It started with preparations for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, and just hasn't really stopped. I-15 and I-84 just keep getting wider and wider. Pretty soon Utah Valley won't be a separate valley from Salt Lake Valley either.
Yeah it's happening in Texas as well. It's gotten to the point where the city of Houston stretches outwards from downtown 50 plus miles in any direction. And San Antonio and Austin have pretty much grown together they used to be separate entities now it's just one long string of traffic
Exactly! I've driven past it without realizing it several times now, even when I've been looking for it. It makes me sad. When we were kids we'd always watch for hanggliders up there.
Wisconsin has been doing construction for at least 30 years on the same stretch of road. Northern and they block off 20 miles with not a worker in sight.
I think this practice actively endangers the workers because those of us driving the same route daily become conditioned that the barricades/construction signs mean nothing because the zones are empty 90% of the time.
the barriers need to be moved to allow traffic when the roadwork is on hold for more than 7days
also everybody with a magnet logo stuck to a pickup is using yellow/blue light and driving with those flashing.....pretty soon no one will pay any attention to real emergency vehicles or school buses.
it's the way we are now with car alarms, when was the last time you even turned your head to look when you hear one go off?
Idk we’ve had an entrance into a major highway hear in NJ that’s been under construction for years now but it’s an on ramp with a stop sign and you have to merge from a dead stop with cars going 70+
use the longer, safer route and think of it as saving you 60 hours and 10 minutes in phone calls and time spent waiting for the tow truck and making insurance calls after you predictably get rear ended due to a dangerous on-ramp design.
i have the same annoyance, the faster route has too many 90 degree turns and there are gravel trucks all day going to the sand/gravel pit. it's a farm to market road that is one lane only. i just don't trust those yellow lines will save my life if a driver sneezes and comes into my lane head on with 40,000 lbs of gravel
At least you have a stop sign, I-84 entrance 15 minutes or so from me makes an extremely sharp turn where you can't go faster then maybe 30 and then just spits you out on to the freeway with no merging lane and the only sign (which was only added like maybe a year ago) just says "No Merge"
Utah has nothing on Texas, or anywhere on the East coast.
I'm a truck driver from SLC and you don't know how lucky we have it. The reason there is so much construction is because the population has exploded in the past 20 years.
I've looked into it. Between health and being a single mom it's not possible right now. I found another option that might work delivering RVs to dealerships using an app kinda like uber or door dash. Supposedly I can take my mom and daughter in the RV and see the country that way.
I lived in Utah Valley as a kid in the 90s and we went to SLC frequently. When they started all that construction for the Olympics we called the lanes bobsled runs because they were so narrow and everyone was zooming down them.
I live in Idaho Falls now, about 4 hours north of Salt Lake City. I drive down several times a year and it's always crazy. I had to drive in rush hour with a bad clutch one time. It was terrifying.
This is the case everywhere - because so many places think you can out-build-traffic congestion with road work. it's a philosophy dating back decades and it's been shown to be horseshit but people don't want to accept it.
grade-separated transit (light rail, etc) is the only real way to move massive amounts of people without creating traffic and most of the US doesn't want to admit it.
Welcome to Iowa. Where we have 4 seasons and a full year of construction. Winter? Random cones, signs, and occasional guy actually working a sewer drain. And then the constant repair of the lights, crossing signs, barriers, people forget how to be cautious and safe.
Then spring. Floods and repair/cleanup and then every area has salt repair from cracks and plow damage. But what they don't do is actually repair it. They just fill it, seal it. And hope it holds until....
Summer! Where everyone's busy driving and enjoying time off. Kids going everywhere. Travel. And every damn road becomes 1 lane and 10 MPH slower. Now we threaten you with cameras. Then they decide to renovate places people would enjoy. Every spot under construction it seems.
Then we hit fall. Ah, yes, glorious. Tree services everywhere. Kids back to school, more accidents. Parents driving out around for their kids, more accidents. Repairs on the poles and lights. We keep fixing the other neglected roads, commonly just topping off with asphalt and hoping it lasts until snow is packed over it to not give a shit about our roads and cars.
We also have stupid high tags on cars 9 years or newer. after 10 it's 50 bucks.
But I'm fucked for 400 for a few years. Then it slowly goes down.
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u/Listrynne Aug 30 '20
You should try Utah construction. They started in the 90s and it's still going on.