A Question of Timing

hoody

Whilst driving to and from Limerick today, and around my home town too, I must have come upon at least four or five seperate sets of roadworks, each one blocking traffic, slowing people up, and generally leaving me frothing at the mouth.

My question is - In other countries do they carry out roadworks during the day (as in do the council workers work during "office hours")?

I seem to remember it being said somewhere that in certain countries they don't, they work at night, when there's less traffic to hold up.

This, for me, has to be one of the most blindingly obvious, simple, intelligent things to ease up the hassle caused by roadworks.

There's plenty of trades where people work at night, no reason why the council can't do it either.

Gandhi

In the States, they usually keep any roadworks that will block a lane on a busy road between 9:00pm and 5:00am. They will usually do nothing at all during rush hour.

Another thing that tackles the same problem is to charge the contractors "lane rent" so that any time the contractor has a lane of traffic blocked, they are "fined" a certain amount. One job that was done on a stretch of Interstate 95 through Philadelphia (very busy 8-lane highway) a few years back had a lane rent of $15,000 a day. It's enough to encourage the contractors to only close a lane if they absolutely need to, but not so much that they would do a shoddy, rushed job.

Victor

The problem with night work, aside from the safety, is the extra costs involved - lighting, shift rates, etc.

Gandhi wrote:

Another thing that tackles the same problem is to charge the contractors "lane rent" so that any time the contractor has a lane of traffic blocked, they are "fined" a certain amount.

In the UK it made money for contractors quicker than if the were employed to tun a mint.