The worst thing about Lubbock is the current "orange-cone plague," huge construction projects underway simultaneously on all 3 of the town's major traffic arteries. Besides those, there is the MacDougal inspired orgy of housing construction that clogs the roads with contractor trucks and clouds of dust. To top it all, small isolated outbreaks of orange cone madness are likely to break out anytime anywhere in the city, with miniature road destruction projects popping up overnight to torment those drivers and businesses that have escaped the main outbreaks.
At one time, you could get anywhere in Lubbock in 15 minutes, but it now takes longer than that to get from my home on 21st street to our office on North University. (for outsiders, this is considerably less than half way across town).
The plague has spread to outlying areas during the summer months. The other day, I had to drive from Crosbyton to Lamesa through Lubbock and was TWICE delayed by contractor dump trucks that had managed to high-centeri themselves while trying to cross the median in a construction zone, thereby blocking both traffic lanes.
One of these was near Crosbyton and the road was blocked for 20 minutes as crews struggled to move the truck and its low-hanging gondola dump trailer. They finally hooked onto it with a giant roller machine and drug the truck-tractor sideways to open one lane. Its tires were probably ruined in the process. The other, near Tahoka, was stuck for about 10 minutes before the crews uncoupled the trailer and drove the tractor out of the lanes it had been blocking.
On West 19th, the plague zone extends for miles, with the orange cones blocking one lane each way right out into the dim boonies at the city limit.
Of course, Lubbock traffic engineering has done nothing to adjust its "famous forever lights" to these new conditions. I have it on pretty good authority that one of the senior traffic engineers suffers from the delusion that traffic light timing exists primarily to "calm the traffic"; that is, slow it down. I don't know if the traffic is calm, but absurdly mistimed red lights and insanely long cycle times do anything but calm local drivers.
The traffic light system does suck; but, the orange cones are just a sign of growth.