The oil and gas boom in energy states like Wyoming and North Dakota has brought jobs, money, and plenty of workers. But with that has also come heavy industrial traffic and accidents. It is a multi-state trend that is proving difficult to predict and prevent. Leigh Paterson, with our Inside Energy team reports from a tiny town on Wyoming’s Highway 59 that has found itself stuck in the middle of the boom.
Driving along the 115 mile stretch that connects the two energy towns of Douglas and Gillette there’s tons of traffic but little else. Until....
"You'’re in Bill, Wyoming. If you look on the census, its 11…"
Nell Bride owns the Bill Store, the popular- and only- stop off for coal, oil and gas workers traveling between the two towns.. Business is up and so is the traffic."
"To pull outta here, its horrible. I mean, to go from there to there you can sit for 5 -10 mins. Whooooosh . Prime example!"
Since 2010, the number of crashes on this stretch of highway has nearly doubled. And in May, a bus carrying coal miners crashed, killing three people. Wyoming’s Department of Transportation recently earmarked $22 million dollars to build passing lanes and plans to send out more state troopers to patrol Highway 59 . But Nell Bride wants change now.
"Blowing smoke up my hiney from DOT -- don’t tell me you’re gonna fix it if you’re not really gonna fix it. Actually do something abt it. It doesn’t take that much to put up two signs."
"I don’t think anybody three years ago saw the exponential growth that we’re seeing."
Jim Willox is Chairman of the Converse County commissioners- that’s where Bill and Douglas are located and where much of Wyoming’s oil boom is taking place. Willox says changes in transportation policy tend to be reactive because in order to say, lower a speed limit,
"Fed law requires a traffic study’."
… which requires ...the presence of traffic.
Another big factor is funding. And that also takes time.
"As a county we’re putting millions into road and bridge projects but we didn’t have millions of dollars to put into road and bridge projects until we had the oil and gas development to generate the revenue so we could put it into roads."
A catch 22, that leaves communities like Bill, with more business and a newly built hotel- but afraid to cross the street. So if you can see a boom coming, is there any way to prepare?
Khaled Ksaibati is director of Wyoming’s Technology Transfer Center and he says yes.
With the help of some surveillance gear
"... on the bottom they have gps units, they have video cameras everywhere. that’s probably what it is."
In September, this vehicle, and a few other, drove around rural Wyoming gathering visual data on road thickness, rut depth, roughness, cracks...
"...and then they convert those video images into numbers into what we call the pavement condition index."
"Baseline testing! that’s exactly what it is."
Its a pilot program but the goal of collecting this baseline-type data, is that when energy development hits, the impact can be measured against what the road quality was before. And then states and counties can resolve problems early-on with small fixes like road repair and passing lanes.
"We don’t know for how long we’re gonna have the drilling activities and higher traffic /So i think this is really an excellent strategy to improve safety on 2 lane rural highways."
Back at the Bill store its evening and the bar fills up with workers on their way home.
"I push a pullin unit for DC energy."
Oil worker Shilo White has been taking highway 59 at least twice a day for the past nine years. The traffic has been so bad for so long- he says- that locals...
"They call it the coal miners 500….. So mix the oil field with the coal miners and you’ve got nothing but a ….race way. Its a dangerous one."
But maybe a little less dangerous for the town of Bill … Wyoming’s D-O-T has fast-tracked the study required to lower the speed limit across the road from the Bill Store. And those NEW signs could go up as soon as the end of this month.
For Inside Energy, I’m Leigh Paterson
Inside Energy is a public media collaboration focusing on America’s energy issues.
