I'm guessing Colonel Saito wasn't involved.
NEXCO? Is this it’s own company, or is it state run?
My guess is it is it’s OWN company and that’s why things get done promptly.
Does Japan have unions?
Next time I see a union crew standing around a hole in the highway eating breakfast sandwiches and scratching their asses, I’ll remember this.
But seriously... this is awesome.
Obama would have to order the shovel-ready signs first. No work allowed until they were all in place, giving him due credit for fixing it.
Turn the camera around and take a shot back down the road the other way.
I would say he is shooting at near the end of the tree line on the right side of the road..the ceder trees. Compare that with the photo of the damage and where they were taking the photo there.
Company Name Central Nippon Expressway Company Limited
Workforce 2,100 employees (as of March 31, 2009)
Headquarters Address Mitsui-Sumitomo Bank Nagoya
Building, 2-18-19, Nishiki, Naka-ku, Nagoya
460-0003
Telephone 81+(52)-222-1620 (Japanese Only)
Capital 65 billion yen
Established October 1, 2005
Mission Statement We aim to contribute to the sound growth of the national economy, betterment of people’s everyday lives and improvement of traffic flow through the efficient management, planning,development and maintenance of expressways.
Take a look at 911 ground zero today, that says it all.
I'm guessing Colonel Saito wasn't involved.
It is amazing how fast infrastructure can be rebuilt if you do two things, don’t use union labor and incentivize the company to finish on time/early. They rebuilt the 10 freeway in LA in just 66 days after the northridge earthquake using those same two principals. Just shows you how truly wasteful most public works construction is.
America used to work like that up until a generation or two ago.
At one time we could have done the same thing.
My Father was in the combat engineers in WWII. Reading their history, it was astounding how fast the accomplished jobs which would take far longer today.
Even more interesting is after the war they hired German civilians to do some of the labor and according to my Father, they worked even harder than our troops did.
Big deal. The state of California fixed not one but TWO damaged bridges on the MacArthur Maze off the Oakland Bay Bridge in just 26 days.
http://www.aisc.org/newsdetail.aspx?id=11172
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“June 07, 2007 From American Institute of Steel Construction, Inc.
“Despite original predictions that repairs would take months, the MacArthur Maze Interchange in California was successfully reopened in just 26 days. The bridge’s two spans were irreversibly damaged when a tanker truck loaded with 8600 gallons of gasoline overturned on I880.
“The subsequent explosion and fire caused the two bridge deck spans of I580 above to collapse, cutting off the East Bay area of Emeryville from the San Francisco Bay Bridge. The collapse greatly inconvenienced commuters and resulted in significant loss of bridge tolls.
“Although initial news reports cited a lack of replacement steel and predicted many months of repairs, crews completed reconstruction of the two Interstate 580 spans in 26 days, and traffic resumed in time for the Memorial Day weekend.”
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A pox on all of you who think Americans lacke a “can do” spirit and ability when the chips are down. All it took was for the Governor to exempt the process from the idiotic environmental laws. The repairs from the Northridge earthquake went equally fast and for the same reason - exempting the idiotic shackling environmental laws.
I would like to see one of you bums even try to hump the heavy pieces of steel Union ironworkers lug around, position, and tie-off 8 hours a day every day. Every one of you would have a catastrophic back muscle tear within 3 minutes from start of shift. I damn well know I can’t do what they do.
6 days to fill a long trench with dirt, pack it down, place aggregate subbase, aggregate base and pave a foot of asphalt over it. Big deal.
I mean, congratulations to the Japanese for an exceptional job, but this is nothing we can’t or haven’t done in the USA. A pox on you who think we can’t. I don’t want to know you.
And don’t forget everybody to send the article to all your fat union friends.
Dig a whole and fill it with dirt and pave the surface in 6 days. Big freaking deal. The Japanese are capable of so much more than that. This is kid's stuff for them AND for the USA. Excavate and backill a hole in 6 days. Pffffffffffffffft.
You Japanese can’t do that!!! You’re embarrassing unions and diversity nations like Haiti by doing that!
Related question...looking at pics of the incredible devastation from the earthquake and then the tsunami, I wondering..just where do they put all the wreckage, the detritus. I mean..there is NO room..what do they do with all of it?
But, what about the environmental reports required before work could start?
What are they proposing to alleviate all the harm that this project created without necessary permits?
sarcasm/off
Non-union, I assume?
I hate being anal about things like this but it is in my nature...Granted it was 7 years ago, but I lived in the Kanto area for 3 years and I don’t remember a “Great Kanto Highway”, nor could I find any reference to it except those that pointed to this article.
Okay, maybe it’s just a bad translation. I did find a North Kanto Expressway, but that’s too far north. There is an East Kanto Expressway in Chiba, an area that had a lot of earthquake damage, but now the problem is that I can’t find any Naka, except a Nakamachi that’s a few miles from the expressway, it’s a neighborhood of Narita City. Anyway, I wish I could see the signs the photos to see exactly where this is.
I saw this and posted it on my FB page yesterday. Unbelievable. Our state road crews would’ve taken 2 years to fix that road.