Ah, roadworks. The mysterious phenomenon that appears only when you’re in a hurry. Need to catch a flight? Boom—lane closure. Late for an important meeting? Bam—detour. Trying to enjoy a Sunday drive? Forget it—congestion worse than a flu-ridden kindergarten.

And have you ever noticed those signs on the interstate? “Reduce Speed: Road Work Ahead.” You obediently slow down, squinting into the horizon, expecting a flurry of activity—perhaps a few guys in high-vis vests, sweating under the sun, furiously digging away to keep civilization moving. But no. Instead, there’s… nothing. Just a handful of big yellow machines parked like they’re having a lazy Sunday picnic, not a single worker in sight. No noise, no commotion, no frantic attempts to actually, you know, fix the road.

Then there’s the legendary ‘Double Fines in Work Zone’ sign. A real beauty, that one. Because of course, I obey it—I don’t fancy selling my kidneys to pay a speeding ticket—but grudgingly and with many, many questions. What work? What workers? Who, precisely, is benefitting from my compliance? Because from where I’m sitting, the only thing hard at work is the bureaucracy that came up with these rules.

Then there are the cones. Miles and miles of cones, placed with the kind of precision normally reserved for launching rockets into orbit. You just know that setting those up took at least five days, three committees, and a lunch break longer than the actual work shift. And when they finally finish a project—after what feels like a century—you realize something terrible: They’ve replaced the beautiful stretch of road, once lined with towering pines, with a soulless strip of concrete, devoid of charm, shade, or even a decent emergency shoulder stop, only to find that no matter how much road we build, there are always more cars. It’s like trying to dig a hole in water.

And when you do finally spot workers, they aren’t actually working. No, they’re standing around in a tight circle, staring at something on the ground like they’ve just stumbled upon a crashed alien spacecraft. Not one of them is holding a tool in motion. One has his hands on his hips, another is pointing, a third is rubbing his chin like a Renaissance thinker contemplating the meaning of life. And one poor soul—probably the apprentice—is holding a shovel but making absolutely sure it never actually touches anything.

What are they looking at? A buried treasure? The Ark of the Covenant? Superman’s one weakness? I’ll never know, because I’ll have moved forward by an entire six feet before I can find out, still stuck in traffic, still questioning why roadwork is always a never-ending, highly elaborate, incredibly expensive exercise in doing absolutely nothing.

So, instead of this never-ending cycle of roadworks and expansion, maybe—just maybe—we should put our collective brains together and work on something revolutionary. You know, like a Star Trek-style transporter. No roads, no traffic, no double fines. Just a simple ‘beam me up’ and you’re there. But no, that would be too easy. Instead, we’ll keep crawling along, trapped in a dystopian nightmare of road cones and phantom workers, wondering why, in 2025, we still haven’t figured out how to build a road without making everyone late.