I've seen it and a few others on recent road trips.
Additionally, Colorado (and other states) are putting these "animal escape ramps" along the sides of highways.
From what I can gather, a fence runs along the freeway on both sides—presumably to keep the wildlife out. But, I suppose in case an animal makes it into the danger zone, every mile or so there are dirt berms built against the fence that provide a way up and over the fence. Presumably they drop off on the other side so an animal is not as likely to use these in reverse: to get into the danger zone.
Additionally, there are often small partitions at each berm, jutting out from the fence. I imagine an animal following along the fence—when they arrive at the partition, they either go around it and continue, or do the right thing: climb the berm to get to the other side of the fence.
The ROI is beyond solid. It's actually insane this wasn't done sooner at this location. The normal ROI for a wildlife crossing is 15 years. Here, it's two to three years.
> Cost savings: Each prevented wildlife–vehicle collision can save thousands of dollars—more than $19,000 per deer crash, $73,000 per elk, and $110,000 per moose—in vehicle, injury, and wildlife costs, making well-placed crossings a strong investment [0]
This section of highway had one deer-vehicle collision per day.
edit: this post and resulting thread made me realize that "wildlife crossing" sounds far too tree-hugger for our society. They need to rebrand to "obvious money-saving infrastructure," or better.
This has been stuck in my head ever since I wrote about the rebrand. My final proposal: "car-saver" or "car-saver overpass."
"Today, our State Department of Transportation completed their latest car-saver overpass. This one will prevent more than 300 highway-speed collisions per year, saving drivers a lot of money, pain, and heartache."
I know cost-effectivness is often the deciding factor, but that's kinda sad, so:
One deer hit a day, down 91% means ~330 deers saved per year.
$15m spread over the working population (160m) of the US is less than $0.10 per person.
So you're spending $0.10 to save 330 deer, which is a trade I would make.
You have to realize that it isn't just about saving deer. If you hit a deer at speed, it is going to do massive damage to your vehicle and potentially cause significant injury to the passengers, up to and including death. Overt fatalities are reportedly rare, like 0.1% or something, but the injury rate is closer to 5%.
Instead of doing that boring thing the unthinking do - I challenge you to ask why 15M seems like a lot.
Is it a lot in comparrison to the costs to the taxpayers for all the emergency crews responding to animal caused accidents over the lifetime of the crossing, not to mention dealing with carcasses of animals, etc?
How much of any single person's tax money went into it? How long until those few cents get paid off in terms of saved time and gas by not dealing with the traffic backup from those accidents? How much do those few cents amortize to your savings in reduced insurance since thats less potential accident you have to bet against... how much savings does that reduction confer on your expected direct costs in cas you had been in a the accident?
Does 15M still seem like a lot?
Maybe you think it could be built cheaper - how? Show your work.
All these things sure are an interesting conversation to have. Much more interesting than "hur dur, 15M is a big number" anyway.
That seems well within reason, an article said about 1 deer collision prevented per day in the spring and fall high season. Having driven through the area and seen dashcam footage of collisions and near collisions, that $7k makes sense to me.
I've known several people that have hit deer on the highways here, and I'm actually surprised if anything that the number is that low.
So my gut feeling is that it actually has slightly better returns than expected from those numbers.
Cost plus have been disfavored in the FAR for a long time. That doesn't stop contract officers from writing them. The biggest thing, imo, is that congress needs to improve its oversight of ACAT I and ACAT II programs and stop waiting for them to be a hundred million overrun before yanking them.
Something like this only costs $15m because the incentives are crap. You know it if you've driven past any road construction project. 90% of the people at any given time are standing around. You have to pay just as much for a person to stand around as you do for them to be doing useful work.
Fixing the incentives is not easy at all. There are a lot of "good reasons" why this happens. Many of them are failures down the line, but no one at the contractor level pays the price for not mitigating them, so they don't. If a truck doesn't arrive on time, you could find something else useful to do, or you could just stand around waiting. If you/your company is paid by the hour, it's more profitable to stand there.
Your company could also charge the trucking company for arriving late, or the concrete plant for making them wait. This is not customary in the industry though.
Suppose you fixed all of this though. For a given number of construction projects, you'd need way less labor. If profits are a percentage of costs, less labor means less profit. Making things more efficient means the construction company has to lay a bunch of people off and make less profit, so their incentive is to convince the government that inflated costs are reasonable.
I'm not sure what the solution is. Laying people off is painful. However, one thing you might do would be to do more work for the same money, or higher quality work for the same money.
"…90% of the people at any given time are standing around."
