DOT/Cleanups/Design-Build Commuters to Pay for More to Bypass Traffic

WSDOT to Start Hot Lanes on SR 167

Olympia – Drivers wanting to bypass traffic congestion will be able to drive in the HOV lanes, if they pay for the privelege as part of a pilot project on State Route 167. The SR 167 will assess how variable tolling can help make the state’s roadways more efficient and less congested.

WSDOT is converting nine miles of a preexisting high occupancy vehicle (HOV) lane in each direction of SR 167 between Renton and Auburn to a single HOT lane. With HOT lanes, drivers will have the choice to pay an electronic toll without ever slowing or stopping and escape traffic back ups when they can’t afford to be late.

There will be no toll booths. The toll will be collected by the same Good To Go! transponders currently in use on the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. Carpools carrying two people or more, vanpools, transit and motorcycles will continue to use the HOT lanes toll-free and do not need a transponder.

The key to HOT lane efficiency is in its fluctuating toll amount. The price increases and decrease with current traffic levels in the HOT lane to maintain the optimum amount of vehicles and the optimum lane speed for the smoothest traffic flow. Variable tolling ensures free-flow speeds virtually all the time.

During the four-year pilot period, WSDOT will closely monitor and adjust the system to achieve its best performance. The department will report evaluation data to the state Legislature and the Washington State Transportation Commission.

Ecology adds cleanup sites throughout state

Olympia – The state Department of Ecology (Ecology) has added more than 40 sites in 18 counties to its list of hazardous sites planned for cleanup.

As part of its twice-a-year update of contaminated sites in Washington, Ecology included 45 newly assessed sites on the cleanup list. The sites include commercial, industrial and residential land.

In Washington, more than 10,000 toxic sites have been identified. More than 80 percent of the sites have been cleaned up or are now being cleaned up. The rest are awaiting action.

Dissolving Borders One Village at a Time Engineers without Borders Meet in Seattle

By Lucy Bodilly

Seattle - Just north of Seattle Pam Elardo, P.E. is working on the design and construction of Brightwater, a $1.8 billion water treatment plant. Cost overruns on the project were recently reported in the Seattle Times.

Elardo and her non-profit organization, Living Earth Institute, have also worked on the other side of the world, to design a $60,000 water treatment system that will provide clean water in a small village in Nepal.

The difference is that hundreds of thousands of dollars in Seattle can be found, somehow. If Elardo and her group are even $1,000 short, an entire project can go under.

“I always come back to the money,” says Elardo. “Bill Gates Sr. (co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Seattle) just spoke about the billions of dollars being spent on vaccination programs. If I just had a handful of that money, I could improve lives one village at a time.”

Elardo is one of the members of Engineers Without Borders who was in Seattle last week at the group’s national convention.

Listen between sessions. A representative from the World Heath Organization was bombarded with questions. “I’m working on a project in Liberia. Where can I find solar panels?” “We need to build latrines for a village in Bolivia. Here is our brochure. Can you help us? Speakers bounce between continents speaking English, Spanish, Hebrew, Nepali and Nigerian. They all have one goal in mind, improving the public health of people in developing countries.

Susan Bolton, P.E., a University of Washington Professor and one of the speakers at the conference made contacts that helped with her project because her plane to Bolivia got cancelled. “Remember, we met when we were sleeping on the floor in the airport in La Paz,” she says to another member. Bolton is now in Costa Rica with a small group of students who may be able to start on a road project. Her latest project was in Yanayo, Bolivia, making ovens.

“The women were cooking inside over open fires that needed big sticks. Our students designed an oven that cooks with heat from the flue gases. The fire doesn’t have to be big, and it vents to the outside,” says Bolton. “Now everyone wants to sleep by the oven because the smoke is gone and they can stay warm.” It also cuts down on respiratory diseases.

Such small-scale projects save lives and give people the boost they need to move out of poverty.

Though civil engineering skills help, social and product engineering play a role as well.

A product engineer from Path in Seattle is developing a one-use syringe system to make vaccinations easier. Social engineers are helping reduce deaths by teaching better sanitation methods.

Bolton promised to write from Costa Rica, if she can find a computer with Internet access.

“This can all sound very romantic, but sitting in a tent, in the rain for weeks on end really isn’t. You really have to spend time (in a remote place) to see how other people live.”