Quicker roadwork on Highway 401 could save lives

We’ve seen a rash of accidents in the Highway 401 construction zones resulting from traffic diverted into single narrow barricaded lanes.

The authorities’ only response to this apparent increased danger has been to erect new temporary admonishment signage: “leave space ... speed kills” to complement the other permanent Big Brother messages on the side of the road.

While such diversion is a necessary aspect of any road improvement, it seems the problem here is the extraordinary duration of the work, now in its third season. I travel this roadway often and notice a very slow pace of activity.

On a recent weekend, no work was underway at all, nobody on site and expensive construction equipment sitting dormant, not only here in Southwestern Ontario, but in other construction zones all the way up to the Greater Toronto Area.

My question to our vast provincial bureaucracy which regulates these contracts is, why do they allow what seems like nine-to-five, Monday-to-Friday banker’s hours in the schedule for completion? Dragging out the work over years.

Seems like these projects should have aggressive around-the-clock schedules with incentive clauses for enhanced performance and earliest possible completion dates.

Not only would this be safer and more convenient for the public, it would generally shorter the duration of the project and reduce the cost.

Somehow we need to speed up this job and, in this case, it would kill less.

Gregory Heil Windsor