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Broke Counties Turn Failing Roads To Gravel
To save money, more than 20 Michigan counties have decided to turn deteriorating paved roads back to gravel. Montcalm County estimates that repaving a road costs more than $100,000 a mile. Grinding the same mile of road up and turning it into gravel costs $10,000. At least 50 miles of road have been reverted to gravel in Michigan the past three years. I can't wait until we revert back to whale oil lighting and can finally be rid of this electricity fad.
Real shame about that. Nice people and beautiful country.
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I grew up in a rural area with a lot of gravel and dirt roads. Gravel roads aren't so bad. They're cheap to build, but they require a lot more maintenance that people think. They get rutting and nasty potholes pretty quickly if they're not consistently maintained (and they deteriorate a LOT faster than asphalt). So I think some of these areas may be jumping the gun on thinking this is a catch-all solution for their cash-strapped transportation departments, counties, and cities. They'll save a lot of money in the short term, but you've got to have a real solid maintenance plan in place or you'll pretty quickly end up with impassable roads. It's not expensive to maintain them (gravel isn't expensive)--but it is labor-intensive.
A well-maintained gravel road isn't so bad physically. Rain doesn't wash them out as bad as dirt roads and they stay passable in about any kind of weather. The main downside is that you just can't drive as fast on them as asphalt. But, then again, you can't drive very fast on poorly maintained asphalt either (because of the potholes). So it's probably a wash on most of these roads (particularly since a colder state like Michigan probably goes trough asphalt roads a lot faster than warmer areas). But, if they don't have a plan to maintain them any better than they maintained them when they were asphalt, this solution is going to be a wash-out (literally) pretty quickly.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Sure, that might save the state 90% of the cost of repaving, but how about the cost to drivers who use these roads frequently and will have to replace their tires more frequently? It might still be an overall savings, but it might not.
Xfce: Lighter than some, heavier than others. Just right.
This is a sound politic. Gravel road cost less $ a year because they are much easier to repair! And they do not have many inconvenient unless there is heavy traffic on the road.
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At least gravel is better for the environment, isn't it?
Any life is made up of a single moment, the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is.
50 miles of country road (I'm guessing the pictures have nothing whatsoever to do with the roads actually converted) changed from paved to gravel, out of thousands in the state. Yawn. Gravel is actually better in little used roads, because it doesn't require nearly as much active maintenance, as in, driving over it with snowploughs when it snows, to be able to drive on it at all. These are, almost certainly, roads that didn't need to be paved in the first place.
This is complete non-news.
The reality is that this is just the beginning of cuts that need to be made in Michigan, and elsewhere.
Gravel roads are cheap to build, cheap to maintain, and represent an extremely sensible kind of cut that does not have a major quality of life impact. Arguably they also have a rustic beauty, and look much nicer than a pot-holed, badly deteriorated paved road.
The poster makes a silly connection between gravel roads and whale oil, but fails to understand that whale oil and *paved* roads have more in common: Both are unsustainable at this time.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Other big downside: the stones that get caught between truck dual tires. They tend to get loose in perfect timing to crash your windshield.
I imagine the biggest factor in reverting a road is the amount of traffic it sees. Having visited family in rural MI thirty years ago and recently a few years back there are a LOT more paved roads. A lot of these paved roads are lucky to see 10 cars a day.
In a relatively small state like Michigan with nasty freeze-thaw cycles that probably cause massive damage to roads anyway, this probably is not a bad idea. The distances are such that the lower speed limit required isn't going to mean it takes days to get across the state (like it would in, say, Montana). Plus, the freeze-thaw cycle means they'd be dealing with massive potholes every season regardless, and potholes are cheaper and easier to fix on gravel.
I certainly wouldn't want to try this tactic anywhere out west though, where vast distances make driving on gravel roads much more of a chore.
A well-maintained gravel road isn't so bad physically. Rain doesn't wash them out as bad as dirt roads and they stay passable in about any kind of weather. The main downside is that you just can't drive as fast on them as asphalt. But, then again, you can't drive very fast on poorly maintained asphalt either (because of the potholes). So it's probably a wash on most of these roads (particularly since a colder state like Michigan probably goes trough asphalt roads a lot faster than warmer areas).
The worst thing the county did with the roads around my grandmother's place (in Texas) was to pave them. Before the roads were paved, it was a bit dusty in the summer, but the road was always good. After paving, the road got potholes almost immediately, and required constant patching.
Winter was particularly tough on the road -- since we have a lot more 100+ days than 32- days, I don't think they're built like the ones up north. We only have a few days when the water in the cracks can freeze, but when it does, the potholes start all over again.
Paving rural roads without a plan to keep them fully maintained is like giving a school a bunch of unpatched Windows boxes. It's not long until you're spending more time working around the new problems than you would if you'd just stuck to the old way of doing things.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Not to start a flamewar here, but I'm interested in hearing how our libertarian-leaning friends here on Slashdot would handle this situation. Socialists would probably increase taxes to raise more money for public projects as this, but what would you do?
In parts of santa fe, dirt (or gravel) roads increase you home value. Sort of perverse but Santa Fe is all about style and aesthetics over function. (and if you've seen it, you can see they have a point. It's very serene.) So home owners fight the city when they try to pave their roads.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I can't imagine these are main roads. What happens in winter when the city has to plow the roads? Usually all gravel roads here are seasonal and closed during the winter.
In Idaho and maybe other states, other issues also come into play. A gravel road does not get sampled which is good for the county because it means it won't be considered deficient. However, a gravel road also does not get state & federal monies (some exceptions apply). So, although they will be saving money, they won't be getting any for that road either.
Turning your roads from paved to gravel is like giving up on economic recovery or development. Gravel roads don't support commerce or industry very well. They are a good reason not to locate somewhere. I lived in West Virginia for 2 years before returning to urban life 2 1/2 years ago. Bad roads and gravel roads abound because the state is poor. But the state will remain poor in part because of bad roads and gravel roads. If a state cannot provide a modern infrastructure, it will not be able to compete. Now its not always a bad thing to de-settle an area and let it revert to a more primitive state, but don't count on being able to undo the damage if you later change your mind.
Very often, people confuse simple with simplistic. The nuance is lost on most. - Clement Mok
This is why we need flying cars, if we all had flying cars we could save trillions on not having to pave roads and not having to maintain gravel roads. We could let roads go back to nature.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
You forgot the first tenant of politics. Save soon and leave the problem to explode on the next government.
--- "When you gotta do something wrong. You gotta do it right. (Fighter)"
Its been well over a decade, but I recall seeing an episode of NOVA on PBS about road construction in the US and how hopelessly behind the curve we were. Their analysis was that our problems stem from corruption in the industry. That road construction companies are buddies with the various local politicians so that they are able to get contracts that don't require them to modernize. The end result being that our roads deteriorate much faster than they do in places like Europe, requiring much more frequent repair work for higher prices. Maybe things have changed in the intervening decade, but I doubt it.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
True, no cuts in programs for illegal aliens. Mainly because THERE ARE NO PROGRAMS FOR ILLEGAL ALIENS There are also no cuts for programs designed to help 16 year olds boys have sex, programs designed to kill 80 old woman, or programs designed to provide tin foil helmets for nut jobs.
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You mean like in the Dakotas, Wyoming, Nevada, etc where the majority of roads in rural areas and some of the state highways have been gravel?
I'm old, I remember when big stretches of Highway 63 in South Dakota were still gravel, as was Highway 73 south of Faith
I was reading the thread under the article and wanted to quote a couple opinions.
obamautopia wrote:
"Fact: Gravel roads are more dangerous because they are more slippery due to loose gravel and potholes. If gravel roads were superior for transportation safety - then why isn't the interstate and the autobahn merely gravel roads? Why not city streets?
Fact: Gravel roads put more dust into atmosphere as anyone who has followed the choking dust of a vehicle moving ahead of you on a gravel / dirt road can tell you.
Fact: Gravel roads require more frequent oil changes - thus using more oil and dirty oil filters to dispose of. Also more air filter changes. Also more fuel filter changes. Also more car washing. Also more tires. Also more windshield replacement and fabricating glass requires a tremendous amount of energy.
Fact: Gravel roads are less fuel efficient. In one study in Bogota, Columbia, fuel consumption was reported to be 25% higher for a vehicle moving on a gravel or earth surface than on an asphalt pavement.
Fact: Gravel roads wear out vehicles faster meaning more consumption to replace the parts, many of them steel parts which take an enormous amount of energy to fabricate and "carbon footprint" for the idiots who think anthropogenic "Global Warming" is anything other than a Leftist Agenda."
And another guy wrote, goomygoomy writes,
"I don't understand the problem. Why would you complain about PAVED ROADS, being turned in to GRAVEL ROADS? It's just CHANGE. I thought you all VOTED for CHANGE? Well...You've got it. Michigan, the Great Liberal Basket Case, is leading the way. As goes DETROIT, so goes Obama Nation. Aren't you IDIOTS bulldozing your towns down? This is UNCHECKED LIBERALISM. This is Obama SOCIALISM."
stoptherhetoric wrote:
"Nothing like a page full of ignorance from gommygoomy to start the day! People don't even take the time to read, they just spew their garbage! The Story CLEARLY states that Michigan Counties have had to revert to gravel THE PAST 3 YEARS!!!!
Do I need to remind you the last 3 years, W was President!!"
If you keep reading, you'll notice it all boils down to a huge administration blame game. Reminds me of other discussion boards I've seen...
"Engineering. Where the noble, semi-skilled laborers execute the vision of those who think and dream." -Sheldon
That's what happens when you continual elect democrats to office.
Roads go to shit but I'm sure there's no cuts in programs for illegal aliens.
Quite. Tax revenue is insufficient to pay for essential services - let's blame the Democrats who want to tax everyone to death.
Hang on...
Drill baby drill - on Mars
They're cheap to build, but they require a lot more maintenance that people think. They get rutting and nasty potholes pretty quickly if they're not consistently maintained (and they deteriorate a LOT faster than asphalt)
Simple: we'll just pave them over with asphalt! Next problem?
A well-maintained gravel road isn't so bad physically. Rain doesn't wash them out as bad as dirt roads and they stay passable in about any kind of weather. The main downside is that you just can't drive as fast on them as asphalt.
Another easy solution: raise the speed limit! And I do believe I already said we'd just pave the gravel roads. Geez, aren't you listening?
Gravel roads are more dangerous because you cannot travel at higher speeds on them. Since the majority of people aren't going to slow down, the gravel roads are more dangerous.
This is precisely why it's such a genius plan. Save money up front and provide jobs for increased maintenance and auto repair. It continues a trend that in going from a production economy to a service economy the US has gone from an economy that grows by increasing efficiency and producing more goods to an economy that grows by decreasing efficiency to keep people employed. Good thing other countries depend on this fake economic growth for their own fake economic growth! If somebody ever figured out how to get people doing real jobs again we'd all be fucked.
mmmm...forbidden donut
Long ago - as someone who worked in a glass shop (in accounting) - no gravel roads aren't all that great unless you like replacing glass a lot or supporting your local glass shops.
Sure - there are people who will reply they've lived down gravel roads all their life and never had glass problems, but seriously - I created ran reports and found that well over 80% of our auto-glass business came from rural residents who lived down - gravel roads - I can still remember the most replaced parts too DW-1099 (Ford F series windshield) and DW-1117 (might be wrong on this part - its been ages, but its supposed to be a Chevrolet C series pickup truck windshield) - we had literally hundreds of these parts in stock at any one time and we made sure delivery trucks always brought more and more.
Anyhow from what I could tell many of these windshields were damaged by flying debris, and stress on the vehicles themselves.
Most of the people these roads service think the government should "stay out of their business" and complain constantly about taxes. Just think how happy they'll be now that the road is cheaper!
Oh wait, they'll complain about that too...
Just curious, because otherwise this will pretty much cost a heck of a lot more in car depreciation, repainting costs, and the environmental impact that comes with it.
Property on a gravel road is worth less than property on a paved road. So, by their actions, the government has reduced the value of a landowner's property. Usually this triggers a lawsuit - which, if successful, could easily wipe out any savings. Also, since the properties on the road are worth less, they will be able to collect less tax revenue.
Ripping up asphalt roads into gravel is not unusual when governments are trying to save money. I've seen this happen in Australia.
Years ago, Victoria elected a conservative government, headed by a gentleman called Jeff Kennett. Admittedly, he inherited a massive mountain of debt racked up by a previous Labour government, but he immediately made himself hugely unpopular by slashing and burning all public spending and picking fights with everybody in sight. Much of his brutal cost-cutting was ripping up the roads throughout country Victoria, which undoubtedly endeared him greatly to his rural supporters...
From my limited experience, ripping up roads to save money is a sign of extreme desperation. Things must be bad indeed in parts of Michigan.
Actually, the very points you bring out about gravel (cheap to build but requires more maintenance) also applies to asphalt as compared to concrete. That is why they're in this mess to begin with: a properly constructed concrete road costs more up front, but lasts for decades. The part the politicians hear is, "costs more up front".
The difference between spam and poop is that you don't have to dig through septic tanks looking for real food. -- Me
that happens on paved roads here anyway... due to the gravel we use to grit the roads in winter
That's not entirely accurate. There are probably very few programs exclusively for illegal aliens, but illegals do qualify for many other types of programs. Remember Obama's illegal immigrant aunt? She's living in a housing project in Boston, which is a service funded by the taxpayers. The housing authority is not allowed to ask about immigration status. This is a very common practice with handouts in MA.
It wouldn't shock me if there were services exclusively for illegals in either MA or CA. MA did hold meetings with illegals to learn how their status affects them. To me, that's a bit outrageous. ICE should have been invited.
Gravel Roads might be cheaper from an infrastructure POV, but they have serious downsides.
* You can't plow them for snow removal. Michigan gets some big snow, so this means isolating people until a thaw.
* They beat the crap out of cars.
* They get dusty during dry spells. Visibility is reduced when following another driver, leading to safety concerns.
* Traction is reduced. Stopping times during an emergency are much different because a moving car will slide on a layer of loose rock without direct traction. You can easily slide into a disabled vehicle(s) or off the road.
* Even the Amish will laugh at Michigan if they do this.
I just don't understand why more roads weren't (and aren't now) made from concrete, rather than asphalt. There are very busily travelled concrete roadways near where I live, that are over a 100 years old, are subjected to salt, heavy trucking, and all sorts of abuse - yet require almost no maintenance.
In comparison, the newer asphalt sections of those same roads just seem to fall apart within a few years of being refurbished. For a few dollars more in the beginning, a centuries worth of maintenance $s can be avoided. Seems short sighted to me...
The reason you have sky high taxes and are STILL broke lies in your definition of "essential" services.
You obviously don't mind chipped paint and increased erosion of your undercarriage etc. It's also painfully obvious you don't ride a motorcycle....
If I sound stupid, it's not me talking....
Unfortunately, taxes are part of the problem in Michigan. Businesses just can't afford to operate under the tax burden there, so they were fleeing the state even before the recession. States have to compete for cash just like everyone else. Just like a vendor can cut prices and make it up in volume, so too can a state lower taxes and make it up in an increase in business. That such drastic cuts are necessary is not just a sign of the times, but also a sign of a state that just refuses to compete.
In Colorado plenty of gravel roads are plowed all winter, including many up in the mountains. There's no reason you can't plow (and de-ice) a gravel road, though after winter is over you often have to re-grade and possibly add back more gravel to replace what got scraped off.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Gravel roads are fine if you have 4 wheels, but if you're on two wheels (specifically a sport bike or sport tourer), they can be extremely hazardous.
Gravel roads are more dangerous because you cannot travel at higher speeds on them. Since the majority of people aren't going to slow down, the gravel roads are more dangerous.
You forget that fewer people are going to travel on them exactly because they are gravel. Because most accidents are caused by two or more cars, gravel roads are safer - especially if you are willing to slow down.
Who cares if the roads are not quite as safe for someone unwilling to slow down? You are ignoring the very real increase in safety an average rational driver will see, and those are who you want to help. Those that drive too fast for gravel are probably doing the same thing on asphalt.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I live in Michigan, what they call "Gravel Roads" are actually dirt roads, at least in my area.
We motorcyclists just love gravel. What with the dust, the bad traction, it's just wonderful!
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
This is just one more example of how totally neglected our infrastructure is in this country. Net infrastructure spending today (that is accounting for depreciation) is about half of what it was during the 70's and 80's. But it goes beyond that. Our infrastructure doesn't just need to be maintained, it needs a complete overhaul. The US highway system has proven to be totally inadequate as a means of transportation for urban areas. Traffic and congestion gobble up billions of dollars worth of lost productivity, automobiles carrying single people to work spew tons of CO2 into the air, and traffic deaths claims tens of thousands of lives in the US every year.
And that's just our ground trasportation infrastructure. Consider also the situation with the Cable/Telco duopoly control of home Internet access, rail lines that have survived only on federal subsidies for years, Wireless carriers who actively interfere with advancements in cellular handset technology, and the pitiful state of air travel.
In the UK we had a series of ads on keeping your distance and the tag line was "Only a fool breaks the three second rule".
3 seconds.
If a stone is thrown hard enough, how high would it have to go to be at windscreen height 3 seconds later? About 12m.
Unlikely.
So if you're 3 seconds or more behind the car in front, you won't be hit by gravel.
They'll save a lot of money in the short term
You got me at "Save a lot of money," sailor!
I don't think they care about much more than that. Long term = somebody else's problem.
A part of the reason things are getting so f**ked so fast.
I wish Phoenix, AZ (Maricopa County) would follow this example. Mainly to reduce the "heat island" effect that we are currently creating.
