Stopped for Road Work

@Amir: Thank you. At the risk of being political again, the "contracting" business is notoriously corrupt. I once met an engineer who told me he quit TXDOT because their relationship with contractors was so corrupt he couldn't stand to work there. He had numerous stories of contractors cheating the state with official acquiescence. In my own personal experience with contractors, both in the military and in civilian life, I have encountered only one that I didn't know to be crooked (he may have been, but in his contacts with me, I saw no evidence of it). My cynicism leads me to suspect that the situation you describe was the product of some kind of cost-plus contract where payment was tied to how long "X" number of lanes were out-of-service.

@Rabbit: One possible reason is some kind of safety rule, but I'm more inclined to suspect a cynical explanation, as I've worked with any number of contractors and I've never seen one yet that gave a damn about worker safety. My guess would be that the contractor gets paid extra for doing it this way. There is probably some bidding clause where the contractor gets paid disproportionately more if he claims that he has to shut down traffic and use pilot vehicles.

@Richard Irwin: Opps, I forgot to use the reply icon once again. Thank you. There are often coned off roads here where no work is being done. In most states, traffic fines are increased --usually doubled-- in "work" areas. The plus side in this state is that the law reads: "fines doubled WHEN WORKERS ARE PRESENT."