Someone needs to write "Road Crew Simulator"—a game where you get to boss workers around and keep them busy rolling out asphalt, stacking traffic cones, etc. I had thought I knew of just one guaranteed customer for the game (my wife) but perhaps there are two!
> You know it if you've driven past any road construction project. 90% of the people at any given time are standing around.
If 90% of the people onsite are unnecessary, a competitor will simply bid for the project without the extra labor and win.
Have you considered the possibility that you don’t understand how road construction works? I don’t fully understand how it works and I am a commercial construction professional.
Always has to be at least one commenter, "but what about my highly specific scenario? All the other people benefiting are an aberration to my specific need or wild singular example"
Fund SNAP, not discount game meat through the deaths of others.
Nailed it. Adding the fact that the majority of HN comments are negative or at least at odds with the post, HN is a bean soup fallacy/theory/dilemma generation system.
SNAP is funded. Food pantries are abundant. Nobody is eating roadkill to survive as a matter of necessity. If you’re eating carrion that’s probably a lifestyle choice and indicative of some mental illness.
A wildlife overpass is certainly not going to be cheap, but I could see the road user safety benefit penciling out over the life of the asset. I wonder why you would send the animals over (and span the whole roadway) rather than under (cut and cover a box culvert). Either way, it would be nice to see this better funded for rural America.
Disregarding the weird roadkill thing: "Funded" isn't necessarily a meaningful determination, since Congress providing 100% funding for $5 that zero people are eligible to receive would also be "fully funded."
In 2025 Republicans slashed its budget by the biggest cut in history, and today
participation is the lowest in 17 years.
I doubt any of us honestly believe the drop is because everybody's financial situation has gotten way better right now, or because groceries got cheaper.
> there are many people that have a significant reliance on roadkill to fulfill their dietary needs.
I doubt that many people are collecting roadkill on a 75mph 6-lane divided freeway though, since I can't really think of any safe way to collect it.
But even if you could collect it, hitting anything small at that speed will completely pulverize it, and hitting anything larger will seriously hurt the vehicle's occupants, so it's probably best to stick to smaller roads.
Ignoring my incredulity at this response, the risk to the lives of the drivers seems to me to be of greater importance than the potential that some people might benefit from the carcasses lying on the side of road.
> going to bed with a deep hunger in the pit of one's stomach.
I'm fine with that, as their dinner shouldn't depend on me suffering an horrible car crash and being hurt or killed.
The people will save a lot of money if they don't need to replace 500 cars each year, therefore more money to feed themselves. They will not be forced to eat dog corpses.
I'm curious about the POV you're coming from. I don't think the number of deer who don't get hit is relevant to the math on injury prevention, traffic prevention, and ongoing operational and property damage costs.
its to gauge the true need to build an overpass in the first place... like imagine the extreme case of a 50% hit rate. In that case building an overpass is completely unjustified, since after the second day the problem is gone
I've seen it and a few others on recent road trips.
Additionally, Colorado (and other states) are putting these "animal escape ramps" along the sides of highways.
From what I can gather, a fence runs along the freeway on both sides—presumably to keep the wildlife out. But, I suppose in case an animal makes it into the danger zone, every mile or so there are dirt berms built against the fence that provide a way up and over the fence. Presumably they drop off on the other side so an animal is not as likely to use these in reverse: to get into the danger zone.
Additionally, there are often small partitions at each berm, jutting out from the fence. I imagine an animal following along the fence—when they arrive at the partition, they either go around it and continue, or do the right thing: climb the berm to get to the other side of the fence.
(Apparently called "Jump Outs": https://www.dot.state.wy.us/home/news_info/district_news_inf...)
Story instead of reddit: https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/largest-wildlife-overp...
Practical Engineering has a good video about wildlife crossings (2024): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mYpQWPtfpo
We need more of these - for pedestrians!
As expected from the press release at open about 9 months ago. (they estimated 90% reduction https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46321557)
The $15M price tag still seems like a lot. Happy for the critters and motorists tho
The ROI is beyond solid. It's actually insane this wasn't done sooner at this location. The normal ROI for a wildlife crossing is 15 years. Here, it's two to three years.
> Cost savings: Each prevented wildlife–vehicle collision can save thousands of dollars—more than $19,000 per deer crash, $73,000 per elk, and $110,000 per moose—in vehicle, injury, and wildlife costs, making well-placed crossings a strong investment [0]
This section of highway had one deer-vehicle collision per day.
365 * $19,000 = $6,935,000 per year.
[0] https://www.pew.org/en/research-and-analysis/fact-sheets/202...
___
edit: this post and resulting thread made me realize that "wildlife crossing" sounds far too tree-hugger for our society. They need to rebrand to "obvious money-saving infrastructure," or better.
