Burrito Closes California Highway

[Ploes]

Random bit of news from the USA!

Heard this on the radio this morning. Sad that its come to this, but what choice was there. The few ruin it for the masses.

[Touqen]

Day in, day out, it makes David Bowie's song "I'm Afraid of Americans" more and more meaningful.

[Railwaymodeler]

Flying burrito? Somehow I think Carlos Mencia will be making fun of this...

[OC_4106]

The only thing that Canadians do to construction workers here is speed. Otherwise on the most part, we respect construction workers as we know it will be worth the delays once all the construction is done.

[Train-a-Mania]

...and I live in this country.

No wonder people around the world hate the USA.

[Parkey]

In general this would never happen in the UK. This is mostly because whenever there are roadworks causing significant disruption on one of our major roads the workforce are rarely actually there. You see, spreading roadworks over months and months keeps the weekly budget down.

[m3henry]

but just increases the number of weekly budgets that have the roadworks in them

[Parkey]

I was being satirical.

[Ploes]

I was being satirical.

The point you where trying to make was that you wouldn't find a worker to throw a burrito at owning to the stretched out way we do road works?


More to the point, where would you find a Burrito!

[Parkey]

where would you find a Burrito!

I dunno... probably at M&S?

Yeah. I was commenting on the way roadworks get done in this country - very slowly. To the best of my knowledge in Europe there is a much better philosophy to infrastructure: Look at the situation, make a quick yet informed decision, and get the work done in short order to minimise disruption.

We have a proud history of not committing to or just getting on with anything ever. Millions are spent on studies to decide whether plan A is in fact the most cost effective option, and of course the delay whilst this happens is also costly as plan A will now arrive much later than it was desperately needed by and the old infrastructure that it is replacing is severely overused and needs propping up. Once work begins it is progressed at a much less than optimal rate so as to minimise the rate of expenditure although this makes the project much more expensive long term and allows more chance for costs to escalate over time. Then of course there are many more opportunities for the project to be used as a political football or for politicians to tinker with the specifications as the requirements may have changed over the long timescale since the project's conception.

This is in all in the best-case scenario that government has actually recognised the need in the first place. Often they just ignore it as an alternative to getting a backbone and spending some money to address the issue.



[/rant]

[Ploes]

where would you find a Burrito!

I dunno... probably at M&S?

These aren't just roadworks.... these are M&S Roadworks.


I was amazed by the road works when I drove into Belgium. 80kph limit, with 2 lanes of traffic going each way. In the space normally taken by 2 lanes and a hard shoulder. A little barrier between the two, no more than two foot tall and a foot wide. Is this the norm for mainland Europe?

[rav]

Yeah. I was commenting on the way roadworks get done in this country - very slowly. To the best of my knowledge in Europe there is a much better philosophy to infrastructure: Look at the situation, make a quick yet informed decision, and get the work done in short order to minimise disruption.

yet it takes 6 months to make a roundabout

I was amazed by the road works when I drove into Belgium. 80kph limit, with 2 lanes of traffic going each way. In the space normally taken by 2 lanes and a hard shoulder. A little barrier between the two, no more than two foot tall and a foot wide. Is this the norm for mainland Europe?

well, it is here in the netherlands: as we really need our roads (lots of freight traffic from the port of Rotterdam to germany and belgium), they close one lane and direct traffic around it, then they do the second lane etc.. etc..
Usually there's a speed limit of 70 km/h or 80 km/h on the freeway.

[orudge]

well, it is here in the netherlands: as we really need our roads (lots of freight traffic from the port of Rotterdam to germany and belgium), they close one lane and direct traffic around it, then they do the second lane etc.. etc..
Usually there's a speed limit of 70 km/h or 80 km/h on the freeway.

They will tend to do similar things in the UK, close off the lanes they're working on, perhaps set up a contraflow (ie, direct traffic onto the other carriageway, coned in), and set a limit of 50mph (80km/h) or whatever. It's relatively rare for a road to be closed completely, unless otherwise unavoidable.