Digging up the road. Again…
It absolutely astonished me the first time I saw a team of diggers came to dig up the road not more than a week after it had been freshly repaved. They did their job and roughly patched over the hole leaving a beautiful street with a large uneven blemish. When I see these things now it doesn’t phase me at all.
It seems that each essential service is responsible for connecting to any new development. And these services typically run down the middle of the road. Most streets are a patchwork of different service entry scars, even the recently paved ones.
A road not far from us is having high speed data cables excavated into it on both sides. Apart from the disruption to traffic, the final surface now has motor scooter hazardous bumps all over it.
During digging they cover the trench with large steel plates. These were always recycled ship hulls but more often these days appear to be raw steel plate. In the 60’s Kaohsiung had a large ship dismantling industry and old ship steel can be found quite often around Kaohsiung.
Here in Fengshan not far from us a major works is under-way that has consumed half the road and part of the intersection. The adjacent clothing store make good of a inconvenient situation.
The Koahsiung-Pingtung bridge over the Goaping river is having two new sections added. A span of the current bridge apparently collapsed a few years ago. They started building the new bridge then ran out of funds and construction halted for a year or so. It is now proceeding quite fast and should be complete soon.
And here the road-side mannequin with articulated arms warns motorists to slowdown. I suspect he is as effective as a real person and no-one takes any notice.
Update:
The road badly repaired after being excavated down both sides was resurfaced in June 2008. They smoothed out all the bumps and now make motorscootering as easy as prior to the roadworks. (Picture below)
[…] Shan Ding Lu has photos of roadworks. […]
Hello Stephen. Long time no see
I think this may be a phenomenon adopted from the West whereby the introduction of fresh, smooth paving is actually purposed as a definitive signal to the public that extensive underground work is about to be performed there. And it is standard that the crews that lay the first paving are not the same crews that lay the patch work - in fact, if I’m not mistaken, I believe this may even be a rule defined by the GAAP, or Global Association of Asphalt Pavers 
Anyway, such is very common in Phoenix, Arizona, USA.
[reply to this comment]
Stephen reply on April 7, 2008:
Thanks Derrill. Indeed, long time no see.
I do remember the Phoenix road teams were good at digging up the roads. Those GAAP rules go something like this;
“To ensure future road users are grateful and ever aware of the maintenance teams existence, the patch must NOT be smooth and seamless.”
And;
“Be certain the patch does not overlap the existing road surface as this will prevent potholes and bad weather wear”
[reply to this comment]
I love the dummy - in Melbourne they have 4 humans doing the same job - it always seems such a waste!
[reply to this comment]
Stephen reply on April 7, 2008:
At least a human operator can abuse the cars when they don’t slow down. With 4 they might accost you. Where-as this guy just holds his wry smile.
[reply to this comment]
I don’t know about the roads in Phoenix, but the roads in Taiwanese are constantly torn up by such crews and their work is shoddy at best. Government largesse? Always amazes me that the Taiwanese can build the world’s best notebook PCs but can’t create a road as smooth as that I have experienced in most other parts of the world (e.g., Malaysia, USA, Europe). I also think the poor roads in Taiwan are due to weak traffic authorities that don’t enforce truck weight restrictions. One hopes the new KMT Administration will adopt global best practices in this area.
[reply to this comment]
Stephen reply on April 8, 2008:
I have seen a number of truck weigh checks recently. Rather, we passed 20 or 30 overloaded trucks parked along a long stretch of road as someone had warned them a weighing inspector was up ahead. Perhaps the traffic authorities are weak. Will or can the KMT do anything about this? Lets wait and see.
[reply to this comment]