New road offers safe transportation, quicker route Published Jan. 21, 2010 By Airman 1st Class William O'Brien 95th Air Base Wing Public Affairs EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. -- Team Edwards celebrated the opening of the new Ammo Road, with a ribbon-cutting ceremony Jan. 16. "Besides the obvious danger of transporting live munitions, the traffic alone was dangerous -- going 10 miles per hour on 55 miles per hour roadway," said Airman 1st Class Jonathan Ethier, 412th Maintenance Squadron munitions flight. Without this road, munitions trailers were required to take public roads such as Jones Road, Rosamond and Lancaster Boulevards and FitzGerald and Wolfe Avenues. On these roads, speed limits can reach up to 55 miles per hour. But for munitions trailers, the fastest they can go is 10 miles per hour. Airman Ethier said an accident involving a munitions truck would cause traffic to cease until the site could be cleared by the Air Force Flight Test Center Ground Safety Office and Explosive Ordinance Removal. "If there was an accident involving live munitions, the area between 300 and 4,000 feet, depending what you're transporting, would have to be cordoned," said Airman Ethier It would stop traffic and the Safety Office and EOR would have to come to the site. "They can transit this road without contacting the tower for clearance to move through a controlled movement area," said Kenneth Crawford, 95th Civil Engineering Directorate, lead project engineer. "So they're free now to go back and forth with getting permission from the tower. Still keeping them a safe distance from the inside runway and the outside runway." With the creation of Ammo road, the danger of having live ammunition being transported on general traffic roads is eliminated along with some of the time it takes to reach their destination, because of the direct route. The purpose of (this road) is driven by safety," said Mr. Crawford. "It keeps the munitions vehicles and fuel trucks off of Lancaster and Jones Roads as they transit from south base up to the ramp." Mr. Crawford said the idea of having this road has been around for a while but it has never been acted on until recently. "There was a concept to do this for a long time but, it really came to a final concept this summer with a strong desire to get it completed as quickly as possible because of the safety issues with these vehicles on Lancaster Boulevard, he said. "Once the command made the decision to go ahead with it, we took the project and ran with it. We put it out for solicitation through the (Army) Corps of Engineers. We negotiated the bid (with the Granite Construction Company) and got it awarded and got it started in November. The project started in early November and was projected to cost 2.5 million dollars. But 95th CE, along with the Army Corps of Engineers and GCC were able to finish the project three months after ground breaking and $400,000 under budget. "The project cost approximately $2.1 million," Which came under the originally programmed amount of $2.5 million," said Anthony Tintelnot 95th CE program manager. "Actual work out here started in the beginning of November," added Mr. Crawford. "We had hoped to get it done before Christmas, and we almost made it but on (the end section) we ran into some bad soil and it took us an extra week to put in cement treated soil to stabilize it. We had the paving done before Christmas, but we had to put the ditches in and the shoulders and we had it striped this week." In addition to safety, Airman Ethier said this road saves them time, which in pinch situations could be very valuable. "Besides safety it saves us time," he said. "Depending where we're going it could save us as much as twenty minutes. If anything urgent comes up that could be a lot of time."