How good are American roads?
construction-physics.com181 points by chmaynard 16 hours ago
181 points by chmaynard 16 hours ago
> Interestingly, in all cases urban roads are worse quality than rural roads, presumably because they see higher traffic than rural roads.
There's more infrastructure under urban roads. Crews come in to fix some utility, shred a section of a lane, patch it poorly with dissimilar materials, and leave.
This happens CONSTANTLY in Atlanta. They'll spend a bunch of money fixing a road, then a month later Public Works digs a huge hole and leaves a steel plate on it for a year, then patch it with either concrete that is an inch or two below the rest of the surface, or they don't pack the earth they put back and in 3 months the patch has sunk into a new pothole in a brand new road. The city has been trying to force public works to go do those things BEFORE road projects, but it's an uphill battle.
I remember the neighbourhood where I grew up. The roads were great until the cable TV company slices them all open to put their cables in. Then the patches would never hold, water would get in and under the road when it rained, and the roads were terrible for years.
The solution to this problem is utility tunnels. A tunnel network under road surface just for plumbing and cabling. Maintenance crews can just drive through in cars and do their jobs, without stopping traffic and digging out pipes. Many ultra-modern cities have one.
This happens in other countries too. Some people theorize that it's done because of internal rivalries between dependencies/political factions, but I suspect local governments are just inept at logistics.
Its also a difficult problem. They need the right digger and the right crew at the right time and possibly the right weather to get the job done. Many times there will be weeks of juggling around schedules and suddenly the digging started three weeks after the road was finished
Let me ask you: how many buildings collapsed during the reign of Hammurabi?
I.. I have no idea. I don't even know who Hammurabi is.
Is there a point you're trying to make? If so, care to enlighten us without assuming we all have history degrees?
Hammurabi is an ancient ruler of Mesopotamia/Babylon who is famous for establishing a written code of laws, of which copies inscribed in steles have survived to this day). I don't know of it's the earliest example of a written legal code but certainly one of the earliest that we have a record of.
Among these laws were civil penalties for builders who performed shoddy workmanship:
> If a builder constructs a house for a man but does not make it conform to specifications so that a wall then buckles, that builder shall make that wall sound using his own silver.
By the way, the Romans also had building codes, and engineers who built bridges and roads were liable for the durability of those structures, thus a tradition of over-engineering.
> 229 If a builder builds a house for someone, and does not construct it properly, and the house which he built falls and kills its owner, then that builder shall be put to death.
He's a rather famous chap: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammurabi
Regardless, I suspect there's a point being made about the timeless ineptitude of bureaucracy (even if I don't agree with it—some cultures are notably more competent at managing logistics of public works than other are).
Not obscure enough of a figure to necessitate a history degree. Well known for being one of the first to establish building codes.
Yet many including myself have never heard of him.
Would it have been so much to ask to put a Wikipedia link and nerd-snipe some of us in the process?
Anyone with a basic high school education should have heard of him.
And how hard it is for you to google for "wikipedia hammurabi" anyway?