Bungled projects symptom of Seattle street department woes

The Most Expensive Crosswalk in Seattle.

That's what patrons at the Triangle Pub dubbed the high-tech crosswalk on First Avenue South after city street crews returned to the site again and again this year to redo their shoddy work.

"They poured it, they jackhammered it out. They poured it, they jackhammered it out. They poured it, they jackhammered it out," said Kris Privat, a machinist who watched the spectacle from his apartment atop the pub. "We've been joking here it's a $500,000 crosswalk."

The crosswalk in Pioneer Square is within a few yards of another street project gone bad: 350 feet of new curbing on First Avenue South was ripped out in June just weeks after it was poured because it was a crooked mess.

There are other examples of poor workmanship by city street crews that had to be redone, including 11 new sidewalk wheelchair ramps in West Seattle that were poured and then torn out and replaced in May. Had they been left in place, ramp users would have been funneled into a busy street instead of the safety of a crosswalk.

Yet another West Seattle wheelchair ramp that has not been fixed leads straight into a phone booth.

The botched projects were among a half-dozen brought to the attention of The Seattle Times by disgruntled workers within the city's transportation department who say they are embarrassed by the work.

When The Times investigated, we found that it was impossible to say how many street projects have been fouled up and redone: Until we asked, the city transportation department did not systematically track its mistakes. Instead, the cost of the do-overs was simply rolled into the department's maintenance budget.

The three recent foul-ups account for a tiny fraction of the $26.4 million in Seattle's street repair budget this year. But they represent another symptom — and cost — of bad management within the street-maintenance division. It is the same division that bungled the city's snow removal in December, and it has cost taxpayers at least $805,000 for workplace investigations, employee civil-rights claims, and consultants to improve the division's day-to-day performance and emergency response.

Management problems within the transportation department — which is headed by Grace Crunican — were hidden from public view until The Times began investigating the reasons for the street-maintenance division's inept performance during December's snow storms.

Acting Division Director Charles Bookman said the botched First Avenue curbing and crosswalk and the 11 wheelchair ramps each had to be redone because of poor communication. The errors could have been avoided, he said, if someone had simply "picked up the phone" and called a supervisor or asked a co-worker to check his work.

Reporting changes

Bookman, who also heads the city's traffic-management division, was brought in two months ago to replace the former division director, Paul Jackson Jr.

Jackson was demoted in May, the same week the city released a draft summary of a $515,000 discrimination investigation that documented long-standing favoritism in hiring and promotions in the division, and complaints about Jackson's brusque management style.

The 184-person division, which has been plagued by poor morale for more than two years, is responsible for street repairs, road clearing and emergency response.

Jackson now works as manager of traffic maintenance, supervising 68 employees. His $98,136 salary is about $10,000 less than he was making as director, according to Mayor Greg Nickels' office.

In an interview in June, Bookman acknowledged the city has not systematically tracked street projects that have to be redone, so The Times could not determine whether Seattle has more or fewer projects that had to be reworked compared with other cities its size.

"That's something we may do formally because we want to be good stewards of taxpayer dollars," Bookman said in June. "If you don't track it, you can't manage it."

On Friday, Bookman told The Times that all reworked street projects now will be reported to him: "I want to know about it every time it occurs."

He defined "rework" as any job where a crew is sent back to a job site after a previous crew has finished the work, cleaned up and left. The definition excludes work that is redone or revised before a job is declared finished.

Avoidable errors

Bookman asked supervisors to review a list of 464 projects and identified six that fit his definition of rework.

The department estimated that it cost about $61,700 to redo the two projects on First Avenue South and the wheelchair ramps in West Seattle. "Compare that to the $125,000 a day that it cost to operate street maintenance," said Bookman.

Still, he said he intends to "counsel and coach" the workers involved, and will not discipline anyone for the mistakes.

Some mistakes in construction are to be expected, of course, and the department is no exception. Eliminating common causes of errors is an ongoing concern for private contractors and public agencies.

But it's the avoidable ones in Seattle that have the city workers riled. Among other projects brought to the Times' attention:

• Homeowners couldn't get out of their driveways without scraping the bottom of their cars after a new sidewalk was installed in December 2007 in the 8200 block of Ravenna Avenue Northeast. Bookman said the problem stemmed from poor design. The project designer was a relatively young, new hire who left the department shortly after the work was completed, he said.