But I know this isn't going to happen because the EPA has already stated that Phoenix (and surrounding cities) have to pave all the gravel roads to reduce the particulate matter in the air, or else we loose our federal road subsidies.
So just wait a bit for the EPA to step in for those counties and force them back to paving their roads.
Oh, how I wish I had mod points.
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samzenpus needs to lose his editor status.
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Not enough data - if 80% of your target market lived down dirt roads, and 80% of your business was from people down dirt roads, no conclusion may be drawn.
Learn about Photography Basics.
Gravel roads aren't so bad. They're cheap to build, but they require a lot more maintenance that people think. They get rutting and nasty potholes pretty quickly if they're not consistently maintained (and they deteriorate a LOT faster than asphalt).
Michigan doesn't maintain the gravel roads they already have. New gravel roads aren't going to be maintained either. Not that Michigan ever maintained their paved roads either.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
don't fight the entropy, use it
besides, the rise in cracked windshields will stimulate the local economy
How fast we have fallen and how great was that fall.
Wall Street is a terrorist organization that make Al Queda looks like street gang. We all have fallen for that Wall Street male bovine feces that they have spewing for so many years that neglected to check on the facts on that selling us roast beef but all it was male bovine feces.
Yeah, that's true (particularly when you have jackasses driving big trucks too fast in front of you--throwing up rocks like hail). They help out the car wash industry a lot too.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
When the government provides food, million starve. When it provides roads, well...
\u262D = \u5350
I pay 28% tax on the top bit of my income, but pay less - 25%, 22%, on down - for the rest of it.
My taxes really aren't sky high. They're perfectly reasonable. And I'd be happy to pay more "taxes" if it meant my health care wasn't tied to my employer, in lieu of the pseudo-taxes I pay in health care costs now.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
this is peanuts.
This is why we need to go back to Eisenhower-era concrete road beds meant for B-52's to land on. I'm talking foot deep steel reinforced concrete baby. Grew up with those bad boys in my little rural town in Texas. Of course we didn't have the freeze/thaw cycles people do farther north so I could be talking out of my backside, but these things appeared well-nigh indestructible.
As a commuter who travels almost every day on I-90 through Spokane, WA, I can attest to you that concrete does require expensive maintenance. The interstate has developed horrible grooves from wear and tear needing the surface to be shaved and overlaid with asphalt. Maybe repaving with asphalt is cheaper than shaving and resurfacing the concrete.
A road engineer told me that paved roads are cheaper than gravel roads, once you factor in the maintenance costs.
Those counties may be penny wise and pound foolish.
Exactly! If you drive fast enough, your tire only hits the high points of the ruts....BRILLIANT!
WTF? Over?
These roads are rural. Not in the city. Lots of people seem to think this will make life dangerous for people, or cause more expense in maintenance since the cars will wear them out faster, and on and on. Seems to me one major point is being missed: My driveway probably sees more traffic/day than these roads, and I don't even own a car. There are lots of roads out in rural farm country that are used for 2 reasons:
1. Shortcut when the weather is nice, since these roads don't get plowed anyway. Those taking the shortcut are driving pickup trucks, no exceptions.
2. Tractors, combines, and similar heavy equipment. They go from field to field on these back roads. It prevents farmers from having to drive over each others' crops to get to uncontigous fields. It also reduces the impact on fields, allowing for minimal driving over them (surprisingly important when it comes to field yield).
Neither of the above really requires a paved road. Stop acting like it's the end of the world. Ever since I got to know some farmers, and how this works, I've been wondering why a lot of roads are paved in the first place.
To live till you die is to live long enough. -Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
We motorcyclists just love gravel. What with the dust, the bad traction, it's just wonderful!
Really? If I had any idea it was so easy to get all the Harley's out of my neighborhood I would have proposed this years ago.
Gravel roads are cheap to build, cheap to maintain, and represent an extremely sensible kind of cut that does not have a major quality of life impact. Arguably they also have a rustic beauty, and look much nicer than a pot-holed, badly deteriorated paved road.
True that. Hopefully the rest of the western world will take its decline this gracefully.
My state was introduced to a miracle material called asphalt several years ago. Recently they realized that they were repairing the roads constantly compared to the previous concrete; the worst case being a road that had to be repaved before it was open to the public. The normal crew of paving companies is up in arms because the state is bidding out new concrete-only bids to reduce maintenance costs and the work is going out of state because no one in the state uses concrete anymore for roadwork. The problem being that the state thinks that one type of material can build every type of road imaginable, and the officials can ride the resulting fame to godhood.
You probably remember when Old 16 was just 16. ;)
I live outside Lansing MI and have a few gravel / dirt roads around my family members. It's not a big deal really.
For all the people crying about plows, if your living in Michigan then you already know about driving in snow. They plow gravel roads just like any other road, just with a little higher gap of the blade to the road.
The biggest problem I see with the roads is the ice on gravel roads can become a pretty bad problem during the winter. The asphalt roads melt it much quicker, but the gravel / dirt roads become skating rinks for your commute.
In my old state of Wisconsin, we had semi-gravel back roads. Every few years they'd take machines and grind up the roads, add a little tar, and spit it right back down where to that same road. It was small gravel at first, but after a few months it was smooth enough to roller blade for miles. The benefit of that was during a really bad winter, you could just recycle the road you already had.
Michigan's budget has been pretty destroyed over the past few years. There's a lot of people who are gonna complain about their cars getting dirty, but changes like these are much better than laying people off.
Seems like most of the people here are just trolling on possible downsides, when they've never actually lived on dirt / gravel roads in heavy snow states like Michigan.
That's because there aren't any illegal aliens in Michigan, due to its high unemployment rate.
Unlike the niggers and white trash that infests Michigan, illegals are here to work.
Was that just a reverse car metaphor? You just blew my mind...
Lazy quoting to follow:
Someone quoted someone and also blurbed: /quote
That's what happens when you continual elect democrats to office.
Roads go to shit but I'm sure there's no cuts in programs for illegal aliens.
Quite. Tax revenue is insufficient to pay for essential services - let's blame the Democrats who want to tax everyone to death.
Hang on... /endquote
I'll simply add another quote: "You ain't seen nothing yet."
By his High Progressiveness the High Lord Barack Hussein Obama to a bunch
of Hollywood types during some recent get together.
And you kids think we are going to return to the Moon and do all that other 'neat' stuff like Mars. Get ready for a decline that will take your breath away.
Something between the lines jumps out and bites your arm off. Soltan Gris / London
Instead of deporting them, lets put them in labor camps and have them repave our roads
St. Croix Falls, Hudson and New Richmond Wisconsin if your curious - I'd say it was pretty equal.
That is if you care for your car and live in the midwest.
Gravel + salt = early death due to rust.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
That's the most optimistic post I've ever read. Seriously, by the end of it, I was thinking, "yeah, maybe gravel isn't that bad."
But not quite. Gravel is a lot slower, if you're going faster than 15MPH on a gravel road, then you are moving fast. On a paved road you can usually get at least 25mph, even if it's bad. That's a huge difference.
And that's not even beginning to mention the car damage and the fact that you'll never have a non-dusty car. As one other guy in this thread mentioned, a lot of cars get damaged windshields from gravel roads. In my experience driving on a gravel road is about the same misery level as sitting in a traffic jam. There better be something interesting on the other side.
On the other hand, if the population really is dropping fast in Michigan, no reason to keep them maintained.
Qxe4
small state?!?, i live in southeast Michigan on a dirt road, went to college at Michigan Tech, a 15 hour drive from my house at highway speeds... further than D.C...
A more complete article: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-mi-revertingroads,0,1719061.story
A tracked vehicle tears up a paved road. You'd hardly see the wear on a gravel road.
We've got some serious heavy duty concrete roads here in florida too. Just giant slabs of the stuff seperated by flexible spacers every so often. They're amazingly smooth rides, almost never seem to get potholes, and whenever FDOT decides to play musical chairs with the roads they can just pick them up and slap them back down again.
Problem is they're also apparently expensive as fuck to put down to begin with.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
Agreed. With shitty weather and high taxes, there's really no reason for anyone to stay in places like Michigan or Upstate New York, for that matter. I left NY for the same reasons. No jobs, high taxes, low pay. I don't like to generalize about parties, but the fact is that a reason that I consistently do not vote Democratic is because of those programs.
Many people, including myself, actually believe that a well-managed and properly planned system could work, but that's the rub, isn't it? Look at Social Security. It's just a withholding plan that is supposed to gain interest until you retire. So why is it running out of money? Congress couldn't keep it's hands off of something as incredibly simple as that, what do you think the plan is for the largest, most complex health care system in the world? How is *that* going to work out?
The states are even worse in their own areas. They basically use taxes to transfer money to politically important urban areas, where there are tons of programs that cater to just about anyone who opens their mouth, including illegal immigrants. It costs a lot of money to keep the bread and circuses going in a modern metropolis.
That's not to say that I don't think the Republicans are a bunch of screw ups too. The only thing they have going for them is that they are saying "No", and while that's an incredibly crappy platform, at least they might slow down the process of spending more money than our grandkids could ever pay back in 100 years. Of course with the last eight years, I'm not even sure of that.
Graveling up roads due to either lack of money or lack of need is one sign that your state is speeding in the wrong direction. You're losing population and tax revenues and considering that industry started in these places, you can't simply blame the weather for it. Years of policies where everyone thought they could tax the crap out of "corporations" and "the rich" brought about the expected response: the rich and the corporations moved away. Short term gains in programs for long term losses.
So who is going to pay for the long term damage the gravel will cause to my car? The city is responsible for damage caused by chuckholes.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I'll take a well-maintained gravel road over pothole-strewn pavement any day!
I would get use to it.
Most of the USA is already vastly third world like, with bridges collapsing all over the place killing people and pricey roads that last like 8 years before being resurfaced.
The USA is going to look like Mexico in about 10 years after the payment for that "heist" the democratic and republican parties orchestrated with the corrupt financial institutions just this past year.
You are going to be lucky to have running water in your house in another 10 years let alone decent roads to drive on.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
Concrete would never survive the frost. Where I live, one routinely gets frost heaves up to 1'. For concrete to survive, one would have to prevent water from building up under the road. This is an almost impossible feat of engineering. The only reason bridges can use concrete is that they don't have to worry about frost heaves.
So I suppose Flat Tracking isn't your style, eh?
WTF? Over?
the stones that get caught between truck dual tires. They tend to get loose in perfect timing to crash your windshield.
I've come to believe (from anecdotal experience in rural Australia) that that might be something to do with the angle of your windscreen: seems to me that the closer your windscreen is to the vertical, the more likely it is to be cracked by stones from truck tyres. So normal sedan cars seem to be less vulnerable to this than vans or 4WDs.
But from my extensive experience, I would much rather drive on a dirt/gravel road than on a poorly maintained asphalt road. For one thing, they at least keep you awake. Modern cars, with the dumbing-down of their technology, make it all too damn easy to fall asleep at the wheel on long trips, and a rough surface forces you to pay attention.
(particularly since a colder state like Michigan probably goes trough asphalt roads a lot faster than warmer areas)
Only if the asphalt was not built with the local climate in mind. This happens in Hungary a lot, due to corruption and incompetence. We know we've arrived in Austria not because of the border, but because the car stops shaking.
Gravel is a lot slower, if you're going faster than 15MPH on a gravel road, then you are moving fast.
Obviously, you've never seen The Dukes of Hazard.
As a former dirt road resident....25 was easily attainable even in poor weather. You've never lived until you've driven a '76 Caprice Classic (4300 lb rear wheel drive car) at 50 mph+ on a freshly raked dirt road.
That was the first time I had any idea how great a Rally driver must feel driving in Finland.
WTF? Over?
While we dream away into the digital haze, our greed-based economy drives hell-bent toward entropy.
What did we think would happen?
Rolling blackouts and hospitals dumping patients, levees bursting, corruption, corruption, corruption. . . Guantanamo is still in business and the populace is apparently cool with that. Corporate America in action. But do we purge the nation of the scum? Nope. Hell, most people can't even see who the scum is, so hopped up on religion and propaganda and so dumbed down on toxic food and poisons in the water and the air and the EM spectrum. . . They blame the left or the right, the slaves blame the slaves when they should be tarring and feathering the psychotic lunatics who are actually pulling the switches, robbing the public blind. But nobody can seem to reach consensus because there are enough stupid slaves still believing the lies. And so we play our video games and drive on third world roads and generally pretend we're not in a state of decay. Marvelous.
Me, though. . . I'm a lot more pissed off than I need to be. Fed up on other people's self-destructive stupidity. I have trouble accepting that kids need to burn themselves in order to learn. I have trouble distancing myself emotionally from the giant mess all the muggle/hobbits have made of the world.
-FL
They also are oiled in front of properties to control dust (often something like Dustlock [soybean oil soapstock], since crude oil spraying is banned in many states). From what I remember this is done a couple of times a year (I lived on a gravel road from age 6 to 7, and then they paved it), but sometimes they will do an extra coat if extra traffic is expected (say, a county fair) or if some sort of festival uses the roads (e.g. something like Woodstock).
Alternatives blacktop requires yearly maintenance like seal-coating and has a lifespan of only about 25-30 years and concrete is expensive (especially in northern climates where it is prone to cracking and can deteriorate due to salt exposure.
Sounds fun. But the gravel roads I've driven on are (generally) worse than the dirt roads.
Qxe4
Of course we didn't have the freeze/thaw cycles people do farther north...
You don't even need it to freeze. Here in Western Australia, the surface of a road can get to as much as 70 deg. C on a summer day, but cool to 15 degrees overnight. Even in winter the temperatures can vary from 3 to 30 degrees C. I suspect it might be a tall order to expect a concrete road to put up with that kind of stress unless you put in a lot of expansion joints.
Ok, I'll bite. What's the difference between a gravel road and a dirt road?
They both are unpaved...I got that.
To me, they are one and the same. A gravel road may have more gravel to start, but in a very short period of time, it ends up on the side of the road...just like dirt roads.
WTF? Over?
One thing michigan has is plenty of illegal workers, there's your cheap labor source.
Ah, home sweet some, South Dakota. Most of the roads out by my grandparents' are still all gravel (ask me about gravel skiing some day), but it's hard to get more rural than they are.
Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads.
we need to go back to Eisenhower-era concrete road beds
And just how much extra tax are you willing to pay to land B52s in Mitchigan?
It's all very well saying "build better roads" but are you willing to pay for them?
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Hell he remembers when old 16 was 8!
. I love the sound of burning women and screaming rubber....
Sheesh! You'd think Americans didn't do any work at all. The past few years, I've spent money on politicians, just for this occassion. And what a repayment on such a small investment! I got a bailout this year and I've since been able to afford upgrading my residences. You don't think that was easy work, do you?
Just drive on the roads until they crumble.
-- Boycott Shell
Where I grew up, Eagle Butte, about 1/3rd of the streets in town were gravel, and all the roads off the Highway were gravel and then off the gravel roads, the section line roads were dirt.
Not as rural as say out at Mud Butte or Opal SD.
Rocks, that's the main difference. You are right, I've never managed to find an awesome smooth dirt road to drive on, but it sounds great. By the time the rocks have managed to get to the side of the road (and they don't all, a lot of them get pushed into the ground.....it takes a long time for them all to disappear), the road is bumpy and unusable already.
I don't know, maybe a freshly graveled gravel road would be great to drive on as well, all the ones I've driven on are old and bumpy.
On the other hand, if you don't mind going fast over the bumps, destructive though it may be to your car, then maybe there's not a problem.
Qxe4
I live in one of the largest cities in Montcalm county mi. So I get to see all of this up close and personal. Honestly it is a good thing. Since electrolux left many moons ago the area has been in a fall. The loss of jobs led to a loss of people. That led to a loss of tax revenues that were used to repair the roads properly. Many of the roads that will be converted are mostly patched with tar and are in serious need of repaving if they were to get it. Now somebody above claimed that this was a step back to an Amish lifestyle. Well some of there roads have Amish farms on them anyway. There were paved to provide access for people going to the Amish bakeries and farms for goods. Which is happening less and less these days. Plowing is also a non argument. The roads have low priority plowing anyway which mean that they get plowed after all main arteries and city paved roads are cleared. Last week there was a news article about people in our state government wanted to increase the gas tax in order to cover the costs of repairing the roads. Well lets just say here in Mi at least many of the residence are sensitive to gas prices. This include calling in sick and taking vacation because they don't have enough money to pay for gas. This hurts productivity. It's the same reason that at this time in our society toll roads will not solve any problems. People can not spend any more. So if turning some roads to gravel allow the main arteries to be fixed and plowed I am personally all for it.
I certainly wouldn't want to try this tactic anywhere out west though, where vast distances make driving on gravel roads much more of a chore.
In many cases, there are multiple roads to a destination. Some will remain paved, other will be gravel. The paved roads are used for longer distances, the dirt roads are more for local access.
This was the case in rural coastal California in the 80s. And I've seen plenty of dirt roads in Nevada, Arizona & Utah. But the highways and major roads were still paved.
Some drivers might need to adjust their habits. I'm reading plenty of comments here about "increased breaking time", 'I can't go 50 mph on a dirt road', etc. In these cases, drivers just need to slow down-- it's what people used to do.
We don't have to pave every single remote rural road, especially at a time when we're closing schools.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Concrete would never survive the frost.
Why not? Concrete buildings survive in the Great White North. Significant parts of the Macdonald-Cartier Freeway are concrete, and some of the planned upgrades will also be concrete.
For concrete to survive, one would have to prevent water from building up under the road. This is an almost impossible feat of engineering.
