The following is a basic summary of a 1 hour (36 hs) discussion with Mr. Peter Brier of the Ministry of Transportation, Ontario (MTO) regarding Ontario's conversion in the 1970s. It was quite enlightening. Mr. Brier invited any on the List to contact him if they have questions concerning highway metrication and he would be happy to discuss the topic. His telephone number (in London, Ontario) is: 519 873-4368. He told me that he does have email access, but his typing skills makes it prohibitively slow. ;) greg =========== Mr. Peter Brier was one of the design people in the 1970s with MTO (Ministry of Transportation, Ontario). I was pleased to hear that 100% of all work done by the Ontario Ministry of Transportation is done in metric. There wasn't even a moment of hesitation in his voice. He did admit, as an 'old' engineer that he remembers the Imperial standards better than he does the metric, but he still does all his work in SI. I was surprised to hear that the only money given to the provinces for highway for conversion was $100'000 from the Federal Department of Transportation to assist in the conversion of standards manuals, as far as Mr. Brier could remember. The rest of the cost was absorbed in the annual budgets. He told me that he has had a number of inquiries from the United States about the cost of converting all the highway signs. He said that they used the low cost method of using self-adhesive over-lays (i.e. "stickers") where possible, attached a smaller "km/h" sign below the speed limit and that was it. In some cases where signs were in need of replacing they were replaced with the new metric sign instead. All this took place over a few months, leaving the metric signs convered until the September Labour Day long weekend when the were "unveiled" and the old Imperial signs were convered. They prioritized the signs starting with the major highways (like the 401 (i.e "The Four-Oh-One") in southern Ontario) and then moved down to less important roads. Another comment that surprised me is that the MTO took this as an opportunity to re-evaluate their standard design requirements. Rather than just replacing "1 in" with "25 mm" and "1 yard" with "0.9 m" they actually asked themselves why the standard was designed in the first place. He gave the example of a horizontal curve. The old rules said that the curve had to be such that a driver could see a 4 inch object on the road and stop before hitting it. They asked "Why 4 inches?" and "How far off the road are the driver's eyes?" So they took some new measurements and decided that "4 inches" was quite arbitratry so they changed it to the average height of a car's head/tail lights. Then they rounded everything to workable SI units (i.e. 300 mm cf. 304.8 mm). He also reminded me that this was the 1970s when a 4-function calculator at Eaton's was $100 ($120 if you wanted a % sign) so they also had to redesign all their calculation tables. Ontario also took the lead and let out a contract to have a company manufacture their plastic design templates to metric specifications. They took orders for all the provinces and municipalities in Canada and thus saved some money by getting it done in bulk. Mr. Brier told me you can still see them hanging on the wall, but mostly as decoration since most work is done on computers now. He assumed that converstion today would be easier since all it would require is a change in computer software rather than many hours manual calculations to make new tables and templates. One comment that was a little surpising is that he didn't notice any change in the efficiency or error rate once the conversion to metric was completed. Everything continued as normal. This is against the grain of many comments here on the List that suggest a base-10 system would be more efficient and less error-prone than a non-base 10 system. We also discussed the cost of replacing equipment. A paving machine cost $240'000 in the mid-1970s (probably closer to 1.5 M$ today). They are standardized to lay down an 8 foot (2.44 m) wide strip of pavement. Attachments can be bolted on to extend this strip of pavement to 10 feet (3.05 m) or 12 feet (3.66 m). When Ontario converted to metric the standard lane widths became 3.25 m, 3.5 m, or 3.75 m depending on the highway. At first, when paving a 3.5 m highway, the paver would start at one shoulder and lay a strip of pavement. This strip would be slightly over the centre line. Then the paver would go to the other shoulder and lay a second strip that would be slightly over the centre line. The result was a ridge along the centre line that many referred to as "metric bumps". The contractors did not want to spend 240 k$ to replace the paver, but it turned out the cost of manufacturing new metric extension was _only_ $12'000 a pair - only 5% of the cost of a new paver. Today I'm sure that these extensions are readily available at much less of a fraction of the cost of a paver. Finally, I asked Mr. Brier about the abilities of Ontario contractors to compete for foreign contracts. He said that he wasn't in a position to comment on that with any authority, but he was aware of some firms doing work in Asia (Beijing Airport?). One benefit was that Ontario developed a new set of bridge design standards that were adopted across Canada, the United States, and a few hundred other jurisdictions. Apparently, from what he said, the former design standards (developed in the US) over designed some parts, and under designed others. The new Ontario standards were developed in SI only. In conslusion, Michigan DOT and contractors don't have a leg to stand on when it comes to their reversion back to 'English' units. They could convert to SI-only in a heartbeat and take advantage of their new found expertise to do some out-of-state work in those states that are still dual-unit. It seems to me that it is obvious that Michigan didn't convert their standards from "the bottom up" as Ontario did; they merely replaced "1 in" with "25.4 mm" Otherwise it would be too difficult to justify the cost of converting all those new, hard SI standards to 'English'. If they did remake new SI standards and just dusted off the old English standards for their reversion then it would be difficult to justify replacing the revised and (most likely) safer SI standards. Something is rotten in the state of Michigan. It seems to me, however, that the conversion of all provincial and municipal highway construction practices to metric in the 1970s with the support of the Federal government (at least moral/legal if not finanical) assisted Ontario in converting at a much lower cost than if they went it alone. This is where the US federal government needs to take a strong pro-metric possition in order to encourage the states and companies to finally adopt the international standard. That's all for now. We did talk for about an hour. He did finished our converation by inviting me to pass his phone number onto the List in case any of my American companions in the transporation design business would like to discuss this topic. I will pass this information on.
