7 ms·

Yes, please! To me it feels like 90% of road works I pass actually has nobody there working at all. Some go on for years it seems. Another option is what they

by Torkel 2y ago

Yes, please! To me it feels like 90% of road works I pass actually has nobody there working at all. Some go on for years it seems. Another option is what they do in Japan - just get 10X the number of people on it, with all the tools for the entire job and then do it all overnight. Also, nice to see good old "dude with shovel" in there, a tool that would have looked the same back in the 19th century.

soco 2y ago
Ahh and I thought the forever-construction sites were a Swiss thing. Every 20 km or so you'd have 1-2 km of road construction signage where nothing happens for a couple of years. At some point it just disappears, to come up again a few km down the road. Nobody here to explain us the phenomenon?
- aidenn0 2y ago
  There's an old joke that works almost everywhere: Have you heard about the new invention that will allow <insert name of local department for handling road work> to lay off 90% of its workers? A shovel that stands up by itself.
  - blowski 2y ago
    I had an eccentric Maths teacher at school who used to stare out of the window and make odd claims. One was that he was running a roadworks business using telekinetic powers, and all the people in hi-vis jackets were merely scarecrows.
stormdennis 2y ago
Where I live it goes crazy with road works when it's coming to the end of the year with the council trying to spend the unused budget rather than lose it.
froddd 2y ago
In the UK roadwork sites usually remain much longer than it takes for the result to start deteriorating once they have finished.
eterevsky 2y ago
The hourly wages in Switzerland are at least 2x those in Japan, and Swiss people generally don't like working outside normal working hours, so getting 10x workers at night is not very feasible.
- michaelt 2y ago
  > getting 10x workers at night is not very feasible. You can get as many workers as you need, for a price. For example, got a 2 day window at Christmas to perform a rail upgrade? And overrunning on time costs thousands of pounds per minute? Just show up with a large workforce and lots of spare parts and equipment. The downside is you end up paying for things like having a couple of diesel mechanics on site just in case a backhoe breaks down. Maybe none of your backhoes broke down, and you paid for 2 guys times 48 hours times 3x their normal hourly rate, just to sit in their truck. Of course, overnight work does tend to get noise complaints from locals - no amount of workers will solve that!
  - lostlogin 2y ago
    The same breakdowns happen with slow roadworks. It’s just that the cost of taking 3 months longer isn’t factored in. Me sitting in a jam is an externalised cost that they don’t care about.
  - TylerE 2y ago
    In my Southern state they prefer to work at night because of how hot it is during the day. Something that could reasonably be called 'Summer' runs from about March to September here. More in some years. It was in the 70s New Years Day here this year.
groestl 2y ago
> it feels like 90% of road works I pass actually has nobody there working at all. Some go on for years it seems. That's because the company that wins the tender knows they're competing on the lowest price, and nobody really cares for time to completion. So they're keeping the construction site as a fallback for other construction sites, that are more important to them and have a higher price tag. It's the equivalent to preemptive pricing for VMs.
- jq-r 2y ago
  Exactly! And it doesn't even have to be a fallback. The same company could have won (or "won" if you know what I mean) many/majority of those tenders and are intentionally spread thin. Because once you win it, you leave a token crew there, and move to win another one, leave token crew again and again. So they're just doing everything all at once very slowly while being paid a lot. Also this doesn't even have to be a public works type of job. They do this kind of stuff for private works like house construction. 30 people show up and start working, and after couple of days you have 2 guys working for weeks while others are somewhere else. I was very surprised when I saw repaving of couple of street intersections in Chicago. Those guys did it like they were on a competition. Really fast and really nice. They were done in couple of days. I couldn't believe it. In my part of the world, the same job would take months, and I'm not even kidding.
  - groestl 2y ago
    All of that is very true, including the bit about private works.
- hiatus 2y ago
  Are there no deadlines in these contracts or penalties where the company is charged X/day until completion?
  - floxy 2y ago
    There are/can be incentives/penalties to complete road construction on time. Although I'm sure it varies with jurisdiction. https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/construction/contracts/t508010.cfm https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/construction/contracts/t508010.cfm https://transweb.sjsu.edu/sites/default/files/2908-highway-transportation-construction-incentive-disincentive-amounts-brief.pdf https://transweb.sjsu.edu/sites/default/files/2908-highway-t...
floxy 2y ago
>Some go on for years it seems. Isn't some of that due to earth settling that you can't really speed up? I remember a fun fact from many years ago where I was growing up. They built a new interstate bridge/overpass, and it wasn't too long after that they noticed it starting to sink. Well it turns out they had drilled sample cores down to like 100 feet, and had good results, but after the sinking, they drilled new cores, and there was a layer of sandstone or something at like 105 feet. I don't really remember how it all got sorted out, but it was under construction for a long time.
