Very interesting subject because of all nuances that can come into play. I was looking at one the other day where we have a ROW dedicated by plat and a road that was pioneered in with little attention paid to that platted location. It's been in use for 30 plus years. Clear prescriptive rights. It can be like peeling an onion. Sometimes the location can only be decided on by a court. Who has authority over the road, is it a State maintained ROW or a local jurisdiction? I've seen some whacked ROW location solutions done by the State that ignore every private surveyors monument set in the last fifty years. Even the State will disavow their older monuments that were set by contractors, but offer nothing by way of an alternative. Some should just be labeled "Dragons live here".
In my experience, Alaska DOT&PF will back down when faced with a strongly opinionated surveyor or land owner that insists that they abide by their own monuments.
This issue comes up over and over again and those that favor the math over the monuments have never been able to provide any justification besides, "that was the way I was tought", or "that is how DOT told me to do it."
I don't get the, "but they were set by contractors" argument. Courts do not generally reject monuments becasue they were not set by surveyors. Don't forget that more than half the original PLSS monuments were set by contract laborers picked up locally.
I try to hold tangent curves. I try to hold r/w mons. I try to hold C/L, both paint line, and mid of pavement. Of course, this takes time.
I consider R/W mons usually are good, for allingment, but poorer in station.
One up near MT ida, I shot all r/w mons, and C/L. Centerline wandered up to 3 feet, but the RW mons were tight. I held RW mons.
There are no "fixed answers".
N
If it's a DOT highway, calculate an average bearing for the centerline tangents each side of the curve based upon the R.O.W. mons, then fillet with the record degree of curvature. The PC and PT monuments only establish the bearings on the tangents, the calculated PC and PT will slide up and down the tangents.
If it's a DOT highway, calculate an average bearing for the centerline tangents each side of the curve based upon the R.O.W. mons, then fillet with the record degree of curvature. The PC and PT monuments only establish the bearings on the tangents, the calculated PC and PT will slide up and down the tangents.
That's all well and good right until the mons get ripped out during rehab and new ones are set by second-rate contractors, maintenance crews and/or engineering departments without any regard for precise location. Or they never get replaced at all.
It doesn't take much error in those CL mons to start seeing ROW lines, especially through those filleted curves, that significantly disagree with the original ROW as monumented, not to mention long-established occupation lines, meaning you're now open to litigation from landowners along the ROW. Utilities running just inside the actual ROW may now be shown on private land, which can cause even more headaches.
I don't mind centerline mons (although I dislike having to dodge traffic to pick them up), but they absolutely must be tied to a maintained control network existing outside of the right-of-way itself, so that they can be re-established precisely. There are precious few highway and public works departments (not to mention licensed surveyors) that both understand that and conduct projects accordingly.
In a great many cases - particularly with plats and road alignments created in the last 30 years or so - the math fits the (undisturbed) monuments close enough that the differences are not significant. Centerline monuments, being installed in the asphalt or in monument cases are most likely to be undisturbed. Any deviation of individual monuments outside of the travelled way can be attributed to disturbance.
So ... this may be heresy to some ... It seems to me that there is little to be gained in fiddling with the math, thereby clouding the record ... just to put the point that already falls on the cap right on the dimple.
If that is not the case - if the monumentation isn't matching the math by a large swing - I'm going to seek to hold the tangents as monumented, the tangency of the curves, and the radii.
