Road hazards and delays in repaving after road trenching for the V.I. Next Generation Network’s publicly owned fiber optic network are "lessons learned" for the government-owned company, viNGN President and Chief Executive Officer Lawrence Kupfer acknowledged during Senate hearings Thursday.
"Right now we have a lot of residents complaining they are swerving to miss running over the trenches because they have not been properly repaved," said Sen. Janette Millin Young while chairing the meeting of the Economic Development, Agriculture and Planning Committee on St. Thomas.
"I will admit some areas are very nice and smooth," she said, “but in other areas you have people swerving to avoid the rut. So if anything were to happen to a driver I would hope those businesses responsible for making repairs would be held responsible.”
Repaving is essentially complete on St. Croix but will continue into June on St. Thomas, Kupfer said. Those areas that have been repaved are pretty smooth, but some trenches that have not been covered with asphalt are still bumpy, he acknowledged.
The original plan to fill the trenches to the top with concrete after the conduit was laid did not work out quite as anticipated, so viNGN had to have contractors go back and fill up the gap with asphalt, Kupfer said.
"I think what happened is in a number of areas, particularly areas with a lot of traffic … there was a lot of pressure to reopen the road before the concrete was fully set and driving over it caused it to settle and create a rut," Kupfer said. "So in hindsight it is a lesson we learned, that even though there is traffic we are creating, we need to allow the concrete to completely cure so when people drive on it, it is fine." he said.
Sen. Myron Jackson also pressed Kupfer on the repaving. "I understand the explanation but I am still not pleased," he said.
Kupfer said St. Thomas is taking longer to repave than St. Croix because, on St. Croix, one company did the trenching and another did the repaving, allowing work to happen on both fronts at the same time, while on St. Thomas, Island Roads won the contract for both the trenching and repaving, so the repaving had to wait until the company’s crews were done with trenching to start repaving.
"There is always a lesson learned" when undertaking a large construction project like this, Kupfer said. "In the future, we will be putting additional sections of the network underground and there are two things I would require: One is enough time for the concrete to cure. And I would insist the person doing the trenching would sub out the paving work, so both happen at the same time. Hindsight is always 20/20 but these two things would do a lot to avoid those problems."
Sen. Clifford Graham said one of the network manhole covers bounces every time a car goes over it, creating a repetitive noise. Kupfer said he had received some calls about it and “it is not acceptable."
Some of the first vaults built were not perfectly flat, making the lids rock and bounce when driven over, and some lids are slightly bowed, causing them to bounce, Kupfer said.
"On St. Croix the bowed covers were put aside, and they just used the flatter ones and that seems to have worked," he said. Where there is a problem with the vault, the manufacturer has suggested using a neoprene gasket between the cover and its concrete housing, Kupfer said.
"It is an issue I have been dealing with. I have driven over every manhole cover on St. Thomas," he said.
Kevin Hughes, viNGN vice president of sales and marketing, suggested the benefits of faster, more reliable and cheaper Internet service will outweigh the literal and figurative bumps in the road along the way.
"All of this will be forgotten when (the network) is up," Hughes said. "We apologize for the inconvenience but, trust me, it is going to be worth it when it comes to the job creation, et cetera, from the network," he said.
The viNGN was established in 2010 as a public corporation and a wholly owned subsidiary of the V.I. Public Finance Authority. The network is funded primarily through four grants provided by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to improve the broadband capacity in the United States, its territories and the District of Columbia.
According to the terms of the federal grants paying most of the costs, the network is supposed to be up and running by the end of June 2013.
In the afternoon, the committee heard from the V.I. Port Authority on its various capital and construction projects.
No votes were taken during the information gathering oversight hearing.
More information on viNGN, its public computer centers or the company’s services is available by calling 1-340-715-8581 or visiting its website at www.vingn.com.
