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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.
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 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.
Gravel roads have an increased stopping distance over asphalt or concrete ones. They also contribute much more to vehicle wear and tear - not only as far as nicks and dings, but also tires and shocks. (though the later part is just as true of badly potholed roads) They are significantly dirtier than asphalt or concrete roads, both for the vehicle (small concern) but also for the surrounding homes and businesses. When I lived on Middle Bass Island, it was quite common for neighbors to band together to pave their section of road just to cut down on the fine dust which accumulated inside their homes.
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.
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.
A more complete article: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-mi-revertingroads,0,1719061.story
> When it snows a small amount, sure, you don't have to plow, but when there are more than
> a couple of inches you have to plow the road anyway. The problem then is that the plows
> also take layers off the roads when they plow them, meaning that through the winter, the
> roads become less safe as the gravel disappears and the dirt below is left.
I live on a gravel road. This is nonsense.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Preach on brother deKernel she can't be gone soon enough. I can blame everything on her and be happy about it.
A fine example was Benton Harbor, when there was cameras for her to look into she was all about helping poor Benton Harbor but as soon as the cameras were gone so was she.
She needs to GO AWAY and the rest of them as well. The state banked put all their eggs in the auto industry basked and can't figure out where they went wrong.
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.
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.