Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Road Destruction

Allegedly, they're fixing my road.

Well, yes, you say. Of course they are. There are cones and other barriers, obvious signs of both digging and patching. Surely, they're working on it. Making progress.

I say, "Not so fast." Pits like this line the three-block area. When they first left an open pit like this a few blocks down, the mother and I were off and running on a shopping trip when we noticed it as we drove by. Granted, it was in one of the two closed lanes but it had no warnings. No cones or anything were in front of it. Very bad, with sunset coming because at dark, you wouldn't see these until you're up on them!

"Now there's an accident waiting to happen," says I.

And when we returned a few hours later there was indeed a car in it, cop car on the scene. I think it's about an 8-inch drop, enough to do some serious front-end damage to be sure. At the very least, if you came down on some of the protruding rebar, you could easily take out a tire or two!

I keep thinking that one day when I come home the barriers will be gone, everything filled and fixed. Yeah, I'm a dreamer.

Funny thing is they don't seem to want to work on it during nice weather. No. They waited the other day until we were in the middle of a hellatious thunderstorm to try and resume work. How crazy is that?


The good news is that, so far, no one else has managed to land in one of these ditches that I've seen. This one, though, is a hazard to me because if I am pulling out of my driveway and want to turn left, I have to go across the two lanes of active traffic, turn around in the two closed lanes, carefully merge with oncoming traffic, all while navigating around the various barriers AND being careful not to let a tire even brush that upper left corner! It really is a pain in the butt to pull off.

The even better news is that once they finish this part, they can close the other side (directly in front of my house!) and start working there. Sigh.

It's going to be a long summer indeed.


4 comments:

Kate said...

Wow, that is crazy! I've seen a lot of roadwork before, but nothing like that. And even then they usually do a decent job of patching things up (relatively) quickly ...

modernemama said...

It's like a scenario from a Mr. Bean movie...

Anonymous said...

Someone forgot to hang the signs - that's okay the drivers will figure it out.
Actually that looks like some of the roads in my city as they are being repaired - cough, cough! Make sure the use crack seal when they are done.

NV said...

Kate -- Yeah, it's pretty nuts! Hopefully short-lived, too!

moderne-- THAT cracked me up. And it sure is. :-)

Michele-- Crack seal? What's that? They are pretty unfamiliar with it around here.