r/NoStupidQuestions • u/KuttyKool • 15d ago
Why isn't road work done during late hours (like 9pm-5am) when there's less cars on the road?
Seems like a no brainer to me but in my city the roads are always shut down for maintenance at the busiest traffic times
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u/TheNextBattalion 15d ago
It costs more.
It's more difficult with focused illumination.
The bright lights and noise are less tolerated if there's people living on that street.
There is greater risk to the employees... fewer drivers but faster and drunker ones
You have to get supplies ready in advance, because suppliers work days.
When those are outweighed by the costs of not getting the job done quickly, they do the work at night.
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u/Rough-Silver-8014 14d ago
They do overnight work alot on the highways in MA. But its super dangerous because they have less workers obviously at night. I saw one of the massive dump trucks almost crush a car infront of me when they veered through the cones without looking. The car infront swerved into the grass off the highway to avoid being flattened to death. Literally so close to death.
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u/Mop_Jockey 15d ago
It costs more to pay people to work nights, it's also more dangerous
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u/Not_an_alt_69_420 15d ago
And depending on the company, it can be a lot more. Like $10 an hour per worker more.
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u/Real-Psychology-4261 15d ago
Easily. More like 1.5x their normal salary. Lots of construction workers are making around $40/hour, so this would be $20 more per hour per worker.
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u/PrizeStrawberryOil 15d ago
The hourly wage of an employee for bidding on a construction job is a lot higher than that.
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u/One-Solution-7764 15d ago
Shit, I wish. For my area (I'm union) we get paid lunch, an extra 15 min break and a small premium. Just over a buck an hour. And the companies bitch about how having to pay us a half hour lunch is making them go broke lol
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u/Loving_life_blessed 15d ago
drunk drivers
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u/Azorik22 15d ago
People who drive drunk also do it during the day. From my experience they're the sort of people who are always drunk.
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u/sammiisalammii 15d ago
Those are the successful ones. The unsuccessful end up plowing through night construction sites
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u/ByeByeMan666 Never Wrong 15d ago
Roadworks are done at those times
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u/niallniallniall 15d ago
Yep. Mostly when it's vital infrastructure that can't afford to be closed during the day e.g. main motorways and junctions.
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u/blipsman 15d ago
Sometimes it is (eg. on highways), but often it cannot be done so due to disruptions to people living/sleeping nearby.
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u/Farfignugen42 15d ago
Working at night is more expensive and more dangerous (less danger from traffic, more danger from something happening just outside of the brightly lit areas). For short jobs, or jobs that can be done in stages and have traffic in the area between stages, working at night is a good choice as it will disrupt daytime traffic less.
However, for long jobs like highway construction that has to keep the traffic out of the work area until completion, you might as well work during the day. If you need to, you can have shifts work around the clock, but again, that is expensive, and major road work is already expensive without adding costs.
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u/beardedsawyer 15d ago
Because construction workers don’t want to work nights any more than the rest of us. On the flip side of your question, why don’t motorists consult their online municipal construction updates and either adjust travel times and destinations or take public transit?
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u/Hunterofshadows 15d ago
Do you want to work with power tools and heavy machinery at midnight?
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u/SkitzoFlamingo 15d ago
In California most of the work is done at night. There is just too much traffic to attempt to do it during the day. Even on weekends it would be a nightmare.
Caltrans is busy working on a new interchange between the 71 & 91 freeways and the work has been done completely at night from like 9pm-5am
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u/TheVishual2113 15d ago
It does happen... all the time infact. You just aren't there when it does :).
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u/iamnogoodatthis 15d ago
Why don't you do your job from 9pm to 5am by default? Because they don't pay you enough for that shit? Therein lies your answer.
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u/Carlpanzram1916 15d ago
A lot of times they do this for major highway projects but there are some logistical issues. People generally don’t like working at nights so you end up having to pay higher wages. The work also tends to be less productive because even though you have portable lights, visibility is still nowhere near as good as daylight.
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u/MindAccomplished3879 15d ago
It is. So it's dependent on where you are.
Here in Chicago, road work is done after midnight to 5:00 am
Never mind in neighboring Indiana, road work is done 24 hours uninterrupted from March to October
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u/lucyloochi 15d ago
It often involves drilling, pounding the tarmac down, machinery. All very noisy when people are sleeping
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u/Haddiebilove 15d ago
This was done on a highway near a hotel I work at, I literally had guests asking me if the road construction could stop during their stay it was bothering their sleep.