- swores 2y ago
  I wonder (and maybe someone here will know) whether that means they were foolishly cutting corners and should have sampled further than 100ft down, or if what they did was considered best practise and they were just unlucky to find themselves in a freak situation?
  - bombcar 2y ago
    Likely the second - they usually base drilling depth on the known area and a wide margin, so everyone probably thought 75 feet was fine, do a hundred to be safe.
    - swores 2y ago
      Thanks
mike_d 2y ago
> To me it feels like 90% of road works I pass actually has nobody there working at all. Some go on for years it seems. This is for simple road resurfacing, which is usually done in a day or two anyway. There are a lot of factors as to why road construction takes a long time, but the biggest reason is safety. They aren't completely closing the road in most cases so while a large section might be coned off, they are moving the worker protection (vehicle barriers) around from section to section. Lots of specialized expensive equipment is involved where you might be waiting a week just for the thing you need to become available. Same with specialized workers and sub-contractors. Add in time you might just need to wait for concrete to harden to the point its safe to move a big piece of equipment onto it for the next phase. Construction is a scheduling nightmare. You can throw money at the problem, but it is in the end tax dollars and rarely is there a good reason.
- utensil4778 2y ago
  People say this a lot, but I really don't think it's a very satisfying explanation for having miles of one lane of a highway barricaded for weeks or months without any workers or equipment in sight, ever. Everyone can name a stretch of highway they've seen treated this way, and this explanation just doesn't cover it.
  - kbrosnan 2y ago
    Roadbed settling and concrete curing are two long term inactive construction projects. Practical Engineering videos on road construction and public works https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIK6I6Q58Ec https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIK6I6Q58Ec https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22W5tRWbUVI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22W5tRWbUVI
  - kelnos 2y ago
    > without any workers or equipment in sight, ever. [...] Everyone can name a stretch of highway they've seen treated this way I think there's an inherent bias here. Each individual is not seeing that section of road 24/7. At most they see it for a few minutes (or perhaps a little longer, if traffic slows enough), maybe once or at most a few times per day. That's a very small fraction of the day, and work could be occurring during other parts of the day, possibly even at night. Safety might require that they do the work when there are few cars driving by, but the nature of the work might be such that they can't unblock the lanes during the day. I get that this isn't satisfying, but often reality isn't. And I have no doubt that there are plenty of mismanaged projects around the world where there are lots of delays, and long stretches of time when nothing is getting done. But I think it's incorrect to believe that nothing is getting done just because a few people you know drive by the area a few times a day and don't see anyone working.
colechristensen 2y ago
>Also, nice to see good old "dude with shovel" in there, a tool that would have looked the same back in the 19th century. I grew up occasionally using tools of the shovel-variety which sometimes were from the 19th century, and when not, not far off. Every time I drive through particularly ornery construction I start to fantasize about writing software to optimize the critical path and driver disruption. I also am left wondering having seen several iterations of "improvement" projects that were followed a number of years later on the same stretch of road with another project... if anybody analyzes the whole effect of the project and if the designed improvement made up for the considerable interruption executing it caused. Like on a "net-positive" basis, would folks have been better off if nothing at all was done and the project just skipped.
avar 2y ago
> Also, nice to see good old > "dude with shovel" in there, > a tool that would have looked > the same back in the 19th > century. The guy using a flat broom at around 1:12 in the video has him beat. While the I was surprised at how recently the flat broom was invented (the very tail end of the 18th century), the job he's doing with a broom goes back to antiquity.
softgrow 2y ago
And in Japan it seems that every time you drive somewhere after 10pm there are roadworks everywhere (on the non-toll roads). Very pretty with kaleidoscopic lights but it takes just as long late at night to move around as earlier on.
JaggedJax 2y ago
One of the largest time components can be due to soil compaction. This period can look like no work is being done, but is a vital step. That's not to say that sometimes no work is being done because of scheduling, equipment, funds, or any number of other reasons. This video/article does a good basic job explaining why it can take so long: https://practical.engineering/blog/2020/6/1/why-does-road-construction-take-so-long https://practical.engineering/blog/2020/6/1/why-does-road-co... edit: I think someone linked this down below too.
fennecfoxy 2y ago
A shovel is a shovel, a glass is a glass.

