of the backhoe they're using to fill in the holes where they dug the tree roots out of the levee in that unrelated levee project forced on them by the feds.

Dayton Construction

Here's the last Dayton Construction post. Here's the first Dayton Construction post, posted on June 30, 2011. After 16 months, they opened Great Miami Boulevard today sometime between 12:45 and 4:30. I learned in a meeting about I-75 construction today that the impetus for the new road was the upcoming phase of I-75 construction. As I documented before this project, they spent the last few years doing an upgrade on I-75 north of here. Starting in October, two weeks, they begin upgrading I-75 just south of here. It's going to shut down access to First, Second, Third and Salem for five years. Great Miami Boulevard was built to enable people traveling to Salem on I-75 to get off at Main and shoot down Great Miami then up Riverview to Salem.

So they finished the road on schedule. But they could have done the entire project this summer, most likely in the last two months. Three at most. So they squandered all that concrete, steel, equipment and other resources for a year, squandering our wealth. They also unnecessarily took away our park for a year.

Dayton Construction

UPDATE 9/7: Great Miami Boulevard is open from Main to Grand in both directions. It's still not open from Grand to Riverview and Forest. They also spread the wood chips around on the play scape, but it's still taped up. Children were playing on it today anyway. That bulldozer is still sitting in the park.

Here's the link to the last Dayton Construction post. They turned on the street lights on the new boulevard, and they opened up the intersection below the Dayton Art Institute. The intersection is really screwy. If you're coming from Main, you have to stop before the new boulevard, way far from the light. If you're coming from Salem, you still have to drive around the island in the road, basically making a U-turn to turn onto Forest. The new Great Miami Boulevard is still closed, but I bet there will lots of wrecks there once it opens.

For some reason the city cut down all the trees on the levee in front of McPherson Town. They cut down 16 trees that were growing out of the levee. On 13 of them, they left the trunks about six feet high. On three of them, they just cut off all the branches and large tree skeletons standing. It's bizarre. I have no idea why they would cut down all those nice trees. They can't rip them out of the levee because that would compromise the levee.

Angry people posted signs on the stumps.

It turns out that new federal regulations written after Hurricane Katrina forced the local government to cut the trees down. What a crock. The federal government proved during Katrina that it knows far less about levees than the people who built the local levees. Those trees were reportedly 75 years old, and they hadn't harmed the levee yet. I bet they made the levee stronger. Since these pictures were taken, the government has further cut down the three skeleton trees and cut many of the stumps off near ground level, effectively removing the signs on those stumps. But some stumps are still about six feet tall and displaying signs. I assume the government will come back a forth time and cut down those last stumps. Only government could take four passes to cut down 16 trees.

And as this picture shows, they still haven't spread the wood chips on the playground and opened it for children to play on. They installed three ground lights around the flag pole behind the left pile of chips. I assume they plan to fly a flag on that pole for the first time that I can remember since I came back here in 2003.

As you can see, there's piece of heavy equipment that will be used to spread the chips around sitting idle. It's been sitting there idle for over a week now. This more of the ubiquitous squandering of wealth that government does. If that park generated revenue, it would have been operational within hours of the arrival of those chips. If the boulevard generated revenue, it would have been operational in two months or so after this project started. Instead, both the park and the boulevard have been squandering wealth for 15 months.

Dayton Construction

Here's the link to the last Dayton Construction post. There's been a flurry of activity in the last week. The contract must end soon. It probably ends on Labor Day.

The hung stoplights at both ends of the street.

They added another spur for neighborhood access. The white truck is on the new road they laid in two days

They also dumped off a bunch of wood chips to put in the play scape, so after 15 months, the children might be on the verge of getting to play on the jungle gym again. Today there's a street sweeper cleaning the main boulevard. This week shows again that crews can work fast when they show up to do it. It wasn't that many people, and it wasn't that much equipment either. It's just disgusting that it has taken them 15 months to do about two months of work. They squandered resources for 13 months. But politicians love it because this visible project makes it look like they're working for the people and providing a socialist jobs program.

Dayton Construction

Here's the link to the last Dayton Construction post.

In typical fashion, workers just shut down the busiest intersection around here, right at rush hour, to pave over the pavement they ripped up last Friday afternoon. They've had all week to do this, and they didn't do it, but they finally started on it during rush hour on Friday.

Dayton Construction

Here's the last Dayton Construction post on the Great Miami Boulevard project. No pictures today.

Yesterday they closed another road to my house. First it was Riverview. Now it's Great Miami Boulevard. Pretty soon I won't be able to get here at all. Today I forgot about it and ran into it again. As I detoured through the ally, I discovered power lines were down and jumbled in the middle of the ally. I had to drive through somebody's yard to avoid the power lines. Forgive me for not going back and taking pictures. Getting electrocuted is against my religion. The absolute self-serving destruction of roads around here by politicians has really pissed me off. I swear our government has blown up more roads in Dayton than the Germans blew up in London during the Blitz.

Dayton Construction

Here's the last post on what I've learned is named the Great Miami Boulevard project.

Wednesday the closed the main route between my house and downtown. No warning. No notice. I just drove up to it, and it was closed. Friday was unusual because people actually worked. They didn't work on getting the new road open. The worked on destroying more of the roads in the neighborhood. They ripped up the pavement at every intersection around here, then they took the weekend off. Stripping that pavement on Friday made every road more dangerous, it causes significant wear and tear on cars, and it's an inconvenience for the people paying for the construction. This illustrates the dangerous, depraved indifference the people in power, the politicians and the top bureaucrats, have toward the people.

Here's a picture of the intersection right in front of the Art Institute.

You can see the stripped pavement. Also, going forward, drivers have to perform a U-turn around this torn up island to go left on Forest, where the oncoming car is coming from.

I also took pictures of a couple clusters of idle equipment. I've talked a lot about the idle equipment, but I don't think I've done a good job getting pictures.

This was taken today, Sunday, so I'm sure people will claim that workers don't work on Sunday, but in the private sector, they do. When people are investing their own money, they don't squander it by allowing equipment to sit idle all weekend. Government does that because politicians are spending other people's money, money they have stolen at the point of the government's gun. Besides which, this idle equipment is typical every day, not just on weekends. There's also more equipment sitting idle I didn't bother to photograph.