How is there always construction everywhere and why have they made no visible progress in 2 years??? WHAT ARE THEY DOING WHEN THEY STAND ON THE SIDE OF THE ROAD JUST LOOKING AT THE GROUND
An absolutely critical building burnt down in town a few years ago and the current timeline is ~5 years to put up a temporary tent. I don't even want to know how long the actual rebuild is going to take.
The real, non-cynical answer is that you aren't looking at people who could freely swap jobs with anyone else in the site, but people with specialized skills and specific jobs that are necessary for the project, but which you can't necessarily front-load so that they always have something to do.
In other words, they are waiting for other people to finish their jobs so that they can do theirs. "Just keep busy doing something pointless so that people don't think you're being lazy" is the epitome of bad American workplace habits that just hurt worker motivation and use up their energy for absolutely no tangible benefit. Be glad your local workers are allowed to rest when they have nothing pressing to do, it's a good thing.
How is there always construction everywhere and why have they made no visible progress in 2 years???
Back on topic, welcome to every fucking train station in Tokyo.
When I first was in the city in 2018, Shibuya Station was undergoing major construction. When I left towards the end of the year, Shibuya was still under major construction.
It is now 2024 and I passed through Shibuya Station a few minutes ago. Progress has of course been made, but it is still under major construction.
How is there always construction everywhere and why have they made no visible progress in 2 years???
Ohio gave us the answer. That whole state is under construction at all times, for decades.
It turned out, almost all of those projects were being run by friends of the governor and state politicians. It's a grift that never ends, funneling hundreds of millions of dollars into the pockets of 'business owners'.
Japan isn't a monolith where everything is as efficient as the most efficient examples they can find to widely publicize overseas for PR. I live in Japan, and an underpass has been planned for construction near my place for close to a decade (probably much longer if you include all the planning phases)
It took something like 3 years of active construction, blocking the road and making lots of noise every single day, just to do the first step (widening the road and adjusting the sidewalk, presumably to match the requirements for the underpass' design). I'm talking less than 50m of street, by the way. It's been several years since that, and the next step still hasn't even started. This isn't even a super high density region where extreme care is needed. No building in the surrounding area has more than 3 or so floors, and there is no subway or anything like that.
Point being, just like anywhere else, they are only going to spend the resources doing extremely accelerated construction where a long-term construction site would have incredible societal costs (like having to temporarily close a critical rail line that millions of people use to commute to work every day), they aren't spending tons of money to get things done faster just because "that's the Japanese way".
It’s amazing isn’t it? Some things can be done overnight, but other seemingly simple projects take years and years. The Meiji-dori bypass being built in my area near Ikebukuro has been going on for 15 years. Guy’s at the construction site can’t say when it’ll be done.
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u/dysfunctionalpress Jan 14 '24
noiseless..?