by Torkel 2y ago

soco 2y ago

Ahh and I thought the forever-construction sites were a Swiss thing. Every 20 km or so you'd have 1-2 km of road construction signage where nothing happens for a couple of years. At some point it just disappears, to come up again a few km down the road. Nobody here to explain us the phenomenon?

aidenn0 2y ago
There's an old joke that works almost everywhere: Have you heard about the new invention that will allow <insert name of local department for handling road work> to lay off 90% of its workers? A shovel that stands up by itself.
- blowski 2y ago
  I had an eccentric Maths teacher at school who used to stare out of the window and make odd claims. One was that he was running a roadworks business using telekinetic powers, and all the people in hi-vis jackets were merely scarecrows.

stormdennis 2y ago

Where I live it goes crazy with road works when it's coming to the end of the year with the council trying to spend the unused budget rather than lose it.

froddd 2y ago

In the UK roadwork sites usually remain much longer than it takes for the result to start deteriorating once they have finished.

eterevsky 2y ago

The hourly wages in Switzerland are at least 2x those in Japan, and Swiss people generally don't like working outside normal working hours, so getting 10x workers at night is not very feasible.

michaelt 2y ago
> getting 10x workers at night is not very feasible. You can get as many workers as you need, for a price. For example, got a 2 day window at Christmas to perform a rail upgrade? And overrunning on time costs thousands of pounds per minute? Just show up with a large workforce and lots of spare parts and equipment. The downside is you end up paying for things like having a couple of diesel mechanics on site just in case a backhoe breaks down. Maybe none of your backhoes broke down, and you paid for 2 guys times 48 hours times 3x their normal hourly rate, just to sit in their truck. Of course, overnight work does tend to get noise complaints from locals - no amount of workers will solve that!
- lostlogin 2y ago
  The same breakdowns happen with slow roadworks. It’s just that the cost of taking 3 months longer isn’t factored in. Me sitting in a jam is an externalised cost that they don’t care about.
- TylerE 2y ago
  In my Southern state they prefer to work at night because of how hot it is during the day. Something that could reasonably be called 'Summer' runs from about March to September here. More in some years. It was in the 70s New Years Day here this year.

groestl 2y ago

> it feels like 90% of road works I pass actually has nobody there working at all. Some go on for years it seems. That's because the company that wins the tender knows they're competing on the lowest price, and nobody really cares for time to completion. So they're keeping the construction site as a fallback for other construction sites, that are more important to them and have a higher price tag. It's the equivalent to preemptive pricing for VMs.

jq-r 2y ago
Exactly! And it doesn't even have to be a fallback. The same company could have won (or "won" if you know what I mean) many/majority of those tenders and are intentionally spread thin. Because once you win it, you leave a token crew there, and move to win another one, leave token crew again and again. So they're just doing everything all at once very slowly while being paid a lot. Also this doesn't even have to be a public works type of job. They do this kind of stuff for private works like house construction. 30 people show up and start working, and after couple of days you have 2 guys working for weeks while others are somewhere else. I was very surprised when I saw repaving of couple of street intersections in Chicago. Those guys did it like they were on a competition. Really fast and really nice. They were done in couple of days. I couldn't believe it. In my part of the world, the same job would take months, and I'm not even kidding.
- groestl 2y ago
  All of that is very true, including the bit about private works.
hiatus 2y ago
Are there no deadlines in these contracts or penalties where the company is charged X/day until completion?
- floxy 2y ago
  There are/can be incentives/penalties to complete road construction on time. Although I'm sure it varies with jurisdiction. https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/construction/contracts/t508010.cfm https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/construction/contracts/t508010.cfm https://transweb.sjsu.edu/sites/default/files/2908-highway-transportation-construction-incentive-disincentive-amounts-brief.pdf https://transweb.sjsu.edu/sites/default/files/2908-highway-t...

floxy 2y ago

>Some go on for years it seems. Isn't some of that due to earth settling that you can't really speed up? I remember a fun fact from many years ago where I was growing up. They built a new interstate bridge/overpass, and it wasn't too long after that they noticed it starting to sink. Well it turns out they had drilled sample cores down to like 100 feet, and had good results, but after the sinking, they drilled new cores, and there was a layer of sandstone or something at like 105 feet. I don't really remember how it all got sorted out, but it was under construction for a long time.

