re: How does road construction take so long

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The lowest bidder wins the government contract to do the work.

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Yep. That's why Airline and Clearview in Metairie is taking so long. Contractor went belly up during the work. Haven't seen a worker out there in a couple of months. The work is also shoddy as hell. I have no idea how the water is going to get into a drain that is 3 to 4 inches above the already new paved road.

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About 15 years ago a contract was bid at 1M but when finished the contractor had been paid 30M.

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Can you provide some detail on the project you're referencing? Or did you just make that crap up? Seriously? Location? Highway(s) number?

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this ^^^^^^^

or a friend of a friend gets it.

if you want to stop the 6 years long road repairs overnight, you make the bid firm, with no cost over runs or changes made to increase costs and time.

you bid the job and you get "X" money, period, end of discussion, you get paid in quarters based on the amount of completed work, you complete the job by "X" date or you dont get paid anything more and the job goes to the next bidder.

you treat them exactly like you treat a contractor working on your property, you take away any incentive to extend the job since they will only lose money if they do that

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Several years ago in Birmingham a truck damaged an elevated roadway (either a steel coil or maybe a fire, I dont remember). But the repairs were going to take months. The state contract had a clause about daily fines if it went over time, but it also had a large bonus for every day it was finished ahead of schedule.

The contractor did it like a month early and made a bunch of money. That should be the way things are done.

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Have you ever worked road construction? Do you have any inkling of understanding on what is involved other than just driving by & spectating?

Quit rubbernecking and keep your eyes on the road.

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found the dude who stands there flipping the sign around from Stop to Slow.

Low bid then contractor needs more dough and a change order is prepared. Contrator drags feet until the slow moving government agency gets off its butt and submits paperwork and awaits authorization.

It's all the corruption.

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Public sector. They have no incentive to move quickly.

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Liquidated damages is a pretty good incentive

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Lot of utility relocation and installation that takes up most of the time

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Someone explain to me why a communications company would wait until after a road was freshly paved to come bury a line? The city has been paving several roads this year, and the road I live on being one of them. It took about a week in total, they grinded the old surface off, came back a few days later and repaved it, then after another week or so they came and painted the lines on it. This was a road that hadn't been paved in the entire 15 or so years I've lived there. A month goes by, and either Spectrum or AT&T has come and carved a thin groove in the road to bury a wire, then put a horrible stripe patch over it. I don't know why it bothers me as much as it does, and over time I know it will all wear down to somewhat even. Just seems like this could have been planned out a little better so they didn't instantly ruin a fresh pave job.

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Seriously. They’ve been working on the same intersection for 9 fricking months. And all I ever see is construction workers standing around talking.

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There's a less than half mile stretch of road in an area that I have to be in at least once a week where putting in a turn lane had taken nearly a year and a half now.