This has been stuck in my head ever since I wrote about the rebrand. My final proposal: "car-saver" or "car-saver overpass."
"Today, our State Department of Transportation completed their latest car-saver overpass. This one will prevent more than 300 highway-speed collisions per year, saving drivers a lot of money, pain, and heartache."
This section of highway had one deer-vehicle collision per day.
That sounds like an extreme outlier.
Yes, they place these at places where they're needed, the outliers.
I know cost-effectivness is often the deciding factor, but that's kinda sad, so: One deer hit a day, down 91% means ~330 deers saved per year. $15m spread over the working population (160m) of the US is less than $0.10 per person. So you're spending $0.10 to save 330 deer, which is a trade I would make.
You have to realize that it isn't just about saving deer. If you hit a deer at speed, it is going to do massive damage to your vehicle and potentially cause significant injury to the passengers, up to and including death. Overt fatalities are reportedly rare, like 0.1% or something, but the injury rate is closer to 5%.
The US does not have a shortage of deer. Mostly the opposite as their natural predators have been drastically reduced in numbers.
$15M is less than 4 Patriot PAC-3 MSEs. Which do you prefer your taxes to be spent on?
It’s not “burn 15M on missiles or spend it inefficiently on infra buildout”. It could also be “spend half as much on efficient infra buildout”
Instead of doing that boring thing the unthinking do - I challenge you to ask why 15M seems like a lot.
Is it a lot in comparrison to the costs to the taxpayers for all the emergency crews responding to animal caused accidents over the lifetime of the crossing, not to mention dealing with carcasses of animals, etc?
How much of any single person's tax money went into it? How long until those few cents get paid off in terms of saved time and gas by not dealing with the traffic backup from those accidents? How much do those few cents amortize to your savings in reduced insurance since thats less potential accident you have to bet against... how much savings does that reduction confer on your expected direct costs in cas you had been in a the accident?
Does 15M still seem like a lot?
Maybe you think it could be built cheaper - how? Show your work.
All these things sure are an interesting conversation to have. Much more interesting than "hur dur, 15M is a big number" anyway.
Just trying some napkin math...
Some very surface-level searching shows someone claiming a total societal cost of ~$7k per deer collision.
Supposing it's a $15m construction and could last 30 years without major maintenance, then it needs to stop ~71 events per year to "pay for itself".
To be fair, that is the cost of collisions rather than any near-misses and traffic problems, or the less-quantified ecological cost.
That seems well within reason, an article said about 1 deer collision prevented per day in the spring and fall high season. Having driven through the area and seen dashcam footage of collisions and near collisions, that $7k makes sense to me. I've known several people that have hit deer on the highways here, and I'm actually surprised if anything that the number is that low.
So my gut feeling is that it actually has slightly better returns than expected from those numbers.
The article linked by JKCalhoun lists
$15M is dirt cheap for the USA. That buys you like 100 yards of urban light rail or something. :)
If I did the math right, Seattle-area Federal Way Link Extension costs $185k per yard, getting 81 yards for $15M.
God we're terrible at building things.
Wow, I pinned the tail on that donkey, it seems, with zero fact checking on the figures before posting.
Is that the California high speed rail I see trying to hide in the back?
Shit, who cares how much it costs when it doesn't go useful places?
Don't forget the decades of time it takes to build the tracks.
That’s like one decently sized house with a yard and garage in a good neighborhood in the bay area
Cool - want to suggest changes to the legal code to lower the cost?
No more cost plus contracts.
Cost plus have been disfavored in the FAR for a long time. That doesn't stop contract officers from writing them. The biggest thing, imo, is that congress needs to improve its oversight of ACAT I and ACAT II programs and stop waiting for them to be a hundred million overrun before yanking them.
Something like this only costs $15m because the incentives are crap. You know it if you've driven past any road construction project. 90% of the people at any given time are standing around. You have to pay just as much for a person to stand around as you do for them to be doing useful work.
Fixing the incentives is not easy at all. There are a lot of "good reasons" why this happens. Many of them are failures down the line, but no one at the contractor level pays the price for not mitigating them, so they don't. If a truck doesn't arrive on time, you could find something else useful to do, or you could just stand around waiting. If you/your company is paid by the hour, it's more profitable to stand there.
Your company could also charge the trucking company for arriving late, or the concrete plant for making them wait. This is not customary in the industry though.
Suppose you fixed all of this though. For a given number of construction projects, you'd need way less labor. If profits are a percentage of costs, less labor means less profit. Making things more efficient means the construction company has to lay a bunch of people off and make less profit, so their incentive is to convince the government that inflated costs are reasonable.
