Hard-hit cities roll up pavement, lay gravel

[EyeMWing]

The little dead-end lane I live on used to be paved decently. And then about a 15 years ago, the county government got it in their head it needed to be repaved because it hadn't been touched since the 70's (It didn't. At all. The only defects were some missing chunks of curb where snowplows had run aground and a missing section of curb where one of the driveways had been removed - a quarter mile 15mph dead end street which serves traffic for thirteen houses and 1 farm doesn't take much wear-and-tear)

They made a big deal about paving it in a "rustic, romantic" pavement style for which the name escapes me.

What this equated to was laying down tar on top of the perfectly good existing pavement and pouring a layer of extremely coarse, very sharp white gravel. This made fucking around on bicycles and skateboards EXTREMELY harrowing for the neighborhood children, because we went from "ow that hurts" roadrash to "jesus christ that needs stitches" - plus the fact that the stones didn't really actually adhere to the tar and acted just like loose stone. And they didn't even fix the damaged curbs - they just left the originals in place.

It was eventually fixed when the neighborhood lawyer/politician got a chip in his windshield and raised hell. The fix? They came and poured tar on the top of it. And thus it remains today. Except in the spots where snowplows have dug in on the actual pavement and exposed the original.

 

[Spectre]

I will not complain about Texas roads again.

You will note that I rarely complain about it - compared to the rest of the country, we have excellent roads.

 

[zookiemike]

Mi Roads are bad. I live in he Lansing area and in the past few years Lansing has been getting pretty ruff.

The roads suck, The people are mean, And jobs are scarce. If i wasn't becoming well established in cnc and ndt work with medical implants i would be long gone.

 

[nsx_23]

Cool, I've always wanted to live on a rally special stage.

It'd make for a brilliant excuse in explaining to the wife why you bought an old WRC car for work :lol:

 

[93Flareside]

Oh Departments of Transportations, you really have no sense of future proofing do you?

Goodness some roads around here have *gasp* CEMENT! They were built over 25 years ago and they don't even have pot holes in them. Sure it takes longer to set, but c'mon!

There's a road I have to drive in the middle because the stupid city thinks a truck that poops in the holes is the right answer in repair. It's been like this for 3 years. Surely this road is ruining plows right? And the salt amount my town uses. It was RAINING at 38 degrees farenheit one day and we were SALTING! For what? It wasn't even freezing. sheesh.

I want cement roads.

 

[93Flareside]

Oh Departments of Transportations, you really have no sense of future proofing do you?

Goodness some roads around here have *gasp* CEMENT! They were built over 25 years ago and they don't even have pot holes in them. Sure it takes longer to set, but c'mon!

There's a road I have to drive in the middle because the stupid city thinks a truck that poops in the holes is the right answer in repair. It's been like this for 3 years. Surely this road is ruining plows right? And the salt amount my town uses. It was RAINING at 38 degrees farenheit one day and we were SALTING! For what? It wasn't even freezing. sheesh.

I want cement roads.

 

[Spectre]

Oh Departments of Transportations, you really have no sense of future proofing do you?

Goodness some roads around here have *gasp* CEMENT! They were built over 25 years ago and they don't even have pot holes in them. Sure it takes longer to set, but c'mon!

There's a road I have to drive in the middle because the stupid city thinks a truck that poops in the holes is the right answer in repair. It's been like this for 3 years. Surely this road is ruining plows right? And the salt amount my town uses. It was RAINING at 38 degrees farenheit one day and we were SALTING! For what? It wasn't even freezing. sheesh.

I want cement roads.

We have them down here. We also don't use sodium chloride to salt the roads; we use magnesium chloride (which won't eat your car) and sand.

By the way, it turns out that sodium chloride eats concrete and asphalt - so by being cheap with the deicer up north, they're actually causing more expensive problems.

 

[Labcoatguy]

We have them down here. We also don't use sodium chloride to salt the roads; we use magnesium chloride (which won't eat your car) and sand.

