Question for you, When is the best time to do road work on the 2nd busiest intersection (Highway 41 and Breese wood – downtown Commercial and Main is busier yet) in Neenah?
My answer: Saturday. Otherwise midday (8am to 4pm) during the week.
City of Neenah’s Answer: Rush hour on a weekday morning.
This is the second time they’ve done minor rework during rush hour on a workday. Last time it was replacing the light bulbs in the stop lights. This time it was filling in some pot holes with asphalt.
Both of these tasks take a few hours and can easily be accomplished during the work day without affecting morning and evening commuters.
Instead they cut traffic down to one lane and create a backup over a half mile onto the highway endangering hundreds of people with a potential traffic accident.
I saw one semi truck this morning that couldn’t break in time actually – the driver pulled onto the shoulder and proceeded to pass stopped cars before he came to a stop.
I don’t mind road work, really. But at the same time I would expect some better scheduling done to prevent potential safety issues and some forethought of ‘how is this going to affect drivers?
City of Neenah – The rest of us actually want to get to work. Can you please look at our saftey before you do this again?
Update
The day after I posted this story a bus was rearended by an SUV due to the issue. Apparently it took 2 days for whatever they were doing to get done – both days requring work during rush hour. The bus was empty so no childern were hurt, the driver of the SUV was taken to the hospital with minor injuries.
