Most of this is from memory as my metric references are all back at the office (I start working there two days in 14 starting Friday).
When the first bill was passed in 1988 requiring metrication of State DOT’s it was done in conjunction with Federal directives that all Federal construction be designed and constructed in metric. There was a major effort to convert. Many projects, VA hospitals etc. were built in metric. I have no idea if that is still the case. It was tied to Federal funding so technically all State and locally funded highway projects did not have to convert. The changes in 1996 merely took the requirements and made it voluntary. It was totally up to the States to convert back, many initially chose not to do so. DOT’s decided they had to convert or loose funding. Conversion was always behind the scenes, nothing publicly visible. Signs would not change as part of this effort (although the sizes of the signs did). Many State Highway Agencies implemented a conversion process, it was a significant effort converting manuals, guidelines, training staff and designing and letting construction projects in metric (this is how I first met Stan Jakuba and discovered USMA). We bought new equipment, rulers, scales etc. Survey began doing all work in metric. New York State Department of Transportation jumped on board and was one of the first and biggest agencies to convert. California converted as well. Local agencies joined in too, the Counties and Cities had no choice as they used our standards and also received Federal funding. It was a multi-year process and conversion was very successful from our standpoint. Contractors did not like it but they did get used to it. Give a carpenter a metric tape measure they can build anything as long as they can read a set of plans. I was the conversion manager in our Region and things went smooth, I never received a complaint about conversation, the Engineers and our Consultants embraced it. However not all States were on board and many dragged their feet hoping it would be repealed or the requirements eliminated. They never really converted in the first place. In my opinion, the failure was not so much resistance from the industry but the fact that only one segment of the industry converted. A majority of civil works construction is private, buildings, commercial development. None of that converted. You had suppliers and contractors having to go back and forth from job to job metric to US customary. It was inefficient and confusing. So they lobbied to go back. Sadly there was no lobby to convince the rest of the industry to convert and no incentive. We just do not import/export that much construction and the Engineering firms can work in either system depending on the client (US or international based). We were just not ready to be the innovators. When the requirements were deleted (no one forced us to go back) the handwriting was on the wall. The agencies that never really converted just stopped and kept working US Customary. Some of the smaller states converted back rather quickly. The larger ones however did resist. California and NY stayed metric for several years after the change in legislation was made. Finally California bowed down and NY had to as well. We were the last State to go back and it made me very sad. I told my superior’s I was glad to be the Metric Conversion Manager but I refused to be involved with any efforts to convert back to US Customary. Now that so many of us have retired from that era its more of a historical footnote. Sadly now after 15 years there is not much evidence we were metric. Fortunately for me, my biggest project, managing the Construction of a $38 M signature bridge in Rochester NY, was designed and built in metric. It will be our legacy as record plans for dozens of projects are metric and will have to be maintained well into the future. There is a bit of metric legacy units around, for example our asphalt is described as 25 F9 WMA, 50 SERIES COMPACTION with 25 mm being the aggregate size. Howard Ressel Project Design Engineer NYSDOT From: USMA <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Mark Henschel Sent: Wednesday, June 10, 2020 7:04 AM To: Michael Payne <[email protected]> Cc: USMA List Server <[email protected]> Subject: [USMA 1455] Re: State Higway metric rollback ATTENTION: This email came from an external source. Do not open attachments or click on links from unknown senders or unexpected emails. Federal legislation in the Highway bill prohibited federal money being used to pay for Metric System items such as highway signs. Since there was no money to pay for it, all metrication work on highways stopped. Ironically states were not asking for money for signs, but for actual construction using SI units This was back in the Reagan era, and no changes have been made since. On Tue, Jun 9, 2020, 11:45 PM Michael Payne <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Anyone have the history of how and why most State Highway departments rolled back their metric transition a number of years back? I seem to remember it was some Congressmen who inserted language into a budget somewhere that made the whole transition voluntary. And it all unravelled. Mike Payne _______________________________________________ USMA mailing list [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> https://lists.colostate.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/usma
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