Roadscapes Wednesday: The I-459 Grooved Pavement Experience

By Nathan Young on May 30, 2013

Have you heard of this new driving experience in Alabama? The experience involves grooving miles of interstate and leaving it that way. Who cares about motorcycles or bridges. I got to experience this grooved pavement along southbound I-459 from the Grants Mill Road exit to the U.S. 280 exit. And since I was going to the Alabama Phoenix Festival to cover that event each day, I had the pleasure of experiencing this pavement for three days straight.

Here’s the thing, I talked to several attendees at the Alabama Phoenix Festival and they all said they hated this grooved pavement. Why would you leave several miles of grooved pavement across the entire interstate? That’s right, all lanes were grooved. And boy, was it a fun and bumpy experience going across the bridges. Yes, I slowed down to almost zero on I-459 to take these pictures.

The construction crews should have grooved the pavement, then have the asphalt machine right behind it to pave over the grooved pavement. It’s very hard to drive on grooved pavement and go across the bridges which is like hitting a speed bump while driving at 70 miles per hour. ALDOT should have done this construction a different way than this. But in the world of ALDOT, they don’t care about the motorists, they want to do projects in the cheapest and easiest ways possible. To the out-of-state people who came to the Alabama Phoenix Festival, I personally apologize to you on the conditions of our roads and highways.

Here is a video and some photos from the I-459 grooved pavement experience. It’s sad I have to put out stuff like this.