Road between the lines

Since I’ve been up in Fort Mac, they’ve been doing roadworks. I’m sure that I’ve mentioned it before. Its summer (well, it was) and so it’s a good time for them to be doing road works. I have no problem with that. I even acknowledge that we’ve been somewhat unfortunate as to time our arrival to coincide with the major highway upgrade that’s going on as it apparently only happens once very 6 years or so.

Its been interesting to watch how they’ve gone about this work though. The stretch of road that they’re upgrading extends over about 20km. And of course every morning and every evening virtually half of the population of Fort Mac travel over this road. So you wouldn’t do the work then, would you?

No, don’t worry, even up here they’re not that silly. They do the roadworks at night. What they leave behind is various stretches of completed pavement. Sometimes it’s the old pavement scraped back in preparation for the new surface. Sometimes it’s the first layer of the two layers of pavement that are being applied and of course at other times, it’s the final bitumen surface, both pavement layers complete.

At each of these stages, a speed restriction of 80km/hr is applied. The road is usually a 100km/hr highway. And I am fine with that because it’s important to be safe.

So far, they’ve completed the paving over some 75-80% of the road. The 80km/hr restriction extends over the entire length of the completed works.. Yep, not one small section of the road has been lifted back up to 100km/hr. And because the completed works now extends past the Suncor site, I get to do 80 km/hr all the way to work. Which would be great if that’s what everyone else did. But everyone else seems to think that because the road is usally rated at 100km/hr, they should continue to do the 110+ that they would normally do.

Hence, most of my ride is spent cringing as I watch the rear-vision mirror, waiting for some day dreaming speed maniac to give me a not so gentle shove from behind. And its one thing for to wait to be rammed by a Ford F150, but its something else entirely when you see a bus or a B-double wait until the absolute last moment to pull out and over take you.

Of course there’s a good reason why they leave the lines off the entire length of the road and don’t lift the speed.

There’s no line marking machine in Fort McMurray.

Yes, you know you’re in Hickville when they have to bring in a line marking machine and therefore have to wait until the very end of the job so that they only have to mobilise it once.