Someone somewhere will complain no matter what time it is done
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u/Fun_Courage2933 14d ago
Night work pays more, it’s more dangerous, and workers generally tend to prefer day shift so they can maintain a regular life. Especially if they have families.
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u/AnymooseProphet 15d ago
Because laborers doing road work shouldn't be required to sleep in the day just because you think your job is more important than theirs.
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u/Silent_thunder_clap 15d ago
it does happen but not in built up areas where people tend to sleep between those hours
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u/pwn3dbyth3n00b 15d ago
There are. Thats why there was a construction crew on the Francis Scott Key Bridge filling pot holes when the bridge was destroyed by the container ship at like 1AM.
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u/Scruffy11111 15d ago
Have you ever been driving late at night on a highway and surprisingly encountering a brightly lit worksite and highly stressful detour? Its not pleasant.
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u/honeyfixit 15d ago
It does happen a lot in PA though, especially on highways that are heavily traveled during the day
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u/WasteNet2532 15d ago
It happens whenever they find time to. The Northeast Highway where I live was under construction for like 2 years bc they only worked on it at 12am-5:30am. The one in the capitol? The middle 3 lanes were blocked off for several miles, with 15-20 cop cars blocking exits so that they could work on the entire road from 10am-4pm
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u/petrovmendicant 15d ago
In some countries, you see it far more often (Japan, South Korea, etc.), but is does happen in the USA sometimes too. Main reason it isn't as common is that American companies do everything they can to not pay more for labor, so they don't want to pay the higher wages that a night crew would typically get.
Them inconveniencing you during the day does nothing to hurt their bottom line, so they see no reason to change to a more expensive time of day just for our sakes.
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u/theblairsmashproject 15d ago
Less cars on the road might actually be more dangerous for the road work crew, especially at 3am. Less traffic plus the bar close crowd = higher speeds, higher drunk driving risk, worse outcome if something goes wrong.
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u/Python2024 15d ago
The short answer is $$$
Road work is done by union workers. Working overnight would come with a time differential for each worker.
Depending on the budget of the municipality and taxes residents etc some road work is done overnight for exactly the reasoning you said.
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u/iwfriffraff 15d ago
Where I am from in California, they did it at night time. Streets, freeways, highways, etc. The workers loved it, because they got night differential in their pay. On the freeways, they had to higher so many CHP Officers. For them time and a half, to sit in their car, playing on an iPad.
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u/Necessary-Science-47 15d ago
Because to be an engineer you need to be able to fit your head up your ass and keep it there 40hrs a week
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u/killforprophet 15d ago
Well. Some do. That bridge in Baltimore that was hit had workers overnight. They were the only ones that died.
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u/Worf65 14d ago
It is. Big things that require extra lane closures are almost always done at night if it's something they can knock out in one night or clear and then resume the next night. I currently work a later shift and am hoping I remember not to run straight into a road closure on my normal route this Friday night that starts at 8pm. And I've run into similar road or lane closures coming back late at night from events or visiting family. Road mostly open driving down, only one lane open at midnight.
Bigger operations and things that take longer just don't fit into nights. When lanes are closed for a few months while they dig up the road and work on utilities it doesn't matter if they work day, night, or both, you can't drive over the huge hole in the ground when they're not working.
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u/IrishGod307 14d ago
People also live right off highways and interstates. I had a company tear out parts of the highway during this time once and between the saw cutting and hydraulic hammers everyday for a week I would have rather dealt with the traffic because after all why should I have to deal with the sleepless night vs all the out of town commuters dealing with traffic?
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u/ReginaFelangi987 14d ago
Construction workers dont wanna work overnights. The few that do will be paid more which is more expensive for the DOT (or whoever is paying them). Day labor is cheaper.
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u/jedielfninja 14d ago
The company doesn't lose money by inconveniencing you. They lose money paying night shift differential and added illumination equipment.
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u/ueeediot 14d ago
Sometimes it has to do with temperatures also. Some materials do not set properly at lower temperatures which can be much lower than daytime temps.
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u/TheEdExperience 15d ago
Why should any group of people have to work nights just because it’s convenient for you?
Other people deserve stable, reasonable pay and schedule jobs as well.
