Potholes

[crinkles]

i did some owrk on the ground for abridge near where i live on a country road. some of the road was excavated as a new road is going underneath this road.

it's a council constructed road. the lignment may be 150 years old but it has been maintained a lot by council.

guess what we found when we dug through the 2 inches of ashphalt? nothing. it had just been paved straight onto the subgrade.

if we were made to pay for the quality of roads we want, we will all be broke!! imainge the qunadary of governments - if you charge appropriately to give good roads and services, no one will elect you ever again, but if you don't, you can't build propoer roads, so you build them to a poorer standard.

 

[Drew99GT]

http://www.krdo.com/Global/story.asp?S=11994599

We no longer have potholes here. They're bomb craters. One of our work vans almost had a wheel ripped off recently and did over a grand in suspension damage.

Colorado Springs is literally out of money to the point they no longer repair roads, maintain parks, plow the roads, and they're tuning off the street lights. But we collectively voted for it!

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/worl...article1459348/

Tempest would love it here.

 

[mjoekingz28]

Where is our 30-50 cents a gallon going to?

Around here the roads are pretty good and the interstate is nice, but not perfect. In the city it gets pretty bad.

Since we're paying a tax on the roads should'nt they be insured and the local, state, or fed pay us if it damages our car?


Besides fuel prices, trucking companies pay pretty heavily for the roads.


And why does the auto seem to 'evolve' every couple of years, but we are still using old technology for pavement.


Besides being pothole free, our interstates SHOULD have GREAT drainage and not cause any hydroplaining in even the heaviest of downpours.

I don't feel we are getting good value for that hefty gas tax, license and registration. Since our country operates on roads, that should be top priority. Not only do bad roads tear up our cars, they are also dangerous. JMO

 

[buster]

Potholes are so bad right now here in the North East. With over 75"'s of snow this season, our roads have taken a BEATING.

 

[PandaBear]

Originally Posted By: crinkles
i did some owrk on the ground for abridge near where i live on a country road. some of the road was excavated as a new road is going underneath this road.

it's a council constructed road. the lignment may be 150 years old but it has been maintained a lot by council.

guess what we found when we dug through the 2 inches of ashphalt? nothing. it had just been paved straight onto the subgrade.

if we were made to pay for the quality of roads we want, we will all be broke!! imainge the qunadary of governments - if you charge appropriately to give good roads and services, no one will elect you ever again, but if you don't, you can't build propoer roads, so you build them to a poorer standard.



The solution to that is a mandatory standard that would last 20 years, like building code.

Why should we have Haitian quality roads?

 

[MNgopher]

And the first question that gets asked Pandabear is: What are the cost implications of adopting that standard.

I work in water resources engineering, and I like to tell people: I could build you a city that will never flood, but you'd be broke as a taxpayer by the time I built it and maintained it. The trick is finding the right balance between the two.

When building a road, one has to look at the lifecycle costs. In the past when oil was cheap, rebuilding a bituminous (blacktop to most of you) road twice or three times during the life of a concrete road was still cheaper in the long run. Not so much the case now, but sometimes it is cheaper in the long run.

Good news for us: The hot mix plant in Saint Paul opened up today. Much better patching mix than cold patch that we get the rest of the winter. We have to wait for the weather to be warm enough to get back to hot mix!

 

[dgee]

the freaking plows in my area are ripping the roads to shrep
i thought my engine blew up when i hit this HUGE pothole on I-95

 

[severach]

Plows do plenty of damage to the roads but the real damage is the freeze thaw cycles. Each time the ground cycles above and below 32*F the roads lose more life. The damage is done during the freeze but can't be seen until the thaw lets loose of the pieces which the plows fling around.

In Michigan winter 2008-2009 we had at least 3 complete cycles. That's 3 years of road life wiped out in a single year.

 

[occupant]

A beater 80's 3/4 ton Suburban (think something corvairwild from YouTube or Red Green would drive) with 10-ply tires and fresh gas-charged shocks. That's my solution.

Too bad all the ones around here either need a motor or a transmission.

Hey, I oughta buy two and make one good one...

 

[sxg6]

Originally Posted By: eljefino
Could fix them right but they'd rather just dump an inch of new asphalt over the old issues fooling people into thinking real work was done.


Reminds me of when I lived in South Portland a few years ago. That's exactly what they did on Broadway, dumped an inch of asphalt down, and didn't go over the center of the road to avoid having to paint new yellow lines.

 

[Kestas]

The radio yesterday talked about the roads and potholes in the Detroit area. People are getting nauseated (motion sickness) from driving on these roads.

 

[Big_Ed]

The potholes are partially responsible for me buying a 4x4 truck instead of a car last November. It's a little more tolerable in a truck.

 

[Kestas]

In the back of my mind I've always wondered if some of the SUV popularity is a response to the lousy roads, or are communities lax on maintenance in response to the SUV popularity, which aren't as demanding of smooth roads.

 

[sxg6]

Reminds me of some stuff I've seen lately, there was a rectangular portion of the road being worked on. It was around 8x10, perfectly level, and filled with dirt and rocks, waiting to be paved i presume? Anyways, I pass this area all the time, and countless SUV's are always swerving to avoid it. G*d forbid your SPORT UTILITY VEHICLE goes over a small portion of the road which is dirt instead of asphalt.