Bob

So there's a strip of road joining our town with a neighbouring town about 1.5 miles to the town line. They are widening it, putting a round about at one end, traffic lights at the other and also resurfacing some of the road.

It's going to cost $8.1M to complete...mental...the project originally went into planning in 1998 for a 2001 completion, so starting a couple weeks ago puts it a little behind schedule.

Could be worse, could be the Big Dig...which is being restarted as they have to replace the lights in all those tunnels costing massive amounts of millions, but it's coming from the huge billion dollar settlement against the construction companies over the last 50 years.

They're sticking in LED lights to replace all the lights that are corroding and falling out of their sockets. The new lights should save Boston $2M a year on electricity though...

So what about you guys?

lansbury

We relaid one of the main roads in town.

Dug it up and discovered cables belonging to the phone company which hadn't been located or shown on any maps. 4 weeks work stoppage while they were moved.

It was planned to replace the water main while the road was dug up. Turn off water to the main, but water kept coming out of the taps in some of the properties. Seems there was another water main not shown on the city maps. Worked stop while more digging was done to find those water lines.

Finally start to relay road, but they were so far behind it was too cold to put down the road surface. More delays waiting for the right weather.

Then they discovered that the ramps on the new sidewalks were not ADA compliant, so they had to be ripped out and done again.

This project started last year and it still isn't finished.

Bob

Ouch...bit of mayhem

The project in town is supposed to only have work done between 9am-3:30pm to prevent congestion, but seems daft as they're working off the road for the widening part first, so seems like no point till they get to the resurfacing bit, at the end of the project...

What's scary though, this project is supposed to tie in with a bridge reconstruction, which is being carried out by the state.

That's not even begun yet though and the original bridge has been closed since 2002 as not being safe, which has caused a lot of issues getting around that part of town as the other bridge used for the detour is also now falling apart and not safe for heavy loads :/

scrubbedexpat097

Yes....but crazy because they have come to a stand still



I'm still waiting for the proposed new retention pond and Bayou dredging to help the flooding problem in our neighbourhood.

The dredging started but is held up because of some guy going to court insisting that dredging the bayou will effect his fishing buisness. His property also floods when we have bad tropical storms so it doesn't make sense

Weeze

Maybe that is his fishing business, his property is the net

scrubbedexpat097

You could be right!

When the cemetary floods again and some of the graves start floating around they may continue...

Bob

ohhh....that's a bit grim

Homeiswheretheheartis

Not here but last year in my home town in the UK, they put up traffic lights at a cost of £64,000

Within 1 day they brought the town to a standstill (only 1 main road). Within 1 month they were ripped out and it was put back to what it had been.

It was reported that the council had done a computer simulation of how it would effect pedestrians but not the traffic

Sally Redux

Hope this 405 project will be successful in easing congestion because it is taking about 2 years and making my husband's commute even worse.

Amazing how they are cutting into the mountainsides and slowly replacing the bridges 1/2 at a time.

WEBlue

Yes, there's a "parkway" that would be called a motorway in the UK & is a major artery here. Since we arrived last summer, they've been working on one stretch or another of it, so it always seems slow. They say it's drainage work, because of so many smashups caused by hydroplaning.

I can't complain too much, though. I'm still scared to drive very fast here, so I'm happy enough to be slowed down to 45 mph . . . .

Bob

And that could so easily and cheaply be fixed if they had cambered the roads in the first place

rpjs

We live close to the Tappan Zee Bridge which is just about to be replaced at the cost of umpteen squillion dollars. The original TZB was built at literally the widest point of the Hudson River, on the Tappan Zee ("zee" being Dutch for "sea" or "lake"). Why? Because any further south it would come under the jurisdiction of the Port Authority which would mean New York would have to share the toll revenue with New Jersey.

Sheepdip

We seem to be building sidewalks everywhere - seems like a good idea but you hardly ever see anyone walking, let alone on a sidewalk....

GeoffM

On a much smaller scale... my satnav, sorry, GPS keeps trying to make me drive down roads that don't exist yet. A complete contrast to the UK where even Google didn't map my estate until 4 years after it was finished (but had StreetView for bits of it before the 2d maps existed).

HarryTheSpider

I guess the designer was a member of the Flat Earth society, schooled at home!