Long Term Memories

Wednesday, June 29, 2005

FHWA Memories #32 Still more Illinois Stories

a. The Report in the Face Meeting
b. The Orange vs. Yellow Fight

a. The was a meeting between FHWA and the State. We sat at opposite sides of a long table. One fellow from FHWA (Lyle) was conducting the meeting. Opposite him was a State guy (Kirk - who would eventually become the State Secretary of Transportation but then was chief of urban planning). Lyle was presenting a new FHWA policy. The State was objecting to this and to that. After an hour or so, Kirk said,

"OK, enough talk. What to we actually have to do to make you guys go away."

Lyle responded, "Read this (waving a manual and related printed matter that explained the new policy).

Kirk said, "Oh really."

Lyle said, "Really."

He tossed the printed matter toward Kirk meaning it to land just in front of him. The printed matter was comprised of several pieces of stapled or otherwise bound pages. It was held together by a large alligator-style clip. The bundle took an arc-like path and landed on the clip which broke. Some of the bundle took a big bounce to the left over the table between two of the State officials but another bundle bounced right in the face of Kirk.

I was much amused but most of the people were ticked at each other.

b. One day, one of the engineers was coming back from an official trip and saw a truck-weighing operation he didn't like. It was on the shoulder of an interstate. He wrote a memo about it citing an FHWA policy forbidding weighing trucks on the interstate (the policy was a bit vague on the question of whether the shoulders consistuted the 'interstate' for the purpose of the ban on weighing on the interstate). It turned out there was also a technical advisory explaining how to weigh trucks on the interstate using the shoulder near off ramps. The State did not have posted warning signs before the weighing. Well this set off a series of conversations, arguments and so forth between our office, the region office of FHWA, the State DOT and the State police. These arguments, interspersed with meetings went on for month after month with the police sometimes not coming to scheduled meetings. Eventually all the disagreements were settled except the question of the color of the warning signs. Everybody agreed they had to be orange with black stripes. However, the State police wanted to use a yellowish orange and our region office insisted on a deeper orange. At the last meeting, our Regional fellow got very exicited and his face turned colors - actually I thought they went from the yellowish orange the police wanted to use to the deeper orange. Finally agreement was reached but I noticed later that the police weren't living up to the agreement (their orange was too yellowish) but I didn't tell the region guy. ¶ 7:40 PM

Thursday, June 23, 2005

FHWA Memories #31

Here are some more stories.

On day I received a phone call. It was from our regional office near Chicago. They wanted to know when the tolls would be removed from a bridge across the Mississippi (connecting Moline, IL and Davenport, IA). I called up the State HQ. They were uncooperative so I called the State office in Rock Island. They referred me to a fellow who was the Rock Island Bridge Commissioner. I called him. It turned out he had called his Congressman the day before with the same question and it had come all the way around. It also turned out that the Commissioner was a pretty good guy. I visited him as part of my duties and we got along quite well. He was just doing his job. I also showed him some legislative language that was enacted a few years earlier that 'solved' the problem by changing the law to allow perpetual tolling as long as the proceeds excess to debt service and maintance were used for transportation.

Once I was assigned to do a review of several State activities (for which they were receiving federal funds). In one of these reviews I found they weren't doing what their grant documents said they were doing. I had an interview with one of the big shots. Here is how the conversation went:

Big Shot: So what did you find?

Me: Among other things, I found that the State had improperly described what they were doing with these federal funds. I then explained things for a while.

Big Shot: OK. You're pretty smart and you did catch us. Now what happens?

Me: Huh.

Big Shot: No seriously. Don't we do a lot of things that are eligible for reimbursement that we don't seek reimbursement?

Me: Yes. Its true. A lot of your activities are eligible but unclaimed because the funding is used by other activities.

Big Shot: So this is strickly a paper problem, right.

Me: well yes, but it is a violation of the grant agreement

big shot: so are you going to recommend we reimburse you

Me: Uh. Well, let's see.

It turned out that our office let the issue go with a promise by the State that they would fix things next year.

