Is road construction really as inefficient as it appears?

[sourceninja]

I don't know what that particular piece of road looks like, but the workers need access to the site. They don't just teleport equipment in to move poles. It may have made more sense to close a lane, so workers can get in and out safely, than have a live road to deal with.

It's easy armchair quarterbacking construction, but there's a lot more that happens that people don't see. Staging, environmental protection, and weather all factor into how a project proceeds. I can't account for all states, but MD has a professional operation that moves things along as fast as possible.

Well I have one last one.

My state has gone crazy for round abouts. No one in the state knowns how to use them (or knows what a yield sign means). To make matter's worse, they keep trying to make them pretty. So the round about by my house on a very high traffic road has a giant hill in the middle of it preventing you from seeing any oncoming traffic. All turns are a leap of faith that someone won't be coming around the round about at 30-50mph. Why are our city planners idiots?

Also, why do Indiana drivers think yield signs mean cross traffic must yield and they have right of way?

 

[lxskllr]

Well I have one last one.

My state has gone crazy for round abouts. No one in the state knowns how to use them (or knows what a yield sign means). To make matter's worse, they keep trying to make them pretty. So the round about by my house on a very high traffic road has a giant hill in the middle of it preventing you from seeing any oncoming traffic. All turns are a leap of faith that someone won't be coming around the round about at 30-50mph. Why are our city planners idiots?

Also, why do Indiana drivers think yield signs mean cross traffic must yield and they have right of way?

People are always a wild card :^D We've been getting more roundabouts also. Most of them make sense, but there's one in particular that was on a fast road, with little cross traffic. Someone drove straight through it before the project was even finished :^D I haven't been back since it was built, so it may have been setting up for more intense development in the area. I know it didn't make sense at the time.

They need more rigorous testing for drivers licenses imo. The shit people do on the road is amazing. It's not even "law" or "rule" based stuff. A lot of it defies basic common sense. People need to take this shit more seriously. They're operating a ~2,000# death machine, and they need to treat it as such.

 

[sourceninja]

Overall I like roundabouts. What I can't stand is the ones with a 15 foot high hill with trees on it in the middle. I need to see oncoming traffic!

 

[Triumph]

They need more rigorous testing for drivers licenses imo. The shit people do on the road is amazing. It's not even "law" or "rule" based stuff. A lot of it defies basic common sense. People need to take this shit more seriously. They're operating a ~2,000# death machine, and they need to treat it as such.

Making the road "safer" can be counterproductive for this reason. People just don't think that they can be harmed while driving. Roundabouts are good because they force people to actually consider what they're doing, instead of stupidly waiting for a light to tell them when to hit the gas or brakes.

I believe it was Finland, or maybe Germany, where a town had a high number of pedestrian impacts in the town square. Lots of foot traffic and lots of car and bike traffic, with lots of regulated signage of how they are supposed to each progress. The town had a brainstorm, they would eliminate ALL rules in this 1/4 mile square area - there were no lane markings, there were no explicit cross walks, no signage, no bike lanes. Accidents dropped dramatically. Why? Because people had to actually pay attention to what they were doing!

I'm not advocating this everywhere, but there's a consequence to our extremely safe and detached transportation devices. Look at all of the Toyota "unintended" acceleration claims. The people who buy Toyotas are the same people who want driving to be as easy and uninvolved as possible. This is the type of customer that Toyota panders to. They're also the same people who can't tell the gas from the brake.

All airbags should be removed and replaced with a 12" long spike aimed directly at the driver's chest. I guarantee you that accidents would drop precipitously.

 

[Crusty]

Overall I like roundabouts. What I can't stand is the ones with a 15 foot high hill with trees on it in the middle. I need to see oncoming traffic!

There's one near me that has 10' walls on two corners about 5' from the curb. It is absolutely impossible to see down that street from any direction until you are already in the round-a-bout. Fuck those people.

 

[lxskllr]

All airbags should be removed and replaced with a 12" long spike aimed directly at the driver's chest. I guarantee you that accidents would drop precipitously.

That idea's full of win :^D

 

[Gibson486]

I used to work in that industry, and that nails it bang on. My dad owned a construction business. A reputable one. Yes, they exist.

There's a few reasons why work takes so long.
-Some companies are fronts for the mob to launder money (yes, they exist) so they care little about cost overrun. They deliberately take their time.
-Some companies take on too much work but won't hire more employees so they can keep costs down. Employees are spread too thin. You can't run construction as a volume based business. You will loose money.
-Same as above but company uses funds from one job to pay for another. It's not exactly legal but they get away with it. When you see construction jobs mothballed for a while then work suddenly start back up under the same company, this is likely what's happening.
-Mr. Government starts making demands and the wheels of bureaucracy slow the job to a snail's pace.
-Government engineers screw something up and it has to be corrected. Goes with the above. Sometimes these errors are pretty serious, like selecting inappropriate materials and requiring the job to be redone in mid progress.
-The construction company screws something up and it has to be redone.
-The construction company is incompetent and doesn't know what they're doing. I've seen road builders try to take on big civil engineering projects thinking it's the same. It's not.

That's why my dad retired. Got fed up of the bullshit. Says nobody has pride in their work anymore.

Yeah, I used to be one of the engineers that engineered the work. I have no intention of going back. It's all about cutting corners at the contractors end just to "just meet spec", and it all about specifying things in a way which removes liability from you on the engineer's end. How could I take pride in that?

 

[OCGuy]

Get back to work OP, stop staring at sweaty men doing construction.

 

[sleep]

another big factor is permits, if it runs out you have renew it. not a fast process.

 

[xanis]

I'm not sure were all you people live defending all the road crews but come to PA and watch PennDOT workers. I guarantee you will change your mind after watching them.

32 years to build 46 miles of road. They all act like it was some huge achievement. It makes you wonder how they even got any roads built in the first place. It took them 17 years of planing get this off the ground. Really 17 years don't tell me it needed to be that long.

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/westmoreland/s_747916.html

This. I've lived in PA my whole life and seen the road construction firsthand all around the state. The fail is so absurdly strong that it'll make your head spin. I heard a joke one time about PA road construction: "It never gets finished, just restarted every year."

 

[Sluggo]

12" long spike aimed directly at the driver's chest. I guarantee you that accidents would drop precipitously.

Well, before collapsible steering columns, cars had that feature.

 

[Imp]

Well I have one last one.

My state has gone crazy for round abouts. No one in the state knowns how to use them (or knows what a yield sign means). To make matter's worse, they keep trying to make them pretty. So the round about by my house on a very high traffic road has a giant hill in the middle of it preventing you from seeing any oncoming traffic. All turns are a leap of faith that someone won't be coming around the round about at 30-50mph. Why are our city planners idiots?

Also, why do Indiana drivers think yield signs mean cross traffic must yield and they have right of way?

I've worked with a transport agency's committee hoping to increase roundabouts. Overall, they cause fewer angle-collisions (think T-bone), so fewer dead people. They do cause more rear-ends though.

A properly designed roundabout "forces" you to slow down to the "safe" circulation speed. Piss poor designs, and they had many cases available, let you see the other end of the roundabout, and make you feel no need to slow down, and plow through at 30-50 mph. You're suppose to curve the approaches (people generally slow down if they have to turn), narrow the lanes, incrase the radius of the roundabout, or use the center-median to force harder steering.

People just aren't use to them. There are people whom go left around despite one-way arrows. Some people treat the yield as stops (better safe than sorry). Personally, I've driven a few in sub-urban residential areas. LOVED them, but there were no cars around.