Keeping Road Construction Safe

[Mark Blacknell]

So last week, I posted a Clarendon Cycles piece about the dangerous conditions that road construction created on Quincy (including a video demonstrating the danger). My editor at Patch followed up with the head of Arlington’s transportation department, resulting in what I thought was a pretty fair presentation of the challenges faced by a busy community with fiscal constraints. Today I posted another column in which I suggested that if Arlington wants to move beyond traditional transportation (i.e., cars), it’ll have to move its road construction safety standards as well.

Now, with the very important acknowledgement that (almost) none of us are engineers, I’m interested in your thoughts on low-to-no-cost improvements that local governments could make in how they deal with road construction. For example, if a contractor is going to leave a parallel cut in the road, why can’t it be spray painted orange along its length? Your ideas?

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