Wow, for once Texas and the People's Republic of Cambridge agree on something (they use calcium chloride), though their official reason is that it kills plants.

 

[93Flareside]

still, if we're doing gravel roads, where's that salt going, hmm?

 

[Spectre]

still, if we're doing gravel roads, where's that salt going, hmm?

Why, into the paint chips and rusting out your car, of course.

 

[Mark355]

U.S. infrastructure is a decaying embarassment. The roads in my area have been havocked by ice and salt. The surface of the moon is smoother than my daily commute.

 

[Spectre]

U.S. infrastructure is a decaying embarassment. The roads in my area have been havocked by ice and salt. The surface of the moon is smoother than my daily commute.

Maybe yours is, but not so much down here. It's not great, but it's not terrible here either.

Perhaps if they spent less money on useless mass transit projects up there and concentrated on fixing the roads (you know, the actual piece of infrastructure that is used to make money?), they might not suck so hard or have as large a budget deficit.

 

[EyeMWing]

Maybe yours is, but not so much down here. It's not great, but it's not terrible here either.

Perhaps if they spent less money on useless mass transit projects up there and concentrated on fixing the roads (you know, the actual piece of infrastructure that is used to make money?), they might not suck so hard or have as large a budget deficit.

PA doesn't spend any money on mass transit.
Or anything, really.

They STILL have nothing left over to fix roads. I'm not entirely clear on where they actually spend their money, actually.

Edit: An attempt to discover where the road money actually goes has revealed to me that the state DOT isn't even in the fucking budget. At all. Period. WTF?

 

[Spectre]

PA doesn't spend any money on mass transit.
Or anything, really.

They STILL have nothing left over to fix roads. I'm not entirely clear on where they actually spend their money, actually.

Edit: An attempt to discover where the road money actually goes has revealed to me that the state DOT isn't even in the fucking budget. At all. Period. WTF?

So what are they spending money on? 'Diversity' projects?

 

[93Flareside]

Why, into the paint chips and rusting out your car, of course.

Not what I meant, but ok.

I was meaning the bare road...

 

[EyeMWing]

So what are they spending money on? 'Diversity' projects?

Truthfully I don't know. The total budget barely went down, but every single line item has been cut dramatically over last year.

Line items that went up (but only in departments and funds that have had a net budget increase):
- General Obligation Debt Service (Up $30M)
- A handful of Department of Corrections things (Up $100M)
- General Government Operations (Up $10M)
- Rental and Municipal Charges (Under Government Operations) (Up $10M)
- Government utility costs (Up $6M)
- Government insurance costs (Up $1M)
- Realty and Inheritance tax collection (Up $1M)
- Department of Revenue Modernization (Up $10M)
- Public Utility tax collection (Up $2M)
- County Elections (Up a quarter million)
- Probate and Parole General Operations (Up $10M)

And yet they somehow shaved two BILLION dollars off the budget by cutting things that were... Apparently less necessary than throwing more money at the operation of government. Like roads, and universities, and actually paying low level government employees for almost two months, and prettymuch everything else under the sun. The only thing on that entire list that they can possibly justify is the Corrections-related stuff. The rest is the kind of fluff and crap that they don't need to be spending on in a revenue crisis.

Note that the DOT also apparently received no money in 2008-2009 either. The DOT received $253,000 in 2007-2008 and nothing in 2006-2007. That's one year out of the past four - and then only a quarter million dollars - and you can't get road crews to do SHIT for a quarter million dollars.

 

[warren]

Perhaps if they spent less money on useless mass transit projects up there and concentrated on fixing the roads (you know, the actual piece of infrastructure that is used to make money?), they might not suck so hard or have as large a budget deficit.

Nope, that can't be it.

