The Road Work Blues

Being from Pennsylvania, I understand a thing or two about road construction. After all, Pennsylvania has orange barrels as far as the eye can see. But at least PennDOT is competent when it comes to road construction. I'm learning that not only does North Carolina have the worst drivers I've ever seen but the whole Department of Transportation has it's collective head up it's butt when it comes to the roads.

In PA, when there is road construction, you at least get notification when a busy road is under construction. Here, they just do it under a whim and tell no one. This causes bad traffic jams and late, angry people.

When you're driving in PA, you get some warning before you drive into construction. It goes a little something like this:

Left Lane Closed 2000 ft ahead
Left Lane Closed 1000 ft ahead
Left Lane Closed 500 ft ahead
Left Lane Closed ahead, followed by that blinking arrow
Then the lane is closed and you had ample time to move over to the right and traffic moves smoothly, even during rush hour.

Here in North Carolina you get this:
Left Lane Closed
10 yards ahead there's that orange sign that shows the lane is closed
Then 10 yards ahead if you haven't moved over you're running over road cones.

Because you have no time to merge, what happens is people are in both lanes until you have to merge, which causes a massive traffic backup because all the people in the left have to move to the right and in a city where courtesy doesn't exist, you have to wait until there is a small opening, hit the gas and move over only to promptly slam on the brakes to keep from ramming the person in front of you.

Not only that, but the actual road crew is just as dangerous as the actual road work. I see crew just walking in front of cars and standing in the lanes that aren't closed. Someone is going to get seriously hurt one day. I only hope that the pay is worth it.

I really hope that our next house allows for Jorden to take the bus to school because I hate driving in this city. Jorden has already picked up some "colorful" words from me and Chase won't be far along in learning them too.