Road Construction is Killing My Inner Child

When I first heard the city of Hillsboro was building sidewalks up the streets by my house, I rejoiced. The street is constantly walked by many people and families with strollers, who either have to brave walking on the busy road, or brave walking on someone's lawn.

This is a good thing. Excitement and joy was felt all around. That is, until, the work got underway.

You really have no concept of what needs to be done to put in a simple sidewalk until you see it for yourself. Last year in the fall, crews came through and chopped down all the lovely ancient trees lining the road to make room for the sidewalk. It was a sad time, as those trees were very lovely, but sacrifices must be made if you want to walk to Safeway without getting hit by a car.

After they chopped the trees, they had to uproot the trunks.

Then winter came and not much was done. But in the spring, work resumed, which consisted of ripping up sections of road to lay down new water pipes. For what, you might ask? For the new fire hydrants that must be placed according to code. Oy.

Okay, we understand that once you start building something new, you have to comply with city code. I get that, and in the long run, it will be better for the street, in case someone has a housefire.

After this fiasco, they then begin ripping up the road itself. Why? Well, in order to make a sidewalk, you must first make a curb. And this curb needs to be level with the road, and obviously that was not going to happen. Since they'd already ripped up sections of the road, it must therefore be better to tear it all up and repave from scratch than to go over the old road with a quick fix.

Problem is, they take their sweet time in doing things, and sections of the road have been ripped up for many days on end, making for many a wild ride through rock-infested potholes. Once they finally get the curbs in, however, they do level out the dirt and rocks and repave. YAY! But then, they move on and rip up the next section of road.

The problem is that we live on a cul-de-sac. So the construction they're doing on the other road makes me feel like I'm "trapped" on our little street. They have been making people take detours while they work, and I'm not sure I'd be able to get back home if I left! Even DH was accosted by the lady holding the "Stop" sign the other day when he had to come back home for his forgotten wallet. She kept telling him to take the detour and he said, "But I live down that street!" It didn't matter to her, and she kept pointing at the detour. He ignored her and drove on, to which she wasn't very pleased. But what are you going to do when you LIVE THERE and they won't LISTEN TO YOU?!?

Gah.

They haven't even begun construction on the sidewalks yet, even though they've had the first curbs up for a couple of weeks at least. I have no idea when they're actually going to START the project they were commissioned to do. But you really have no concept of everything that has to be done first. Wow, what a PITA.

I hope they finish soon. Because seriously, I've recently been waiting until after 3:30 to leave my house (as they promptly finish up around 3:30), and that kinda sucks with errands to run. SIGH.

Seriously, I can't wait until they're finished. I just want to walk to Safeway. Is that so wrong?? **sobs**

~~Becka