October 30th, 2007Road work is to work as rap music is to music
Recently, we drove down to Virginia to visit sons Scott and John. It was a long drive, made longer by numerous stretches of road work.I don't mind having them work on the road. In much of the country, the highways have gotten into such deplorable condition that they should be taken up and whole new roads laid down. Oddly, this is true even of the Ohio and Pennsylvania turnpikes, which usually are in pretty good shape.
What I find hard to endure, however, are the miles and miles of highway that are marked “Work Area” when there is nothing at all going on. Repeatedly, we came to signs calling for reduced speed and announcing road work ahead only to find no one working, no machines standing around and no sign of anything having been done to the road for decades. We dutifully slowed down until another sign announced, “End Road Work.”Sometimes, they would announce a reduced speed and signal coming road work and then cover up all the rest of the little red signs to show that nobody was doing anything. Presumably, the only reason they wanted you to slow down was so that you wouldn't hit the traffic cones places every few feet throughout the area.After going through that sort of thing a number of times, you tend to get jaded and not slow down as much at the next signs. It is like the boy who cried wolf too often and then was eaten by a coyote because nobody paid attention to him any more. This was unfortunate when it turned out there was a work crew present and it was, as nearly as one could tell at a quick glance, doing some kind of work.It is hard to tell whether there is work going on because there are so many people gathered around. Sometimes, one will be shoveling something while three or four others watch. Either that or all the work will be stopped while a small group of men, apparently supervisors, studies the plans.The busiest people on the project often are those who handle the flags. They don't really have flags. The tend poles with signs on them, one side saying “Stop” and the other saying “Slow.” I've always wondered why it says “Slow” on the other side as if “Slow” were the opposite of “Stop.” Logically, it should say “Drive” or just “Go” but I suppose “Slow” makes the point and adds a note of caution that can't hurt.In many cases, they don't need to tell you to go slow. Where there is really serious construction going on, they re-route you so that you are driving with at least two wheels on the shoulder. They squeeze six lanes of traffic down to one lane going each way and caution you to take it easy. I is impossible to go more than -40 mph without tearing your car apart. In one such arrangement, they had mistakenly left up the 65 mph sign but nobody was able to drive that fast.I have never understood why they have to spread a work area over 25 miles when all they are doing at the moment is fixing a bridge. I don't know whether it is to show that they have the money and eventually are going to work on the whole area or it is because they have all those traffic cones and want to make good use of them.As I said, I am not against road work as such. It is just that I think they close down too much of the highway to do it. If they are going to do that, they might better shut down that part of the whole road and route people some other way. When you think about it, it probably wouldn't be any slower to take secondary roads than to creep along through a construction site.A better solution would be to roll up a short stretch of road and take it off somewhere to be resurfaced and then return it to use when it was done. You probably could take up 100 feet at a time and return it within the hour.Bruce D. Callander spent 33 years writing and editing for Air Force Times. He now is a freelance writer who lives in Cheboygan.