The city solved the problem by replacing sections of the private driveways and altering the slope of the driveway entrances. Bookman said it was not possible to calculate the cost because it was folded into the overall project.

• Extensive reworking of crossings on the Chief Sealth Trail, built from August 2006 to May 2007 in Southeast Seattle. About 10 of the street crossings on the trail needed additional work because of grading problems, cracked concrete and incomplete sidewalk ramps, Bookman said.

"I remember the anguish over this," he said. "The (concrete) finisher did it their way, and the designer wanted it another way. If someone had picked up the phone ... "

The poor work added $48,946 to the project, according to Bookman.

• Another wheelchair ramp on California Avenue Southwest hasn't been fixed but should be: It runs straight into the corner of a telephone booth.

The department on Friday said it had discovered two more jobs to add to The Times' list of botched projects:

• A bus-stop pad at Fourth Avenue South and South Michigan Street that was rebuilt last year because the grading was incorrect. Estimated cost to rework: $15,000.

• An asphalt sidewalk, built this year, at Northeast 110th Street and 30th Avenue Northeast. Poor design and poor workmanship on driveway entrances added about $70,000 to the overall cost.

"That's not acceptable"

The crosswalk on First Avenue South became a running joke at the Triangle Pub in January when regulars noticed that city crews kept ripping up the work they'd only recently installed.

Transportation-department records show wheelchair ramps and parts of the crosswalk were poured three times over two months. The reason? The ramps were too steep.

"Apparently, Seattle has money to burn," said Karl Wilson, a building engineer whose office is across the street, and who has watched with a mixture of bemusement and anger as crews tried to get it right.

The 350 feet of crooked curb that was poured nearby was part of a street restoration done for Seattle City Light, which had the street opened up to access lines beneath it.

"I drove by two days after it was done, and said, 'That's not acceptable,' " said City Light's Greg Carlson, who was in charge of the utility's project.

He told Seattle's Department of Transportation that the utility would not pay for the work.

"Normally SDOT does good work," Carlson said. "I've never seen them do a job like that, ever. That whole job down there has been a nightmare."

Records show the concrete crew was led by a crew chief who had been promoted into the job in September. He had previously worked as a truck driver and maintenance laborer with the department.

The crew poured the curb in the middle of a 14-hour day that stretched past dark, Bookman said.

Bookman said the design called for an 8-inch curb, and the department's metal forms come in only three sizes: 4-inch, 6-inch and 12-inch.

Instead of asking for help or advice, Bookman said, the crew member in charge improvised, allowing two 4-inch forms to be stacked atop each other. The person who laid the forms did not ask anyone to check the work, and if anyone noticed something amiss, they did not voice it to anyone in a position to order corrections, he said.

The result was a wavy curb that snaked down the street.

Tom Parris, a cement finisher who has worked in the division for 13 years, said it's unclear why the crew didn't use wooden forms, which can be set at any height.

Substandard ramps

Unchecked work also caused problems in West Seattle, where the department tried to save money by having crews design 43 wheelchair ramps in the field along Fauntleroy Way Southwest. The crew, carrying a schematic of a standard wheelchair ramp, spray-painted areas in the street to indicate places along the curbs where the new ramps would go.

But when the cuts were made, and the ramps poured, 11 of them misdirected pedestrians into the road and had to be ripped out and redone.

Bookman said a call to the project's designer could have prevented the error, which was discovered about midway through the project.

Wheelchair ramps cost about $3,000 each, less if a large number are done in a single day, Bookman said.

On Friday, Bookman said there are other concrete wheelchair ramps the city poured that lead directly into telephone poles, because removing the poles would cost $5,000 to $7,000.

"Sometimes you accept less-than-perfect in the design because to do otherwise doesn't make sense," said Bookman, noting that moving telephone poles would result in a lot fewer ramps.

"I'm not happy about any rework," Bookman said, "but I want to learn from our mistakes and move forward."

Susan Kelleher: 206-464-2508 or skelleher@seattletimes.com

Information in this article, published July 12, 2009, was corrected July 12, 2009. The previous version incorrectly stated that the asphalt sidewalk at Northeast 110th Street and 30th Avenue Northwest was reworked. The correct address is Northeast 110th Street and 30th Avenue Northeast.