The Road Crew of Gundabad - General

The infrastructure in America is absolute rubbish and outdated. Our bridges are falling apart, only to be maintained by the most basic patch work that only barley keeps them standing. Roads crumble more with every passing of a car, while new ones are not built with the future in mind. Pipe systems are decrepit and bursting left and right. Traffic systems are still run on legacy mainframe systems from the early 70's and 80's. Power grids are running on obsolete software and hardware, both highly prone to failure, attack, and solar interference. The problem is, we let it get to the point where it is impossible to start anew. We let all the problems build up so far that there's really not much that *can* be done about it other than keep on slapping band-aids on everything and calling it a day. The cost of fully renewing our infrastructure would far exceed any budget plan, even if we take funds out of our military and drug enforcement expenses. Even if we could scrape together enough money, it would take far too long, and would still be nearly impossible to do. It would literally mean completely rebuilding the foundation of every road system, digging up every water main and replacing them with new pipes, rebuilding the electrical grid from the ground up, and traffic systems would have to be completely re-engineered and redesigned from scratch. The future of America's infrastructure is extremely grim and is going to end up being the downfall of our country long before our political system collapses.

I worked on a road crew for three months. Everything BDA said is true and not metaphorical at all, you should have seen our training manual. [editline]13th June 2011[/editline] [QUOTE=Parakon;30405881]I saw two guys taking turns holding the slow sign. Where do I sign up?[/QUOTE] You're Canadian too? That job pays anywhere from 15 to 25 dollars an hour. Go do it. It's actually harder than it looks (hot as fuck), but you get to stop cars and feel like a bigshot.

It reminds me of the roads in south west Swizterland which are under maintenance in one direction or another all year long, every year. We were going on a road trip to a vacation in Italy from Germany, and there was a giant fucking traffic jam in which we were stuck from about 3 am to 8 am, because there was a road section with maintenance signs and special re-directions but absolutely no workers to be seen.

I live around the corner from the busiest road in my city, and on occasion the road crews decide to ruin what was a pretty good system by closing down a section of this road so that they can look through their sinister little spirit level tripods for hours on end for no discernible reason. Problem with this is that my road then acts as a thoroughfare for any commuters wishing to get from the Northern suburbs into the city, so I'm literally not able to get out of the driveway and down the street through the sea of cars.

It would be better if the city officials would contract beeter workers, or even say that if you get done faster you can get paid more now that is an incentive.

[QUOTE=Master117;30424671]The infrastructure in America is absolute rubbish and outdated. Our bridges are falling apart, only to be maintained by the most basic patch work that only barley keeps them standing. Roads crumble more with every passing of a car, while new ones are not built with the future in mind. Pipe systems are decrepit and bursting left and right. Traffic systems are still run on legacy mainframe systems from the early 70's and 80's. Power grids are running on obsolete software and hardware, both highly prone to failure, attack, and solar interference. The problem is, we let it get to the point where it is impossible to start anew. We let all the problems build up so far that there's really not much that *can* be done about it other than keep on slapping band-aids on everything and calling it a day. The cost of fully renewing our infrastructure would far exceed any budget plan, even if we take funds out of our military and drug enforcement expenses. Even if we could scrape together enough money, it would take far too long, and would still be nearly impossible to do. It would literally mean completely rebuilding the foundation of every road system, digging up every water main and replacing them with new pipes, rebuilding the electrical grid from the ground up, and traffic systems would have to be completely re-engineered and redesigned from scratch. The future of America's infrastructure is extremely grim and is going to end up being the downfall of our country long before our political system collapses.[/QUOTE] Don't worry, the rednecks prepared us for this. Why else would we have all those lifted trucks?

