So what's actually going on? The explanations, it turns out, are somewhat more reasonable than "nobody cares" — though the end result still feels like nobody cares.

One local who identified themselves as a civil engineer for the city offered some context: "There's an incredible amount of utilities underneath the roadway. Almost all the timelines for roadway construction are due to electrical, gas, water, sewer, etc. That's really what causes most of these projects to be years long."

San Francisco also has what's called a "dig once" policy. When the city opens up a street, every department — sewer, water, fire, fiber optics, gas, electric — gets notified and has to coordinate their own separate work before the final repaving can happen. As one SF resident explained, the process "drags on forever because of how old the city is and the old utilities maps don't work very well."

On paper, "dig once" actually makes fiscal sense. You don't want to repave a road only to rip it open again six months later for a gas line. We'll give the city credit for that much.

But here's where the sympathy runs out: understanding why something takes long doesn't excuse the lack of urgency, the abandoned work sites, or the weeks where absolutely nothing appears to happen. Budget pressure means the city shops for the cheapest contractors, and layers of audits and permitting slow every phase to a crawl. The result is streets that look like post-apocalyptic obstacle courses for months — or years — while residents, cyclists, and businesses just deal with it.

The core problem isn't underground pipes. It's a bureaucracy that has zero accountability for timelines. No private company could fence off a worksite for six weeks, do nothing, and keep the contract. But this is city government, where the only deadline that matters is the next budget cycle.

San Francisco deserves roads that get fixed in months, not in administrations.