Earthworks

19 January 2012

Interesting the different ways digging up the railways and roads is approached. The system of booking possessions and minimising disruption (even if it does not always feel like that) has led to a relatively passenger focused approach on the railways. A lot of work is done at night or in continuous, large scale bursts of work.
I mused on this as the 355 bus edged towards Brixton on Sunday. Big road works, big delays – all cordoned and coned off – but no work going on. The economic value of the wasted fuel, time and lost shopping must be immense, but does not seem to figure in the engineering economics. Why are roads different? Why don’t they work for 18 hours a day to get it all done?