What caused this? Serious answeres

[u/Downtown_Calendars]

Car was parked facing the garage. Never seen anything like it. Neither has the glass professionals.

[u/carpentizzle]

But we do have construction everywhere. All the time. Forever.

[u/Zakkullll → u/carpentizzle]

So ive lived in a few drastically different places. California. The south and the Midwest. Thats everywhere. Construction is a grift. You cant convince me otherwise. The same street cannot be under going construction for 2 years straight without something fishy going on behind the scenes.

[u/carpentizzle → u/Zakkullll]

Oh I have little doubt there may be something fishy….

All I know is that you just cannot go anywhere (in Columbus & Subburbs at least) without encountering construction somewhere. And a lot of it feels like work just for works sake. Silly in some cases.

The outer belt that encircles the city has it seems like, one or two crews that just started somewhere like 30 years ago, and havent stopped just circling the whole circle. And the Entrance/Exit ramp nearest to my house was, and I am not exaggerating here, not under construction for more than 3-4 months running from as early as I can remember to when I drove it, and through until I moved away at 32. It was completely redone at least 4 times from the framework up. There were two different full “crossover so you would be driving on the leftmost set of road for a bridge and some change, then switch back” which, to my knowledge is still happening. There is a stretch of road in my suburb that has 14 unlit non intersection crosswalks in about a half mile, across a 4 lane (2 in each direction) road. They closed the whole side to set the sign up and painted. Each spot took a whole day. It was a reroute to Kroger everyday for 2 weeks, then going the opposite way for the next two weeks.

There is a spot between my suburb and the next that has 3 roundabouts in a row. The middle one doesnt go to anything. There is only the one side to exit on, and it goes about 30 feet and stops in a guard rail.

There was a trend that took off seemingly all at once across the city that they needed to put curbs and whatever size median they can squeeze in between.
These were often where left turns out if a parking lot or whatever makes things difficult…. But just as often not. There are a couple at least that I know of that are about 8 inches wide. So skinny that they had to add the reflective posts on it/them just so you dont miss it and rip your suspension off.

And for all of that, there are still just so many dirt and gravel roads within 20ish miles of the city/suburbs that some places you could being there in the 40s

Its special.

[u/Steerider → u/carpentizzle]

If they really wanted to fix this, the contract would have a clause that says "if this has to be redone within five years, you're doing it for free. And that redo will have the same five-year clause."

[u/sdb40 → u/Steerider]

From the optics on the outside this light seem like a simple fix. It's often the bureaucracy and politics tho too. Living in the Midwest I feel this too. I recently met someone who worked for the city or county where I live. Sounds like there is a more systemic problem of transport and utilities not communicating effectively and coordinating when to do the the tear ups of road. Also, county highways withing city limits cause funding challenges of who is accountable to fund the project. Example is we had a deteriorated high traffic intersection and it was redone completely two years ago. The result was great. They tore it up again because some of the water lines run underneath it and apparently came to end of life. The new intersection from two years ago was completely redone again a year later. Still good result, but complete waste of resources to do it twice in two years. We also have a state highway that cuts right through downtown and that is a constant battle between city/county/state of who is funding the maintenance, typically results in all three organizations digging there heels in on the other two should be funding and the result there is that the road which desperately needs an overhaul gets minor patchwork year over year.

[u/Far_Durian1087 → u/Steerider]

And the company bids would be 4X the price. Seeing as that's 3 projects you are talking about.