To prevent frost heaving, the roadbed must extend down into the ground significantly below the frost line. This is not impossible. It is just expensive. The Roman empire build roads through cold climates. Roads that are in use 2000 years later without significant changes to the roadbed. Of course, the Romans had slaves, which cuts down on the expense.
When libertardians complain about taxes and regulation, the half the population loses their health care, and the other half loses their life savings in Wall Street bank scams.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I bring you Change(tm) based economic stimulus. All joking aside, it brings up an interesting subject. In the push toward high technology, the emphasis has been on improving efficency and reducing the number of people involved in any particular process. The down side is that a lot of people end up unemployed. I wonder if there is a balance to be struck. Given that 2/3rds of our economy is based on consumer spending, we need people who are employed. In a lot of cases, the automated and computerized way of doing things may be the most efficient. However, is it necessarily the best for the country? What if we could replace some fancy systems with a bunch of low skilled labor? It seems like going backwards, and in many ways it might be. On the other hand, it could very well make economic sense in terms of employing people versus having them unemployed and living as parasites on the tax base.
The answer is to elevate the road. I know, it sounds more expensive but that's pretty much what they do going through swamps and other places. The make a base structure that is separate from the surrounding ground structure which disperses the load of the road over more area. This would also add more mass to the base of the road which would retain heat better and limit the freeze cycles under the base.
grows by increasing efficiency and producing more goods to an economy that grows by decreasing efficiency to keep people employed
The problem is that your money is debt and *requires* "growth" simply to stand still. The instant "growth" (debt/credit growth) stops, you have to start turning your roads to gravel in order to pay your debts. It's stupid. Monumentally stupid in fact, but there you go.
Do any if you ever question "growth"? Must be good right.
Deleted
In a relatively small state like Michigan with nasty freeze-thaw cycles that probably cause massive damage to roads anyway, this probably is not a bad idea. The distances are such that the lower speed limit required isn't going to mean it takes days to get across the state (like it would in, say, Montana). Plus, the freeze-thaw cycle means they'd be dealing with massive potholes every season regardless, and potholes are cheaper and easier to fix on gravel.
I certainly wouldn't want to try this tactic anywhere out west though, where vast distances make driving on gravel roads much more of a chore.
Michigan is the 11th largest state, and more than you might expected based on its absolute size living here required a ton of driving because the nearest place of interest is often hours away on I-75. However, I believe these poor counties are planning to remove pavement from rural roads with low traffic, not interstate or state highways.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
Lol! Illegal immigrants are responsible for everything, aren't they?
I'm not sure if you can see the irony here, bit if big trucks are driving too fast and the rocks are hitting your windshield, you are doing the same. The most effective counter to rocks flying from tires is to slow down and put some distance between the two of you.
On the unoiled roads around here, you pretty much need to set back almost 100 foot or more for moderate speeds just to see through the dust plume of the vehicle in front of you. Of course spaying oil on the roads dampen that effect quite a bit.
It's not expensive to maintain them (gravel isn't expensive)--but it is labor-intensive.
Sounds like the ideal solution for job creation: cheap but involves lots of labor.
Of course these aren't going to be jobs people will necessarily want to be doing long-term. But in this economy, a job is a job.
Faith is a willingness to accept something w/o complete proof and to act on it. Reason allows you to correct that faith.
And I'd be happy to pay more "taxes" if it meant my health care wasn't tied to my employer, in lieu of the pseudo-taxes I pay in health care costs now.
You can get individual health insurance, you know.
Man. They liked 'em young back then, didn't they?
You just get dirtbikes instead.
HTH.
Deleted
Same here! 'Course I'd rather make money off them by enforcing $1000 fines for violation of noise ordinances.
The right to protest the State is more sacred than the State.
The worst thing the county did with the roads around my grandmother's place (in Texas) was to pave them. Before the roads were paved, it was a bit dusty in the summer, but the road was always good. After paving, the road got potholes almost immediately, and required constant patching.
Properly constructed paved roads do not pothole immediatly. So why wasn't the road in your country properly constructed? Either due to the road contractor saving money using less tarmac or thinner base layer than supposed or by being incompetent and not making the layers smooth enough. Inspectors from local government don't watch closely ("the contractor is my friend, I trust him to do a proper job") or are even bribed to watch the other way.
Welcome to the corrupted world of construction.
Wouldn't that be a typical intelligent use for stimulus packages? A complete overhaul is needed anyway. So instead of spending gazillions of dollars to rescue non-working companies and their dinosaur business models, wouldn't this public money be better spent in repairing public infrastructure (i.e. where it belongs)?
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
My brother works in landscaping and as long as you dig deep enough, you can get below the frost line. You don't have to prevent water, you have to get below frost. Then, no heaves.
As do I!
Unfortunately, since most consumer items are built to be replaced instead of fixed, the overall service industry will fail eventually as well. So... we'll all just have to be content with serving each other Fatburgers to each other.
Web hosting that doesn't suck!Dreamhost
Of course we didn't have the freeze/thaw cycles people do farther north...
You don't even need it to freeze. Here in Western Australia, the surface of a road can get to as much as 70 deg. C on a summer day, but cool to 15 degrees overnight. Even in winter the temperatures can vary from 3 to 30 degrees C. I suspect it might be a tall order to expect a concrete road to put up with that kind of stress unless you put in a lot of expansion joints.
Which is why concrete roads are laid in slabs, not as a continuous surface. Also, concrete roads don't get as hot as asphalt. Also, freezing is a lot worse for concrete than an equivalent temperature change on a hot day because it means that any water in cracks of the road will expand. Freezing water turns rigid solids to powder through inexorable crack propagation.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
Small countries, smaller problems, less complexity.
Also in smaller countries, there are less jews and negroes.
Roads here in Belgium are largely in bad shape too. Maintenance is eternally in catch-up.
(I remember a holiday with my parents some 20-25 years ago to what was then Yugoslavia, which had a reputation of being a much poorer country than Belgium. Indeed, it struck us that almost all crash barriers were rusty. Skip 20-25 years; now almost all crash barriers in Belgium are rusty too... Also it used to be the case that, on return from France to Belgium, one could easily notice the location of the border by the improvement in road quality; nowadays it is the other way around)
I don't know whether the problem is corruption or just because of the fact that government has to buy from the lowest bidder. In any case roads deteriorate faster than they should, I guess because the foundations are not as good or deep as they should be.
It always amuses me when I drive to the Netherlands and I see signs "attention: bad road surface ahead". Those bad roads are often better than anything we have over here (with only a bit of hyperbole).
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Back in the 90's. The state paved large sections of I-75. Southbound in asphalt, Northbound in concrete, to compare maintenance costs. Concrete lasts twice as long as asphalt, but it still costs less to pave the road twice with asphalt, than just once with cement.
This of course assumes that when it comes time to pave the road for the second time, you actually have the money to do so.
No kidding you're old. That UID is from the Pre-Cambrian.
I would second that, when driving from the Houghton to New York City, Detroit is the halfway point.
Another big downside: Driving a motorcycle on gravel sucks. Motorcycles are vehicle too!
of everywhere i've driven, michigan has by far the worst roads in the country.
http://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
And it didn't turn out too pretty. Read Bryan Ward-Perkins' "The Fall Of Rome and The End Of Civilization"......
http://www.amazon.com/Fall-Rome-End-Civilization/dp/0192807285
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
The problem with our economy isn't that jobs are disappearing. It's that we've adopted laws that encourage corporations to ship them overseas.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
It's all very well saying "build better roads" but are you willing to pay for them?
Yes, we are. If everybody would just go out and buy a goddam new car (from one of the Big 3, of course).
Indeed - for concrete, the cracking is worse, and harder to fix - also, the sodium chloride in the road salt would speed up the deterioration in the winter months. This is why manufacturers sell alternative ice melt for your sidewalk that is based on calcium chloride, etc.
I live in a northern US city (canadian border) with cold winters, and there's plenty of concrete roads around here. Usually they are built concrete, last a long time, and only later get a layer of asphalt. But the concrete doesn't frost heave.
Let's pack up and go home. Michigan is a lost cause. We should have never lived there anyhow. Too cold. Here's my plan: Everybody move out of Michigan, and make the whole state a national park. Charge people to take tours of it's ghost towns and urban decay. Eventually, the wilderness will take back the state, and we'll have a great place to go camping.
In a relatively small state like Michigan with nasty freeze-thaw cycles that probably cause massive damage to roads anyway, this probably is not a bad idea. The distances are such that the lower speed limit required isn't going to mean it takes days to get across the state (like it would in, say, Montana).
Small State?
Try the 11th largest state in term of square miles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_area
It takes 3 hours at 70 mph to drive width, so while yes it is not as wide as some of the other states we do travel north and south as well we are not confined to travel just east and west.
I'm talking foot deep steel reinforced concrete baby....Of course we didn't have the freeze/thaw cycles people do farther north so I could be talking out of my backside, but these things appeared well-nigh indestructible.
In my experience, there is a problem with concrete roads and freeze/thaw cycles. Concrete doesn't "flow" with temperature changes the way asphalt does, so it needs expansion joints cut into it at intervals. Water gets into these, freezes, and starts cracking the concrete. The result is, after a decade or so, a rhythmic kathunk-kathunk-kathunk sound as you drive over the joints.
Notice that I said "after a decade or so." I'm pretty sure they still last at least as long as asphalt, if not longer, before becoming rough.
You're completely wrong. Concrete roads wear cold weather better than asphalt. I don't know why. On the interstate nearby, there's a long stretch in the mountains that's concrete, and it's a joy to drive on, especially if you've been driving on asphalt for very long.
This is why we need to go back to Eisenhower-era concrete road beds meant for B-52's to land on.
In high heave areas (long winters, high precipitation) concrete slabs don't work. They crack, heave, and end up no better than bad asphalt or dirt roads. Some places like Michigan, or the Dakotas, or even the northeastern US (New England) would not benefit, and the cost is too high. Gravel would be the most logical choice for any non state highway speed road.
Well, then you have solved 2 issues in Michigan at the same time:
1. Spending less in a strapped economy.
2. Higher labor intensity means more man(person)hours needed- you have just created jobs- isn't Michigan having a high level of unemployment right now?
Where? In Detroit? Cause this is a big state and the major cities do not make up for all of it.
Small state? We aren't Rhode Island or Delaware.
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so. ~~ Douglas Adams
I am surrounded by gravel roads where I live and in decent weather I would not hesitate running 70 mph.
Got Code?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This is progress! This means that the transition to rails is one step further along!
Am I being cynical? Maybe not!?
That would make sense - it's much less of an impulse to deflect something through an angle than flat-out reflect it.
The simple solution to that is to slow down and you won't get gravel damage. Cars moving 10-15 mph don't usually kick up that much gravel, but once you get going faster than that, or if you accelerate suddenly, that's when you get the problems.
The "interstate highways designed for bombers to land on" is an urban legend - at least in the USA.
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
Newsflash: your healthcare is only tied to your employer because corporations get a tax break that you don't when they buy your healthcare. If the government leveled the playing field by making the taxes equitable between you and your company, then there would be no cost benefit to employer plans. You could join any pool of people you wanted, if you needed to be part of a pool.
You might want to check your facts - Michigan is ranked 11th in size (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_area)
I certainly wouldn't want to try this tactic anywhere out west..
Nonsense! There are plenty of dirt (not gravel) roads here in Arizona, straight and amazingly smooth! I can get up to 80+ MPH on these roads, and why not, usually these roads don't come accompanied with speed limits nor highway patrol.
Granted, the weather is fairly predictable (sunny) and traffic is not very heavy on these roads... still, they are a pleasure to drive and I wish there were more of them!
--ponga
One of the good things about the early Cold War was that almost all public works were designed to military specs.
Actually it's a monumentally bad idea. Also, there really aren't that many "gravel roads" in Michigan. Oh sure, they might start out as gravel, but unless you're dumping new gravel on them every year, they turn into "dirt roads" so that's what we call them here.
In the winter, a paved road can be plowed perfectly clear whilst a dirt road cannot. You need to spread a lot more salt (or more commonly, sand) to keep a dirt road safe in the winter. To keep a dirt road in acceptable condition, you also have to have it grated at least once a year, something that costs money and is therefore never done. Rain and melting snow destroy dirt roads through erosion and the creation of ripples and potholes. Cars have a short life expectancy in Michigan already, but dirt roads only accelerate their deterioration through vibration, dust, mud, and flying rocks.
Michigan weather does do nasty things to roads, but I've been in plenty of other states (and even Canada) with similar weather and the local governments have zero problem keeping roads properly maintained. For being the automotive capital of the world, Michigan has always been completely bass-ackwards when it comes to cars and roads. One of the main reasons I'm looking to move out soon.
Amen!
If we're closing schools, the solution is to fund them properly from the appropriate source (those who use them) and not increase an already-high and completely-unrelated gas tax.
Benford's Corollary to Clarke's Law: "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced."
The town where I grew up was at least half dirt and gravel roads. The average speed that people drove was probably 20-30 mph. Of course out here in the desert hard-packed clay made for a much better road than gravel. The worst thing they ever did to the post-office road was to grade and gavel it. The frequency of maintenance required quadrupled.
Not true. I live in Green Bay, WI and every main road is concrete. All the highways are concrete. Even most side roads are concrete (quite a few are asphalt though). As far as I understand, as long as they are poured in slabs, ice isn't that big of a deal. When sections of the road get bad, you replace a slab or two and you're good to go.
Now that I think about it, every large highway and any down town road that I've ever been on is made of concrete.
WOOOHOOOOOO!!!!!
Gravel roads are much more fun to run rallies on than tarmac.
Concrete with an asphalt cap. Asphalt provides a smooth, continuous driving surface and keeps the concrete dry. Concrete provides a road bed that will last for decades. Every few years you scrape the asphalt off and re-lay it over the same concrete bed.
It works great and holds up well through weather cycles. It's expensive to build, but has very reasonable maintenance costs.
I can see a huge advantage in the colder states. Obviously ice would be far less of an issue on a gravel road. I would also suspect that a grader could level gravels roads rather quickly so that maintenance isn't much of an issue.
But I also could predict that washing and waxing cars could be a really frequent chore as gravel tends to spray that chalky looking goo all over cars whenever it is damp.
that's quite funny
I'm amazed that this article is about the United States and not some third world country. President Bush left a legacy alright.
Yes, and driving a bike on gravel really sucks. You get flat tires that way.
I live in NW Washington State. When I drive down to Seattle, I dread the parts of the freeway that are concrete. Thump, thump, thump, thump, and the surface itself is loud so you get general roar behind the periodic thumping. Worse still, when you get to the north side of Seattle it gets really loud. I've been stuck in traffic there a few times, and the road bed that gets ground by tires has worn away to reveal the "gravel" -- the stones they used in the concrete are as big as a full size computer mouse. With the cement worn away, it's like driving on cobblestones. No wonder the freeway is so loud. The grooves in other areas really suck with a motorcycle. And then in other places, there are other types of grindings, 3 parallell strips about 3" wide and 12" long spaced in each tire well of the lane, each set about 12-18" from the other longitudinally. So here you get zipzipzipzipzipTHUMPzipzipzipzipzipTHUM.
I love blacktop.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
So maybe everyone in rural Michigan drives a truck, and therefore it's a non-issue. But if more and more places start doing this, it really has an effect on people who have given up cars and taken to more environmentally-friendly motorcycles.
THE MAGIC WORDS ARE SQUEAMISH OSSIFRAGE
I am inclined to agree with you - buy the best infrastructure possible for your country, everybody wins. Problem is I've noticed that there's a general consensus from US posters to slashdot that "taxes are bad" - so I am not sure how you square that one. It feels to me from across the pond that you'd have a hard time persuading people to pay extra for good roads and you're rather stuck with poor ones. Asking people to fund high quality public services is seen as a bit dodgy, socialist or communist or similar?
Interested to hear examples of where people in the USA have been persuaded to pay for expensive public services for their states, and how the argument was won. The impression from over here is that the majority of people in the USA prefer everything to be private.
The main downside is that you just can't drive as fast on them as asphalt.
But it's fun as hell to do so anyway! :)
Convert FLACs to a portable format with FlacSquisher
One of the issues with the money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 is that work must be done in accordance with the Davis-Bacon Act, where the U.S. Department of Labor determines the "prevailing wage" in a given area for a particular type of construction (e.g., building, heavy, highway, or residential). This may not reflect the lowest market wage, and can be much higher than the Federal or State minimum wage. Thus the high cost of repaving, despite 10% unemployment.
Get proper tires. I haven't had a flat tire in ages.
I grew up in a semi-rural mountainous area of Australia - basically a mix of state run forest and low density residential with a lot of narrow winding gravel roads. Interestingly enough the maintenance costs on the gravel roads are so high that the local council is converting roads with through traffic to bitumen, but only it seems when they can get the residents to chip in around $6000 each to help pay for it.
After speaking with a council engineer, it seems that even for reasonably low traffic roads, say 1,000 cars a day, bitumen is low maintenance and cheaper than gravel over a 7yr maintenance schedule. The more traffic you have, the cheaper bitumen gets, but with the main expenses in big bursts several years apart. To run heavy traffic gravel roads through the year your costs are steady and higher overall as you need an army of graders going and new gravel all the time. In the end, Michigan is probably going to lose a lot of money on this.
sudo mount --milk --sugar
It really tells you something about us when a computer analogy is used to explain an issue related to cars instead of the other way around.
Here in Peru, IL the city didn't budget appropriately for salt and plows last winter. This last winter was rather bad too. Sure, the city saved money, but I'll end up spending it on higher insurance rates because of the much larger number of accidents people were involved in. My friend was rear ended twice the same week in both of her vehicles. What happened to thinking about the safety of the public? Someone dies on that road and I'm sure there will be a lawsuit filed against the city...
