Michigan Doesn’t Schedule Much Road Construction Overnight – Perhaps It Should

Nearly any Michigan driver can tell you a story about a heinous traffic back-up caused by construction. Roadwork is a necessity of driving on our roads and highways. Eventually they wear out and need repair. But going through construction zones is almost never a breeze.

Compounding the pain of a work zone is the daily morning and evening commute. Some locations, particularly larger urban areas, schedule the most disruptive construction jobs in the overnight hours. Should Michigan deploy this strategy more often?

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When radio personality Howard Stern ran for governor of New York in 1994 he famously made the pledge to make all road work on expressways in the NYC area happen overnight.

The question of night time road work in Michigan came up recently on the Grand Rapids subreddit of Reddit with the conjecture that the city is large enough to justify the use of nighttime only projects.

Being the second largest metropolitan area in Michigan road construction is getting more and more difficult for commutes. I love that things are finally getting addressed and fixed but at some point when you take a detour for your detour because of all the road construction during your morning and afternoon daytime commutes it gets to be a problem.

READ MORE: Michigan Drivers Say There's a Road Worse Than the S-Curve for Winter Driving in Grand Rapids + Grand Rapids Was Once 'Detour City' - Do You Remember Those Heavy Construction Days?

Many agreed and some had a memory of projects that were indeed done largely after the commuting rush.

Night time road construction has happened before. The 2010 rebuild of I-196 occurred at night, adjacent to my neighborhood. A few people complained; it was fine.

The most common complaint is, not surprisingly, an issue with noise pollution experienced by those living near the work zone. Although, the argument would need to be made that living near a major highway there would likely always be noise if only the constant white noise of a freeway.

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Another barrier to nighttime road work is the likely added cost. These projects would put construction workers on odd hours as a higher rate. There would also need to be light to work be and that likely means many portable lights and the generators to fuel them.