Engineer Criticizes WYDOT On Road Failure And Repair Plans

WYDOT has been promising to have a temporary fix for the Teton Pass route (Highway 22) in just two weeks.

One engineer wonders if this is too fast due to the stability of the area.

Casey Jones is a professional engineer who hosts a channel that examines engineering failures. He has worked most of his life on projects like the one in Teton Pass.

In the video, below, the YouTube host provides an update as to how Wyoming DOT plans to address the catastrophic failure of an embankment fill section for Highway 22 (Teton Pass Highway).

WYDOT decided to cut a temporary roadway until the main one is repaired.

He argues that it should take a couple of months just to acquire proper samples and study them, to find out what happened, and then determine how to rebuild the road.

This will not be a quick process.

He worries that WYDOT is claiming that they will have the road open before all of the work that needs to be done has been done.

In the short term, WYDOT plans to "tighten the curve" to go around the collapsed section.

He argues the stability of the area is still not known. It's too soon to make that decision with the data available.

Mr. Jones then talks about the possible reasons for the failure of the road and why he thinks that WYDOT should have seen this coming.

He points to areas that he sees that were failing long before the road collapsed and patching it did not come close to fixing the problem.

In his opinion, WYDOT should have had monitoring equipment in the area a long time ago, since they knew the curve was sliding.

Wyoming’s congressional delegation is asking President Joe Biden’s administration to prioritize Highway 22.

Below is a previous video from Mr. Jones that he recorded shortly after the collapse.

U.S. Sens. John Barrasso and Cynthia Lummis, along with Rep. Harriet Hageman, sent a letter to U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, asking for funds to help the process along.

“We ask that emergency relief funds be provided as expeditiously as possible for any eligible short- and long-term means of restoring travel on Highway 22,” they wrote.

WYDOT hopes to have the original section of the road finished by the end of the year, but that may be optimistic.