Road construction frustration leads to call for 24/7 work. It’s not that simple.

Bottlenecks that have developed at Twin Cities road construction sites this summer have some impatient motorists and even a state legislator suggesting the Minnesota Department of Transportation keep its contractors on the job around the clock to get jobs done faster.

While that seems like a plausible solution, it’s not that simple, says Tim Worke, CEO of the Associated General Contractors of Minnesota, the state’s oldest and largest commercial construction trade association, which includes members who fix the roads.

“We live in a culture of immediacy” and “tend to think that it’s easy to do this continuously,” Worke said.

Road construction is physically demanding, with workers putting in long hours in all kinds of weather while constantly exposed to additional safety risks posed by inattentive motorists, Worke said. That, combined with increasing pressure from the public for uninterrupted travel, is quickly plunging the industry into a mental health crisis.

Men working in construction have about a 75% higher suicide rate than men in the general population, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Fifty-six out of every 100,000 male construction workers died by suicide in 2021, compared to 32 per 100,000 male workers in all industries, the agency said.

In 2022, 5,095 construction workers died by suicide, according to the Center for Construction and Research. That compares to 1,075 who died from a construction work-related injury, data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed.

Those numbers are alarming to Worke, who said it underscores just how much the conversation about the well-being of workers gets lost in the conversation.

If not addressed, Worke said it will become tougher to attract workers to the industry, leaving nobody to work on the roads.

It’s not that MnDOT doesn’t ever do work at night, said spokeswoman Anne Meyer. Crews will often patch potholes, fix road blow-ups, install bridge beams and wash the Lowry Hill Tunnel in the darkness of night to minimize impacts to motorists.

For larger construction projects, however, nobody wants pile drivers and loud machinery running nearby while they are trying to sleep.

“We take into consideration how the work may impact people who live in the area, so we do our best to limit noise or light that causes a burden to neighbors during overnight hours,” Meyer said. “Working during the dark is less safe for crews and more costly.”

Worke said the best way to carry out a project, keep workers safe and reduce costs is to completely shut down a road for a few months, eliminating the need to build temporary lanes, bypasses and bridges, such as on the long-running I-494 project through Richfield and Bloomington.