"Pardon our progress."

That's the kind of public relations message often seen on taxpayer-funded road construction projects that, in the short term, appear to offer only disruptions, but in the long term offer some prospect of improvement.

"Building a better tomorrow" is another one. They're all efforts to reassure the public (a la Bill Clinton in the 1992 campaign) that the folks in charge of the construction project feel your pain.

They need such messages to beg forgiveness and to remind people it's for our own good. And often, it really is, but that's hard to recognize when traffic is backed up or, worse for businesses in the vicinity of the construction, people just find a different way to get where they want to go. That can mean a hit to the bottom line, i.e., the cash register.

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