I was told once it’s because cities project the job to take say 5 weeks, so they rip it up the first week, leave it for 3 weeks, then repave the last week. And they do this so everyone gets a paycheck for the full 5 weeks. Surely there has to be a different reason?
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This is not always the case, but sometimes there are reasons to batch certain types of work. Say, for example, you’re a construction company who has to replace 5 streets. So first you do all the ripping up, then you do all the repaving. That means in between ripping up and repaving the first street, you first rip up 4 more streets in other locations.
I don’t work in construction so I don’t really know the logistics of this, but this is basically what they did when installing roundabouts in our city. Everyone was annoyed at the empty hole in the middle of their intersection, including at least one person who mindlessly drove into one.
It seems like there should be some kind of financial incentive associated with reducing the total impact to drivers, and maybe sometimes there are, but I think at least sometimes the construction companies are prioritizing the completion time of the total project over the completion time of each individual segment.
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