Oct. 5, 2004

Construction rant

I work in Theoretical Biology and Biophysics (T-10), which is on the corner of Diamond Drive and Eniwetok Road. Over the last six months our little parking lot is being taken over by a giant pit.

Since I often do not arrive before the few remaining spots are taken, I often park down Eniwetok Road in the parking lot on the left. But now that parking lot is closed, with a huge fence around it. Sometimes the only parking I can find is along the road. Then I am forced to walk in the road to get to work because the construction has closed off the sidewalk on both sides. The parking lot construction in my lot has resulted in the tearing up of some of the nice new sidewalk that was put this past summer. Big trucks drive down this road all the time, and I have to walk in the road, which seems very unsafe.

My other parking choice is to park in the lot below my group's buildings, near the power plant. That used to be a nice place to park, until last year when a construction crew tore up a stairway set into the hillside that we used to get to and from the building. Now we have to walk up a gravelly incline, which is a little dangerous going down. I can understand that perhaps the hill needed to be regraded, but couldn't they have put the stairs back in? They were just sunken timbers - they could have even reused the old ones.

So I don't understand why do they never seem to finish what they start? With all this concern about safety, why aren't they thinking about safety a bit more when doing all of these projects? It isn't just the construction crew. It's all the people who work near these large open holes for months on end that also should be thought about. If someone backed into that hole, there would be hell to pay. And all that is separating the cars from the hole is some orange plastic fencing.

One last thing: we have absolutely no idea what the hole in our parking lot is for. No one ever came over to our group office and explained. I tried finding some Web site to tell me about it, but I've had no luck navigating the Lab's Web site, even with a Google search. I would love to know who is accountable, what the project is for, and what the deadline for completion is.

--Rachel Richard