swores 2y ago
I wonder (and maybe someone here will know) whether that means they were foolishly cutting corners and should have sampled further than 100ft down, or if what they did was considered best practise and they were just unlucky to find themselves in a freak situation?
- bombcar 2y ago
  Likely the second - they usually base drilling depth on the known area and a wide margin, so everyone probably thought 75 feet was fine, do a hundred to be safe.
  - swores 2y ago
    Thanks

mike_d 2y ago

> To me it feels like 90% of road works I pass actually has nobody there working at all. Some go on for years it seems. This is for simple road resurfacing, which is usually done in a day or two anyway. There are a lot of factors as to why road construction takes a long time, but the biggest reason is safety. They aren't completely closing the road in most cases so while a large section might be coned off, they are moving the worker protection (vehicle barriers) around from section to section. Lots of specialized expensive equipment is involved where you might be waiting a week just for the thing you need to become available. Same with specialized workers and sub-contractors. Add in time you might just need to wait for concrete to harden to the point its safe to move a big piece of equipment onto it for the next phase. Construction is a scheduling nightmare. You can throw money at the problem, but it is in the end tax dollars and rarely is there a good reason.

utensil4778 2y ago
People say this a lot, but I really don't think it's a very satisfying explanation for having miles of one lane of a highway barricaded for weeks or months without any workers or equipment in sight, ever. Everyone can name a stretch of highway they've seen treated this way, and this explanation just doesn't cover it.
- kbrosnan 2y ago
  Roadbed settling and concrete curing are two long term inactive construction projects. Practical Engineering videos on road construction and public works https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIK6I6Q58Ec https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIK6I6Q58Ec https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22W5tRWbUVI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22W5tRWbUVI
- kelnos 2y ago
  > without any workers or equipment in sight, ever. [...] Everyone can name a stretch of highway they've seen treated this way I think there's an inherent bias here. Each individual is not seeing that section of road 24/7. At most they see it for a few minutes (or perhaps a little longer, if traffic slows enough), maybe once or at most a few times per day. That's a very small fraction of the day, and work could be occurring during other parts of the day, possibly even at night. Safety might require that they do the work when there are few cars driving by, but the nature of the work might be such that they can't unblock the lanes during the day. I get that this isn't satisfying, but often reality isn't. And I have no doubt that there are plenty of mismanaged projects around the world where there are lots of delays, and long stretches of time when nothing is getting done. But I think it's incorrect to believe that nothing is getting done just because a few people you know drive by the area a few times a day and don't see anyone working.

colechristensen 2y ago

>Also, nice to see good old "dude with shovel" in there, a tool that would have looked the same back in the 19th century. I grew up occasionally using tools of the shovel-variety which sometimes were from the 19th century, and when not, not far off. Every time I drive through particularly ornery construction I start to fantasize about writing software to optimize the critical path and driver disruption. I also am left wondering having seen several iterations of "improvement" projects that were followed a number of years later on the same stretch of road with another project... if anybody analyzes the whole effect of the project and if the designed improvement made up for the considerable interruption executing it caused. Like on a "net-positive" basis, would folks have been better off if nothing at all was done and the project just skipped.

avar 2y ago

> Also, nice to see good old > "dude with shovel" in there, > a tool that would have looked > the same back in the 19th > century. The guy using a flat broom at around 1:12 in the video has him beat. While the I was surprised at how recently the flat broom was invented (the very tail end of the 18th century), the job he's doing with a broom goes back to antiquity.

softgrow 2y ago

And in Japan it seems that every time you drive somewhere after 10pm there are roadworks everywhere (on the non-toll roads). Very pretty with kaleidoscopic lights but it takes just as long late at night to move around as earlier on.

JaggedJax 2y ago

One of the largest time components can be due to soil compaction. This period can look like no work is being done, but is a vital step. That's not to say that sometimes no work is being done because of scheduling, equipment, funds, or any number of other reasons. This video/article does a good basic job explaining why it can take so long: https://practical.engineering/blog/2020/6/1/why-does-road-construction-take-so-long https://practical.engineering/blog/2020/6/1/why-does-road-co... edit: I think someone linked this down below too.

fennecfoxy 2y ago

A shovel is a shovel, a glass is a glass.