None of this news really surprises me anymore. It's a sign of the times, nothing more.
You should vote repub... , no wait demo...
Say, which was the small government party again ?
Uh, a normal 2WD car still has four wheels total, unlike a motorbike.
Where I grew up we ate gravel and were happy to have it.
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everybody agrees that it is old enough to know better." - Unknown
There are concrete roads in north eastern Pennsylvania and they do just fine with plenty of frost...
You hit the nail on the head. If you were to shut down government spending, military, health care/drug dispensing and prisons in the U.S. you would discover we have virtually no economy left. I yearn for an end to the pork barrel spending at the state and local level and a big cut in taxes to go with it, but then you realize that the government has taken over such a big percentage of our economy you would have an instant depression were it not for the government squandering tax dollars and printed or borrowed money.
Better hope the dollar stays the world's reserve currency because if the U.S. can't keep borrowing and printing trillions of dollars every year this country is in deep, deep trouble. For example it wont be able to buy all the oil it needs to keep all its cars on the road. When Iceland and Ireland's economies tanked last year they were screwed, while the U.S. can just print and borrow money even though it caused the collapse in the first place.
An interesting aside, it sure didn't get much main stream press, but Italian customs apparently caught a couple Japanese nationals trying to smuggle $135 billion, that's right BILLION, in what are apparently $500 million and $1 billion U.S. treasury bearer bonds in to Switzerland last week in a suitcase with a fake bottom. Conspiracy theorists are having a field day debating if Japan is trying to clandestinely dump some of its huge investment in treasuries before the dollar craters or if someone in the Fed/U.S. government is doing something very fishy.
@de_machina
It's not expensive to maintain them (gravel isn't expensive)--but it is labor-intensive.
Michigan unemployment is currently at 12.7% Hopefully, they'll have plenty of manpower to do this.
"Motorcycles are deathtraps"
FTFY
Viral software licensing is not freedom, it is in fact GNU/Socialism.
Or a bicycle while wearing shorts. Ouch, the memories...
I'm (almost) a civil engineer and so I'm getting a kick out of these replies.
Concrete roads aren't indestructible. In fact, roads with rigid and semi-rigid pavements (concert layer without and with a gravel layer between the road bed) have only a slightly longer life expectancy (40 years) than regular flexible pavements (asphalt and bitumen-based rolling layer) (30 years). Just because concrete is seen as an artificial stone it doesn't mean it is eternal. Far from it. It does degrade and it degrades even faster when structures are designed to last just a few decades or so.
To make matters worse, rigid and semi-rigid pavements are much more expensive and labour-consuming than their flexible counterpart not only when building but also maintaining. They are also more prone to erosion due to water circulation in the road bed and all those regular problems related to concrete structures (carbonation, steel corrosion, those pesky freeze/thaw cycles, other nasty buggers).
So you may believe that concrete, just because it is concrete, ends up being an excellent solution but hey, there is a reason that it's only applied in very specific roads such as airport runways and parking lots (they withstand the forces from the landing impacts and don't degrade when in contact with fuel). It's a solution that is far too expensive and suffers from far too many problems than regular flexible pavement solutions, which means it is only used when it is absolutely necessary.
On the other hand, macadame roads are a time-tested technology. Although they don't make it possible to run around in high speeds they are one of the best road technologies developed up to this day. They are extremely easy to build, they are low-maintenance, they are cheap and sometimes they can even be built from the materials mined exactly from the construction site. In fact, flexible pavements are basically nothing more than macadame roads with an extra layer made out of some fancy material such as asphalt, bitumen, concrete or some other "glue" such as plaster. They may look "old school" but don't believe for a moment that them old time folk weren't smart or couldn't develop great stuff.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
Most of the schools in California are closing because they have few students. Yes, there is less money being spent on fewer students, but claiming that the schools are closing because of improper funding is a strawman at best. Heck, the single largest line item in the California budget is education. One of the schools here in my town has a damn water slide. Yes, a three story amusement park style water slide in a public school. That is NOT a problem with underfunding.
Patriotism is bigotry.
If that's true than so are friends and family. After all, most people will give someone who is a friend or family member preferential treatment over someone who is is not.
That punctuation mark you keep using - I do not think it means what you think it means.
Concrete still lasts longer than asphalt. It's just that asphalt is so much cheaper in the short term. Just as dirt is cheaper sill. It's the long term. I think an asphalt road north of Texas/Arkansas/North Alabama-Georgia is scheduled to last about 2 years w/o maintenance. Concrete is scheduled for like 10.
You know, I like to help you here guy. I'm sympathetic, I really am. But you've got to understand my position. It's just not possible to recognize motorcycles as legitimate road vehicles.
I mean sure, no ones got a problem with big Harley's. But lets think for a moment about where this is leading us. Plastic exteriors motorbikes, dirt bikes, scooters ?! Jesus! Sooner or later, someone is going to stand up and argue that electric bikes be allowed on public roads and form there it's one small step to honest to Gods pedal powered bicycles! This is how slippery the slope is right here.
I mean, the dangers of the road are bad enough. People cutting you off, lane changing, bodywork scratches, stop signs, pedestrians just throwing themselves under the wheels, spilled coffee, etc. Now you're asking be to accept those heathens on their clacking, greasy, hell spawned bare metal contraptions as legitimate road users?! You expect me to slam on the brakes so I can have the privilege of crawling along behind these slugs for five miles until they get another puncture? Because I sure as hell can't pass their wobbling asses without another "incident" occurring where their either wobble off the embankment and I get a ticket or else their spoked hate mobiles eviscerate my paintjob and get irreparably tanged up in the undercarriage. I swear the assholes just do it on purpose.
No. No, I'm sorry. I'm not going back to that. Never again. My hands are tied. I'm sympathetic, I really am, but my hands are tied.
May the Maths Be with you!
I'm (almost) a civil engineer so I'm getting a kick out of these replies.
If your asphalt roads need to be repaved less than a couple of decades after they were built then the problem doesn't lie on the technology (flexible pavement roads, asphalt) but instead due to being poorly built by incompetent construction crews. A flexible pavement road needs to have a impermeable rolling layer, a thick, tightly compacted gravel layer that must be at least a couple of feet deep and an impermeable bedding. The people building the road also need to make sure that everything drains perfectly, which means that the entire road and sometimes it's surrounding must be a drainage system.
So having that in mind, flexible roads only present problems if the road bed suffers from draining problems, if the macadame layer isn't thick enough or properly compacted and/or if the top layer isn't thick enough nor impermeable. If it's built with those problems in mind then it can easily be problem-free for around 30 years. On the other hand, if it's experiencing problems a few years after it's inauguration then you must take a good hard look at both the people building the road and the folks verifying that it's up to code, because they obviously didn't do their job properly.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
I really fail to see why having a road go back to gravel is a big deal at all, I have been in counties in Texas where an asphalt road ment you were in a city limits, gravel roads are nearly all the county roads were. Also, learning to ride a bike is 100x more fun and challenging on a gravel road.
Anything can be found funny, from a certain point of view.
I'd have to bet most of the reason there is increased noise on the cement you have driven on is to help improve traction in the inclement weather that winter can bring.
At least that's why they do it in northern PA.
Karnal
I used to live in Tecumseh Township, Lenaway County, MI. Our township learned that paving roads was cheaper in the long run than having gravel roads. Gravel roads require an enormous amount of annual maintenance. Properly built asphalt roads require minimum maintenance and are much less expensive over the life of the road. Concrete roads are even better, but require a much higher cost to install.
I think these guys are looking at the current expenses, and not at the big picture.
Ahem. I conveniently just got back from two trips around Michigan. Its bigger than you think. Driving from the capitol to copper harbor is around 560 miles one way. I just drove it twice, then went to Wisconsin and back. Yay fourteen hour driving days!
They're cheap to build, but they require a lot more maintenance that people think. They get rutting and nasty potholes pretty quickly if they're not consistently maintained (and they deteriorate a LOT faster than asphalt)
Simple: we'll just pave them over with asphalt! Next problem?
Things aren't that simple. Although a paved road is basically a macadame (gravel) road with an extra impermeable layer on top, a paved road needs to avoid stuff in order to simply not crumble. For example, your regular gravel road is nothing more than a layer of gravel that isn't even compacted. It even doesn't need to be build with an impermeable bedding. If you displace gravel then the car passing after you will run over it without any problem. On the other hand, if you build a paved road without paying attention to draining both subsoil water and rain then your pavement will not last long. The same goes for the gravel layer. If it isn't compacted or the right thickness then say bubye to your pavement.
A well-maintained gravel road isn't so bad physically. Rain doesn't wash them out as bad as dirt roads and they stay passable in about any kind of weather. The main downside is that you just can't drive as fast on them as asphalt.
Another easy solution: raise the speed limit! And I do believe I already said we'd just pave the gravel roads. Geez, aren't you listening?
Here I assume you meant lower the speed limit.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
Believe it or not they just finished paving an entire section of the 401 from London to Windsor in various heavy-weigh sections in concrete. You bet it stands up to it, properly laid concrete lasts forever. There was a section of roadway that I used to drive over as a little kid on my way to London, Ontario. This was down Kings Highway 2(people on the area might know where I'm talking). This section was in front of the old Caramuse Lime Plant(called LeFarge I think now) down to Beachville Lime. It was concrete, 3 lanes, and so on. It was 80-110km/h truck rated, they repaved it about 4 years ago once the county picked it up. But Caramuse paid for the entire thing at the time. I don't remember there ever being issues with it.
Anyway, there are plenty of roads in my area that have shifted away from gravel and gone back to Tar and Gravel. Or what we call split-gravel up here. Works well, lasts for ever. The only downside is, it's a bit slick the first summer or two. And if people don't drive the right speed during the first summer you can get weird road warping. But once that's done you get a road that's nearly as good as asphalt and rated around 80km/h.
Om, nomnomnom...
On the other hand, macadame roads are a time-tested technology. Although they don't make it possible to run around in high speeds they are one of the best road technologies developed up to this day.
MacAdam roads: because 40MPH should be enough for anyone.
There is one thing you have forgotten about: water (although from what I hear about western Australia perhaps that is forgivable!). Up in Alberta, Canada, more than a good days drive north of these warm southerly locations like North Dakota, we have similar swings of temperature in the summer due to lots of sun and low humidty (although probably a good 10C lower on both ends of your scale!). The temperature swing in the winter is less but this is when the damage occurs.
In the late winter (March/April) period the sun can heat things up enough to melt the snow during the day and then freeze again at night. This allows water to seep into cracks and then expand into ice. This causes far more damage that simple heat/cool cycles without water. At high enough temperatures tarmac becomes pliable and can be pushed out of the way by the weight of a car going over it so perhaps this is what causes your potholes i.e. temperature alone rather than heat/cool.
That's urban legend. Both sodium and calcium chloride have the same effect on concrete.
I live in Alberta, Canada and most of our roads our paved, but we still have massive windshield repair issues. In the winter we gravel the paved roads which creates lots of chipped/cracked windshields. I imagine MN does something similar and so the increase in repairs because of gravel roads may not be as high as in states where they don't have to do that sort of thing in winter.
Hopefully you don't get modded troll for a great piece of humor.
I'm not so sure about this - many sections of I-15 in northern Utah are made of concrete. In the past 5 years, temperatures have varied from -10 to 100 degrees fahrenheit.
Granted, Utah is pretty dry, but that area has pretty high humidity in the winters - around 70% (http://www18.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=nephi%2C+ut+weather).
mostly just the crotch rockets, Hybuski, ninga, CBR, and some of the cruisers, and anything considered a chopper (which would be unsafe on most Michigan roads.) OK that is more bikes than I was thinking, but no normal street car/pickup could hang with a enduro, or moto-X, or any of the bikes with 6-8" or more of front suspension travel on gravel. It may not be especially fun on anything but a enduro or dirt bike, but it is at least as good as a car, most of the time. I know I have hundreds of incident free miles on my moped on gravel, I usually went out of my way to do gravel to avoid faster traffic.
A similar argument could be made in funding these small, remote country roads.
It's fine to pave some of those roads, but they should probably be funded at a low priority or at low cost. Where I grew up, I remember when the county converted long 20-mile dirt roads to pavement, even though only a few dozen people lived out on those roads. Funding a freeway makes some sense, since much of our economy is dependent on the transportation of goods.
Michigan must have thousands of miles of paved roads. Reverting 50 miles of road to gravel in Michigan over past three years is not a big problem.
not increase an already-high and completely-unrelated gas tax
I was expecting you to end that with "property tax" ;)
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
at last! My shares in buggy-whip manufacturers will finally come good.
Namgge
I was actually joking with both of those, both of my suggestions were of course terrible ideas.
Of course, the real joke is on the michigan taxpayers and motorists, and is being told by the construction company that will be turning the roads into gravel and then back into asphalt, the government officials, and the lobbyists that connect the two.
Also, few people are going to cross the state on gravel roads. Most will probably use the interstates, which are maintained at least partially with federal money.
Yeee-haw. Well, now I can grab that old Challenger, fit a roll cage and head on out and pound around at road legal speeds on dirt and gravel. Got any old bridges for jumping too?
Here in Colorado they use magnesium chloride to salt the roads. That shit is like glue when it gets on your car. An automatic car wash won't get it all in one pass if you've let it dry on. Only real way to clean the car is at one of those manual washes with the foam brushes to scrub it off. I'll hit those every other week when it's snowy, and periodically hit an automatic to try to get some of it off the bottom of the car.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Google Maps says Monroe (about as far southeast as you can get) is 10 hours 1 minute (597 miles) from Houghton, not 15 hours. Washington DC is 488 miles (8 hours six minutes), so it's about 20% closer in both time and distance. I grew up in Maine, the 39th largest state, and the longest trip one can make within Maine without backtracking was 362 miles or about 6 hours.
I have driven on reverted roads like this and if they do a cheap job of it and do not soften up the road bed, it can be like driving on a thin layer of ball bearings. Your stopping distance becomes very very long. A thin layer of gravel over something hard is much worse than a normal gravel road. As a teenager I learned this lesson. Fortunately the only thing damaged while I learned this lesson was a couple of innocent shrubberies.
My driveway is 2 car wide, 2 car long- so 1 mile, 100,000$ = 19$/foot. Most of the quotes I've gotten want 4K to redo it. 50 feet is just under 1k.
Anyways....
waah waah waah, social services are killing us. You even go for the stock illegal immigrants line.
The defense slice takes 40% of the national budget, far and away the single greatest cut. Why is it that you never hear fiscal conservatives suggesting starting cuts there? And how often do republicans say 'no' in that realm?
In Alabama I used to feel poor living on and around so many dirt roads. What's old is new again.
The best way to ruin your hobby is to try to make a living at it. Waiting on the paperless office since 1997
I live in the DC area, but I was on a business trip to Eagle Butte back in '06. Talk about desolate area... it's hard to explain to people that haven't been there just how far apart everything is and how little there is between point A and point B. It was pretty neat, though. I've lived on the east coast all my life, so seeing other areas like that is interesting and fun.
Me and my motorcycle do just fine on gravel. Most Harley and Hayabusa riders may not like it, but the BMW, KTM, and other adventure/dual sport riders have nothing but fun on it.
Slower speeds and fewer cars? Sweet.
"a paved road can be plowed perfectly clear..."
Are you kidding? I would take a dirt or gravel road in the winter over pavement easily. Plow pavement smooth and all you get is sheet ice. Pave most of the snow off of gravel and you get ridges from the rocks. Much better traction on the bumpy gravel than the smooth ice.
Cite a modern example where millions starve as a result of government-provided food. How can we be certain it's not an example of millions starving, therefore the government steps in?
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
I also grew up with these roads. And shale roads. Shale had issues with water but not like dirt. Instead, it would washboard in areas .... creating a nice quick set up small humps (1 to 2 inches high). But it was so easy to fix, my dad would tell me to go put the box-blade to the road and voila it was fixed. We never had a problem in the worst rains with the road turning to mud though.
I do not know if shale is as easy to find there as where I grew up though.
While the 3 second rule makes great safety sense, the problem I have is people will just switch to your lane from the adjacent one because they see a large opening in front of you and an oppurtunity to pass. 3 seconds becomes 1.5 seconds. If I returned to the 3 sec distance every time I was passed I would damn near be traveling backwards... Yeah yeah I'm exaggerating but you get my point here :)
"That's why I'm a big proponent of doing our best to avoid unwarranted wealth transfers to areas that do not generate wealth......The problem is mostly politics, and that's why, in the long run socialized programs will fail."
And the problem with arguments like this, is that they almost universally fail to account for the cost to society of not having that 'socialized' program, especially when you add in moral obligations that society has deemed necessary to be considered a civilized nation.
For instance, tax payer money funding programs built from research here: http://www.nectac.org/topics/quality/effective.asp#longterm in an inner city where parents would not be able to afford pre-school by themselves.
How many children will grow up to become productive with the program or without?
How many children will avoid joining gangs saving prison money/lives?
There are tons of studies showing that in some cases, preventative social programs, preventative healthcare, etc.. saves society tax money in the long term.
But usually people are so short sighted, that they say things like "wealth transfer", not realizing that they are saving money in the long term. I know the exact news sources and philosophies that you subscribe to because you used the term 'wealth transfer' (My father is firmly in your right wing viewpoint). It is a loaded term that seeks to distort the reality that social programs can and do save society money, and raise our overall prosperity.
And saying "why I'm a big proponent of doing our best to avoid unwarranted wealth transfers to areas that do not generate wealth" completely ignores any moral obligations.
