Subject: Trouble on the Maine Turnpike

From: "David G. Hawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: 1 Aug 1995 01:07:55 GMT

(This message is being crossposted to other related forums and 
Usenet newsgroups.)  

Several bridge construction projects on the Maine Turnpike between 
York and South Portland are causing major traffic backups this 
summer due to lane closures.  Unfortunately, the pike management is 
NOT using any backup alleviation schemes that are common elsewhere, 
such as only closing lanes during night work, or such as 
constructing temporary bypass lanes to keep all lanes open.  They 
are arbitrarily just closing lanes during the day, with no warnings,
causing massive backups that extend for miles.  

The locations of these backups change from day to day, even from 
hour to hour sometimes, so any location report posted here is 
useless.  But you should expect on average to hit about two of them 
each time you try to traverse this section.  

Perhpas the most irritating thing of all, and the thing that is most
indicative of the total arrogance of the management, is that when 
you finally inch your way through miles of backup and get to the 
work site, most of the time you see, to your utter astonishment, 
that the lane that is closed is empty!!  Usually, there's nothing in
it, no work going on there, and obviously no reason at all that it 
has to be closed!!  

-- 
David G. Hawkins

---

From: [email-masked] (Aaron Rever)
Date: Wed, 2 Aug 1995 19:37:17 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>, 
[email-masked] says...
>it, no work going on there, and obviously no reason at all that it 

Maybe the Maine Turnpike authority gets its planning ideas from 
CALTRANS... :)  That is ever-so-typical of the Los Angeles freeway 
system... <grin>

Aaron