I'm not sure what the solution is. Laying people off is painful. However, one thing you might do would be to do more work for the same money, or higher quality work for the same money.
"…90% of the people at any given time are standing around."
Someone needs to write "Road Crew Simulator"—a game where you get to boss workers around and keep them busy rolling out asphalt, stacking traffic cones, etc. I had thought I knew of just one guaranteed customer for the game (my wife) but perhaps there are two!
Your fantasy about 90% of workers idling at a construction site is just that: a fantasy. Go watch a road crew sometime. Everyone is working.
> You know it if you've driven past any road construction project. 90% of the people at any given time are standing around.
If 90% of the people onsite are unnecessary, a competitor will simply bid for the project without the extra labor and win.
Have you considered the possibility that you don’t understand how road construction works? I don’t fully understand how it works and I am a commercial construction professional.
[flagged]
This is peak bean soup theory on HN.
Always has to be at least one commenter, "but what about my highly specific scenario? All the other people benefiting are an aberration to my specific need or wild singular example"
Fund SNAP, not discount game meat through the deaths of others.
Nailed it. Adding the fact that the majority of HN comments are negative or at least at odds with the post, HN is a bean soup fallacy/theory/dilemma generation system.
SNAP is funded. Food pantries are abundant. Nobody is eating roadkill to survive as a matter of necessity. If you’re eating carrion that’s probably a lifestyle choice and indicative of some mental illness.
A wildlife overpass is certainly not going to be cheap, but I could see the road user safety benefit penciling out over the life of the asset. I wonder why you would send the animals over (and span the whole roadway) rather than under (cut and cover a box culvert). Either way, it would be nice to see this better funded for rural America.
The CBS article (https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/largest-wildlife-overp...) mentions there's one large overpass which gets all the attention, but also there's five underpasses. There's a photo of some deer using one towards the bottom.
The lives of the animals also matter.
On a related note, they don’t send them under because most wild animals do not like enclosed tunnels and would not use them.
> SNAP is funded.
Disregarding the weird roadkill thing: "Funded" isn't necessarily a meaningful determination, since Congress providing 100% funding for $5 that zero people are eligible to receive would also be "fully funded."
In 2025 Republicans slashed its budget by the biggest cut in history, and today participation is the lowest in 17 years.
I doubt any of us honestly believe the drop is because everybody's financial situation has gotten way better right now, or because groceries got cheaper.
https://www.cbpp.org/research/food-assistance/snap-tracker-p...
> Nobody is eating roadkill to survive as a matter of necessity
Wrong.
Especially in places that culturally frown upon wasted food / meat.
Agree 100%. Also, hitting a deer at highway speeds can lead to the death of the occupants of the vehicle.
This is not some country road!
This is an actual win-win scenario, for humans and wildlife.
> there are many people that have a significant reliance on roadkill to fulfill their dietary needs.
I doubt that many people are collecting roadkill on a 75mph 6-lane divided freeway though, since I can't really think of any safe way to collect it.
But even if you could collect it, hitting anything small at that speed will completely pulverize it, and hitting anything larger will seriously hurt the vehicle's occupants, so it's probably best to stick to smaller roads.
Last thought before the deer goes through my windshield and kills me is: "At least someone can eat this roadkill."
Reducing car/animal collisions is a good thing for cars(drivers) and animals.
My brother almost died in a car wreck with a deer.
Ignoring my incredulity at this response, the risk to the lives of the drivers seems to me to be of greater importance than the potential that some people might benefit from the carcasses lying on the side of road.
I have to admit, my life would be a little more boring without some of the hot takes I find here sometimes
Like, maybe I can just buy you a cheeseburger instead of totalling my car
> going to bed with a deep hunger in the pit of one's stomach.
I'm fine with that, as their dinner shouldn't depend on me suffering an horrible car crash and being hurt or killed.
The people will save a lot of money if they don't need to replace 500 cars each year, therefore more money to feed themselves. They will not be forced to eat dog corpses.
Surprised it took so long for a car-centric country to get on board with these
"This area was getting about one deer hit a day"
Relative to how many didn't get hit, what's the percentage there?
I'm curious about the POV you're coming from. I don't think the number of deer who don't get hit is relevant to the math on injury prevention, traffic prevention, and ongoing operational and property damage costs.
its to gauge the true need to build an overpass in the first place... like imagine the extreme case of a 50% hit rate. In that case building an overpass is completely unjustified, since after the second day the problem is gone
Well, yes; for that you need the number of cars that that don't hit a deer. :)
No you don't. You only need total costs of accidents before and after this crossing.