A Week For That?!

These temporary lights have been the bane of my life this week.

Much has been said about the way private companies carry out roadworks in the UK – the vast majority of it immensely negative. There has also been talk over a number of years about making roadworks more time efficient, as well as safer with better signposting and more clearly visible company contact details and so on. 

But from where I’ve been sitting this week – in my all too stationary car, waiting for temporary traffic lights to turn green so I can go to work – very little has changed. Work on seemingly small sites still takes forever, and the bigger the site, the more months companies need.

To my mind, there is a fundamental problem with how these companies and their employees go about work. Let me give you an example. The picture above was taken at 8:50am on a Friday, and as you can see, there isn’t a worker in sight. Why is that, exactly? There should be a swarm of blokes in high-vis jackets drilling and hammering away. And they should have been there at the crack of dawn, trying to get the work done before rush hour really kicks off.

The chaos these roadworks have caused in the surrounding area is truly unbelievable. They’re on the A232 on the edge of Wallington in Surrey, and each morning and evening, every possible rat run is teeming with cars, their drivers trying to escape the glut of metal on their usual route. As you can see from the picture, I've long given up on finding a faster alternative route – there just isn't one. Safer roadworks you say? How about getting the job done quicker so those behind the wheel aren’t forced to use narrow side roads in built-up areas, where pedestrians are more easily obscured.

The 20- to 30-minute delays these particular roadworks have caused have been going on for a week. And I wouldn’t mind that so much if a new bridge was being installed or new tarmac being laid, but there’s only a hole in the road about four metres long. What could possibly be going on down there that requires so many working days to fix? Of course, I call them working days, but then no employee seems to be at this site on time…

Sorry for the rant, but when I hear about what goes on in Germany where companies are prepared to work through the night to get any type of job done, it makes me wonder why firms digging up our soil can’t be like that.