A few years after that, the big shot at the State was appointed to be the deputy director of FHWA. Ooops. ¶ 4:09 PM

Sunday, June 19, 2005

FHWA memories # 30

More stories from Springfield, Illinois

After the #2 big guy from Chicago retired he still liked to come to the office and give us the benefit of his wisdom. Once we heard that he had noticed that on a number of miles of interstate the joint between the portland cement concret traveled lanes and the asphaltic cement concrete was failing. Big deal. It always fails. I arranged to have a meeting with some state employees at their building. I was willing to take a lot of garbage in my job but being lectured on stupid matters by retirees was too much.

Several of the State employees I worked with were disagreeable. One, I nicknamed foul mouth because he frequently cursed. One time myself and foulmouth were coming back to Springfield from a meeting in Rock Island (I referred to the area as the Republic of Quad, locals called it the Qual Cities despite the fact there were 5 cities, Moline, East Moline, Davenport, Bettendorf and Rock Island). As we traveled south it started to snow then the snow changed to freezing rain. We got as far as Galesburg and saw a lot of trucks jackknife, it looked like kind of a ballet as the trucks spun aroung -- almost too horrible to look at but you couldn't turn away. We got a motel and were forced to share a room. Foulmouth shouted curses at Joan Collins who played the evil bitch monster on a TV show we watched.

Another nasty fellow, I nicknamed Grump. Grump didn't like federal employees. Once I was going to Peoria for a meeting with Grump. I took a new employee in our office to show him what these kind of meetings were like. I had, as is normal, asked the new employee to take notes during the meeting. Grump didn't like sharing a ride with a federal employee and considered himself being put upon to have to put up with two of us. We kept the conversation to a minimum. When we got to Grump's car, I said, "Mr. X, I'd like you to meet Y, a new federal employee on a training assignment with our office. Y will be taking notes of this meeting"
Y said, "Good to meet you".
Grump said, "Ugggghhhh"
Then at the meeting in Peoria, at one point, Y didn't understand something that was said and, because he was taking notes, Y said, "Could you repeat that please."
Then as we arrived back in Springfield, Grump asked Y, "What is your next assignment?"
Y said, "Oregon (or maybe it was some other State I forget)."
Grump then said, "Well I hope they straighten out that fat head of yours."
Y had only said 10 words but it was too much for Grump. ¶ 8:56 PM

FHWA Memory #29 - Some nice people but a bad big boss

I liked some of the people I worked with in Illinois but didn't like the boss who was patronizing and arrogant (although he did some good things). Once, I had to got to a meeting 200 miles away to tell the State that they had done something wrong (an inproper report on the experimental use of some plastic drainage structures). When I got there, I found out the boss had already, but without telling me, told the State they didn't have to redo their report. I cursed the guy for this.

Another time, I had done an analysis showing that the empirical evidence indicated that the national (and highly publicized), policy assumptions regard the decay of the road structure were wrong. The boss was very, very ticked especially because he realized my analysis was correct.

Another time, the boss had asked me to do an analysis demonstrating collusion between two contractors. I looked at the data and told him that if we did an analysis it would almost certainly demonstrate the null alternation (collusion not shown at 95% confidence). Again the boss was ticked.

I had some fun though. The #2 boss in the Chicago office, who nominally supervised my boss, was done for a visit. He went through a song and dance about the benefits of recycling concrete pavements. I asked, "If the aggregate used in the original pavement was from a source now known to have a high content of deterioration cracking under freeze-thaw, would you still argue for recycling?" He was furious and muttered something incomprehensible about an intersection near where he lived in a Chicago suburb. The division boss was very pleased this time because he hated the #2 Chicago boss but didn't quite have the nerve to put him down in front of everyone. Since I was a very, very junior person, this incident was very amusing to quite a few people.

The State DOT could be fun to work with but sometimes they were a pain. One day I had a report to review on some pavement reflectors. The report indicated that the experimental reflectors cost more and worked worse than the standard reflectors but they recommended the new reflectors should be allowed anyway in alternate specifications. I called the State and said that I couldn't accept the report because it was illogical. The State employee (his name was Harold) said, "where in your regulations or in the law does it require our report to be logical?" I responed, "Obviously it doesn't, but don't tell me you are going to assume the lack of such a requirement as allowing bad logic." He responded, "that's exactly what were are assuming." Irritatingly, it turned out the division boss made us accept the report. Later I found out that the State wanted to use the threat of alternate specifications to force the manufacturer of the standard reflectors to lower their price. So there is a case where the boss did the wrong thing but it worked. ¶ 4:54 PM