Getting to school on time can be a struggle for high school students as is. Having a nightmare for a road doesn’t help that problem.
The infamous road construction on Devil’s Glen road has been a problem in Bettendorf for years. It’s a constant battle between man and infrastructure. The reoccurring construction is where the true problem lies.
Senior Sydney Huber lives near the street and has to drive on it everyday to get to school. “It blocks a lot of busy traffic and makes it hard for me to leave my house,” she said. Huber not only has trouble getting to school on the daily, but simply leaving her neighborhood because of the constant construction.
It seems as though a new part of the road is being worked on every time they reboot construction. Huber said they work on it frequently. “I’d say they work on the road at least 2 times per year and it’s crazy because it seems like the only road they ever work on,” she explained.
Simple problems should call for simple solutions. The road as a whole has problems like potholes, random cracks and bumps. If the city of Bettendorf could just fix the entire road, they wouldn’t have to fix parts and pieces of it twice a year.
The street is strung with traffic cones and signs directing where to drive. The original 4 lane road is now cut down to 2 lanes with cars directed to drive down the opposite side of the road. The construction workers are “fixing” the right side of the road and will soon move to work on the left side, causing more havoc by directing traffic to the opposite side of the street to drive on once more.
Senior Brandon Depover also has an opinion about the road construction on Devil’s Glen. “The construction happens way too often for the problem to not be fixed already. It should be one and done,” he said.
The city could save money if they decided to fix the entire road one time and be finished with it for good. They could also save themselves from a lot of annoyed drivers and tardy students.