Michigan spends 8% of its $3.5 billion DOT budget (2009) on public transit, and this state has some of the worst roads in the country.

http://www.michigan.gov/documents/budget/Budget_Book1_223972_7.pdf

Contrast this with Ontario, which has a $4.2 billion (CAD, 2009-2010) transport budget, spends 40% of it on public transit, and has vastly better roads. Anyone who spends time driving in both places can confirm this.

http://www.fin.gov.on.ca/en/budget/ontariobudgets/2009/chpt2.html#sech

Ontario's population is about 20% higher than Michigan, gets similar weather to Michigan, and has significantly more road surface than Michigan, and yet somewhat less money is spent on road building and maintenance. Most of the state's rapid transit projects are on indefinite hold because there's just no money for it.

Those are the facts. I don't see how public transit spending could have a significant impact here.

I think the source of the problem comes down to two things:

1) The standards of road quality expected by government have been lower in Michigan, and (consequently) practices of shoddy construction are rampant in the state's road construction contractors. Right now the state is in a position where they did such a bad job in the first half of the 2000s with road maintenance that they have to nearly double that $3 billion budget to $6 billion in order to "catch up" and bring the roads back to a decent standard, at which point road maintenance costs could go back down to where they are today. Of course, finding that kind of money in Michigan is pretty much impossible, because people have gotten used to paying low amounts of state tax (19 cents/gal in MI vs. 15 cents/L in ON) and any attempts to raise the kind of money needed will result in people getting kicked out of office. Or shot.

2) The politicians -- Gov. Granholm introduced a transport budget in February and dumbass legislators spent the entire year arguing over it, but couldn't be bothered to assemble a continuation budget that'd allow the most obviously-needed projects to go ahead. As a result of the lack of new in-state funding, hundreds of bridge and road-building projects had to be put on hold this past month due to a lack of funds. This has pretty much ensured that most of the state's roads will be in extremely bad condition in ten years time.


There are no easy solutions. Increasing the gas tax won't work because revenues are already falling due to people losing their jobs. A lot of people who have lost their jobs are career workers that have no concept of striking out on their own and starting a small business, because they either lack the imagination or the education. Of course, those that do try to do that find they can't get money for a small business loan because big and small banks alike are being really protective of their money. And so it goes on....

 

[tigger]

Reply-to-everything mode: engaged ...

Gravel roads can be fun if you don't care too much about your paint or your tires.
I used to live on a gravel road, and my tires never lasted all that long the way I drove on them.

This. I've gone 70-80mph on a well maintained gravel road and not much slower on poorly maintained ones. It's a lot of fun once you get used to it. It's also, without a doubt, hard on cars. It's not just tires and paint you have to worry about, but filters and bushings will go much faster.

Though I'd probably have to go out and buy a KTM if I lived there and wanted to keep motorcycling.

Riding on gravel can be pretty sketchy. Unless you're on a full out MX'er with knobby tires the back end really wants to slide. It's a strange sensation to feel the whole bike moving beneath you without changing any of your inputs.

Yeah, real romantic.

Over Christmas my grandma told me about going to church in Illinois ... in the 1930s. The whole drive was on dirt and gravel roads, in a Model T (with its gravity-fueled engine). So if it was muddy, her dad had to find that perfect speed that would get him over hills before the engine died from lack of fuel. Without going so fast that he put them all in a ditch. Sounds real romantic indeed.

They made a big deal about paving it in a "rustic, romantic" pavement style for which the name escapes me.

Sounds like "chip seal". If you ever have the misfortune of driving across Kansas you'll get to be pretty familiar with it. Although whatever method they use to apply it here makes it last forever, which is why it's so popular in the western 3/4ths of the state.

 

[AiR]

What kind of roads are we talking about here? One-lane roads on the country where there's a house/farm every 500 meters? Or city centers? Cobblestones are much better than gravel and more durable than asphalt.

 

[Spectre]

Nope, that can't be it.

Michigan spends 8% of its $3.5 billion DOT budget (2009) on public transit, and this state has some of the worst roads in the country.

Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of Minnesota, who spent $1 BILLION of road funds on a train nobody uses, but couldn't spare a few hundred thousand on maintenance to keep a bridge everyone uses from falling into the Mississippi. Then they complained that they didn't have enough money.

Michigan? Even when they had practically unlimited coffers, during the heyday of the Big Three, they always had terrible roads.