道路工事

Very cool post! Here, we have workers who get stuff done relatively quickly. However, if you go down south just a bit to the major areas (Boca, West Palm, Miami), it takes FOREVER to complete anything. I love how the Japanese have "automated workers" as well. That's an ingenious solution which saves man power. Roads here are nice and flat with very little holes, thankfully.

I've seen this guys in action. Funny thign is that even though they are doing raodworks in a residential area, they still get one of those stick waving guys to guide the pedestrians. They even put up the 'Roadworks - 100m' away sign!

It's funny that you posted this today. This morning I was picking up my daughter from school and was almost late because there were 2 roads closed that made a 3 mile trip turn into a 6 mile trip. I hate Massachusetts

Coincidence that today was a slow day in traffic cause when I was heading home today to take care of niece and nephew, they had 2 out of 3 roads blocked off on a high way just so they could repair a fallen sign. Man, it backed up traffic big time. I was lucky, I was already in the right lane when all this happened. XD

Road works sucks badly here!
Our F**ker Ministry of development, is just a damn fat pig sucking the money of the ppl here and producing lousy work!

Almost 90% roadwork here choose to be in the peak hour! 7-9am in the morning, 4-7pm at the evening! In the night there choose to rest! Causing chaos to the traffic!

This is almost like a joke in Brazil.
People here would be happy if there were road works that were a pain in the left knee.
The thing is: There's none.

Brazilian government is occupied trying to figure out ways to steal more money from the people... they just don't have the time to care for the country, make investments on roads and transportation, or whatever that doesn't benefit their own pockets.

One of the reasons why I want to move to Japan. I once struggled and protested for a more decent government, but now I just lost hope. This country's government is just plain useless, and I can't see the day it's ever becoming better.

No exagerations here. Holes like the one Danny posted on a link there are pretty common here were I live, only without people working on it.

Roads are so poorly made, some heavy rain will create holes just as big as that, sometimes in the middle of avenues. And it sometimes takes months for government to take some action (which usually is so bad that the next rain will open the hole once again).

When they do decide to make something about streets (usually because of protests and private iniciatives), they do it on commercial hours, just to create more chaos.

you know,
it kind of looks like a festival the way you take the pictures...

Is that guy holding the sticks in the first "darth maul" picture sleeping?

ooo the light sticks seems like fun. But if they did it at night, would the noise disturb people who are sleeping.

I don't need to talk about Malaysian roadworks. Seems to take forever and always cause jams.

But I always do wonder about the road side "Jedis". Their job must be very boring and very tiring....waving their hand like that. They may fall asleep from boredom and then incoming cars will bang the road work crew. XD

I was thinking why don't we have some sorta lightsaber waving machine....that would be more practical and it will never get tired. Then I saw this post....Japan thinks of everything. ;)

nice traffic scarecrows. they should probably use a gold C3PO suit on it to make it more visible. ^^ but then again it might end up glare-blinding motorist and cause more accidents. ^^;
btw lol on the fish and chips. I often wonder why they wrap them in newspaper. does it add to the taste or do they just like to recycle. ^^
anyway regarding roadworks in the Philippines, it usually varies from extremely slow to non-existent. nowhere near the one day time limit you have there, people here would probably be happy if the efficiency was anywhere close to what they have in the UK. I've even heard of stories here on how people would fall into the sewers and drown because of some missing manhole covers.

Talk about lazyness xD, gotta love those traffic scarecrows!

Oh they are just as bad (or worse) here in the United States. They have been working on Interstate 78 for years and blew the landing strip of a year of work or so to a few. Route 100 in Pennsylvania also is still closed 95% of the way. It's just horrible.

I don't blame on road constructions in US too much. Roads in US are much larger than ones in Japan so they have to cover much more. And Japanese roads are always jam packed even without a construction or car accident. US roads are not too bad even with a construction or car accident.

It is still nice to see well organized construction sites which is on a schedule and avoiding to cause trafic jam.

Roadwork here is annoying, especially when they were doing it at the nearby high school thats right next to the exit out of town so big traffic for the small area. Construction on roads start around 7 am and end at 3 pm before the rush hour's start. But still a pain whenever I'm on the road.

Hey Danny, that might be a more specific Tokyo thing at night?
I've never witnessed any roadwork’s occurring at night except once in Nagoya when they raised large concrete sections for a new expressway. After they were raised all the rest of the work occurred during the day. Always disuptions :(
But they did leave those nice glowly flat men to warn people of possible dangers :)

Sometimes the dudes redirecting are so confusing with their instructions too for where I should go around with a bike. One told me off and called me a braindead american once :P too bad i wasnt american.

I always love CalTrans (California Transportation Department). Their construction is top notch and always on time. (sarcasm so intended)

hmm here in the lower 48.us of a its a pain in the a@# but in hawaii when i lived there road work was at night.. and one day old road, next day new road.. no fuss no muss.. i loved that.. but here in florida.. been here for 2 years...road work for the WHOLE 2 years.. sheesh.. and during the day.. at rush hour..

now if hawaii didn't take 4o years to build an interstate...>_>

Ther roadworks in japan are great! Everything flashes and is brightly coloured. By our hotel the once in shiodome, there was a huge construction project going on. I think they were making a new major road or something. No matter what time we walked past it (even at 4am) construction was busy and there was a guy with a lightsaber waving people across!