[QUOTE=Mlisen14;30427503]I live around the corner from the busiest road in my city, and on occasion the road crews decide to ruin what was a pretty good system by closing down a section of this road so that they can look through their sinister little spirit level tripods for hours on end for no discernible reason. Problem with this is that my road then acts as a thoroughfare for any commuters wishing to get from the Northern suburbs into the city, so I'm literally not able to get out of the driveway and down the street through the sea of cars.[/QUOTE] I'd have no beef with road crews if they inconvenienced me for a legitimate reason, such as surveying or actually repairing damaged roads, and for a limited amount of time, but I've never actually seen road crews working. Maybe it's better in other cities, states, or countries, but I'm not kidding when I say that the workers in mine will close and destroy a major highway, add an unforgivably long detour, and then leave it vacant for [i]years[/i] before coming back to actually work on it. There was a road leading to my high school that they shut down and tore apart my Freshman year. It was no more than a quarter-mile of two-lane road, but it didn't open again until shortly before I graduated. It received so little attention for so long that when people would occasionally get fed up with the ten-mile detour and move the orange barrels aside, the change wouldn't be noticed by the workers until an orc scout in a reflective vest came by to hold his 'SLOW' sign for a few hours--often weeks later. Shit is [i]bad[/i] in my area. [editline]13th June 2011[/editline] [QUOTE=rsa1988;30427596]It would be better if the city officials would contract beeter workers, or even say that if you get done faster you can get paid more now that is an incentive.[/QUOTE] I agree completely. This is corruption at it's most obvious form. The construction unions have complete domain over all public works projects in my area, and it seems like, when there's no work to be done, they go out and [i]make[/i] work by destroying a perfectly good road and then bleed their contract for as long as possible.

Where I am, road work gets done really quickly, several times a year. I remember about a year back when a crew turned up, dug up the road, did something mysterious down the hole, filled it in and were gone in a few hours. Two weeks later the same thing happened. And again and again... The same few yards of road were dug up and relaid 5 times within the space of 6 months. My guess is that it took them 6 months to actually work out what they were supposed to be doing.

[QUOTE=OogalaBoogal;30408943]I have seen one road crew that changed my view of them forever. Back in 07, a water main exploded in my neighborhood. [img]http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1041/1050152929_751bc59d3f_z.jpg?zz=1[/img] It took them less than a week to fix the pipe, and reopen the road.[/QUOTE] The problem could well be the type of contract the contractors get. One one hand this kind of thing is evidence that most of the time they're just resurfacing roads for chuckles and to keep their budget up but on the other if they have to do pointless work to keep their budget the same in the future how else are they going to deal with actual problems and road/pipe destroying problems like this in a timely manner?

Big Dumb American poster of the year all years

[QUOTE=Mlisen14;30427503]I live around the corner from the busiest road in my city, and on occasion the road crews decide to ruin what was a pretty good system by closing down a section of this road so that they can look through their sinister little spirit level tripods for hours on end for no discernible reason.[/QUOTE] That's surveying. They're doing surveying. It's very important. Don't worry about it, stop asking questions.

You wanna know something even worse, BDA? [img]http://www.bwiairport.com/bwi-files/files/images/ground_transportation/ICC_MD200_Horizontal-011.JPG[/img] [url=http://www.iccproject.com/]THIS IS THE INTER-COUNTY CONNECTOR.[/url] This... this *creature* of a project is taking YEARS to complete, and will end up costing the state of Maryland [B]20 billion dollars[/B]... if all goes quickly and according to plans (it won't). It requires electronic toll-collecting devices (EZ-Pass) to be used in your car, and it costs you by the mile. THIS SHIT HAS BEEN UNDERWAY FOR 2 YEARS. MD-29 has been completely clogged by unnecessary assfuckery, and the Capital Beltway (I-495) has become even [I]more[/I] clogged from people fleeing University Blvd. and MD-29 during peak hours. If I see any more road crews, I'm going to completely flip my shit.

The way you describe things gives me all kinds of boners.

[QUOTE=Zeke129;30433261]That's surveying. They're doing surveying. It's very important. Don't worry about it, stop asking questions.[/QUOTE] It seems unnecessary to close a major arterial to have two guys stand on the pavement for 6 hours a day surveying. If they'd been doing construction/pavement work it would have been understandable but the council should have restricted the amount of time they could close the road.

The road crews here in Montana are pretty good actually, they've been upgrading the main highway that runs through pretty much any city of importance here, which includes my town! And they get a good 1-2 mile section done in maybe a month or two.