School ends at 3:10 p.m., work starts at 3:45.

That should give me plenty of time to drive five miles and make it to work on time, right? Well, if you’re like me and your commute involves Washington Street, that’s no longer a reasonable expectation.

Since the beginning of the school year I have been consistently late to work. While taking another route sounds like it could be a simple fix, for me and many others, avoiding Washington means either heading in the opposite direction of your destination or turning down 20 different side streets. Either way, you end up just as late.

I hate road work for the same reasons we all do: the confusing signage, narrowed lanes, detours, road debris, and worst of all, getting cut off. But these issues are pretty unavoidable and come with improved infrastructure. So what am I really complaining about?

Poor city planning.

I wish I could be as unbothered as Naperville, which seems fine with causing as many inconveniences as possible, no matter how many people are affected. Looking around downtown it’s hard to see the innovative and state-of-the-art planning methods Naperville prides itself on.

For those unaware, there are two major construction projects happening around downtown Naperville right now. One is the Washington Street Bridge Replacement Project and the other is the Downtown Streetscape Project. The downtown improvements were intentionally set out in phases to minimize disruption, but that clearly hasn’t been enough. The ongoing construction has led to limited access to businesses, inconveniently redirected sidewalks, and traffic delays not just on Washington, but throughout the entire downtown area.

It didn’t have to be this way. According to the City of Naperville, monthly inspections of the bridge have been in place since 2016.

Preparations to replace the bridge have been ongoing for years, and a 15-ton weight limit was imposed in 2016 to reduce further damage from heavy loads.

What baffles me is why the city chose to merely limit damage to the bridge when they already knew it needed a full replacement. Instead of acting sooner, they waited until 2022, when the bridge failed an inspection and they were “directed” to reduce it to a single lane. Because of this delay, construction didn’t start until the spring of 2023—seven years after the bridge was first flagged as deteriorating.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m no construction expert, and I know the bridge needed to be torn down at some point. That part was unavoidable.

But while the city’s plan to do all the work at once might seem practical to avoid future disruptions, the process should have been expedited to avoid overlapping with the Downtown Streetscape Project. Delays have already pushed the bridge completion from October to spring 2025, creating more prolonged traffic issues than necessary.

I understand the hurdles municipal governments face in starting large construction projects. But hypothetically, if you started in 2016, gave the city a year for planning, two years for designing a contract and securing funding, six months for pre-construction, two more years for construction itself and one more for pandemic-related delays, you’d be done around 2021.

The city isn’t 100% to blame. The Illinois Department of Transportation has been managing the bridge project and the city itself has been more than frustrated with the delays and lack of progress. So maybe I’m being a little harsh. Maybe the city had no clue the bridge wouldn’t pass inspection, or maybe the IDOT wouldn’t release funding until it was absolutely necessary. But here’s the thing: the city has been designing and planning the streetscape improvements since 2011.

The next time Naperville decides to take on another construction project of this size, I hope they consider the impact it has on its residents. I hate to say that in the past year I’ve avoided downtown Naperville at all costs, this construction should never come at the expense of those who live and work in the heart of our community.