Around here there is alot of road construction, and I have noticed certain areas that are work zones with road cones and barrels, although no one really seems to be working. Nothing seems to happen for a year or more, then suddenly BOOM, you drive down the road progress is rapid and before you know it there is another lane. Why does this happen?
because they can.
Just a WAG: the authorities suddenly realise that the end of the financial year’s approaching, they haven’t spent the budget which might vanish overnight, so they crack whip.
That’s how things happen around here sometimes, any way.
Could be any one of a million reasons. Could be that they promised the city it would be done by a certain date and suddenly that date is approaching. It could be that the city told them that they best go and finish soon becuase they’re getting tired of lane closures for no good reason. My guess would be that the company is probably working on several projects around the city at once, and they’ve finished one and are moving on to the next.
This seems to happen with all sorts of construction projects. A big mixed use project (stores on the street level, apartments above) near me has gotten stalled for years at every stage. Through the grapevine, I’ve heard that it’s because they didn’t get the proper permits, and had to get the permits after the fact, which caused big delays.
Road projects could stall due to similar problems. Like what if the construction was started, and a possible environmental problem came to light. It might take a while to study it and come to a resolution, while the cones and barriers just sit there.
Also, depending on the location, weather could have a lot to do with it. If there is a rainy/dry season, it might mean that the contractor will have to complete a certain stage of the project regardless of whether they are ready for the second stage.
For example, they might need to dig up sewer lines and replace them before the rains come even though it is going to be 3 months before they finish another job and finish the repaving project.
What a lot of people fail to realize is that prepwork = 90%, the “finished product” = 10%. There’s a lot of work to be done in laying the subgrades and base courses for pavements, which have to be compacted (and tested for that compaction), recompacted (and retested), etc. To do it properly, you have to layer your ‘lifts’, which takes time. But the visible traffic-wearing layers go quickly.
Case in point: This 12-acre project I’m working on now has a 16" concrete aircraft ramp, with 2’ of base course (a gravel-like mix), and I had to fill the entire site below that. I started this project back in February, and it wasn’t until mid-April that I was able to put down base course. Fast forward to last week, when I finally started placing concrete (275 cubic meters a day–which is a decent day). Tomorrow, I finish lane 3 of 7, which basically looks like I’ve finished half the dang project in one week.
Weather can throw off everything: one good rainy day can force a crew off the site for a whole week. It’s not a good idea to work in mud–not only will you seriously dork up your previous work, you would probably get a piece of equipment stuck, which would cost you more time and money. As a general rule of thumb, if it rains one day, we don’t come back until at least after one sunny day. Rain can also screw up your compaction and/or moisture ratios, so then you may have to undo some of the lifts you’ve already put down, recompact them, and then test to see how well it’s been compacted.
Sometimes, it’s just a waiting game for curing time. Yeah, I placed three lanes this week, but the concrete won’t fully cure for another 21 days (30 days total). So even though that concrete roadway looks perfectly fine, they don’t want you driving on it until it’s full-strength. Same for asphalt pavement, but the timeframe is shorter (about a week, depending on the mix).
Long story short: all that ‘languishing’ is most likely the prepwork, or some delay in it. Better to do the subsurface slowly and correctly, rather than have potholes a year later.
Tripler
Them’s my two cents. The State charges a dollar twenty five.
In addition to Tripler’s knowledge from experience, it’s safe to say that politics can play a big role here, and not necessarily in a bad way.
Five years ago, US-64 was a limited access highway from Robersonville in eastern North Carolina to a point between Wendell and Knightdale, about 12 miles east of Raleigh, at which point the road became a four-lane non-limited-access road that was carrying six times its rated capacity during rush hours, and moved at about a 5 MPH average during them. Building a limited-access bypass was on the State DOT’s master plan for highway construction, but scheduled for about two years from now, for most of those five years. Major complaints by travelers, municipal officials, eastern North Carolina representatives (including the State Senate Majority Leader), and several disastrous accidents, including an overturned tractor-trailer bearing logs which completely closed one side of the highway for several hours, led to pressure on DOT to move it up the list significantly. The bypass was built last year, with exactly the sort of process Tripler describes – several months of apparent dig-up-the-ground-and-stall, followed by rapid laying of the entire highway in what appeared no more than a two-week period. But we’d still be waiting on it if it weren’t for the political pressure exerted by grassroots and politicos with clout alike.
I ust’a work for a company that sold big generators; a local dealership associated with a manufacturer that rhymes with BAT. I was in the service/new install division, working clerical with the Service Manager and dispatcher/technicians that did the work. Also worked closely with the millions-of-dollars contract salesman.
The responses above are very true. It can also be blamed on inefficient subs. Or the salesman not obtaining a change order to the Purchase Order. At my company, we had more work than techs and were constantly busy, what with the status of the company. I saw several-years-long projects that got pushed aside because someone with more money or influence came along and started hollering about their project being done sooner. I watched the salesman blow off the City for as long as he could. I saw personal tools, overtime, parts and even unspent money (phony food receipts submitted for reimbursement when hours worked exceeded 12) charged to customers.
There’s a lot of reasons that projects get halted and restarted. Politics plays a role. Who you want to please the most.
Study the history of the Mid-County Expressway, aka I-476, aka The Blue Route. Although formally proposed in 1954, the highway wasn’t finished until 1992.
NIMBYs and environmental groups played the greatest part in delaying and driving up the final cost of I-476.
:eek:
I wonder have they just gone “600m divided by original estimate”, or bothered to work out the change in real value over time?