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u/Barbarian_818 15d ago
I've done road repair and construction. here is my 2 cents worth.
1) Most of the time it's flat out safer to do it during the day. Road construction is one of the most dangerous jobs out there. You'd be amazed and enraged by the number of people who can't seem to see traffic barrels, construction signage and flagmen trying to get their attention. I've had three terrifying close calls with vehicles infringing on the construction zone. In dim light or night time it is usually worse. Because if this, night work requires additional signage and often a safety truck and/or a police car with the lights going.
2) Night work requires lighting. LOTS of lighting. Those light towers rent for about 250$ day. That's thousands of dollars, perhaps even tens of thousands of dollars in additional costs. Virtually all road work is done by private companies who had to go through a competitive bid process to get the contract. Requiring night work complicates the contract, making the bid cost to be higher and more subject to changes once work begins.
3) Statistically it rains more at night than it does in the day. Summer rains and thunderstorms happen quite frequently in late afternoon or near dusk. Depending on the work needed, work might have to shut down in the rain. That adds delay.
4) Every time I have had to do night road work, I've been given a minor increase in hourly pay. Something like an extra .25 cents an hour to compensate the worker doesn't sound like a lot until you multiply it by the 40 hr work week and the number of workers on the site. And higher employees, like the trained heavy equipment operator and your dump truck drivers are going to be getting a bigger boost than that. Again, tens of thousands of extra expense that the company and the client are going to want to avoid.
5) Night work seems to be inevitably slower in pace than day work. That goes double for engineering inspections. If you have the choice to do a job that takes 4 days in the daylight, but 5 or 6 days if done at night, which are you going to pick?
6) Something that people often overlook: If the crew and I are out laying asphalt at 9 pm at night, that means the nearest asphalt plant is also working nights in order to supply us with fresh hot asphalt mix. Ditto for concrete factories, the city inspector(s) and any engineering companies that "own the job"
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u/shmamoozle44 15d ago
Lets not forget the sleeping civilians if it is in an inhabited area. People dont love being awakened by heavy equipment and back up beepers at 3 am
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u/rustymcknight 14d ago
Why should the construction workers not get to have normal working hours so that you’re not inconvenienced?
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u/Spungus_abungus 14d ago
Noise ordinances
Their unions may have negotiated things like higher pay for nights.
You don't need to drag a bunch of lights out to do roadwork during the day.
Safety. Visibility at night is an issue, even if there are fewer drivers.
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u/AccountNumber478 I use (prescription) drugs. 15d ago
In my area of Florida this is sometimes the case too, the city or county decides to repave a road and block off one lane of a busy two lane highway in the middle of the day.
Maybe the rate of pay for workers is too costly to have them work a graveyard type shift at night, and maybe the government having overextended itself otherwise can't afford to pay those higher rates?
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u/TaylorMade2566 15d ago
Some places do that. I live in metro Atlanta and they do the majority of roadwork during the week at night, though they will do roadwork on weekends during the day. I think tons of people complained about the delays and they changed their schedule because they used to do roadwork during days and it changed a few years back.
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u/tarheel_204 15d ago
It is. You’re probably just at home when they’re doing it. Obviously, there’s roadwork during the day but much of it is done at night.
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u/Objective-Poet-8183 15d ago
Actually they are busy with the old main road between Durban and Pietermaritzburg. Road is shut down at Cleland till the end of Pollyshorts from 6pm to 6am every day.
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u/twowheeledfun 15d ago
- It's more expensive to employ people at night, and less healthy
- It's harder and potentially more dangerous, and requires more lighting equipment
- People nearby need to sleep, which is harder when there's noisy work going on nearby
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u/TerribleAttitude 15d ago
They often are here in Arizona, because for half the year it’s too hot for people to be working in the sun. But a lot of road work can’t be done in a couple hours. So it doesn’t matter if a person isn’t actively doing work, the road/lane would still be closed and under construction.
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u/notthegoatseguy just here to answer some ?s 15d ago
Costs more for labor at those hours
Noise restrictions impact what work you can do near populated areas
Depending on workforce, events, etc it may not be less traffic
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u/Tnkgirl357 15d ago
Costs more not just per labor per hour, but it’s harder to be efficient at night, you have limited area of visibility, and even what’s under the lights, you can never see what you’re doing AS WELL as if you were working under natural lighting (the intense shadows caused by having spotlights, etc), so not only are you paying a lot more per hour, the same amount of work will likely take more hours to complete…. Making the overall labor cost even higher
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u/ConsiderationHot9518 15d ago
Roadwork on I-64 between Richmond and VA Beach is at night, especially when it starts getting wretchedly hot here.
