After 35 years with KDOT, Dale Hershberger worked his last day on March 14th. He had served as Area Engineer for the Kansas Department of Transportation since November of 1989. Prior to that, he worked as a surveyor helping place center pivots, a county engineer, and then started with KDOT as a construction engineer at their Marion Office. After three years, he was promoted to the role out of Clay Center. The role included supervising the maintenance and construction sections of KDOT, spanning from Washington, Abilene, and Junction City. That meant a jurisdiction of state highways and more than 50 miles of I-70.
It was his role to travel around as needed and to follow up with area offices that cover maintenance and construction.
He recalled several notable events and construction projects from his career, including weather, for instance, helping a young mother stuck in the snow who had wanted to show her new baby to her grandparents, and another couple who wanted to see how bad the snow was. Both instances were in near-zero temps and high winds. While everyone was ok, he said they delayed snowplows’ ability to clear the roads.
However, it was a trend he saw grow over time, with drivers underestimating the time it takes to clear snow.
“This trend that people think the roadways are instantly passable seems to be increasing and the added traffic, especially when they get stuck on the roadway, greatly hinders the crews trying to clean the roadways.”
Other weather-related challenges included floods, especially the Great Flood of 1993. Listed as the worst flood since 1927 – and the costliest in US history – it sent KDOT into a tailspin. Hershberger recalled trying to keep up with all of the roads.
“That was the era where phones weren’t really around,” he said. With a borrowed bag phone, he drove around while reporting road conditions to others.
“KDOT had some two-way radios, they’ve improved on that since then,” he said. “It was kind of that era between not being able to communicate unless you were face-to-face or calling on a phone – a phone from a location, it wasn’t traveling out on the roadway.”
That same flood landed a picture on the cover of a national civil engineering magazine. He remembered the image of the washed-out road across the Milford Lake spillway.
“It kind of shocked me because we were about the furthest west that affected that flood.”
Meanwhile, two bridges were being redone, including US 36 West, and the shoofly detours – sections of road that jut around the bridge – were under about six feet of water. For Hershberger and his crew, it meant traffic couldn’t get to Washington for a period of time. In July alone the area got more than 17 inches of rain – a record for Washington County and fourth-highest in the state, ever.
“We were running all over trying to keep up with what was going on.”
Mundane repairs were also made, such as resurfacing the area’s entire jurisdiction of I-70, from exit 260, Niles Rd./New Cambria to exit 313, K177. Replacing the bridge west of Clay Center, and removing the viaduct on Crawford Street.
Another repair in Saline County included a test section where they mixed two types of concrete, after Topeka supervisors had observed something similar in Europe. Hershberger said they mixed in a marble-sized aggregate and swept the two-inch layer before it was dry, leaving the aggregate exposed.
“It’s supposed to give a better and quieter ride,” he said. “I don’t remember how it performed compared to some other type of surfacing we did.” However, he did remember testing the surface when the department added microphones near tires and recorded the decibels when driving over the dried surface.
Now retired for over two weeks, Hershberger is enjoying “a lot of Saturdays in a row.” However, he said the full extent has yet to kick in. He and his wife, Janice, took a trip to visit their granddaughters in Oregon this spring and have discussed multiple travel goals. A few ideas include visiting every county in the state and all lower 48 states. However, he said they have time to decide and haven’t made any concrete plans other than enjoying time off after a long-loved career.
“I really enjoyed my career, it gave me a lot of problems that required developing solutions to,” he said. “The people were good to work with and I really enjoyed that. I would recommend a career in civil engineering, in fact I recommend and encourage it.”
