Friday, February 04, 2005

18-Wheeled Blips

700 of em, per day. And each one of them is a big one.

It could be described as the Wal-Mart Express; a variation on a theme of hard driving truckers keeping US forces supplied to fight the war in Europe during World War II. [Note: Those Third Army guys. They were SUCH ‘consumers’.]

It’s supposed to be around 700 18-wheelers on US 50 each day moving between heaven knows where and the proposed Wal-Mart distribution center near the intersection of US 50 and Purcell Boulevard in Pueblo West.

The Pueblo Chieftain carries an article in yesterday’s paper on the impact of all the trucks on US 50, according to a contracted consulting firm, Kimley-Horn and Associates. According to the article, K-H & A think the traffic will increase by 1 truck every 2 minutes; they calculate a rate of 30 trucks an hour. The article doesn’t say it, but that looks an awful lot like an ‘average’. Life, usually, does not work in reality by averages. The average family does not REALLY have 2.4 children. The .4 child would be having a hard time of it. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) would have been a way of life back in the 18th Century, if that were true.

So, a few questions, if you will indulge me.

What are the assumptions involved in this estimate/report?

Will the Wal-Mart facility be operating at full capacity and crew 24-hours a day?

Or will there be more work accomplished in one part of the day than in another?

If the latter, what is the difference and what is the impact on the density of truck traffic?

I’ve travelled by road quite a bit. Indeed, I love driving about this great country, seeing all of its spendors. At all hours of the day and night. I notice that where there may be some 18-wheelers travelling at night, I see most such vehicles are not out and about between 2200 hrs and 0600 hrs at night. The drivers tend to be like most other people and want to get some sleep between those hours. These guys are NOT in the military. Generally we can’t order them to be on a schedule like I’m familiar with in convoy planning from my earlier life.

So I have my doubts that the truck traffic is going to be the same at all hours of day and night. Therefore, the density of trucks could well be higher during the course of the daylight hours than reported by K-H & A. And if that IS the case, how could they have overlooked that?

Another think….about these 700 trucks. Are those trucks the number to be processing through the facility on a daily basis? Or are those trucks to pass on US 50? If it’s the latter, fine. If it’s the former, that means the trucks will be on US 50 twice. Once going to the facility and once again to leave it. That increases the traffic to 1400 passes along US 50, daily. Double the traffic increase. After all, the trucks gotta go SOMEWHERE, after visiting Wal-Mart.