Road contruction. What's the deal with it?

[KCChiefsMan]

I've always been curious on this subject. I'm too lazy to do any research on the subject. But every time I'm driving on a highway and there is road construction, I rarely see any work being done, no matter the time of day. The last time I went to my mom's house was about 5 or 6 months ago, and I made it there last week for a few days, and I remember the same road construction in the exact same place. It's right near blackwell oklahoma and then some more a little south of it.

Now, I'm not very educated on the subject and I'm curious as to why it seems to take a year to get it done. Can anyone fill me in on this? I've always been curious, is it temperature...like it can only be worked on in certain temperatures? Is it money? Are they waiting to get funds? Are workers lazy? Perhaps a union thing?

I'm not accusing road workers of anything, I just want to know. I remember in my home town of Arkansas city, they built a new bridge on the road that I took to get into town and I think that took at least a few years to finish.

So what's the deal? anyone? or am I gonna have to research it

[raptorrage]

it could be they total forgot all about that road and never got around to it ..whoops

[HMc]

rofl, rep

[Bugeater]

Since fines for speeding are normally doubled in construction zones they've become a source of revenue. The longer a project takes the more speeding tickets they can write.

[Saulbadguy]

Since fines for speeding are normally doubled in construction zones they've become a source of revenue. The longer a project takes the more speeding tickets they can write.
They are a source of revenue for cops, which have nothing to do with road construction.

[Jilly]

it's because God hates us

I'm kidding

[patteeu]

Rain Man did some market research that concluded that people like to see that the government is working on improving the roads so now they go out and set up barrels and detours all over the place just to give the impression that progress is being made.

:cuss: Rain Man!!

[wilas101]

They get paid by the hour. Not the mile.

[Iowanian]

While the workers might get paid by the hour, the contractors do not, have deadlines and usually "late penalties", fines for every day past a deadline.

I'm sure there are any number of issues that slow down a project, sometimes they work at night to avoid the heat too. Most of those road-bridge jobs are not done by govt workers.....

[DJay23]

I know here in PA a lot of road work gets contracted out by PENNDOT. The company that gets a lot of the bids from what I've heard is half assed. A lot of the work they do ends up having to be redone a couple years later, and they take a long time to do it. I can't imagine why they keep giving the bids to that company.

The stretch of highway between Williamsport, PA where I lived, and Lock Haven, PA where I went to school had PERPETUAL road construction for 4 years of college. In fact they resurfaced the same 4 or 5 mile stretch probably 2 or 3 times in those 4 years.

There's a huge bridge project in WIlliamsport that's been ongoing for several years now. It's nearing completion, but they built 2 new bridges to replace on old rickety one with really weird access. The bridge is part of State Route 15 runing north and south, and Interstate 180 used to run UNDER 15. You had to go into town to access 15. Now they added direct entryways. Despite all of this they are actually ahead of schedule, but that's a PENNDOT job, it wasn't contracted out. Just shows that sometimes these projects go as planned.

http://marketstreetbridge.com

[DJay23]

sometimes they work at night to avoid the heat too.
I think just as much they work at night to avoid traffic.

[Dartgod]

Road construction workers are shitty tippers.

[Zebedee DuBois]

Tipping over Porta-Johns is gross.

[bobbything]

I have a friend who used to work for KDOT. He told me that road workers could get about 95% of the jobs they're working on done in about half the time.

But, he likened it to any other job. Like most desk jobs, much of the time, you could get your work done in about half the time as well.

.

[bobbything]

Just FYI, this is the email I got today when I asked him why projects take so long...

It's all a scam. The federal government allocates matching funds to state highway construction, most states use the most substantial piece of their budget, as much as they can get away with, on highway funds so they can get the most money matched by the government. They really don't have a plan to use it all, they just want it so they have it in case they need it.

Then, they use some of KDOT, some private contractors, and set up "deadlines" to complete construction. Normally this is a paper tiger and has no real penalty, except in the case of incentive laden bonuses for finishing on-time or early for private contractors.

What they found is by having harsh penalties for private contractors, the contractors would rush to finish and do a crappy job, so you can't rush them and punish them, you have to let them go at their own pace. That's problem 1.

Problem 2 is private contractors usually pay their staff hourly, so unless they will get maximum productivity out of them they may call off many of the workers unless they can get a solid 10-12 hours of work done.

Problem 3 is the running joke about state road workers, having worked there I can assure you there is no exaggeration. My first day there back in the summer of '96, was a Friday. I was assigned with some guy named Gary to "run the roads"--basically drive a dump truck up and down our assigned region's highways, in this case old highway 54 and part of I-35 all the way to Lebo (by Emporia). We got in the truck after a 30 minute "staff meeting" (consisting of drinking coffee and talking about the weekend's plans) and within 5 minutes Gary was saying "Yep...just wiiiinnnding down to the weekend." We went about 20 miles, stopped at that truck stop off I-35 halfway between mporia and Ottawa for 2 hours, got back in the truck, drove for an hour, took a 1.5 hour lunch break where he napped, then went down old 54 at 5 mph while I walked next to the truck on the side of the road picking up trash and throwing it in the back of the dump truck. As the joke goes, What's the best way to make a state highway worker unemployed? Invent a shovel that stands up by itself.

So, what you have is government officials chasing money, and to do so they have to schedule large projects, then in case federal auditors show up, they have to show that the site is "under construction" even if they aren't really working on it and are using the money elsewhere. Since you budget one year in advance, they want as much as they can get and will plan construction projects they don't plan to start for 8 months, then make it appear as if preliminaries have already started.

[KC Kings]

Even better than construction, is planning in advance to have the President speak at a building that is built over a major highway, then closing that major highway down all morning on a work week to protect the President.

[Redrum_69]

Your mom is like road construction...everyone pays high taxes to help smooth out her potholes, her roads seem to always need some sort of patchwork done, and if the daily traffic that clogs her stretch bottlenecks all you can do is sit and wait.

[Eleazar]

What irritates me is how all the time on the weekend or in the evening, there will be a lane that is closed off by cones or orange barrels, and traffic will back up, and then you get to the front of it and you see that there are no workers, no MODOT trucks, no nothing. Just cones.

[Saulbadguy]

Roads would not have to have be worked on all the time like they are if it weren't for semi-trucks.

[Dartgod]

Roads would not have to have be worked on all the time like they are if it weren't for semi-trucks.
If it wasn't for semi-trucks, A LOT of people would be out of a job.

including me.....