I see what you mean. The deprecation rule was originally added long ago as part of a suite of rules about contradictory tagging combinations. That’s another possible interpretation, just looking at the tags out of context. It’s another example of why the original path proposal should never have commandeered access keys for indicating the transport modes for which a path is “for”.
By the way, iD has a dedicated preset for highway=construction that can ostensibly be used for roadworks, though I’ve always found this awkward for long-term closures that aren’t being worked on.