The hospital that I worked for had to, by law, care for any seriously sick or injured person regardless of their ability to pay. That "wealth transfer" from the hospital into a service for someone with no money, was deemed morally correct, enough so that it became law.
That hospital, and my job, disappeared due to the large amounts of illegal aliens and/or poor folks that knew that going to an emergency room, having waited until they were very sick = free healthcare.
If instead, we had provided preventative healthcare for free to those illegal aliens/and or poor people, and offered other free healthcares, the overall cost to provide service to those people would be LOWER.
That means I would still have my job, and the hospital supporting 4,000 employees would have still been in business.
That is a micro example of course, but extend that to the entire healthcare system as a whole, and you can see the impact it can have on America.
We've been slipping in terms of education compared with other European countries for quite a while now. Would you consider tax payer money used to provide teachers a "wealth transfer" to those that cannot afford private tutors? Most likely not. We know that having an uneducated population is bad for everyone. Why can you not see other, proven, socialized programs in the same light?
I would not expect many non-minor roads round here to last 30 years without resufacing, simply due to quantity of traffic. But then, I suppose the UK is a little more densely populated.
take a good hard look at both the people building the road and the folks verifying that it's up to code
I'll get right on that, I'll have my secretary send stern letters to Doe Construction and Doe Inspection.
-- Signed, Representative Doe.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Let's build a MonoRail!
When I describe it to people I say - I grew up 90 miles from a hospital, 90 miles from a pizza joint.
Eagle Butte is "bigger" for the reservation towns. Lantry, Timber Lake are much more desolate.
On my road, one of our neighbors has a grading hook up for his tractor and every six months or so, he grades the road.
What was really awesome was the time someone got ahold of some busted up road (you could still see the yellow/white paint) and put it on the road. that settled it down for a couple of years.
I am a licensed civil engineer, and I think your statement (and the one prior) bears qualifying. The choice between an asphalt road and a concrete one should always be analyzed by a life-cycle cost analysis (LCCA), which takes into account the up-front cost of the road plus the maintenance costs. In Southern California, concrete will most often come out ahead in said analysis, especially given our traffic volumes and the traffic delay costs associated with the more frequent maintenance activities required by asphalt. We have concrete pavements here that are 50+ years old. In areas of high freeze-thaw cycles, an LCCA may produce different results. However, it should also be noted that the thump-thump of many concrete pavements today is due to a load-transfer failure between the slabs, something that in new pavements has been addressed with the inclusion of steel dowel bars between slabs.
"The majority is always wrong; the minority is rarely right." - Henrik Ibsen
Also, I apologize for my inability to use a thesaurus.
(road road road road rode road road road)
Here's an idea for you guys: Stop tailgating. Assholes.
The problem is "we" all can't come to grips with the amount of money our politicians are spending. The amount is so staggering, we have no frame of reference. Trillions of dollars... heck, we even have a hard time imagining a million dollars.
And we've never had to pay for any of it. A billion dollar project comes up for a vote, why not? It sounds like a decent project. Another billion here, another there... and how does this affect us? It doesn't. We go on living our same lives and someone gets the benefit of the projects that are being done. All that we worry about is some nebulous debt that no one ever seems to care about and has never affected us anyway, so no big deal.
We're talking free money here.
So that's why I celebrate this roads problem in Michigan. Now people are going to be pissed. It's finally hitting close to home that you can't just spend and spend and spend. The chickens are coming home to roost. Granted, their economy is giving them no help whatsoever but maybe now we'll realize that there is no such thing as a free road.
I feel the same way about the California budget crisis. Voters don't want to cut spending. Voters don't want to increase taxes. Good for you. You made your bed, now lie in it.
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
Motorcycles are vehicle too!
I always thought they're more like self-service catafalques.
Agreed, although if you drive along the shoulder (which most bicyclers do) you often sink in enough that it's easier just walk...
They'll save a lot of money in the short term, but you've got to have a real solid maintenance plan in place or you'll pretty quickly end up with impassable roads. It's not expensive to maintain them (gravel isn't expensive)--but it is labor-intensive.
Hopefully this decision for a labor-intensive style of road is meant to take advantage of Michigan's unemployed citizens. I lived in southeast Michigan until 3 years ago and the nearby counties had plenty of dirt and gravel roads among the farms that had never been paved. They were just fine for driving on in the winter and summer.
As do I. I don't mind taking my bikes out on gravel type roads. I've taking my bike on quite a few rough roads and had a nice ride up to Alaska last year.
Oh, and I ride a Hayabusa (yea, I'm not "most riders" either :) )
See my home page for a bunch of pics if you're interested.
[John]
Shit better not happen!
Yes, a three story amusement park style water slide in a public school. That is NOT a problem with underfunding.
Are you sure the waterslide was funded by taxes? It sounds like that sort of waterslide may have been funded by donations and fundraisers, which can be completely separate from any sort of state funding problems.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
And here's an idea for you. Get the fuck out of the way. Pinhead.
Moving to gravel roads sounds like a strategy to combat unemployment ... now more people can be employed to maintain the high-maintenance roads.
A problem which only affect ass-sniffing tailgaters.
Welcome to Australia! Next petrol: 300km.
Taxes hardly killed industry. Even at 0% they'd still be leaving or collapsing.
Question: What's the difference between a Harley and a Hoover?
Answer: Placement of the dirt bag.
Life is not for the lazy.
... or you have severe problems with shrink-swell soil. Twenty years ago the local government ripped up a road around here, down to the dirt, and re-graded and re-paved the whole thing. Five years later, the road was just as bumpy as before. Now, today, the surface is still better than it was before the repaving - there's nothing wrong with the asphalt - but the experience is still terrible.
Somehow, the tiny handful of concrete roads around here seem to handle it better. One other advantage - in southern climes, concrete sure feels a lot cooler than asphalt.
Michigan is the 8th most populous and 11th in area, relativity small?? it takes more than 14 hours to get from end to end, Wisconsin to Ohio.
That is an old and poor scam that schools use. Even if the waterslide was installed by a fundraiser, the maintenance and upkeep including heating the pool is not. Besides the fact that the school spends significant resources paying for the management of many of these fundraiser that pay for crazy stuff like waterslides and stadiums.
> Of course we didn't have the freeze/thaw cycles people do farther north so I could be talking out of my backside, but these things appeared well-nigh indestructible.
A little road salt in the winter will take care of your "indestructible" concrete...
Fire the unions and cut every employee's pay by the exact amount of their union dues. Pass the savings on to the consumer either by dropping the price to match the lack of quality or improve the quality and keep the price the same. Tada!
Women are like electronics: you don't know how damaged they are until you try to turn them on.
>Yes, we are. If everybody would just go out and buy a goddam new car (from one of the Big 3, of course).
By "Big 3", do you mean Toyota, Honda and Fiat?
I am a licensed civil engineer, and I think your statement (and the one prior) bears qualifying. The choice between an asphalt road and a concrete one should always be analyzed by a life-cycle cost analysis (LCCA), which takes into account the up-front cost of the road plus the maintenance costs.
Yes, as any civil engineering project.
In Southern California, concrete will most often come out ahead in said analysis, especially given our traffic volumes and the traffic delay costs associated with the more frequent maintenance activities required by asphalt. We have concrete pavements here that are 50+ years old.
The thing is, that's not quite right. Flexible pavements, such as those with asphalt or bitumen-based rolling pavement, don't require any more maintenance than rigid and semi-rigid pavement roads. The only reason that may lead to premature repairs is if they suffer from draining problems or if the foundation suffers from excessive settlement, which is caused by poorly designed and/or built roads.
Moreover, there are also quite a few flexible pavement roads out there that are 50+ years old. In fact, there are flexible pavement roads built by the romans that are still being used up to this day. That doesn't mean all flexible pavement roads last for millennia but is a nice way to show that properly built roads do last a very, very long time.
In areas of high freeze-thaw cycles, an LCCA may produce different results. However, it should also be noted that the thump-thump of many concrete pavements today is due to a load-transfer failure between the slabs, something that in new pavements has been addressed with the inclusion of steel dowel bars between slabs.
Well, as you may know that "thump-thump" phenomenon is caused by the erosion of the road's foundation/base layer, which is caused by drainage problems. That is a sign that that road's drainage system was either poorly thought out/built or wasn't even implemented, which is seen by some people responsible for building them as irrelevant as they believe that the rigid concrete top-layer is more than capable of withstanding any action that may be thrown at it. The fact that the prescribed solution for a drainage/erosion problem, something that is fixed if you add a gravel bedding to the road, is more steel bars, which are comparably very expensive, leads to believe the people behind that solution are a bit out of touch with that problem, as they are trying to throw money at the symptom instead of simply fixing the problem to begin with.
That way of thinking starts to be the source of real trouble when you rely on the same people to build a semi-flexible or flexible pavement road. When that happens then you have entire design and construction crews not caring about stuff such as draining, subsidence, settlement, water movement or even making sure the rolling layer is water-proof, with the added inconvenience of, this time, not being able to fix it by throwing more expensive steel to make up for their poorly thought out design. That leads to all sorts of problems including, such as this case, blaming the technology in itself when the blame is solely in the incompetence of those being paid to do the job. After all, it's the technology that must be wrong instead of the people spending the money and failing at their job, right?
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
Pedal bicycles are allowed on public roads.
As for actual motorbikes, most of them do in excess of the speed limit as a norm. I have never in my life been stuck behind a motorbike because they are all too busy cruising between the cars or, on a quiet street, shooting off at ungodly speeds.
You are right, dirt bikes have no place on the road, that is why in most places it is illegal to drive them on the road.But road bikes, scooters etc are designed to drive on the road and are just as fast, if not faster than most conventional cars.
Also, how do you get stuck behind a motorbike with a flat? Once they pull over they are out of the way, unlike a car, which is just as susceptible to a flat tyre.
While the green brats won't let anyone get away with it any more the best "cheap" road surface is dirt with as much used motor oil slicked over it as you can get your hands on. They used to do this in rural NC when I was there and after a few years you have something a whole lot like asphalt that does not pot hole.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Where the hell do you live in texas that you got 100+ -32 degree days? I believe you sir are full of shite. It's unusual for the temp to drop under freezing for any length of time in northeast texas during the winter.
On the other hand, if you have incompetent design/construction crews in charge of building a road then more often than not you will see them only caring if the pavement is near the generic minimum acceptable thickness described in some building code, without even doing the basic geotechnical survey of the area where the road is being built. If you add to that the fact that those construction crews that only do concrete roads don't even pay attention to the need of a decent draining system then no wonder the road exhibits problems a couple of years after it was built. But hey, the responsibility never lies on the people behind the construction, no matter how incompetent they are.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
"They found that while bituminous roads have high initial costs, gravel roads cost more for ongoing, routine annual maintenance in later years. The graph of cumulative maintenance costs from one county
(Figure 1) verifies that annual maintenance costs per mile for a gravel road increase with traffic
volume."
http://www.lhtac.org/publications/tech%20news%20articles/2006/When%20is%20it%20Time%20to%20Pave%20a%20Gravel%20Road.pdf
as the gravel roads are used by few cars only this may be an good temporary solution. However i dont believe this is appropriate in a nation spending 600Billion $ for arms (=6 Million Kilometers of good road).
Instead of deporting them, lets put them in labor camps and have them repave our roads
Brilliant! But why stop there? Once the road are paved, you can still deport them - say, to Mauritania, or any other similarly enlightened country which still practices slavery - and get some extra cash.
Glad to see there are still some fiscally responsible people around...
Indeed. I find it funny that people think of Michigan as small (even myself sometimes, and I'm from there!), but it takes 12 hours to drive from end to end, and, barring Alaska, has the most shoreline of any state.
And those aware of a little physical process called "bouncing".
Perhaps the problem is you are driving the motorcycle instead of *riding* it?
The next step would be to turn cars into horses.
OutputLogic
I'm not a civil engineer, i do however drive on roads a lot :) The problem with asphalt, it that during hot summer days with high traffic these roads quick develop large ruts and dips. These problems seem to speed up the demise of the road quickly.
It's not expensive to maintain them (gravel isn't expensive)--but it is labor-intensive.
Hmm, an inexpensive but labor-intensive requirement in a state with ridiculously high unemployment? That sounds like a bonus.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
The thing is, that's not quite right. Flexible pavements, such as those with asphalt or bitumen-based rolling pavement, don't require any more maintenance than rigid and semi-rigid pavement roads. The only reason that may lead to premature repairs is if they suffer from draining problems or if the foundation suffers from excessive settlement, which is caused by poorly designed and/or built roads.
Like I said, LCCA required. Asphalt does not answer all pavement woes (neither does concrete). Your defense makes it sound like you work for the asphalt industry.
"The majority is always wrong; the minority is rarely right." - Henrik Ibsen
It seems to me that it's time for another contest.
When DARPA wanted to figure out how to make vehicles more autonomous, they held a nice contest that netted them some very cool technology and other ideas at the cost of about $10 M.
Same thing with the X-Prize to find a cheap want to make into space and back.
Now we need a contest to figure how how to create a surface for driving smoothly, that won't deteriorate, will stand up to heat and cold, and is cheap.
And if we offer $10 M to the winner, it sounds to me like this could be giant savings.
-David
I'm laughing so hard at the "40 year life expectancy" that I'm about to fall out of my chair.
PLEASE show me two contiguous miles of pavement in the U.S. that's 40 years old. Heck, show me one that's 20!
I've been all over the U.S. and if the roads have one thing in common it's that they're utter crap. They're being repaired / replaced every ten years or less everywhere in the country that I've seen.
I'm sure your textbooks give you that four decade number but I've never seen it out here in the real world.
So I think some of these areas may be jumping the gun on thinking this is a catch-all solution for their cash-strapped transportation departments, counties, and cities.
Most of Michigan (anything north of Flint, anyway) already has quite a good portion of gravel roads, and in my experience they are typically in much better shape than rural paved roads, especially in the spring. I would say the counties probably have plenty of experience and know what they are doing.
AccountKiller
They've decided that Flint Michigan must SHRINK 40% to survive.... So the answer is to bulldoze parts of flint and let it return to nature. 49 other cities to be targeted. Is yours next?
http://www.wral.com/golo/blogpost/5358258/
--- Relax, that mass muderer is just trying to reduce our carbon footprint, one fetus at a time...
Again, please show me two contiguous miles of asphalt anywhere in the country that's two decades old.
I understand that if they're built CORRECTLY that they have an estimated lifespan of two decades. What I'm saying is that I haven't seen a single road crew anywhere in the United States that has that level of skill.
Hmmn.. AND you have a low UID. Very suspicious.
Driving directions to Copper Harbor, Michigan from Monroe MI, via I75 N, 643 miles, 11 hours, 16 Min;
Driving directions to Brownsville, Texas from Perryton TX, 841 miles â" about 14 hours 48 Min.
Paradise to Hell MI is only a 4hour 4 minute drive
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
You can't cut back on funding! YOU WILL REGRET THIS!
True true, but in Singapore, part of the East Coast Parkway (ECP) on the approach to Changi airport can be used as an emergency landing strip by moving the potted plants out of the way...Granted that 747s aren't B-52s, but still pretty cool. Or maybe I don't get out enough.
I 94 and I75 were built like that in Michigan and they went to hell up here; at first the had big chunks break out at the expansion joints, then they patched the potholes with blacktop then they the cut out the expansion joints and placed and poured 5 foot replacements in. Finaly they replace everything between Port Huron and Chesterfield with concrete with a blacktop top coat.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Not from my anecdotal experience. After hurricane Katrina...there was debris on all roads leading out of NOLA for a couple years it seemed....falling out of trucks hauling it out of the city.
I have a turbo miata...this has a very raked windshield. My first year back down here, I went through 4 windshields, from cars kicking up rocks on the highways (and even on normal streets). Heck, I had to change my windshield twice in one week.
I'd have thought my angled windshield would have helped me out too...but, not the case.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Michigan weather does do nasty things to roads, but I've been in plenty of other states (and even Canada) with similar weather and the local governments have zero problem keeping roads properly maintained. For being the automotive capital of the world, Michigan has always been completely bass-ackwards when it comes to cars and roads. One of the main reasons I'm looking to move out soon.
I've only heard of the legendary poor condition of Michigan roads--from a friend who lived in part of Quebec where potholes are already horrendous.
I figured the massive potholes in Michigan are left there deliberately to a) wear down regular cars faster so residents have to buy new cars sooner than should be necessary, and/or b) drive up sales of expensive trucks and SUVs.
you laugh, but this is exactly how many people where I live (including myself, sometimes) deal with gravel roads that have gone to washboard. If the washboard is regular and there are no large potholes, you can get up on top of the ruts, with just a little extra gas (If you're not afraid to waggle your back end a bit, that is).
Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
If somebody ever figured out how to get people doing real jobs again we'd all be fucked.
There are other "real jobs" besides prostitution, you insensitive clod!
The up-front cost is higher, but the long-term maintenance (read: TCO) is much, much lower.
Unions would not like it, but whether they admit it or not, civil servants do not have a right to a permanent job funded by citizens.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Hey, it's not that small. It takes about 11 hours to get from one end to the other (Temperance to Ironwood, about as far apart as you can get in MI).
There is a good, bad & ugly side to this.
Some roads can get downright ugly and dangerous when they aren't maintained. When I delivered pizza in a semi-rural area I had to drive on some roads that were so bad they were less roads and more just paths of clumped asphalt and potholes narrowing to one lane where road sides washed away. One such road close to the store had hundreds of people living on it and was so bad we refused to deliver on it. The city and county contested who was to maintain it, each saying the other was. It was technically outside the city but the county mostly ignored it. It finally got fixed just before I went into the IT industry.
