We’ve yet to see the survey, but we’re willing to bet that the majority of Washingtonians would find road construction at 3 a.m. preferable to road construction at, say, 4:30 p.m. on a Friday. That is, until there’s so much construction that the one time you need to be on the interstate at midnight, you can’t actually move.
That night is not far off in Fairfax County’s Providence District, Supervisor Linda Smyth, D-Providence, said at a county board meeting on Tuesday.
“It’s going to reach the point where we’re wondering how many more roads we can close through the night around here before it’s backed up to the morning rush hour,” she said (to the slight chagrin of fellow board members who wouldn’t mind seeing a few more road improvements in their districts).
Smyth’s district includes the construction-besotted Tysons Corner area. She pointed specifically to the simultaneous nighttime closures of Interstate 66 and Lee Highway, one of which often is the alternative for the other.
And then there’s the noise factor: “I don’t know how anyone in my district is going to sleep at night because of all the [roadwork] we have going on,” she said.
Smyth’s fellow board members sympathized a little bit, but failed to see the alternative – more daytime construction – as viable.
“I don’t think anyone wants to see nighttime construction go away,” said Supervisor Jeff McKay, D-Lee, chairman of the county’s transportation committee. “But we do have to be smart about it.”