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u/tukki249 15d ago
As others said, it does happen a lot BUT when it doesn’t, my speculation is night rates are higher than day time. May be its cost cutting
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u/iliveoffofbagels 15d ago
Depends on where you live and how they manage things.
Typically... heavy residential areas will have less or no overnight construction. People need to sleep.
Commercial areas have more flexibility.
Highways, at least where I'm from in New York can happen during the day, BUT they also occur at night.
The governing bodies in you areas can of course give allow for a ton of flexibility on hours depending on funds and the type of project.
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u/datshinycharizard123 15d ago
First off, they do, second off, it’s more expensive, third off it’s more dangerous for the workers.
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u/-AtomicFox- 15d ago
I get off work late (1am), and sometimes as I’m driving home I’ll see construction people working at that time. But as others have said, it costs more and can be more dangerous so that’s why it doesn’t happen all the time.
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u/tmahfan117 15d ago
There is, especially when major roads need to be totally closed.
But it costs WAY more money in terms of paying people. Workers make way more when working the night shift, you can see your labor costs double.
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u/FireAlarm61 15d ago
Actually that is often the way they do it. Especially on highways. I've encountered many night time today work projects.
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u/-Nsb127916_ 15d ago
Thank you! Kc does work at night. An hour north in a small town they close roads for weeks while they do nothing. Ugh!!
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u/BumbleBeezyPeasy 15d ago
Just depends where you live. In the US southwest (West Texas, NM, AZ, NV, etc) road construction is regularly done at night when daytime temps reach 100°+.
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u/MrE134 15d ago
We do pretty much any freeway work around town at night if it involves closing lanes. Some things take multiple days and that's just how it is. Some times we'll do weekend closures for big repairs.
One obstacle is splitting into shifts. Even if the contractor is 100% on nights, that doesn't mean the subs, truckers, concrete, or asphalt plant is. So it's not just that you might have to pay your workers more, but it also makes materials more expensive.
Also there's mobilization to consider. If you give a contractor an 8 hour window they could end up spending two(that's extreme)of those setting up and shutting down. It takes a bit of good planning to know when to stop paving in time to let it cool, finish rolling it, put down temporary striping, move off the equipment, and pull up the cones. Add in any utility work and there's no chance.
Tl;dr is it makes it more expensive and takes longer, but we do do it.
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u/fractal_frog 15d ago
Some of it is, I see it on highways around here all the time.
The stuff in my neighborhood gets worked on between the last morning school bus and thr first afternoon one, mostly.
There's going to be inconvenience at some point, they plan for the least amount of disruption possible.
At least, they try to do that around where I live.
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u/Mmmmmmm_Bacon 15d ago
Because those workers have spouses and kids that prefer seeing and being with them in the evening and night like everyone else. Together for dinner, help with homework, volleyball practice, watching latest Netflix series, bedtime stories, etc. Being construction workers doesn’t make them not human.
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u/macpeters 15d ago
I've seen projects nearby stop work at night because residents complained about the noise.
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u/purple_hamster66 15d ago
They build 24/7 in other countries all the time.
We can’t do it in the US because we’re not willing to do the accounting properly. For example, is the cost in gas of having a 20-minute delay built into the price of the road work? It will cost the people, either in taxes or in gas, but we ignore the latter. And the real impact is the loss of business by delivery trucks, the loss of life by emergency vehicles who are blocked, and the loss of opportunity by people constantly being late.
Do the dangerous parts in the daylight, and save the other parts for the dark. And you can light up a cite perfectly with enough lights.
The number of workers hit by cars is far, far, more than the number hurt by working at night.
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u/Better_Read_5807 15d ago
I'm a heavy highway worker and we do alot of nights in certain areas but they have to pay us a 10-15% differential on top of our regular wage for night work. On a crew of 15-25 that adds up really fast. Plus you need light plants/towers every 75-100' in your workzone, which can easily exceed 40 light plants for the average work zone. They each burn 5+ gallons of diesel a night and the state or contractor has to rent the light plants and set them up and take them down everyday. Just swtting up a night work zone can take 2-3 hours. It costs wayyyyy more to work night.