I would suspect that blowing dust from dirt and gravel roads contribute to health and environmental damage. Breathing the dust can't be good for people and animals. In areas where the dust could be carried north then land on glaciers it could cause them to melt faster.
I learned to drive on dirt and gravel roads. I see so many people in the DFW area that have never driven on anything but pavement so when they hit a loose or slippery surface they have no clue how to drive. I saw one young girl sitting in her car crying after sliding on an icy patch. I've always said to people that dirt or gravel is the best surface to learn to drive on. People should be required to be able to handle sliding out on a loose or slick surface before getting their driver's license. A timid person behind a wheel is more dangerous than someone that knows how to handle vehicles on different surfaces.
Gravel and dirt are definitely cheaper to maintain. I wonder if brick wouldn't make a better surface. They last for a very long time. Some Roman brick roads are still in use in Europe. It also seems to me that they would give better traction. I've never been on a high speed brick road but it seems to me that road noise might provide an incentive for drivers to keep their speed down.
*It's not what you can do for the Dark Side but what the Dark Side can do for you!*
It would certainly make sense in terms of benefitting real people (to some extent, "low skilled" labour doesn't pay very well these days), to ease off on efficiency and spend more on labour, but it would also have a devastating effect on the profit margins of large corporations, who swear fealty only to the shareholders. Therefore, though your ideas are intriguing and I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter, they're not likely to be implemented any time soon.
Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
I'm in Quebec, Canada, and I've seen a rural backroad grinded to gravel to save a few pennies. This was a really small city (~1000) with no money, and for a road with lots of ups and downs, going at about 70km/h. They poured some kind of oil on it so it wouldn't be dusty when you'd pass on it. T'was great for a while. But eventually potholes got back, and instead of fixing them with gravel, they patched them back with asphalt... And 10-12 years later, they re-sufarced it... with asphalt...
So there it goes... some gained wisdom from the land of freeze/unfreeze . HTH.
Try Constitution or Libertarian.
Constitutionally Correct
I don't know much about paving roads but I'm guessing if repaving a road costs $100,000 a mile then paving one for the first time will cost at least the same. So they destroyed $50,00,000 worth of pavement in order to save $5,000,000 in maintenance.
Are we supposed to be shocked and horrified by that or something? If so, it's not working.
It seems like a perfectly reasonable solution to me. They're not taking inhabited property by eminent domain, instead they're targeting abandoned houses and demolishing them to create open space. Net result is fewer abandoned buildings -- which are a safety hazard, and create lots of extra work for fire and police departments -- more open space, and healthier communities in the nicer sections of town instead of a few people spread out and squatting amongst the ruins.
The only people who should be appalled by this are American exceptionalist, growth uber alles neo-"conservatives." In other words, morons.
"Negative growth" is something we're going to have to start dealing with in a lot of places in the near future, and as a society in general within a generation. The United States managed to get very high on the hog by growing continuously throughout the 20th century, which is getting increasingly unsustainable and simply cannot continue. The 20th century (arguably the 19th as well) as experienced in the US was very probably a singular event, built on cheap energy, rapid population growth, industrialization, and coming out on the winning side of two World Wars. The party is over.
We need to look forward, and unflinchingly and without nostalgia analyze what's likely to work in the future and what isn't. Trying to force some sort of return to the "good old days" is doomed. The things that aren't going to work need to die. That means industries that aren't profitable need to be wound down, rotting, unwanted houses need to be bulldozed, and government programs that depend on or assume never-ending growth to function need to stop.
I am glad to see that Flint is at least making some attempt to move forward, rather than sit and wait for some sort of salvation that's plainly not going to come, as other cities seem hell-bent on doing. I have some minor issues with the way it sounds like they're doing things -- my geo-libertarian sensibilities would be less offended by an "abandoned buildings tax" that attempted to stick owners of vacant structures with the costs they're externalizing on the community, than any use of eminent domain -- but these are issues of implementation rather than overall intent.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
It's a tough situation.
There's really no "good" answer to the problem. Large-scale deportation isn't terribly effective, and requires heavy-handed tactics that will inevitably infringe upon the privacy of law-abiding citizens, and cause a great deal of pain and suffering to those being deported (children in particular).
Xenophobia and racism complicates the issue even further. Many people in my area have the unfortunate tendency to label any dark-skinned individual without a perfect command of English (or a full-time job) as an 'illegal,' despite the fact that census data indicates a large legal immigrant population, while the various "crackdowns" that have been attempted have yielded virtually nothing.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Cars are just one step above motorcycles. We should ban those too.
It's a Sign of the Times.
Obamageddon is coming
The oligarchs have done it, the USA are bankrupt.
Emmm I worked with one of the largest asphalt companies in Southern California 'All American Asphalt' and when oil prices rose; it was almost cheaper to use concrete at one point during the last few years. Although if your company owns an oil well in a foreign country like they do, you almost have a monopoly on the asphalt business because you can lowball everyone else with your cheaper asphalt oil prices.
Concrete lasts for a very long time and gets stronger over time; the problem is when you have to fix a crack you cannot just fill it and that is awful in a lot of Norhtern colder conditions. You have to sawcut a huge section out and repour it; if you just filled in the crack the two slabs would act like hammers smashing the fill patch to pieces.
Most of Los Angeles and the interstate highway are paved in concrete and just covered in aspahtl, a lot of it was poured in the 50's when concrete was cheaper. Guys used to stand by their work and be proud of it by stamping their name/company into it; they stopped that after awhile because whenever something went wrong with it they would refere to the stamp.
What they do with a lot of these older roads is pave ashpalt on top of it, so you will see like 3-4 layers of asphalt one on top of the other. So it allows for flexibility on top while protecting the concrete and remove the damaged top layer.
More money is unfortunately the only answer to get holes patched faster and maintanence, the government would probably save the Americans overall in repair damage done to their cars, shocks worn, tires worn and other damage.
Here's a link to give you an idea of what it costs to maintain roads especially in metropolotin.
http://www.sacog.org/mtp/pdf/MTP2035/Issue%20Papers/Road%20Maintenance.pdf
Factors Affecting Road Maintenance and Rehabilitation
-Âf Texas Transportation Institute studies conclude that it costs less in the long run to have good
roads than bad roads â" if you keep up with preventive maintenance continuously.
-Âf Deferred maintenance drives up long term cost; it shortens the cycle for rehabilitation,
which is four times as costly. Deferred rehabilitation compounds the problem, often leading
to pavement failure and the need to reconstruct the whole roadbed, at ten times the cost.
Routine preventive maintenance, particularly to seal cracks, patch potholes, and keep
drains open, on a continuing basis takes on average of $20,000 per mile of road per year
to do right.
Regular heavy maintenance, meaning a slurry or chip seal coat, adds costs in the range
of $50,000-$80,000 per mile for residential streets, on about a seven year cycle.
For well-maintained roads, the pavement rehabilitation cycle, meaning an asphalt
overlay, comes due in 15 years for arterials and 30 years for local streets, costing
$300,000-$400,000 per mile; rubberized asphalt can last longer and cuts road noise but
costs about 25% more up front.
Reconstruction of poorly-maintained roads, which entails removing the pavement and
repairing the gravel base underneath, costs as much as $2 million per mile.
I was headed out to the Mt. Adams area to do some hiking, if I recall correctly, when I encountered this. There is a remote forest road that snakes several times between two counties, who only maintain their sections of the road. You'll be driving for miles on an old, wide but poorly maintained and washboarded gravel road, and it would suddenly turn into a smooth asphalt highway with signs, lines, and a 50mph or so speed limit. A while later, you'd be back to gravel. It's sort of a shame that many of our old gravel forest roads are no longer maintained and even closed off. You used to be able to drive to the top of a lot of the smaller mountains in Washington, but not in my life time. Some of the roads also make reasonable paths between some cities that aren't well connected by main highways, but they can't be trusted to be passable.
Perhaps our "essential" services are no longer sustainable. Even the ones that are genuinely legitimate (ie. things that you cannot possibly provide for on your own)
Not every society has a "stable" equilibrium in which taxes are acceptable, and all services are provided for. Suburbia requires a specific set of parameters in order to remain viable. Currently, several of those parameters are out of range, and the society is beginning to crumble. Taxation does enter into the equation, but is only one of many variables.
Africa desperately needs a solution to the AIDS epidemic. Proper healthcare would go a long way toward solving this crisis. Unfortunately, the governments can't afford to provide healthcare, because their taxes are too low. Unfortunately, the governments also cannot raise taxes because the people cannot afford to pay them. In this situation, the governments cannot provide a legitimately essential service, and don't have the resources to solve the problem on their own.
Our own situation is beginning to get out of hand as well. Although many conservatives would love to use the current economic crisis to criticize government spending that they deem to be wasteful, the roots of the problem go much, much deeper. If we are unable to restore the previous equilibrium (low fuel prices, low levels of unemployment in the middle-classes), there will be a societal shift, and certain regions will have no choice but to wither and die.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
They also are oiled in front of properties to control dust (often something like Dustlock [soybean oil soapstock], since crude oil spraying is banned in many states).
Better not hire Russell Bliss to do this if you live in one of those other states.
Dioxin-contaminated oil he sprayed on the roads in Times Beach, MO gave a bunch of people in town cancer although to be fair it did do a good job of keeping the dust down for four years.
How the hell is the parent 'Insightful'? In this case he is completely factually ignorant, that's the truth.
407 - this is built from concrete except for a few patches here or there. It's the best road around here (Toronto, Canada.)
From the wikipedia: It was the first highway in almost thirty years since Highway 427 to be surfaced with concrete instead of asphalt, which despite involving a costlier initial investment, lasts significantly longer and has better reflective capabilities (although motorists have a noisier ride).
You can't handle the truth.
We still have a lot of brick roads here along the Mississippi river. It gets hot and cold here and I've never seen any maintenance needed for them. In the summertime a lot of green grows out from between the bricks which I guess could be a problem if they get too big. Personally I've always really enjoyed driving on them.
*DrugCheese rants*
My mountain bike handles it just fine, thankyouverymuch. A hybrid bike will handle it as well. I just wouldn't take a road bike out, unless you're into fixing flats every 200 feet. Hopefully this brings in more bikers.
From http://dhc.ucdavis.edu/convocation/ESW07/Border%20Crossings.htm:
One of the significant negative repercussions presented by the large number of illegal immigrants is the burden it places on the health care system. Over half of all undocumented workers are uninsured, and use of emergency-room facilities by uninsured patients has led to a massive increase in uncompensated hospital costs. Current legislation legally binds hospitals to treat all patients in emergency situations; such legislation, however is severely under funded, such that, in last five years, more than 84 California hospitals have been forced to shut down due to financial strain.
Am I advocating denying them emergency-room services? No. But the longer we go without meaningful border security, the worse this problem will get. There's nothing mean-spirited about requiring people to live, go to school, and get their healthcare in the country of which they are actually citizens.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
They're cheap to build, but they require a lot more maintenance that people think.
Generally, they need occasional grading and maybe "oiling". Both are jobs that can be done by Bubba and his grader/truck, without shutting the road down, and pretty much in 1-2 passes tops.
Compare and contrast to most paved roads, which, at least here in New England, seem to have a lifespan of about 4-5 years thanks to frost heaves, plows, etc...or in the city, from idiot contractors digging up strips of the roads every few months and doing shitty-ass jobs of putting the stuff back.
What does that require? Dozens of guys on dozens of big machines, shutting down entire lanes for hours. Same with emergency repairs. Washed out dirt road? Backhoe and roller. Washed out pavement? A week plus of work.
Please help metamoderate.
I'm sorry, but I go to college in Michigan, 500 miles from where I live in Michigan. How many western states have "vast distances" like that?
Why would you bar Alaska?
XML causes global warming.
Gravel roads are FUN.
I grew up in a rural town, and I can tell you that chasing/circling each other in your high school parking lot while peeling out and kicking up a lot of dirt is quite fun. Until of course your side window breaks.
Driving at 70 mph down a dirt road in the middle of the night is fun too, until you realize that the road had actually turned and the grass/gravel your now driving over is someones yard.
On a side note if you have ever been curious if your rear wheel drive Bonneville can make it through that 1 foot deep fine rocky stuff playgrounds have.... it cant.
Oh, I'm willing to concede that this might be bad construction - see my other comments in this story. The fundamental problem, however, is that the soil shrinks and swells with rainfall - it's not a matter of settling, it's a matter of soil that rises and falls based on water content.
In my case, they certainly did not build up three feet of gravel, so c'est la vie.
Another big downside: Driving a motorcycle on gravel sucks.
Not if you have the right kind of motorcycle.
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?
Gravel roads usually don't pothole. They get ruts. It'll happen mostly in the spring when large trucks (think farm vehicles) drive on the ground when there is a wet substructure to the gravel, causing the gravel to sink and spread. Another vehicle comes along, pushes it down some more - and wet soil, particularly with a heavy clay base, gets more pliable the more it's worked. This results in a fairly sizable rut on many roads.
Now, if you're not traveling it when it's wet and worn with a heavy vehicle, it's not such an issue. A gravel road, even a poorly maintained one, can last for decades without maintenance if you're not driving on it with a 2-ton pickup after a heavy rainfall.
Oh, and a good gravel road will allow a 'family car' to go about 60mph without much of a problem. I'd guess a gravel raod with moderate traffic gets regraded every 3-4 years out here in SD. (Hell, sometimes it's not even necessary when it gets really bad: someone with a big truck will just drive on the 'bumps' between the ruts after a rain and even it all out again!)
I say move all the goods transportation back to trains (and put more rail in to area population centers) and move the back roads to gravel as they degrade throughout most of the country. Over-the-road trucking, while providing jobs, is a fool's errand and very costly to the country (in terms of fuel for the trucks, labor, maintenance on the trucks and road, etc.)
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
The terminology I use when trying to describe travel out here isn't miles, at least not directly. It's more like: "You know how it's 20 miles to work for you, but it takes almost an hour? If i want to "eat out" it's likely not only quicker to get dressed in my hunting gear and go shoot a deer, but it's half the distance. "Eating out" is a once-a-week event because just getting there, eating, and getting back takes the better part of the evening."
Yet, when you say "The state capital is in the middle of the state. It takes about 4 hours to get from one side of the state to the capital. I've done that drive, on major roads, and have completed the trip without seeing a single vehicle until getting into town" - they don't believe me, or that it's possible.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I'm sure a few days of Iraq occupation expenses could pave every county road in the state. We could probably shut down a few of the thousands of military bases we keep around the world an pave the entire country in a few years. Unfortunately, citizens are too dimwitted to be outraged.
The American Empire is leaving America to rot.
Well tank warfare proved this concept decades ago, and it has nothing to do with deflection. a sloped armor by 60 % gives double the steel thickness for a projectile traveling horizontal to the ground.
You're thinking past the next election period, that's your fallacy here. In other words, yes, they cost more. But that's something the next administration has to worry about.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Or they just don't change the formula all that much no matter where you go.
Around here (Seattle) we're lucky to see it snow once or twice a year, and there's only one or two months a year where it gets really cold. I've never seen it get colder than the 20's.
Of course, this is also the city where they decided when we got almost two feet of snow this winter (a very rare event) that they weren't going to use salt because it might 'hurt the environment.' That plan didn't work out so well...
Sounds like it's time to vote ... with the feet.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I have seen some of the asphalt thicknesses they have under highways in SW Ohio. It's usually a foot thick asphalt with all the various layers...on top of another 1-3 feet of stone. Given that they usually bury mains, sewage, storm, and other things in the road. I can see how it would cost so much.
But I don't think 100k per mile would apply to rural roads that just need a resurface. I don't see what's stopping them from having a machine go ahead down the road and either grind the road to a relatively level surface or laying a thin levelling layer of asphalt. Then having a second machine follow behind it at a distance appropriate for the temperature of the material and how hot of a day it is, and lay the top layer.
I just don't see 100k per mile unless you're doing major city streets or highways with a lot of buried utilities under the street. At which this point if you're re-doing the road it's probably because something is breaking down under the road and needs repaired anyway.
Seems to me they could hire smaller outfit asphalt companies to repair non-essential roadways besides paying out the huge dollars to the huge multi-state conglomerate road crews. No big company wants to do one really bad road when they can do a major freeway overhaul that they can keep their crews on for 3-5 years.
Reading your statement I am rather surprised....as I have lived on gravel roads all my life, and I have never had glass problems. (aside when a semi had a flat and threw half of a tire into my windshield)
If brute force isn't working, you are not using enough.
In a relatively small state like Michigan with nasty freeze-thaw cycles that probably cause massive damage to roads anyway, this probably is not a bad idea. The distances are such that the lower speed limit required isn't going to mean it takes days to get across the state (like it would in, say, Montana). Plus, the freeze-thaw cycle means they'd be dealing with massive potholes every season regardless, and potholes are cheaper and easier to fix on gravel.
I certainly wouldn't want to try this tactic anywhere out west though, where vast distances make driving on gravel roads much more of a chore.
Relatively small state? It takes about 10 hours to get from Detroit to the far end of the Upper Peninsula. I've made it to Atlanta, GA in just over 10 hours.
Now Ohio, there's a small state...
labor-intensive you say? no problem, we got plenty of criminals just waiting to get their hands dirty working on the chain-gang. Perhaps for the 21st century re-make of Cool Hand Luke
lick the cancle button (at least thats what our Chinese QA says)
In Dresden, Germany a lot of the streets are cobble stone. This was done on purpose as far as I know to keep the "historical feel". So if you drive faster than 30kmh you get shaken all to hell. I also twisted my ankle pretty bad a couple times because there is big gaps between the stones so if you hit the stone the wrong way you get your foot stuck in a crack. Some areas of the city can't get highspeed internet because they have really old phone wiring, where as other areas which can be literally across the street have 30Mbps for ~$55. The US government has been skimping on infrastructure for 40+ years. Here's a thought, rather than throwing 100B at GM, why didn't they use that money for rebuilding the streets? Bail out a company that makes cars no one wants when you don't have roads that anyone wants, crazy :-)
If we're closing schools, the solution is to fund them properly from the appropriate source (those who use them)
Hm... an interesting idea that, making those who use schools - children - pay for them.