Gotta love those cutout 'traffic wavers' too!

Roadworks like laying of cables are done in stages. They do their work and then temporally cover it with road tar or metal sheets strong enough to support heavy vehicles at the end of the day before continuing the next day. Roadworks in residential areas are rarely done at night (except at expressways which are more regular) and don't last more than 1-2 days.

wow they are quick

It's so inefficient here, they slow down traffic for so long and take their friggin time. The route I drive to school has been repairing the side of the road for a little over a month already.

I think the UK has the world beaten in terms of long and useless roadworks!
I used to have to travel on a road labelled the A449 in wales to get to my school every day and in my 7 years at the school, I have NEVER known the stretch of road to be without roadworks!!

Even better! My brother went to the same school and stayed for a further 2 years and he never experienced it without roadworks either!!! And I have visited my school every once in a while to see my old teachers and friends. Last time I went was in March. Guess what? Still roadworks! I challenge anybody to try and beat that!!!

Reminds me of ridge racer all those colourful road signs :D

Japan has all the best stuff :( even the road cones are awesome. they would all get stolen in the UK :P

Road works near me always take place during rush hour, after all its the most sensible thing to do right...

I think if UK builders had to work overnight they would all strike and some government minister would be sacked. At least I think thats how it works here @_@

Those glowing cones look nice!
But I have a feeling they cost quite an amount to run considering how much electricty these cones can consume in one night.
Over here, we have blinkers on top of cones.
But usually, for the sake of saving costs, these blinkers usually gives out little or not light, or that they replace the blinkers with reflective surfaces.
Those cheapo companies, hrmph!

wao they are really on time with the schedule and fast that's GOOD (unlike here just for 5 or 6 holes on the road they take about a week to fixed them)

That's how quality job can be done when people take their job seriously.
Rather than just work for 8 hrs, don't care about anything except for $$$. (That is me... hahaha)

They had to make some improvements to the watermains by my house last year. It took them a year to do it and for the most part they worked it seemed every other day for only about 5 hrs a day it. And took two months off all together during the winter. Made a huge mess and left their work machines near the site making it almost impossible to navigate around them to get into and out of our neighborhood. To top it off they backed one of their trucks into my car at the end causing about $1400 worth of damage to my car. Their insurance covered it but still a serious pain in the ass to deal with.

Our country could really learn a thing or two bout road works in Japan. Everytime there's a roadwork around here everyone tries to avoid that part of the road coz they'll know there will be lots and lots of traffic and it goes on for days.

Love those cardboard(?) substitutes for the man holding the mini-light sabers. heheh! We could use that around here.

glowing road cones and flashing jackets, japan really is 10 years ahead of everyone else. roadwork near my place is horrible, almost everything is done during the day and they deliberately make it so that one lane isn't blocked. a nightmare for drivers

Long Island is very famous for its horrible traffic issues and half of the problems come from simply bad planning in the road work. I can't tell how many times I'm coming home at night on the LIE (Long Island Expressway) and what was a 30 minute drive became a 2 hour+ drive being stuck on side roads with no way out since all main roads get worked on at the same time. No wonder Final Destination 2 took place here.

When you come to Mexico you'll see the diference

Hey Danny, thanks for all the wonderful posts. I enjoy reading your blog everyday. Last night I ran across a post about the longest shopping arcade in Tokyo in your English blog site but today it disappeared. I only managed to find it on Google in your Japanese blog. Did you take it off from the English blog for some reason?

http://www.dannychoo.com/fauna_detail/jpn/262/Tokyo+Shopping/

roadwork here in the Philippines are unorganized and horrible and it's always a pain in the arse and it one of the main cause of traffics

here the funny thing...they have a lot of time to fix the roads during the summer time where it's dry but they always fix the roads during the wet/rain seasons XDDD

one of the conspiracy would be that construction materials tends to be cheaper during the rain season and the contractors could squeeze more money out of the government

the philippines could learn a thing or two to efficient japanese construction techniques ^^

It's not that your country's roads suck (... well maybe it does) but it's that Japan has the best roads-Period.

Where I'm at they tend to dig a large hole right in the middle of rush hour traffic, redirecting a busy highway down alleyways and then leaving it there untouched for weeks at a time because of legislation issues. It's impossible to actually get any progress done in this town. It would actually be kinda creepy if something WAS completed for once. o.O

I have to agree with AvatarStormBringer... The guy in the second picture seems really happy about his work... I mean dead tired.
What an expressive face. XD

May the Dark side of the Force be with them...!

In Puerto Rico, roadworks such a disaster. They leave their maintenance tasks(Even in the PR-66), badly incomplete; some end up with a 10-month delay, that even the speedees wanna risk their lives violating it