Orange construction signs give drivers the summer blues

If you’ve lived in Western Pennsylvania for longer than a year, you know that there are four… If you’ve lived in Western Pennsylvania for longer than a year, you know that there are four distinct seasons: almost winter, winter, still winter and road construction.

Pittsburghers go through a lot during the winter months. There’s that six-month period from October through March that is just absolutely unbearable. The gray, overcast days, the frigid nights, the blustery winds…it’s a pretty miserable time to live in Pittsburgh.

But then, sometime around the third week of April, the weather miraculously turns from total crap to perfectly beautiful, seemingly overnight. This is just to lull you into a false sense of security.

Not only will it rain for the majority of the month of May, but the beginning of May marks the beginning of road construction season. All summer long, PennDOT wreaks havoc on the roadways, making it damn near impossible to get anywhere.

This summer will mark the fifth road construction season I’ve experienced as a driver in Western Pennsylvania, and there are a few things I’ve noticed as recurring problems with PennDOT’s system.

OK. Problem. Just one. All of the problems that occur during road construction season can be attributed to the biggest problem of all: PennDOT is run by the government.

Ronald Reagan once said, “The most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.'”

Man, the Gipper really nailed it with that one.

In case you haven’t noticed, road construction in Pennsylvania is pretty inefficient. Sure, at the end of it all, they do an OK job — my car’s never fallen into a Toyota Camry-sized hole or anything — but it just takes them forever.

There’s nothing worse than sitting in your car on a major highway, surrounded by other pissed-off drivers, in the middle of summer. Two summers ago, I was sitting on the turnpike and traffic came to a dead halt. People actually got out of their vehicles and were chatting in the middle of the highway.

I kept thinking only one thing: There had best be carnage at the end of this mess.

Maybe that sounds morbid, but if I’m going to be at a standstill for more than a half hour, there’d better be a really good reason.

So needless to say, when you roll up to the “mess” 45 minutes and a quarter of a mile later, it’s pretty aggravating when you realize the eight PennDOT employees just couldn’t figure out where to lay the asphalt.

For the most part, the problem with organizations run by the government is that they eliminate the need for efficiency.

PennDOT receives an exorbitant amount of money every year. According to an article from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, approval of the most recently proposed budget could mean up to $5.1 billion for road work this year.

That money just gets placed into the hands of PennDOT, and then they go all willy-nilly for six months, “fixing” the roads with your tax dollars at their own leisurely, disorganized pace.

Instead of just handing over the money to PennDOT, the government should let four or five private companies come in and bargain. The company that can do the work the fastest, the best, the cheapest and with the least amount of inconvenience to drivers wins the bid. Introducing a bit of healthy competition wouldn’t eliminate the pain of road construction season, but it would alleviate it a bit by making it go more smoothly.

So not only would road construction season be more efficient and shorter, it would also make sure your tax dollars are being spent wisely.

So next time you’re sitting in traffic as a result of road work, do some thinking about how Ronald Reagan would settle this traffic jam.

He certainly wouldn’t send in the government to help you, so why not cut the government out of the picture to fix the problem?

It took Annie 25 minutes to get to Oakland from Shadyside. If you’re mad as hell about the road work on Fifth Avenue, e-mail her at annietubbs@gmail.com.