These Are Your Roadwork Horror Stories

“This is more of a design process/inadequate budget issue than the actual construction. A decade ago, MODOT completely closed and rebuilt I-64/US-40, just west of St Louis. It was (and still is) four lanes wide, in each direction, in both St Louis (to the east) and Ladue (to the west), but was three lanes wide going through the small city of Richmond Heights. Instead of spending the money (and facing the political blowback) to condemn and buy out less than a hundred properties, the state, instead, created a full interchange for I-170 while NOT widening this stretch of highway! The region is, now, stuck with a less-than-two-mile stretch of three lane highway that is the scene of daily congestion and multiple crashes, due to lanes ending and drivers being forced to merge!

“Yes, I pointed this out during the public meeting, show-and-tell process, before construction started. I was told that their ‘projections’ showed that three lanes would be ‘adequate’ with the rebuilt, ‘better’ on and off ramps. I’m pretty sure that this was not the case, but that a fixed budget had tied their hands when it came to acquiring any more properties. Unfortunately, since the project is, now, ‘complete,’ nothing is going to change/be improved in my lifetime.”

Nothing like a good bottleneck to keep traffic flowing, am I right?

Suggested by: jimmyzzzzzzz

“Around 20 years ago I was visiting relative in Mobile. 15 miles pas Citronelle ion US Highway 45, I rand into a ‘Road Closed’ sign, signaling the bridge was out and I had to detour on a county road, which I did. This was supposed to be three miles around the construction site. That detour took nearly 10 miles.

“I am not lying. this was scary. The road was narrow. All the vehicles travelling on 45 had to take that road. Narrow, curvy roads and lots of 18-wheelers are not great mix. And this was the deep woods, folks. I love in the woods myself, but at least there is space on the side of the road if you need to pull over. The trees were right near the edge of the road. There wasn’t even a ditch.

“This was Deliverance country. there were tons of fobbed-out trailers and shotgun houses everywhere. It was like these people living here were cut off from civilization for decades. And there were Confederate flags everywhere.

“And then the shit got real. When I reached the supposed three-mile point, there was a small neighborhood store at a crossroads. No detour signs. Somebody took down the detour signs. Drivers were confused on which way to go, but people were afraid to ask for directions. Neither did I.

“I told a couple of truckers ‘I’m going left, that should take us back to 45.’ One of them said ‘We’ll be right behind you, buddy. We got your back.’ And we headed down the road, with me, my brave but dumb self (for taking the lead in driving through “no-sensible-man’s land” in a blue ‘92 Geo Prizm with several 18-wheelers and other travelers, probably all scared of stopping for an emergency in the midst of these strange people staring as we drove by.

“I was right. Some seven miles later, we made it back to Highway 45. Everyone that followed me out were honking and waving as they passed by. I had stopped to get myself together after going through that hellhole.

“Since that day I always check the road conditions and detours before I travel. I do not want to experience this situation again.”

Why drive three miles when you could drive 10?

Suggested by: imoore3

“Right now it’s the one on the main road outside of the development I live in. It’s going to take a year to complete. Will add a bus lane for buses that aren’t really used and has turned all the surrounding roads into a carpark for several hours a day.

“The 1/8 of a mile to get onto said road now takes me 20 mins of a morning. It’s nuts.”

What if everyone used the buses? Then the year of chaos might all seem worth it.

Suggested by: j45on

“This could have been one of my worst construction stories, but it turned out to be the guy in front of me. I’m on the Merritt Parkway — probably well known to those in the MA-CT-NY area. A four-lane, limited access highway, in theory, with narrow lanes, tons of curves and blind hills, stop signs at the end of the on ramps, and everybody driving toward NYC like it’s a Formula 1 race. Everybody’s going 20+ over with a maximum of one half of a car length between them, plus Audis and Mercs flashing their lights at your constantly, even though there are approximately 37,000 cars in front of you that they think will somehow move over for them.

“I was heading to visit a buddy in NYC, and I was driving down in my GTI, at the appropriate (excessive speed) behind an Audi TT. One lane was closed on our side for construction, and the barrels narrowed the already narrow right lane down just a little more. The Audi slowly but surely drifts over to the soft shoulder (it felt like it was in slow motion), hits that dirt and gravel with the right wheels, and begins what turns out to be a full 360-degree spin. I’ve got nowhere to go and no way to stop without at least a dozen cars plowing into me, so I dive over in the closed left lane — luckily it was at night, so nobody was working, and not much had been done to the road there yet — and then back over to miss the Audi carnival ride. I looked back at the shocked couple in the Audi, sitting facing the right direction, but on the shoulder. I assume a major code brown had occurred. I of course slowed down and tried to be more mindful. (Ok, fine, I didn’t. I was all hopped up on adrenaline and proceeded to drive like a maniac like everybody else until I hit the Triborough Bridge. I was young and stupid.)”

Is there a worse place to spin that during roadworks on the approach to New York? Answers on a postcard.

Suggested by: preparetosurgetosublightspeed

“Seems like a common thing in the United States when there is construction on a interstate, and they have one lane merge into another and put signs that say ‘RIGHT LANE MERGE 2 MILES.’ Therefore EVERYONE merges right there, 2+ miles ahead of the actual merge. You still have full legal right to use the right lane until merge. But in this country you’re “cutting the line” if you use the full legal lane to the point of merge. Drivers will try to not let you in by ridding the bumper of the car in front of them.

