Wait A Minute! STOP Right There, Buster!

On Wednesday, HUDseen ran a one-picture piece showing one of the four freshly installed stop signs at the intersection of 2nd & Warren as part of Luizzi's ongoing DRI work. Those signs had replaced temporary signs which had replaced permanent signs about a month ago when work at the intersection began. The sign in the picture was leaning quite a bit, but it had most definitely been put in the wet concrete of the new bump-out earlier this week to make it permanent (until, of course, it eventually gets knocked over by a truck or car). If you look closely at the picture, you can see the stop sign across the street, on the southeast corner, which is not leaning, same as the other two on the north side of the intersection which I did not take pictures of because there was nothing noteworthy about them.  Work seemed to be progressing, with all four signs set in concrete, one of them not so well.

Wednesday, from temporary to permanent! 
Right?  Er... Correct?

Leap forward two days and, voila, all four of those "permanent" stop signs were gone, replaced with -- ONCE AGAIN -- temporary, four-legged stop signs.  Progress?  You can even see the vestiges of the metal poles at the surface of the concrete where Luizzi cut the poles off.  Signs of quality work!  But why would they have done this?  Why did we have four stop signs permanently installed in concrete, only for them to disappear 3 or 4 days later?

Friday, from "permanent" back to temporary!

"Oopsie, hope nobody notices!"

One of four permanently buried
 sign post bases at 2nd & Warren

Here is my theory about why Luizzi changed their mind.  DPW Superintendent Rob Perry was not happy with what he saw in Wednesday's HUDseen article, so he drove down to 2nd & Warren to survey Luizzi's stop sign work.  Right away, he noticed that they had not installed what are called sign breakaways, the short pieces of metal sticking out of concrete that sign poles are attached to that, in theory at least, allow signs to be more easily replaced when they are knocked over by a vehicle.  (When hit, the signpost breaks off at the breakaway and the breakaway, hopefully still sticking out of the pavement, is ready for another signpost to be attached to it.  Breakaways are money and time saving devices that also prevent DPW from constantly having to drill holes in the concrete to replace knocked over signs.)  Noticing four missing breakaways at the bases to the four newly installed stop signs, Perry likely ordered Luizzi to remove the signs they had just installed directly into their concrete, install breakaways AND THEN ATTACH THE SIGNS TO THE BREAKAWAYS.   Well, at least this is what Luizzi should have been told to do, and I expect it will happen soon, sometime this year.

Example of a sign breakaway

Luizzi now has no choice but to drill holes in their new concrete so that they can install the four sign breakaways that Rob Perry is probably demanding.  Drilling into concrete is to be avoided when possible -- thus breakaways!  Luizzi will have to do the same thing one block away on all four corners at 1st & Warren where lovely temporary stop signs have been in the street, and partially in the sidewalks, since last fall.  I have not yet assessed the stop sign situation at Front & Warren, but I did notice a pair of death traps on both sides of Warren that Luizzi left us over a week ago and then moved on to other tasks.  They obviously don't give a hoot if someone steps into one of their 4-inch deep trenches and smashes their head on the new concrete sidewalk.  They don't care if there is blood and teeth splattered on their fresh concrete.

Luizzi's wide, 4-inch deep concrete trench
adjacent to their ADA curb ramp.  Breakaways
should have been installed in the trenches.

Not so easy to notice, is it?  Imagine trying 
to see it at night!

Back to the stop signs at 2nd & Warren.  The question is:  Did Rob Perry forget to tell Luizzi to install the breakaways in the concrete before the concrete hardened, or did Luizzi forget to?  For the answer, you would have to read the contract Luizzi signed with the city.  Also, you gotta wonder:  if Luizzi and DPW are screwing up something so basic and simple as stop sign installation, what else can't they get right?

What about concrete?

Next week, Luizzi will begin the task of repaving a few thousand feet of city streets as part of this year's CHIPs project while their DRI project is nowhere near finished.  It looks as though the CHIPs work will begin on Worth Avenue on Monday morning, where temporary NO PARKING signs went up a few days ago.  At Thursday's Public Works Board meeting, Justin Weaver, the mayor's aide, claimed that Luizzi's DRI "milling and paving work will take 2 days," beginning this coming Tuesday.  That work will take place on Warren at Front and at 2nd, and possibly elsewhere in the city's west end.  The way I see it for next week, somehow Luizzi will be milling and paving simultaneously on both ends of the city.  I have no idea how many stops signs are involved in those two projects.  Also, rain is scheduled for the first three days of the week.