The average college graduate in the USA already starts with something like $20k of debt. This does not seem to have any ill effects that anyone can discern, so it does make logical sense to extend this to those free-loading high school students at the very least.
Since megacorporations warmed to the idea of turning children into consumers via well placed franchises, I am sure it would be easy to convince MasterCard and Visa to give "KinderCard" or "Visa Princess" cards to elementary school children. Other types of financial constructions are surely possible, since the banks are no longer free to be creative in home loans any more, they can turn their attention to this vital new sector.
The false dichotomy between lower taxes/crappy schools and higher taxes/good schools finally solved, thanks to your libertarian genius!!!
Comprehension fail.
No-one said that taxes on fuel should pay for schools. Taxes on fuel should pay for roads. But you should not earmark _more_ budget for the roads when there are other more important issues, like schools to deal with. People can only pay so much tax. It makes more sense to reduce the burden in one area, allowing you to use what funds you have more efficiently.
Do you really think that the tax you pay on fuel pays for all the road building and maintenance ? If that were true, you would be driving gravel roads already.
Large parts of France are thinly populated: less then 50 person/km2, but the roads are always good.
I guess it all has to do with what people find important, and the French do like speeding :-)
For concrete to survive, one would have to prevent water from building up under the road. This is an almost impossible feat of engineering.
The principle is something like this:
I may forget a layer or two, but the drainage layer allows water to run off to the ditches, so it doesn't build up under the road.
Usage: km/h for speed (kilometers per hour); kph for very slow impulses (kilopond hours).
I wonder if the information in your text books doesn't have a geographical/climatic bias and is incomplete. I strongly ssupect that the 3-month thaw/freeze cycle in many parts of the upper Midwest (and Canada) were taken into consideration. Or, for that matter, chemicals put on the road to inhibit ice formation (creating a temperature differential that likely allows water to seep into the road, but not out), and so on.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Do you intend to submit your course work using the word "macadame" because you are an idiot. The mans name was John McAdam, and that is what the technique is named after. When bitumen was added to the surface of that structure it became "tarmacadam", usually shortened to tarmac.
And a gravel road is not a McAdam road anyway. The stones and gravel have to be laid very specifically, large stones, then a bit smaller then smaller still, and the whole is then compacted to form a smooth surface. Just dumping gravel on the ground is not a McAdam road.
Where I live it is common for the top layer, the one with the bitumen, to contain quite sizeable stones so that the finished surface looks like it has been grouted with bitumen. These roads last quite a bit longer than plain old black top, which although it contains stone, it is only stone chips and dust. I know this because I used to deliver the stone to tarmac plants for use in road building. The stone was small enough to be blown from a tanker through a pipe up into the silos. The kind of stuff that gives you silicosis, if you're not careful.
RON PAUL 2012!
Paving rural roads without a plan to keep them fully maintained is like giving a school a bunch of unpatched Windows boxes. It's not long until you're spending more time working around the new problems than you would if you'd just stuck to the old way of doing things.
:)
I think this is the first reverse-car-analogy I've seen on Slashdot - or am I too new here?
ooooh luxury
I would give everything i own for a little bit more.
As a rider, I dread going over concrete freeways at speed, hurts my manly bits from the thumping it does. the grooves aren't *that* bad to deal with, it's going mostly straight and can just avoid them most of the time.
There are dirt roads in several rural areas and parcs départementaux (roughly equivalent to US county & state parks). The ones in my part of France -- the southeast (yes, the French Riviera, no, I'm not rich :) ) -- are a mix of packed dirt and "gravel" that's actually the ground-up naturally-occurring rock here. I go mountain biking on many of them. (The gravel isn't thin and slippery like in the US, but consists of larger chunks, and it doesn't cover the entire road surface, so it's quite all right to ride on.)
You are right that the French take very good care of their roads -- that would be the taxes that amount to 70% of the price of gas here, which is about four or five times more expensive per gallon than in the US, and, for autoroutes (highways), all the toll stations. (It's so expensive to have a car here that I don't have one. I take public transportation, which costs me a whopping [that's sarcasm] 40 euros a month total, and that does indeed include my commute to and from work.)
You're absolutely right about brick and stone roads keeping speeds down. I live in Nice (France) and they recently redid part of the city center roads after putting in the tramway. On a particularly wide road (the one that goes along Place Masséna) that practically everyone sped on, which of course caused pedestrian fatalities, they removed the asphalt and replaced it with cobblestone to slow down drivers. No one goes over the 50km/h speed limit any more! They do the same in Helsinki, where practically all the roads are cobblestone in the city center. It's not so much a sense of history (though that's certainly part of the reason) as it is a practical and aesthetic way to keep down driving speeds.
I grew up where they are doing it to the roads. The main road Lake Montcalm happens to be the road that I grew up on. And it has been going down hill for at least 20 years. Montcalm county is a mainly rural county that has had it one big industrial employer move out a couple of years ago. The Queen, has done nothing for the economy other than run it into the ground. It makes me wonder if her next great idea will be to get the US to sell MI to Canada, where she is from.
So, people who work in glass shops want you to throw stones.
1980: The world needs ditch diggers too!
2010: The world needs gravel spreaders too!
On the other hand, macadame roads are a time-tested technology. Although they don't make it possible to run around in high speeds they are one of the best road technologies developed up to this day.
yeah, except for two problems. Oil and loose stone, both of which are in abundant supply on a macadam road.
I'm sorry, but when you put oil and loose stone down, that isn't a road, that's a roof.
Driving on it causes all kinds of dings and mess of your undercarriage unless you're doing 5 MPH, and I still bear the scars where i wiped out on my bicycle, and had to have the doctor scrub that crap out of the wound before he could suture.
Macadam? Hell no!
Either pave it, or don't bother building it in the first place.
I remember the concrete highway 231 going through Huntsville Al. It was put down sometime in the late 60's to early 70's and it's still there. Sometime in the mid 90's they put asphalt on top but the concrete is still solid. It may cost more up from but the damn things last forever.
The purpose of language is communication, If the idea is clear the grammar ain't important
Because anyone could miss Alaska, all tucked away down there.
I understand the need for "progress" but I sometimes question peoples' definition of it. I, too, grew up in areas surrounded by dirt and gravel roads. Until a year ago I lived on one. I enjoy riding my road bike on newly paved roads, but there's just something about a rural environment that gets lost when roads start to be paved.
I'd be happy to see some paved roads go back to gravel or dirt, personally. My 23 year old diesel Land Rover goes the same speed on dirt as is does on pavement, and I find dirt roads more enjoyable overall. I do understand that they can cost more to maintain, but then again that's not so much of an issue for roads that aren't travelled as often. Additionally, it's termed as "deferred maintenance" and if the state can't pay for the roads, there aren't many better choices.
When I was a kid living in Zambia, there were two paved roads in my town. The main road was maintained reasonably well, but the other "paved" road to the mine was so bad that you had to drive on the shoulder. Removing the pavement in that case would have been a benefit, but then again that would have cost money.
www.clarke.ca
Where I live, in Kansas, the trucks average about 50 mph on gravel roads. I usually drive about 60 mph on the gravel roads in a Mazda 626. When you grow up driving gravel roads, you learn to compensate and handle differing road conditions. Fresh gravel is the only thing that causes a major speed reduction. The worst part is when the road maintainer trenches the ditch and the next rain causes part of the road to slide into the ditch.
The sad thing is that although school enrollment is going down, education taxes are going up. So the schools are getting more money to teach less students. While I do understand that many of the costs of education are a fixed cost, (i.e. the incremental cost of teach 1 extra child is much less than the funding money received for that 1 extra child), I still find this a little alarming. There has to be a place to cut costs. Administration, I'm looking at you.
No, they don't - my next door neighbor bought the cheap "rock salt" (sodium chloride) and used it throughout the winter, by spring his entire walkway was full of pits and cracks. I opted for the more expensive calcium chloride based pellets (I think the brand was Prestone Driveway Heat, but it doesn't matter which brand you get), and our driveway/walkways are still intact.
The gravel will force motorists to reduce there speed this would be very beneficial on roads that shouldn't see a lot of traffic. Rural roads with schools on them just don't need the traffic and the children will be safer. If they really think about this and implement it properly. I don't think this should be argued as a cost thing more as a traffic control thing.
Yes, people who use schools should be taxed.
Of course, kids don't have any money, so we'll probably have to tax them once they grown up.
So we should tax everyone but immigrants for their use of the schools. And politically that's silly, so we'd probably end up taxing everyone.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I've only had a chip in my windscreen once (we don't have many gravel roads in the UK, but we frequently get cheap councils sticking "chippings" on tarmacked roads, which is almost as bad!) and that was from a truck travelling in the opposite direction. I assume the wheels must have flicked the stone sideways.
Fortunately, it could be repaired by the handy "squirt glue into the chip" method, which the insurance covered free of charge. I'd've felt really bad if it'd cracked 'cos it wasn't my car.
You don't even need it to freeze.
It certainly helps. Once you get a small crack, water gets in and freezes. The phase-change expansion is much greater than the heating expansion.
So a -5 to +5C cycle is worse than +5 to 70C.
But what would you know about gravel roads in Western Australia? :-)
Americans need to come to a realization that their country is failing apart. It's not a bad thing, it is just a course of natural history. No other country had what America had and no other country grew so fast like America did. After it is all said and done, a diplomatic-social-capitalist-etc big goverment just doesn't work.
You're governments (both state and fed) are spending more money then they are pulling in. Eventually your infrastructure is going to go bankrupt and you're beyond the fixing point. So be prepared for change, the areas of infrastructure are already failing and are beginning to take hold.
1. Power is getting more expensive
2. Oil is getting more expensive
3. Education infrastructure is dropping
4. Highway and road infrastructure is dropping
5. Cost of living is rising faster then the economy can support
6. Taxes are raising higher then the avg incoming + COL can support
7. Almost all fortune 800 companies are offshoring
8. Cost of healthcare is rising
9. Number of people requiring healthcare is rising
10. Number of people becoming 100% dependant of socialized support is rising
11. Number of states increasing local taxes and asking for federal support is rising
12. Avg salary for americans is between 20-35,000$ a year
13. Number of college applications is dropping
14. Crime rate is rising
15. Drug and Substance abuse is rising
16. Number of AIDs and Cancer cases are rising
and I could go on, I'm not saying it isn't any better anywhere else in the world, but a shift is coming and it would be wise to pay attention and even more so to do action. Government officals can only do what the people want, when you want someone out of office, you remove them, not whine on internet forums. Here are some cheerful ups to the above issues.
1. Walmart has some cheap ass stuff
Cheap materials but more labour? Sounds like jobs.
I can't go 50 mph on a dirt road
I sure can............ pansy.
you've got to have a real solid maintenance plan in place or you'll pretty quickly end up with impassable roads. It's not expensive to maintain them (gravel isn't expensive)--but it is labor-intensive.
I believe the state already has a large, captive workforce: Convict Labor. While Michigan's prisons can't supply all the labor needed to maintain the roads, it can lower the cost of maintenance by supplementing its Public Works or Dept of Transportation workers with low-cost convict labor.
And it's a win-win situation. In most prisons, inmates want to work. In 2000, Michigan was paying convict labor $7.00/hour. Inmates get to spend time outside the confines of the prison, engage in productive physical activity, and learn job skills and work discipline that can translate into real jobs when they are released. The state offsets the cost of imprisonment by saving on the cost of road maintenance and recapturing some of the convict's wages to offset the cost of imprisonment. It's also reported that prisoners participating in similar prison labor programs are much better behaved than the average. (Information sources: http://www.mackinac.org/article.aspx?ID=4476),
A lot of young adults go to prison on drug charges or related crimes having never held a job of any significance. They usually come out of prison withno job skills, no car to get to a job, no place to live, no money to get a car or a place to live, and a criminal record that makes it virtually impossible to get a job that can provide a living wage. Faced with this situation it's inevitable that most will go back to selling drugs or theft as a matter of survival.
But if an inmate can work on public works projects such as maintaining roads, and earn wages during their imprisonment -- even if below minimum wage levels -- they have a chance to have enough money saved upon release to buy a cheap used car, legally register and insure it, and get an apartment, without resorting to criminal enterprise. And they also have skills, experience and a work discipline they can capitalize on to find work in an marketplace that can be more forgiving of a criminal record than most others.
--- A man with a briefcase can steal more money, than any man with a gun. [Don Henley]
Is it shoddy workmanship and/or overpaid unionized road workers? My guess is both.
Even up north, concrete roadbeds -- if properly constructed and maintained -- are much stronger and last much longer than asphalt. Where problems occur is when the roadway needs to be opened and closed to service underground utilities and such. If the patches are not properly sealed and the seals (and expansion joints) maintained, freezing water can tear them up as quickly as asphalt.
Another advantages to concrete is they use no petroleum products in the manufacturing process other than as necessary to move and mix the ingredients, (asphalt requires petroleum products as an ingredient plus must be heated to around 300F during manufacturing and laid and finished above 174F), and concrete's lighter color converts less sunlight into heat and so contributes less to global warming.
--- A man with a briefcase can steal more money, than any man with a gun. [Don Henley]
My father is originally from rural Nebraska, and any time we visit that side of the family it's pretty much all gravel roads for miles in any direction. Even I, having learned to drive on the southern California freeways, never had a problem driving over 30MPH on the gravel roads there. That said, I do remember my dad complaining an awful lot about having to get the windshield fixed or replaced after visiting his family when I was younger.
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
In practical applications, I've never encountered a stretch of asphalt highway that's gone more than 10 years without repaving that didn't obviously need repaving. It seems that most asphalt highways are on a 5-year resurfacing cycle.
Conversely, I know of several stretches of concrete highway that is still in good shape after 30-40 years without general resurfacing. I'm talking about the areas I'm familiar with: NY, NJ & PA.
Is this atypical?
--- A man with a briefcase can steal more money, than any man with a gun. [Don Henley]
You've got a point there. Aren't there any laws that prevent people from using atrociously loud cars/motorcycles? Those damned things should never be made. And they probably wouldn't, if it wasn't for middle-aged men having midlife crises and wanting to pretend to be part of a motorcycle gang.
Yeah, gravel roads aren't a requirement for that to happen... but I can believe it'll happen more often... unless they travel slower on gravel and it just doesn't happen without higher speeds.
Education costs are bound to rise over time, in comparison to everything else. Certain sectors of the economy cannot make productivity gains in the same way others do.
When you compare 12 years of education to a the price of a car over time, education looks more expensive over time but really may not have changed in absolute cost.
Think of it this way: the time required to build a car (or most any other widget) keeps dropping, and bankers can make more money with the same staff than before, but it still requires the same number of musicians and minutes for an orchestra to play a symphony as it did when that symphony was written; police officers still walk and drive the same speed when patrolling a neighborhood; and it still takes 12 years to educate the average student.
Or, "what do you mean you wave at people you meet on the road?"
Umm, you don't have to wave more than once every 10-20 minutes.
I was back for a wedding in '01, we were late to make it to Pierre for our flight back, my Grandmother who still lived in South Dakota let me drive, I was going about 15 over on Highway 83, met a Highway Patrol car, he waved, I waved. Grandmother says "oh you better slow down now..." Hell Grandma, thats the only cop we will see all day, if anything I should speed up...
The only thing I don't like about driving back there is the lack of FM radio coverage.
Why can't technology make education more efficient?
PLEASE show me two contiguous miles of pavement in the U.S. that's 40 years old.
There are some contiguous concrete pitches on state route 101 North to San Francisco here in California that are original Eisenhower era concrete freeway (albeit much patched with tar in the cracks).
Technology should be applied where it can make education more efficient, and where we can afford it.
However, technology doesn't always make everything more efficient. In some cases, technology will be inferior to a traditional equivalent.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
EVERYONE benefits from schools. EVERYONE.
Peopel without kids? benefit from public schools. Retires? benefit from ublic schools. EVERY SINGLE PERSON benefits from public schools.
So everyone should pay for them.
And the tax needs to be more wide then deep to help cushion the inevitable economic downturns.
So, a gas tax would be good, as would property, income, and services is the best way to help create a good education program.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"While I do understand that many of the costs of education are a fixed cost,"
More accurately:
While I do understand that many of the costs of education are a rising cost,
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The whole financial issue could have been solved by giving all taxpays 8000 dollars off any american car instade of giving a trillion dollars to the banks.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Heh. And to think I just heard about MI's former plank roads.
Yoinked from a Bentley Historical Library posting, University of Michigan, about MI plank roads (http://www.ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=865)
"[...] these plank roads in Michigan were a godsend to the state's farmers who often had difficulty getting their farm products to market. One Wayne County farmer reported that the roads were impassable for a large portion of the year and most of his profit was swallowed up in carrying his produce to Detroit if he could get it there at all [...] [T]he wear and tear on the farmer's horses, harness and vehicle when traveling a plank road was reduced by nearly half. [...] Farmers preferred to pay the tolls rather than have to rub down horses after traveling on an unimproved road or mud and dust and mire."
Back to logging!
