The FHWA has recently updated its geotechnical engineering site related to their annual State Geotechnical Workshops. All regions with the exception of the Southwest have their Workships this September and October. The next Southwest Geotechnical Engineers Conference will be in April of 2008. The 2007 SGEC was on April 23 - 27, 2007 in Overland Park, Kansas. They have posted PDF versions of the presentations at the conference on their FTP site. Read on for the dates of the upcoming workshops, as well as a link to the FHWA site and the presentation downloads.

HIGHWAY CUT SLOPES IN ROCK:SPECIALIZED EXCAVATION AND ENHANCEMENT TECHNIQUES

by
Robert A. Cummings, P.E.
for presentation at the
53rd Highway Geology Symposium, San Luis Obispo, CA
August, 2002

INTRODUCTION

Highway development projects crossing lands with special scenic or recreational characteristics may be required to meet special aesthetic criteria. Generally, the entity imposing the aesthetic criteria is external to the core roadway construction team. Usually, agencies imposing these criteria are land administration entities, external to highway departments, whose primary role is the preservation of historical or recreational opportunities, such as the Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service, the United States Forest Service, or local governmental agencies with similar responsibilities. However, agencies imposing aesthetic criteria may also be divisions of highway development agencies themselves. For example, in Arizona, the Roadside Development section within the Arizona Department of Transportation has defined aesthetic needs on numerous designated scenic highways.

Aesthetic attainment on highway jobs falls in the category of what many term “soft engineering”, whose design is, in large part, intuitive. This contrasts strongly with the “hard engineering” elements (structures, pavement, line and grade, and so forth) whose design is deterministic and more familiar to roadway designers and builders. From the perspective of the highway designer and constructor, the imposition of unfamiliar and sometimes vague design and construction criteria, by external entities whose approach differs greatly from that of engineers, can be problematic. The aim of this paper is to describe how geology, construction engineering, and visual analysis have been used to alleviate and streamline the process of aesthetic attainment.

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