The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) maintains over 23,000 acres of freeway landscaping throughout the State.

The majority of California's freeway plantings are located within urban environments that are prone to damage by vandals. The California motorist and local residents demand high quality landscaping and are willing to fund freeway planting and rehabilitation projects. Caltrans has taken an active role in developing strategies to reduce the potential for vandalism to freeway facilities, providing local communities with the quality projects they desire.

Design and Maintenance Challenges

California, like many other states, has experienced an explosion of growth in the last twenty years, which has required improvements to the freeway infrastructure. Due to the high cost of purchasing additional right-of-way within urban environments, new pavement is usually squeezed into the existing right-of-way boundaries, resulting in reduced width of planting areas and steep side slopes. Even on older freeway segments, freeway slopes were generally designed at a 2:1 or steeper ratio to reduce right-of-way costs. Unfortunately, these steep slopes create erosion and irrigation challenges for freeway landscape architects and maintenance employees.

Added to these challenges are the combination of an increased number of random acts of vandalism and an increase in damage to the irrigation facilities caused by homeless encampments within the freeway rights-of-way. The result of these design and maintenance challenges is the development of creative design strategies and material specifications currently used for freeway planting and irrigation projects.

Roadside Safety for Employees

One of Caltrans'primary concerns in designing roadside environments is the safety of maintenance personnel and the motoring public. When irrigation facilities are grouped together and protected by fixed objects, maintenance activities can be limited to one relatively safe area rather than many, reducing worker exposure to traffic hazards. For this reason, irrigation facilities are grouped behind guardrails and concrete barriers, along fence lines, or adjacent to maintenance access roads or pullouts. Maintenance access roads and vehicle pullouts, constructed of asphalt, concrete, compacted aggregate base, decomposed granite, interlocking pavers or other materials are sited to allow maintenance personnel to park safely away from traffic.

Homeless Complicate Design

The ever increasing homeless population that gravitates to freeway rights-of-way has caused landscape architects and maintenance personnel to "open up" the landscape through the implementation of design concepts or pruning to increase visibility by law enforcement, maintenance employees and the public. Low spreading shrubs and upright trees are planted to eliminate the shelter and hiding places afforded by large shrub masses and low branching trees. Visibility to all areas within the roadside is a crucial tool for law enforcement and Caltrans'maintenance workers in the battle to minimize vandalism to freeway landscaping.

Tampering with irrigation components by vandals and the homeless is a routine occurrence in some areas. Irrigation facilities are prone to modification by the homeless to provide a readily available source of water or power. Irrigation facilities are also stolen, knocked over, turned off, or redirected. Over the years, as the problems have increased, Caltrans'strategies for protecting our equipment have become more sophisticated.

Water can be either a desirable commodity or an inconvenience for people living illegally within the freeway right-of-way. The use of master valved systems is a very simple way to limit the potential for water theft. Since the pipes are pressurized only when the controller(s) has activated the system, water is only available during the regular water schedule. The use of master valves has the added benefit of limiting damage to slopes if remote control valves should malfunction in the open position or if there is a break in the main line pipe.

Another simple way to limit damage to slopes is the installation of breakaway couplings on above grade risers that will break at a shear line upon impact and automatically stop the flow of water. The bright orange colored couplings installed by Caltrans are easy for maintenance personnel to identify as being broken during drive-by inspections.

At one time, backflow prevention assemblies only required a simple chain and padlock to prevent unauthorized use. Today, we find it is necessary to place backflow prevention assemblies in expanded metal or solid steel enclosures that are bolted to concrete pads to prevent theft, damage to or modification of the equipment. All gate valves attached to wye strainers are modified so that attachments can not be made to the outlet valves.

Irrigation controllers have been installed in enclosures to protect them from the elements. Today, the controllers are placed in stainless steel enclosures that can be easily cleaned if painted with graffiti. The enclosures are bolted to concrete pads to prevent them from being pushed over. Padlock shields are used to prevent the tampering with the locks. Occasionally, booster pumps are protected with large chain link fence enclosures constructed around concrete pads. All of the equipment is installed in individual security enclosures within the chain link enclosure. Profiles of equipment enclosures are kept to the smallest size possible to decrease the size of a graffiti canvas or vandalism target area. Yet, clearances are maintained between the equipment located inside to allow viewing and ease of maintenance.

Valve boxes installed near areas of pedestrian activity, such as park and ride lots or roadside rest areas, are placed in boxes with locking lids to prevent access and potential damage to the valves, control wires and splices. In some areas of the state, valve box lids are hinged to the boxes to prevent the lids from being stolen or used for Frisbee practice.

Electrical power theft has become an issue in many landscaped areas where homeless encampments exist. Some roadside inhabitants in the Los Angeles area have been so bold as to cut in to the 120-volt service line and plug in televisions, microwaves and even air conditioners to make their temporary structures more livable. Where energy theft has become an issue, designers have looked toward alternative sources of energy and increased visibility to the controller. Solar powered controllers that require a minimal solar panel surface have proven to be a good solution for reducing the theft of power and to reduce the possibility of tampering with the controller. However, solar panels also become targets for vandals and theft.

Use of centrally-controlled irrigation systems have taken the design and maintenance of freeway roadsides into the complex world of water management. Irrigation systems based on central controllers provide the ability to automatically shut the irrigation systems down when damage, whether intentional or accidental, occurs. These systems have the potential for lowering the risk of slope damage or wash outs, as well as increasing safety by reducing the potential of water on the roadway when the flow monitoring features are utilized.

Theft of recyclable metal irrigation products (impact sprinkler heads, backflow preventers, and valves) for their scrap value has been a problem for a number of years. Methods intended to reduce theft, such as requiring that the Department of Transportation name be stamped on the equipment proved ineffective. Caltrans has since painted the equipment with bright orange paint to identify it as state property. Currently, less expensive plastic gear driven sprinkler heads, which have no scrap value, are used in lieu of brass impact heads.

Sometimes, the simplest and best solution is to just keep the equipment out of sight and inaccessible. In this case, overhead irrigation is replaced with pressure compensating bubblers on flexible hoses, hidden beneath a layer of mulch.

With the arsenal of vandal and theft deterring equipment available in today's irrigation market and a little creativity, we believe we can provide irrigation systems that will deter the casual vandal, withstand abuse, minimize damage to the roadside while insuring the development of quality freeway planting.

Suzanne H. Namba is senior landscape architect with Caltrans. She can be reached at (916) 654-2594.