The Emperor's New Roadwork

Yesterday, on I-84 East out of Waterbury, I – along with many other drivers – encountered construction trucks with giant yellow-lighted arrows mounted on the back, instructing us to shift one lane to the right, as the left lane would be closed. I obligingly moved into the rightmost lane and crept along as other cars drifted into the middle lane from the left, their various levels of frustration showing clearly in how tentatively (or viciously) they cut in front of other cars. About a mile later, the same thing happened again; orange dump trucks indicated that middle-lane cars should move to the right again, crushing us all into a slow and annoyed queue sure to stretch on longer than many of us could tolerate.

If I hadn’t been so busy making sure no one cut in front of me, this common suffering may have caused some fellow-feeling to well up in me – but alas, I was so engaged.

When we had passed the last construction truck, I – along with many other drivers – looked curiously to the left to see what mammoth undertaking was causing such a snarl in our already tangled traffic patterns, expecting to see a crew laying pavement, or a major accident, or a giant pit where the left lane used to be. Instead, I saw…nothing. No crew members with hardhats and orange reflective-taped vests; no chain-gang cleaning up litter or mowing highwayside grass; not even another giant orange truck. Traffic quickly moved over to fill the two previously banned lanes, drivers again sorting themselves into most frustrated (left), annoyed and confused (middle), and people who always drive the speed limit, anyway (right).

Several miles down the road, near the exit I would normally take to get home, a giant yellow-lighted sign mounted on an overpass alerted us to construction on Exit 34. Being familiar with this exit, I craned my neck (from the left lane) to glance at it as I passed: again, no construction whatsoever.

Today, again on I-84, I was waylaid at a different spot for what was becoming a familiar lack of roadwork, by orange construction trucks; I noted the sign for Exit 34 construction again, this time with the addition of trucks shifting traffic into the left lanes – a dangerous proposition at that particular point, where a left-exit merge to Rt. 72 makes changing lanes tricky even under the best circumstances. I turned off the highway before my usual exit, mainly to avoid seeing another example of completely nonexistent construction being done by no one.

Now, I have long been familiar with Connecticut’s tendency to experience what I call “phantom traffic,” particularly on I-84, in which traffic bottlenecks for no apparent reason. I am acquainted with hours of sitting outside Danbury waiting for the traffic jam to break up, only to find no original cause. I suspect that much of the blame falls on the drivers at the front of this pack who shift into the left lane and find themselves driving neck-and-neck, at roughly the speed limit, with the car to their immediate right, for miles; but I have no evidence of this. It is pure speculation. Whatever the cause, phantom traffic is a fact of life in Connecticut.

Is it possible that the state has noticed this tendency as well, and is trying to make it official policy somehow?

Like having a state bird (robin), a state tree (mountain laurel), or a state motto (“Qui transtulit sustinet”), perhaps Connecticut decision-makers feel a state traffic pattern (the bottleneck) – one of the most annoying, and thus most noticeable and readily associated with a state’s identity – would engender a sense of unity in CT residents. Perhaps they hope that we Conn-natives will feel a sense of fierce loyalty and even pride as we become jammed up with drivers who only enter our state in order to exit it – in transit to New York, or Boston.

“Take that,” we’ll think, “you lousy out-of-staters.”

Or perhaps this is Governor Rell’s ingenious plan: What better way to enforce her new platform on state troopers (pro), truck safety (pro), unsafe teen drivers (anti), and to create new jobs for people whose skill set includes driving orange dump trucks very slowly and occasionally standing on the side of the road, surveying traffic and chatting?

I have to drive 84 every workday, or else face the hellish red lights of downtown Southington on Rt. 10. I hope that whatever the reason for this trend, it extinguishes itself quickly and thoroughly, and that the powers-that-be end up feeling very, very ashamed.