I got interviewed by Rupa Shenoy of Minnesota Public Radio a few weeks ago:

Where’s the logic of construction season?:

“There are those who ask if all of this is necessary. David Levinson, a civil engineering professor at the University of Minnesota who has worked with MnDOT, points out that once a road is closed it is cheaper to perform as many repairs as possible. On the I-94 project, MnDOT did not just increase capacity, it used the opportunity to upgrade the drainage system even though it might not have been at the point where it was absolutely needed.
‘The question is: are our standards too high,’ Levinson said. ‘We demand that lanes be certain widths and we demand that pavements be certain thicknesses and drainage be certain ways — which are really all nice things to have, but are also costly.
‘And the cost is not just the money spent but the delay and people who suffer through the construction process.'”