“Zipper merge doesn’t work in America because the drivers have some sort of weird lane ownership/identification problem. When I was in Germany, a similar construction issue having two lanes go down to one but the traffic kept moving at a steady crawl and everyone merged at the point of merge, following a 1, 2, 1, 2 system. Everyone got through the construction and got on with their busy life. No ‘line cutting’ here. Stop merging miles ahead and allow people who use the full legal lane to the point of merge to zipper merge in. Grow up people.”

There are a lot of problems with the way Americans drive, this is one of the lesser ones.

Suggested by: alltrackpilot

“There was a reported gas leak near a pretty busy intersection in suburban Chicago shortly before evening rush hour. I was on site to lay out the emergency traffic control while the crew looked for the leak and we rushed to get it set before rush hour built up. One of those big arrow trucks with cones stacked in front was going by as we try to shut down the lane by the workers and a BMW went flying by, cutting off the arrow truck, hitting the cone that was in his hands. Basically inches away from watching that guy get run over. Our traffic cop wasn’t on site yet, but we hope the dash cam on the truck was enough to get him later on.

“There have been other times where cars got close or barely stopped in time, but the visual of the cone getting whacked really accentuates how close that guy was to a hospital bed. It’s also a lot easier to stay calm in construction, having spent enough time on the other side of the cones. My wife’s answer is probably every time that I point out signs with the wrong spacing or tapers that are too short for the area.”

Of course it was a BMW driver.

Suggested by: engineerthefuture

“The one that’s gonna happen soon in Southern California since the 10 fwy burned down. This’ll be fun.”

Is the chaos worse if you know it’s coming, or is it better to be caught off guard by travel trauma?

Suggested by: darthspartan117

“It’s 1998 and @Chevron has got to relocate the Montebello CRUDE Line. Long story short, the job foreman misread the casing length on my drawing as 69 not 89-ft. and how’d our Maintenance Supervisor put it, oh yeah ... We’re NEVER getting that pipe out of there! 😲”

It’s a simple mistake to make.

Suggested by: @LilToot62 (Twitter X)

“I was driving in Glasgow in the UK, it was this year, back in July. Construction on the M8 highway had pushed everyone off onto side streets. As long as you followed the diversion signs you’d be fine, I thought. Got to a three way junction. Three big yellow signs saying ‘Diverted Traffic,’ each pointing at a different exit. Which one to follow, who knows? It was chaos. There was even a semi parked up on the junction with the driver looking in their map book. Apparently three different construction sites all diverted through that same junction, and each road crew had just slapped down a diverted traffic sign, without bothering about the ones already there. Usually there is at least a small symbol telling you which diversion is which, but not this time.

“The navigation system in the rental was no help, it just kept trying to route me back onto the freeway at the same exit I’d been routed off from, which I guess was what everybody else’s system was trying to do too.”

That was actually just the Scotts’ way of confusing anyone that’s not from around there.

Suggested by: skeffles

“It’s not so much the construction project, but what the construction project can do to you that gripes my ass.

“Umpteen years ago I was living in Dallas. The everyday car back then was an RX-7 with a stick. A manual transmission: you are in control of the car, not the car in control of you — the ‘cool’ way to motorvate. Uh-huh, sure, except when you’re stuck in traffic crawling along at a car-length at a time. And Dallas back then constantly had construction projects either on US-75 or that damn beltway, I-635. And all that clutch pushing as I’d feather the clutch eking car-length gains at a time will really do a number on your left thigh muscles — the times I hobbled into the apartment with my left leg throbbing from the commute were enough to make me consider chucking the RX-7 for anything with an automatic.

“Moving away from Dallas... so glad it happened.”

Would you also move house if it meant keeping hold of your beloved manual car?

Suggested by: the1969dodgechargerfan

“How about all the understaffed projects? Like when they work on a lane or shoulder of the Baltimore or DC beltway for months on end. They’ll put up Jersey walls and slow traffic for months yet you’ll see no more than maybe FOUR workmen (one working, three talking) over a quarter mile and that’s only between the hours of 10-2 on non-holidays.

“They won’t have them out there at night because “safety reasons” but we know it is because they don’t want to pay them more. Yet these delays cause countless millions in lost productivity from all of us poor suckers stuck in traffic.”

Everyone knows that whatever you can do with 40 workers you can do just as well with four. By everyone, I mean stingy city planners.

Suggested by: 17seconds

“The worst construction for me right now is the closure of a main East-West routes for almost a year. What’s really galling is delays because they didn’t properly locate underground utilities and now delays because ODOT can’t schedule an inspection until December because Oregon state government makes the Three Stooges look like Toyota.

“On the positive side it will improve traffic by completing the missing chunk of the North-South road. Bend Oregon has some bizarre streets with frequent name changes, occasional displacements a block over and missing chunks.”

Are you more excited for Christmas or for ODOT to finally schedule an inspection?

Suggested by: geoff-vader

“This stretch of highway outside of Pittsburgh has been under construction for about 20+ years at this point. It has been the bane of anyone living anywhere near it. Even after they widen the roads and put in better transitions, it’s still full of entrance ramps that are barely 3 car lengths long and uneven pavement transitions.”

Turn around, drive on what you see. In her face, the highway of your dreams. Make believe, I’m everywhere, hidden in the lanes. Written on the pages is the answer to a never ending roadworks.

Suggested by: fijist