City engineer explains fall traffic chaos
Arizona Avenue debacle prompts changes
A perfect storm of missteps led to a traffic fiasco last fall when Arizona Avenue was closed for utility work as part of the Mesa Heights Apartments construction.
Yuma City Engineer Jeff Kramer explained to the council what went wrong, how it deviated from the normal process, and what staff is doing to avoid a repeat of the debacle.
The city requires contractors who will perform work in the city’s rights-of-way and/or infrastructure to obtain an encroachment permit. If they’re working on a road, they must submit an approved traffic control plan and have it in place prior to starting work. They must also give the city notice prior to starting work, two work days for road work or three days if a road or an alley will be fully closed.
The permit process is “fairly complex process,” Kramer said.
A customer submits an application, fee and traffic control plan at the Department of Community Development counter. It’s routed
to Development/Engineering, which reviews the application.
If it requires a traffic control permit, staff will forward it to Traffic Engineering for review. When it’s approved, it goes back to Development/Engineering, which notifies the affected departments, the emergency agencies and the Public Relations staff.
“The city does not go out and notify every resident or business in the area. That’s typically required of the contractor, not of the city,” Kramer said.
Once contractors pick up approved permits, they can begin work with proper notifications to city inspectors: 48 hours prior for most work or 72 hours if completely closing a road or alley.
Contractors must provide advance notice to adjacent businesses and residences if required by the permit. Once inspections are complete, the permit is closed out.
This is how the process should work, however, the process didn’t quite work as planned when a contractor closed Arizona Avenue in October.
According to Kramer, several things went wrong, beginning with the contractor not submitting the permit application and the traffic control plan far enough in advance.
The contractor went to submit the permit on a “dark Friday,” when City Hall was closed. He came back the following Monday and asked for expedited review because he wanted to start work right away.
“So we didn’t have advanced notice of the closure — 72 hours. We had less than 24 hours,” Kramer noted.
To compound issues, the contractor asked for two closures, one in October and one in November, and submitted both with the same application but attached in reverse order.
When the notification reached Public Relations, which notifies media, and other departments, they thought that the closure information had been attached in the order that they would occur.
“That created some misunderstanding,” he said.
And once the contractor started the work, he discovered a conflict with the gas line underground. “He closed everything back up and went away until they redesigned and resolved the conflict which took the rest of the week.”
The contractor then called Friday afternoon to give his notification after 3 p.m. The inspection line gets checked for the last time at 3 p.m.
“We didn’t get the notice until Monday morning and he started Monday morning. So his 72-hour notice was across the weekend during a time frame when nobody knew he had given notice,” Kramer explained.
The contractor also failed to notify the adjacent businesses, including a daycare provider and the Yuma Sun, of his schedule and subsequent changes to it.
“Road closed” and “detour” signs were put out, but motorists and local businesses and their customers did not know about the closure until driving up to the signs. Vehicles and semi-trailers made Uturns all day. Police said motorists ignored the signs posted both at 18th and 24th streets, causing backups “because they have to turn around after finding out that the road really is closed.”
City staff looked back to see what happened and what they can change to prevent the same traffic confusion from happening again.
“We really felt that the process was good. In this case, it just didn’t get followed properly on multiple occasions,” Kramer said.
Nevertheless, staff has implemented a small change. Now, when there is more than one closure as part of the same permit, staff ensures that the sequence is clearly communicated and double-checked to make sure that everything is in order. Also, staff is double-notifying the Public Relations crew of closures.
NEXT STEPS
Staff is taking steps to improve the process, such as reviewing the conditions of the permits “and looking at the way they’re worded, where they’re placed, how they’re spelled out, and we’re going to make revisions to the actual permit itself to really clarify for the contractor what all the requirements are,” Kramer said.
This effort is being done in conjunction with other reviews to the city code and development guidelines.
Mayor Doug Nicholls asked who gets notified — the property owner or the tenant. Kramer said that the occupant of the property gets notified with a door hanger, flyer or postcard or with an in-person contact.
After Kramer said that the city doesn’t have a process in place to make sure the contractor notifies residents and businesses, Nicholls suggested that the city implement a more formalized process.
“I got several calls during some recent construction activity, and my business didn’t get noticed when driveways were being closed or lanes were being shut in front of businesses,” he said.
Changes in schedule or phases might seem minor to contractors, but it’s major for most businesses, Nicholls noted.
“So if there’s a way to formalize that in a tracking system, I think it would be beneficial just to ensure it gets done. To lose business for a day for some businesses, it is catastrophic,” he added.
Nicholls also inquired about who’s responsible for putting out traffic control devices. Kramer said that it’s the contractor’s responsibility and companies usually have a certified traffic control supervisor in charge of the task.
If staff notices that something is misplaced or not working, they make the contractor aware immediately, “but we don’t tell them what to do, just that something needs to be addressed. We won’t modify it ourselves,” Kramer said.
He did not know what number should be called to report problems with traffic control. He said he would look into it and if a number is not already being used for this, he would identify a number.
“I’m not saying someone is not doing their job, but it appears someone is not doing their job because it’s down for three, two days,” Nicholls said.
Councilman Mike Shelton, who requested an explanation after the fall incident, thanked Kramer for the breakdown on what went wrong and for the remedies put in place. He then asked about enforcement when a contractor fails to follow the process or control traffic.
“The remedy we have is to shut them down. In (the) case of Arizona Avenue, it was a short closure, a few days work. By the time we got out there, he had the hole opened, so shutting him down wouldn’t have necessarily done us a lot of good. So instead we worked with him to get through the process,” Kramer said.
As part of the permit and code review, staff is looking at other enforcement options such as civil or criminal measures.
“I do hope we come up with a way, looking at this perfect storm that we went through, that we’re able to have some sort of enforcement mechanism to say, ‘Don’t do that again or else,’ because I’d like to say we’re on the side of the people, and while the businesses are people too, I’m going to side with the motorists who didn’t know what was going on when all this work was happening and so were put in a state of confusion,” Shelton said.