Roadworks

Everyone seems to have a problem with roadworks. I have a problem with people who have a problem with roadworks. I generally don’t say this out loud though, as with a lot of things, it’s easier to just be neutral or slightly nod when someone is talking complete bollocks.

For example, there were some roadworks recently near where I live which meant the temporary installation of some (shriek!) temporary traffic lights. If anyone had actually bothered to read any of the signs near the roadworks (after all there is fuck all else to do when waiting in a queue) they would have realised that the reason for the roadworks was to upgrade an existing water pipe. So instead of joining in and saying insightful things like ‘Yeah, roadworks eh, terrible’ what I should have said was ‘Do you like water? For things like drinking, cleaning and, to quote the Bee Gees, staying alive? Or would you rather have no temporary traffic lights but be dead?’

In a similar vein another road near me was recently resurfaced. People again flocked to Facebook to complain that it was taking 15 minutes to travel a few hundred metres. And if anyone mentioned it to me, I just sighed in agreement and gently nodded. When what I should have said was ‘Tell me, do you like stuff? Do you ever buy stuff and get it delivered or go to shops where stuff has been delivered by…(drumroll)…trucks? If the answer is yes, then the road needs repairing because of the heavy trucks driving around with all of your fucking stuff. Contrary to popular thought, roads do not magically regenerate.’ Although to be fair, some people think that concrete grows.

In my imaginary conversations sometimes people retort that roadworks should only happen at night. I assume that anyone who thinks like this has vast experience of recruiting night staff and the associated logistics and increased costs and dangers of working at night. Either that or they just think the roads solely exist for their use and everyone else can get fucked.

Similar comments are made when people drive past roadworks but (shock!) no-one is currently working, as if the roadworkers are somehow owned by us. Or even worse, roadworkers have dared to have a day off but left their roadworks on the road! Forgetting the small but important fact that it could be dangerous to pack roadworks away for the weekend (not to mention the time and cost). Maybe people have watched too much Peppa Pig and believe that roadworks should only consist of a mad flurry of activity and workers rapidly ‘digging up the road’.

Remarkably, people even find a way to moan when emergency repairs are undertaken after storms pass through. A road could be in danger of collapsing and turning into a sinkhole and people still tut and complain.

It’s not all the fault of people stuck in cars in queues of course. If we had a sensible multiple option transport system where buses and trains were not shit, expensive, irregular or simply don’t bother turning up then more people might use them and the roads would be quieter and used by those who have no other options.