Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Danger! Perpetual Road Construction

Well, as any true Miami native knows--it's not Miami unless the roadway you are driving on is under some kind of construction. The epidemic of constant roadway construction only seems to get worse and worse as the time goes on.

Here's an example of what happened to Tony and I returning home after a fun night out at a local restaurant this past Friday. We are driving north on LeJeune/8th Avenue when we hit some major traffic and come to a complete stop. We know there is heavy construction on LeJeune in front of MIA, but that's been the case for years. Nothing new. Well, we eventually see that LeJeune is closed to all through traffic. There were no signs warning us of the road closure up ahead and subsequently we are forced to reroute onto the 836, which is void of detour signs.

Ok...no biggie. We're natives. We know our way around. But what about tourists?

It was appalling that on a Friday night, whoever is in charge of deciding when construction gets done, would actually choose that time to close such a major thoroughfare.

It's ridiculous.

Well...we continue on our way and the exit off of the 836 that we wanted to take was also closed. Imagine that.

We had to drive all the way to the Palmetto Expressway and come back towards LeJeune via the NW 36th Street exit--which is sort of like driving in a "u" then cutting across the top part--a HUGE detour!

I'm not sure if these closures were announced ahead of time, but there still should have been plenty of signs giving drivers enough forewarning in order to allow them to decide on alternates. Instead, the lack of signs just dumped drivers on a highway with additional closures in the middle of the night. What a wonderful situation to find oneself in.

Oh...and it was raining!

My advice, get one of those GPS systems in your car, if you're a tourist--and even for people that live here that might not be a bad idea--or just be aware of different routes you can use to get to your destination.