This time of year—now that winter has settled in and the snowplows have replaced the orange cones—road construction finally quiets down, but around here it still feels like it never really ends. It almost becomes background noise, like the weather. You don’t even question it. You just assume cones, reduced speed limits, maybe a lane closure or two, and some guy in a fluorescent vest who looks like he’s been standing in the same spot since 1997.
And as I headed west this morning, that theme held true. Waze lit up my phone with its usual friendly warning: “Delays due to construction ahead.” Of course. Why wouldn’t there be?
The funny thing is, if you ask anyone around here how often a particular road is under construction, they’ll almost reflexively say “Always.” Always! As if the same two miles of Thruway have been torn up for the last twenty-six years. My wife and I used to joke about a bridge on the way to our kids’ college that we swear was under construction for twenty years straight. Now, was it literally twenty years? Probably not. But that’s how it felt.
But here’s the thought that started to form as I cruised down the Thruway this morning:
It’s not that they’re always working on the same patch of road.
It just feels that way because they’re always working on some patch of road.
There’s a difference.
The road is long. There are miles and miles of pavement out there, and beyond the pavement there’s guardrail replacement, signage upgrades, drainage work, rumble strips, sound walls, painting lines, repaving shoulders, ditches and culverts, new exits, redesigned on-ramps, EZ Pass sensors, bridges that need waterproofing, bridges that need resurfacing, bridges that need everything. The simple truth is that a modern road is a complicated piece of engineering—and every part of it ages.
So while it may feel like you’re seeing the same orange cones in the same locations every summer, there’s a decent chance the crews have moved a mile or two down the road. Or they’re doing something entirely different. Maybe last year was pavement, and this year it’s railing. Maybe next year it’ll be drainage. Same general area—completely different project.
The guys doing the work know that. If you asked a construction worker to point out the bridge he worked on, he might point to five or six of them scattered across the region. Not one. Not the same one every year since high school. That project ended, and they moved on. But drivers like us—because we don’t see all the nuances—we interpret it as “never-ending” work.
And yes, construction is inconvenient. Maybe you’re running behind. Maybe traffic slows to a crawl. Maybe there’s a minor accident caused by rubbernecking. But the work isn’t done just to be a nuisance. It’s done so that the people who travel those roads—me, you, my clients, my kids—have the safest, smoothest, most reliable experience possible.
But here’s where the real realization hit me:
Our perception of “constant construction” is less about their work and more about the nature of the road itself. There’s simply a lot of road to maintain—so much so that the cycle never really ends. Something is always being worked on because something always needs to be worked on.
Which got me thinking…
Maybe the road isn’t the only thing constantly under construction.
We might feel like we’re always working on the same things in our own lives—our habits, our careers, our organization, our families, our leadership, our priorities—and because we’re looking at it day after day, we assume we’re stuck in the same place. But maybe we’re not. Maybe we’re just working on a different part of the same road.
And as I started pulling all of this together in my mind, I realized this was getting longer than one blog post. Fitting, honestly.
Because much like road construction, maintenance, and repair…
There’s always a part 2.