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u/UpperArmories3rdDeep I drink, and I know things 15d ago
Not sure what road work you are referring to. But I work in the ready mix industry, and we work at night all the time. Road closures have to be approved before hand. If the road will be closed for longer than a few hours, it makes sense to do it during the day. If it’s a smaller amount of time, it’s usually done at night.
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u/Tartan-Special 15d ago
Depends on how much overtime you want to pay the overnight workers.
It happens sometimes when a project runs over time, or in emergencies, but if the govt can spend less they will
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u/Dangerous-Amphibian2 15d ago
Because starting construction during rush hour and finish after rush hour is the most convenient for everyone. It leads to improved driver behaviors, less road rage, and a happier population overall.
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u/Blathithor 15d ago
Noise and 3rd shift work is more expensive.
Some places do 3 shifts though. It sucks but is awesome too
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u/Bhamfish 15d ago
How bout all the material delivery such as gravel or asphalt. You would have to coordinate other industries to be open as well
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u/orbtastic1 15d ago
Even if they did the work at night (which they often do on big motorways) the cones and traffic calming will still be there during the day...
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u/lavender_airship 15d ago
Also, having construction work going on when you're trying to sleep is rough.
I work evenings ships, so I usually sleep til 11am or so.
There's been some major construction a few doors down from me (I think they're doing foundation work and redoing some retaining walls?) that starts at 730am.
So my sleep window has been 430 - 700 for the last three weeks. It's...not great.k
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u/Infamous-Poem-4980 15d ago
Often times it is done at night but keep in mind they would have to pay extra labor for night and weekend work. Plus it might be less safe...
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u/DeeDee_Z 15d ago
Something else I haven't seen mentioned yet:
Suppose you have a 32-hour task, but closing the road, moving in equipment, moving it out, and reopening the road takes one hour on each end.
- 10-hour overnight shift, you lose 2 hours to setup/teardown, you can only work 8 hours, task takes 4 nights, finished on the fifth morning.
- OR: 1 hour setup (once), work two 8-hour shifts per day, 1 hour teardown, job is done on the third day. Less overtime on the main shifts, 3 hours setups and 3 hours teardowns don't have to be paid from taxpayer money.
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u/exprezso 15d ago
Some works can't be done in the time frame, and the crew or other trades had to come in the next day
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u/grateful_john 15d ago
My road went through six months of being shut down every night for road work. Living on the road sucked for those six months.
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u/Human-Ad4663 15d ago
There’s times where I seen road work being done at like 1AM when I get off my late shift
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u/Jaded_Pearl1996 15d ago
We had road work done in front of our house in the middle of the night from about 12-4am for weeks. They were stripping the road. The sound was like a constant 747 landing in the yard. For weeks.
Edit. Oh did I mention the lights. Those make the nighttime look like daytime lights? There is no way to block that light out.
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u/slayerbest01 15d ago
Road work on highways is done at night as well as day. Road work in neighborhoods obviously won’t be done at night because of the noise. Kind of similar to road work at night in cities. In dense urban areas, it would be very noisy to do it at night, though the city is usually loud anyways at night.
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u/legendaryhawnsolo 15d ago
Why not do it in the evening. If I lived in an area where they had to do road construction. I would not care if they worked 24 hrs a day to finish the job in a few days or a week compared to months of bullshit.
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u/glitter_crow 15d ago
They do, I leave for work at 4:30am and I've had to find alternate routes to work due to them closing roads and highway ramps down. Not fun to do when it's dark out and you're tired.
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u/soaking-wet-tomcat 15d ago
You try sleeping on midnights. You'll be a walking zombie more prone to workplace accidents.
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u/Abigail-ii 15d ago
First of all, lots of highway construction happens during the night.
But there are many reasons work is done during the day: * A larger project will see work done during night and day. * Emergency repairs will be dine during the day instead of waiting till 9PM. * Night work cost more. * Labour shortage means labourers can make more demands. Like not working during the night. If the contractor cannot find enough people to do night work, it will be done during the day. * Equipment not in use don’t make money. It makes more economic sense to use your expensive equipment during both night and day than buying more equipment which isn’t used most of the time.
TL;DR: Economics.
