Signs the DPW hates you

[jwgh]

Yesterday evening, around 9 pm, I was driving from New Hampshire to Rhode Island on Route 95.

Just when I crossed the border from Massachusetts to Rhode Island, traffic suddenly slowed down and I was stuck in stop-and-go traffic for quite a while. After a long period of inching along, I discovered the reason for this: construction.

This point of 95 South is three lanes wide normally. What they had done, of course, was put out orange cones to gradually constrict the width to a single lane. This of course causes a lot of congestion, but that clearly wasn't enough, because they also placed it so that shortly after the highway went down to one lane an onramp came in from the right, adding even more merging delightfulness.

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Then, a little ways further, they took away the restriction -- coincidentally right when the off-ramp that corresponded to the earlier on-ramp showed up -- and we were back to normal speeds.

Well, this was annoying and all, but of course it's absurd to think that they did this purposefully to annoy motorists, right? Although I was interested to note that maybe a mile or two later they did the exact same thing.

Comments

I have witnessed firsthand

[vardissakheli.livejournal.com]

Connecticut State Troopers deliberately creating traffic congestion in a construction zone--blocking both lanes, slowing down to 20 MPH, occasionally stopping entirely. How they balance the perceived safety benefit to the construction workers (which is pretty dubious in the first place, putting thousands of angry drivers in close contact with them for an hour at a time) with the risk of crashes for those trying to get through those stupid Waterbury interchanges is a total mystery to me.

[mishapville.livejournal.com]

I experienced the very same thing Sunday evening - I was going from the east side to the west side so I hopped onto 95 to avoid the waterfire congestion - bad idea! The situation you described made my shortcut into a nightmare. Grrr.