City construction adds to chaos:

By Mackenzie Farmer:

Our yellow city is currently painted with bright orange cones nearly everywhere you drive. If you haven’t noticed the massive amounts of road construction, then I consider you either lucky or just living under a rock.

In a city where many of the drivers are awful and rude, the construction only adds to the problem making it one big, chaotic mess. It’s as if someone decided to play a cruel joke on the drivers of Potter and Randall county to see if they could anger us even more.

In what used to take usually no more than 15 minutes to get almost anywhere in Amarillo, can now take almost double the time and sometimes even more depending on the time of day. With drivers slamming on their brakes suddenly and the endless lines of cars at stoplights, it seems as if the construction will never end. So, the question is, why is there so much construction and when will it end?

According to the Texas Department of Transportation, or TxDOT, the city received a significant amount of funding to repair or replace the roads and bridges that are aging. Unfortunately, most of these projects will not be done until 2019 and if we are being realistic, will probably take longer.

I understand that safety is important and no one wants a bridge to collapse while there are drivers on it, but why couldn’t they have spaced some of the construction out? Instead of wanting to tear down and rebuild what seems like all the bridges on I-40, how about doing one or two at a time? How about not continuing to add to the chaotic mess of construction?

All the construction is only making the drivers worse. They suddenly decide to slam on their brakes even though there were warning signs a mile before the construction started. They get mad if you don’t let them in your lane because they decided to wait until the last minute to merge. There is no winning in this situation and it only makes me want to move and I’m sure I’m not the only one.

Unfortunately, the bright orange cones and angry drivers are here to stay for a while, most likely several years. So, until those awful colored objects leave, can we all agree to be a bit nicer when we are driving?

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