It’s one big Band Aid, and ripping it off is set to become a little more painful.

Residents, commuters and visitors alike have spent the past half-year bumping into roadblocks in or near downtown Traverse City as a spate of construction projects made navigating local streets akin to a game of Pac-Man.

Those projects — a string of bridge reconstruction or repair — felt poorly timed as tourists and locals alike were forced to find alternate routes while three of the city’s most trafficked bridges were closed simultaneously. The closures had many of us shaking heads or fists for much of the summer, and created a blockade around sections of the city’s heart.

And, as officials shutter the West Front Street bridge starting Monday, we were left wondering if what we’re witnessing and enduring should be considered strategic or clumsy. There are arguments for both.

Let’s start with the fact that all of the bridges were in dire need of repair or replacement. Stop for a few minutes along the West Front Street bridge and take a close look at the crumbling concrete structure. The deterioration should be alarming to anyone who placed two or four wheels on its deck during the past decade.

We all should be relieved for the investment in critical infrastructure, especially as state officials continue attempts to dig our state out of a $4 billion backlog of unkempt, dilapidated roads and bridges.

But these projects are more than a half decade in the making. That’s the part that leaves us wondering if the overlapping timing of these projects is genius or mishap.

One of the bridges — Park Street — reopened Sept. 2 after three months of work. Eighth Street and south Cass Street will be closed until November. And West Front Street will close Monday and not reopen until June 2022 if all goes well.

This year of detours has become nothing short of ripping off a deficient infrastructure bandage. It’s going to get more painful before it stops.

We’re now on the precipice of that worst patch, the span from now through November when Eighth and Cass should be reopened. But the ache no doubt will continue until next summer — the West Front closure will be a sore spot for anyone who lives west of downtown and appreciates direct access.

On first blush, it seems like a little planning could’ve spread these projects over a handful of years.

Why close them all in a single year, concentrating the disruption into an acute snarl?

Heck, if we were lucky, one might’ve fallen in mid-2020 when traffic, both visitor and commuter, was suppressed by the pandemic.

It would’ve been a four or five-year ache. That’s where history may judge piling disruptive projects into a single year as a smart decision.

Either way, the coming months of roadblocks will tell us whether this year of bridge building was a clever move or a mishap of planning.

We’re half way through ripping off that Band Aid, and we’re about to find ourselves in the excruciating part.