All of the proposals I've read so far are just silly. What we need is to replace all the roads with a 3 foot thick substrate of the finest Italian marble, layer 1 inch of titanium on top, then apply a Teflon sealant over that! Sure it will be around US$1 million per inch, but it will last nearly forever! Rain, snow, and ice can just be brushed off. No need for plows, just tie brooms to the back bumper of a bunch of pickup trucks! No more road erosion due to tire friction, the tires just slide on the Teflon (will need to add those bumper they use for bumper bowling on the shoulders). If there is some damage to the Teflon, just get a spray can of Teflon and spray. Awesomeness all around. And while we're at it, we can upgrade interstate rest stops with gold toilets. Oh shiny! This is my grand plan to revitalize the US economy.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
No. You are profoundly misinformed. California even prior to the current budget crisis had among the highest student to teacher ratios in the nation. Moreover their funding per student is among the lowest in the nation. The only strawman I can see is your reference to the 'single largest line item' which I suspect you know full well does not accurately portray overall funding. Teacher pay is typically higher in California, BUT not in proportion to the cost of living in the state. See this 2002 report for a dose of reality: http://www.ed-data.k12.ca.us/Articles/CalRankings.asp
Do you intend to submit your course work using the word "macadame" because you are an idiot. The mans name was John McAdam, and that is what the technique is named after. When bitumen was added to the surface of that structure it became "tarmacadam", usually shortened to tarmac.
It appears you are quick to accuse others of being idiots without even investing a fraction of the time you spent writing your post thinking about what you just read, which doesn't make you look that smart to begin with. You see, there wouldn't be a single problem if/when I submitted course work with macadame in it. Care to know why? Well, because I'm not from an anglophone country and the adopted word for that concept is exactly that: macadame. If I was an idiot due to that then all spanish speakers in the world would be idiots for using the word futbol and all english speakers would be idiots for using the word naive. Are you able to understand that?
Even then I would suggest that you took a peek at wikipedia's article on macadame in order for you to have the chance to learn something about the subject.
And a gravel road is not a McAdam road anyway. The stones and gravel have to be laid very specifically, large stones, then a bit smaller then smaller still, and the whole is then compacted to form a smooth surface. Just dumping gravel on the ground is not a McAdam road.
No one said that it was, so congrats for failing reading comprehension. You see, I mentioned macadame roads as being "basically" (do you know what that word means?) gravel roads to avoid stating largely irrelevant aspects (irrelevant to this discussion) regarding the layer thickness, number of layers, degree of compaction, granularity of the granulate being used and even if some sort of glue was also employed. Those aspects are perfectly irrelevant in this discussion as their level of detail goes beyond what is being discussed and, more to the point, they vary according to their deployment conditions such as the soil's geotechnical properties, hydrological profile of the region, the expected traffic density and even climate. But how exactly could you know that? Your only knowledge on this subject derives from your vast experience at "delivering stone to tarmac plants".
But that wouldn't matter anyway. Idiots of your calibre would still cling to some other petty detail to be anal about it and therefore feel entitled to accuse others of being idiots and therefore try to feel good about yourself by redirecting your frustrations to some innocent bystander.
And yet the others are the ones who are idiots.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
"While I do understand that many of the costs of education are a fixed cost," More accurately: While I do understand that many of the costs of education are a rising cost,
The term "Fixed Cost" and "Rising Cost" are not mutually exclusive.
I wonder if the information in your text books doesn't have a geographical/climatic bias and is incomplete.
Why do you believe it hadn't? But FWIW, the course's required readings included an hefty list of AASHTO's standards along with other international standards derived from AASHTO's work which, obviously, also consider the climate's influence in a whole bunch of details.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
In a relatively small state like Michigan with nasty freeze-thaw cycles that probably cause massive damage to roads anyway, this probably is not a bad idea. The distances are such that the lower speed limit required isn't going to mean it takes days to get across the state (like it would in, say, Montana). Plus, the freeze-thaw cycle means they'd be dealing with massive potholes every season regardless, and potholes are cheaper and easier to fix on gravel.
I certainly wouldn't want to try this tactic anywhere out west though, where vast distances make driving on gravel roads much more of a chore.
It's a bit of a stretch to describe Michigan as a "relatively small state" given that it's the 11th largest by area and 8th largest by population. However, gravel roads are a great solution for essentially unpopulated states like Montana, where the vast distances and low population density render road usage too light to justify the expense of pavement in most cases.
I was actually taking a clue from the washboard sections in Supercross...
WTF? Over?
I guess they'll actually have to cut back on giving out free money to people that don't earn it in order to free up money...
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
California even prior to the current budget crisis had among the highest student to teacher ratios in the nation. Moreover their funding per student is among the lowest in the nation.
That statement leaves me with two options. Assume that you are an idiot, or assume that you are lying. Claiming that education is underfunded and there are too many students in a classroom because the state has the most students per room and the lowest funding of the 50 states is like claiming that Mensa is failing because Joe has the lowest IQ in the room. Taking a ranking where someone must be at the bottom and claiming there is a problem because someone is on the bottom is either ignorant or dishonest. By your logic, if California had 2 students per classroom and spent 100k a year per student, and every other state had one student per room and spent 110k per year per student, California education would be underfunded.
Teacher pay is typically higher in California, BUT not in proportion to the cost of living in the state.
According to your own link..
California's average of $54,348 was nearly $10,000 higher.
While $54k a year is not going to make you rich, it is certainly a reasonable salary in a state where the Mean Income is $48K a year. Of course you use 7 year old data to try to make your point. With today's data, the Mean yearly salary is $62k a year. That is well over 20% above the state's average. This is for a part time job no less. (No, don't try to tell the lie that teachers work 12 hours a day and don't get summers off.) That means they are making the same hourly pay as people who make in excess of $80k a year.
With all the complaining about pay I hear from teachers though, it would seem that very few of them have enough of a basic math education to figure out how much money they make. Of course, if you can't figure out that your hourly pay is over twice the state average, it is more likely that their financial troubles are more from personal financial mismanagement than underfunding.
What sort of priorities does the US have ? The country also has 58% of the entire world's military budget. Why not divert a little of that into useful stuff ?
"The party in power is the party of big government"--Works every time
Rolling resistance goes through the roof! This might increase the average energy use per distance travelled significantly, although I suppose that it might provide incentive for people to drive more slowly (less wind resistance) and to avoid driving more often, both of which are good things. I wonder how it will pan out.
.
A real pity, though--bikes are a viable form of transportation on pavement where you can easily average 20mph, but forget it on gravel (and if you still want to bike, you really need not only slower but also more expensive and heavier bikes with suspension and knobby tires). One more reason for people to refuse to bike anywhere.
"The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
You've got a point there. Aren't there any laws that prevent people from using atrociously loud cars/motorcycles?
There usually are, but for some reason police pretty much refuse to enforce them, at least against Harleys. I've heard of police in California giving import drivers with noisy exhausts a hard time, but Harley riders with completely open exhausts just get a free pass.
Worst of all, it's not like these stupid motorcycles come this way from the factory. Their idiot riders are the ones who modify them and remove the mufflers. And also strangely enough, it's a phenomenon completely confined to Harleys, and not found at all in other brands. There's lots of big Japanese-made "cruiser" bikes (like the Valkyrie), but when was the last time you saw one of them that was ridiculously loud?
Wow. In what climates are you getting your numbers for asphalt road life expectancy? Arizona?
Asphalt roads in Michigan are lucky if they can last even 10 years before they have to be repaved
I guess I'm your guy that has lived on a dirt road for 25 years and never had a problem on the dirt. My broken windshields have been on I-69, from gravel falling off trucks. (broken only a few times). Or else hitting a deer, which is another problem in rural Michigan.
My township un-paved about 15 miles ten years ago. I don't really have a problem with it, I think it is more economical. The speed limit on rural roads is 55MPH (highest), but I usually drive 50 just to keep the dust down and avoid the chatterbumps. Except at dusk, then I slow down to about 40 (paved or not) to avoid the deer. I've hit three in 25 years, but I see them every day.
Dirt roads keep the riff-raff out, or in? :-)
This is why we need to go back to Eisenhower-era concrete road beds meant for B-52's to land on. I'm talking foot deep steel reinforced concrete baby. Grew up with those bad boys in my little rural town in Texas. Of course we didn't have the freeze/thaw cycles people do farther north so I could be talking out of my backside, but these things appeared well-nigh indestructible.
Doesn't I-15 (or is it I-25?) get so much truck traffic that they built three parallel segments, and one is always constantly being rebuilt?
No, I will not work for your startup
I'm laughing so hard at the "40 year life expectancy" that I'm about to fall out of my chair.
It depends on wear and weather. There's a 3-4 mile stretch of I80 that I drive over when I go skiing that's very beat up. The reason why it's so beat up is because when the road is slippery due to snow, they make all of the vehicles put on chains. The chains then destroy the road.
The right lane, where trucks drive, has dents from the truck wheels that are about 6 inches deep.
On the other hand, another poster commented that there are roads in LA where the pavement lasted 50 years! LA's weather is quite gentle.
No, I will not work for your startup
It's so obvious. If this existed, road construction technology would be a non-issue.
Yesterday's Weirdness is Tomorrow's Reason Why
There are still sections of the interstate system that are from the original Eisenhower-era construction. I think it's been resurfaced as of a couple years ago, but a section of I35 here in Minnesota was that old, lasting for 40 years or more - and Minnesota's climate is not known for being nice to the roads.
Don't give them any ideas, or they'll be saying you won't need bridges next.
That sucks, the ones down here are actually very nice to drive on because it's basically just a different background road noise with the occasion "thwipthwip" as you pass over a spacer.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
Is it specifically the current people running your county that you don't trust or the concept of anybody running a county? Sounds like your current lot are pretty dodgy but is it a general principle that you wouldn't trust anybody with your money to maintain roads or schools etc?
My impression in the USA is that many people don't really trust anybody with setting up and running public services, you're generally more comfortable with private companies running these sorts of things. I think it's maybe a philosophical stance? Over here in the UK we're more towards a social model of society where most people are happy to pay taxes towards public bodies maintaining roads and sewers, fire and police services etc.
A lot of places in PA use tar and small gravel over the old asphalt, it seems like a decent compromise.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
In a relatively small state like Michigan with nasty freeze-thaw cycles that probably cause massive damage to roads anyway, this probably is not a bad idea.
The roads in northern Ohio are exposed to basically the same freeze-thaw cycles and Ohio somehow manages to have FAR better road quality. I used to live in Ohio but work in Michigan and would cross the border every day. It was VERY easy to tell when I had crossed the border into Michigan without even seeing a sign. Same is true of Indiana. Michigan is a beautiful state and it has a lot to recommend it, but it is ironic that the State which is the center of the automobile universe has such horrible roads.
The distances are such that the lower speed limit required isn't going to mean it takes days to get across the state (like it would in, say, Montana).
Depends on the direction you travel. Going from Detroit to Copper Harbor (top of the upper peninsula) takes about 11-12 hours. East to West it's only 3-5 hours across the state in the lower peninsula.
Hey, maybe we can argue that by keeping glass shops in business, we're stimulating the economy!
That is, if we believe in the Broken Window Fallacy". Of course, instead of broken windows, you're talking about...oh.
Shhh! The voters might notice!
Or maybe I don't get out enough
This is Slashdot. That kinda goes without saying.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not entirely sure about the universe - Einstein
Some might call it a boat, or a hole in the water that you just keep dumping money into. Gravel roads are great for the greatly less traveled roads, but for general everyday traffic, bad idea. As someone else already mentioned, they are much more prone to need repair than an asphalt road.
I mean I can see the logic here, "Let's save money by spending more money! The logic I see is the one that a child would argue with.
I just hope the ambulance they are taking someone's loved one in isn't driving on one of those gravel roads.
Beautiful. I wish this were Digg, so you could get more than +5 points.
Your analysis fails because of operator error...
In short, you are saying that your data says that "Gravel roads and rural areas cause more glass problems", I could just as easily say that "ford and chevy pickups have crappy design resulting in windshields breaking at above avg rates" or "pickup drivers who work construction have a much higher incidence of breaking windshields"
In short your data doesn't support what you are trying to say it does, and should be posted as an anecdote, not a factoid.
They can be more dangerous, but everything in life is a risk reward trade off. Motorcycles are economical to ride, cheaper to own overall, and most importantly more fun :)
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
Bikes that are loud from the factory floor are legal, no matter how loud they may be. That's all governed by how loud they can legally sell them.
Conversely, it is illegal to modify the exhaust system of a motorcycle in such a way that it alters the decibel level of the exhaust. That is, alters it -at all-, be it up, or down... thereby, any aftermarket exhaust on a motorcycle at all, is technically illegal.
One thing I've learned about cops and motorcyclists, is that they either love them, or hate them. Usually, it's the suburban police and security patrols that tend to hate them, while highway and inner-city cops are more even. The problem is with the law--regarding motorcycles, it's pretty stupid, arbitrary, and illogical... to the point where enforcing it would be biased, so one type of cop may enforce it, while another won't. Take for example laws regarding protective gear, and parking. Did you know in many states it is illegal to back a motorcycle to a curb? It is also illegal to be without eye protection, for which the lenses must extend two inches from the center of the eye--four-inch diameter goggles don't even exist, so regardless of whether it's legal to ride without a helmet, the helmet you may or may not be wearing, must be full-face.
Motorcyclists -do- frequently get singled out by authorities that don't like them, so the whole bias argument is kinda pointless. I've gotten multiple parking tickets and other citations for things which aren't even illegal in my state, because the local authorities don't like motorcyclists.
Michigan is more of an average sized state by land area, and it is fairly long from corner to corner, about 650 miles driving distance. Not as long as Montana at about 850, or some of the other states, but it is fairly long. They aren't going to turn the major highways to dirt though, so it's not really a big deal. Plus, I like dirt roads! I think paved roads may be easier to plow too, but I'm not sure. They seem to have more paved roads in northern Michigan where they get more snow.
what sig?
Strange to think that even in Our Ford's day most games were played without more apparatus than a ball or two and a few sticks and perhaps a bit of netting. imagine the folly of allowing people to play elaborate games which do nothing whatever to increase consumption. It's madness. Nowadays the Controllers won't approve of any new game unless it can be shown that it requires at least as much apparatus as the most complicated of existing games.
Thank goodness.
We got buried in Oregon too; we don't use salt either and I'm glad. Salt just corrodes everything. I can live with a few days of ice each year.
You just discovered what Soviet tank designers figured out in the 30's
It is cowardly, and a betrayal of whatever it means to be a Jew, to act as a white man
-James Baldwin
Michigan did/does have those concrete roads, and they held up very, very well. There are still places of pristine concrete roadway, smooth like butter, but lasting only where truck traffic was minimal. Michigan has a very high axle-weight limits. And, such roads were expensive and for decades the state DOT has tried to eliminate making and replacing them with the same; we end up with asphalt, surface treatments, reused crushed concrete, grinding, etc. My dad was a concrete finisher and helped build some of the concrete highways.
Stupid comments on dirt roads; You get ruts, but those roads -washboard- massively, and wreck a front end and suspension in just a few years. Dirt builds up in the sheet metal and rots them through often in less than 2 years. And some of these bad roads simply wrap around hundreds of acres of farmland; a few houses and mobile homes every couple of miles or so, and "villages" of 5 to maybe 40 homes - no, it is not economical to keep paving them.
Libertarian
Has anyone noticed that these roads' maintenance skyrockets as they age, mostly because the roads lose the crown essential for shedding water? It seems that the first thing county crews do is lose that crown and permit low spots that collect water. Results are predictable.
Guh! I remember that. I went through quite a few tire patches--there were always nails and bolts on the road. Plus there were the times I had to active dodge debris falling off of trucks. Nothing like someone's furniture sitting in the middle of a busy interstate to make sure you are PAYING ATTENTION THERE! Or an overloaded pickup shedding part of its load of lumber not 20 feet ahead of you.
There were days post-Katrina that driving around N'Awlins was like being in some surreal driving game.
---dragoness
A great piece of satire... sadly, the rednecks around these parts are more like this than not....
Actually, the worse the gravel road, the faster I go. It smooths out all the bumps. Once you hit 80 mph on a dirt road it feels like a freshly paved highway.
Born in 1979, spent my pre and teen years in Redford or Redford Township, MI. They STILL don't have paved roads from what I hear. This city of 50k or so which butts up against the western edge of Detroit proper - has roughly 30% of its residential roads still dirt. Today - in 2009. Potholes, water trucks spraying god knows what, mud, all kinds of fun to be had. Best part was shagging cars in the winter because there was really no danger, you could lose grip and no way you can scrape your face on dirt, at least not nearly as bad as you could end up in the hospital doing that on pavement.
According to wikipedia - this city is 89% white. Mostly trash (according to me, who lived there for a long time). Cross Telegraph Rd - and it's 89% black. White flight at its worst. Except these folks didn't get far enough.
I'm not shocked at this - it costs SO much money and no matter how much they throw at the roads they still have dozens of freeze thaw cycles to destroy them in a couple years.
Down here in south florida we have roads that have lasted 20 years and look damn good.
Lousy facepalm.
Your not sympathetic at all, you're an ass. Its ridicules to say a Harley is an acceptable vehicle, yet a scooter is not - and not even a bicycle? In every state a bicycle has the right to the road, much less a scooter. The other day I was bicycling home from work on the road, legally, and some dude in a truck speeds ahead of me only to cut me off just before a stop light. I pressed him about his dangerous action at my expense when we got to the light and he told me "riding your bike on the road is dangerous, stay off!" dangerous? The road was dangerous because he cut me off, not because of some unknown mysterious, dangerous force.
I've notice the jerks who shout "get off the road" to bicyclists are the very drivers who should get off the road.