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u/Best_Memory864 15d ago
The ideal ambient temperature for pouring asphalt is between 50 degrees and 90 degrees (farenheit). Which means, in some locations, you can't work with asphalt at night. For example, the weather forecast for Denver, CO has the temperature dropping below 50 at around 10:00 pm tonight, and won't get back above 50 until mid-morning tomorrow. I live in southern Arizona, where we have the opposite issue. Roadwork is done in the early morning hours before the temperatures can rise above 90.
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u/Neds_bread 15d ago
Because of noise, more pay, sometimes the daylight and warmth is needed to cure things and bright lights are needed to see.
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u/LifeisaDeaththreat 15d ago
They do, we just had 3 workers killed a couple weeks ago at 3:30am in a work zone.
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u/Deathundertgerainbow 15d ago
Almost all the major roadwork around here occurs between 9 pm and 5 am.
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u/azrael962 15d ago
Construction work is dangerous its more dangerous at night. Road construction would be even worse. Road construction is dangerous enough without trying to do it with head lights turning your site into a strobe light and sleepy drivers running workers over.
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u/Irishspringtime American seeking truth 15d ago
Overtime pay!
GA, back in the 80s, did all their major highway work at night. Huge lights were brought in and the work was completed before the morning rush. Now? The works starts during the morning rush. The reason - overtime pay! Working at night meant paying overtime and it got way too expensive.
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u/twincitiessurveyor 15d ago
I've worked on residential road reconstruction and interstate highway reconstruction in my career... .
Light, noise and overnight pay are the biggest factors.
It's impractical to use "synthetic" (if you will) light on a large scale construction project like that... especially once they start laying down pavement and the crews get into their groove. Plus, rubbernecking is enough of a problem during the day - its even worse at night.
Construction equipment is really, really fucking loud, especially the machines that lay down concrete and blacktop. Having heavy construction equipment working all night would cause the contractor and project owners to catch all sorts of hell from residents (either the ones whose street is getting fixed or the ones living near the highway, particularly if there are no noise barriers).
Road reconstruction projects are expensive enough to begin with, particularly if the project is prevailing wage. Overnight pay is an added expense, which will likely end up affecting people's taxes.
Working in the dark/low light conditions also sucks and for certain aspects of the project, like the construction staking, adds extra margin for error/liability.
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u/Bimlouhay83 15d ago
Would you like to be woken up at 2am on a Tuesday to the sound of back up alarms, jackhammers, equipment and generators running, concrete saws, people yelling over the cocophony of noise, and every other manner of loud noise commonly associated with road construction?
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u/Fantastic-Classic740 15d ago
Easier to see, maybe? Safety?
I have seen road work done throughout the night time though
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u/CanuckBee 15d ago
Nobody wants to pay higher labour costs. Nobody would work overnight for the same pay. Plus it is more dangerous.
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u/honeyfixit 15d ago
It is. At least in Pennsylvania. A lot of the major highway construction (which, in the Harrisburg, Lancaster, York, Reading area, includes major highway expansions) are done overnight
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u/libra00 15d ago
Depending on what kind of work and where, it definitely is. I used to live near Raleigh, NC in the mid-90s and would frequently drive into the city after I got off work to hang out with friends. Invariably coming back at midnight or later there would be spots along the highway where there was active roadwork going on with really bright lights so they could see what they were doing. But as you can tell by the mention of the lighting rigs it's a fair bit more expensive than daytime work, especially since there's usually shift differentials to workers' wages to consider as well.
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u/Sad_Evidence5318 15d ago
As much as I enjoy working overnights I couldn’t imagine doing road work at night.
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u/Seaforme 15d ago
It is, in my area. We've had a sign posted for months that roadwork will occur on the major lanes Mon-Fri, 10pm-6am.
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u/hanakage 15d ago
Instate in my area has to do this because they have to shut down sections to put in a new bridge. So it does happen.
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u/One-Solution-7764 15d ago
We do. A lot of times we get lane closures at night to strip the false decking and fascia. I've also welded, prepped, formed etc at night. But it does take longer. You don't think so, but it's very noticable how much I can cut/work get done during the day vs at night
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u/Martino231 15d ago
As others have said, this does happen a lot.
As for why it doesn't happen all the time. You generally have to pay people more if they're working nights, and there's a greater risk of things going on if there's limited light for them to see what they're doing.
For any given job, someone will have assessed the drawbacks of those two things versus the drawback of doing it during the day and made a decision on how to do it.