I can’t imagine seeing this on my commute. Someone passed along an e-mail with a picture of the tanker blowing up at I-69/465.
Masson's Blog
I can’t imagine seeing this on my commute. Someone passed along an e-mail with a picture of the tanker blowing up at I-69/465.
Doug,
I drive this every day. Although usually I’d be one of the cars turning right here, not left where the tanker was. I only go left a couple times a week.
Glad you weren’t there and getting hurt, Chris!
Thank god the only reason a sensible person would go to Fishers, Indiana, is there’s a Fry’s there.
Not that the rest of I-69 is a driver’s wet dream, exactly, but All Hope Abandon, Ye Who Enter should have been painted on that overpass years ago. And all as a result of unfettered, incontinent, nakedly greedy development with no intention to pay for infrastructure.
Y’know, back in the 50s the Army Corps of Engineers had a plan that would have turned half of Hamilton county into a reservoir. It is the only instance I’m aware of where an ACE proposal was too modest by half.
Thanks, Doug.
Hey, I live in Fishers.
But Riley is correct about that overpass. We have the worst traffic in the city, and this whole section of 69 and 465 and the overpass should’ve been gutted and rebuilt years ago.
It’s currently scheduled to happen in 2014. I can’t imagine this waiting until 2014. This will be a traffic nightmare by then. It will be even more of a nightmare during construction, which will take years.
When this bridge was built, the population of Fishers was around 3,500. It’s now about 65,000.
Fishers was the fastest growing town in America for a town of it’s size in the 1980s. It was the 3rd fastest in the 1990s. It’s more than doubled in size again in the 2000s, so it’s going to be high up there again.
It’s the worst traffic in the area, and yet, it ain’t jack shit. Ever driven around Chicago? Now that’s real sprawl, and real traffic. This in Fishers is the worry of small imaginations.
Now, the ‘naked greed’ of development in the area comes with some complicity that is worthy of naming: The Fishers Town Council. Their only concern is the assessed value of property. Nothing more. ‘How much tax money will we get to spend? Oh? That much? Project approved!’ Be sure to blame them as well.
But traffic’s relative, Mike; you live in Chicago you think in terms of traveling around Chicago. Here I think in terms of miles traveled, not length of traffic delays. That 2 miles northbound from Binford to 116th is inexcusable. Trucks in all three lanes, zero enforcement, people who have no idea how to drive at interstate speeds. And this is after it’s been widened; it was two lanes before.
I lived just inside the Marion country line in the mid-to-late 70s, and used to bicycle Fishers regularly–wouldn’t dare now–when the population was 800. Zero infrastructure improvements since then, except for access roads linking one strip mall to the next. And those bozos say their goal now is a 50% increase in population. (Say what you want about the crooks who run Carmel, at least their approach to development hasn’t resembled a porn starlet’s approach to coitus.)
Doghouse, it has been proven that the more lanes you add, the more they get filled. I69 is just another example of that.
Adding 2 more lanes to the Interstate (28 feet more width, if I remember correctly) wouldn’t help. However, a few 8 foot wide bike lanes would at least give people a safe option.
As I said before, I’m moving to Indy to commute to 82nd & Allisonville (Yeah, my commute from Columbus now sucks with this issue), but I can’t find a good bike route from Fishers, so it doesn’t look like I’ll be part of their 50% growth figure.
Jason, there’s a new bike lane on Allisonville, but I’m not sure how extensive it is. I just noticed it the other day. And the buses have bike racks, so you can work out a combination foot power/public transportation option (from Indianapolis, not from Hamilton county).
And I’m pretty sure that studies show that when you permit a population to grow tenfold in twenty-five years, and cap it with the zoning-free strip mall development of all remaining space, while doing nothing whatsoever to change the two-surface-street, one-interstate-exit connection to the larger populations to your west and south that served when you were a quaint little whistle stop surrounded by farm fields, you’re going to have increased traffic problems regardless of lanes.
Somewhat useless trivia: that sort of explosion is called a BLEVE (bleh-vee). When I was trained in HazMat we went over these because my company used to do a fair number of train derailment cleanups. It stands for Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion and is multiple times more violent than if you just had a pool of the fuel and ignited it. The liquid in the tanker catches fire, begins to heat and flash into vapor. The relief valves can’t keep up with the expansion, and vapor pressure builds in the vessel. Volatile organics are almost universally (maybe actually universally) more violent in their gaseous state than liquid form, and added with the pressurization results in a massive explosion.
Lesson: stay the hell away. Really far away. There isn’t anything you can do to stop it other than shitloads of water on the thing to cool it down – which usually isn’t available on a highway or train track.
You’re a handy guy to have around, Marc. I’d forgotten about your stint working with environmental issues.
The bike lane on Allisonville doesn’t extend but a couple of blocks South of 82nd… since that’s how far North I usually travel, I can’t tell you how far it goes North of there… just a feeder to Castleton Square?
Construction crews were there, heading south, when I went through a couple days ago.
The bike lane goes from 82nd to 75th. Not really useful in the big scheme of things (yet), since it doesn’t help you get across the madness at 82nd/Allisonville OR get across I-465.