
Bumpy Ride:  Why America’s roads are in tatters - drtillberg
https://harpers.org/archive/2017/11/bumpy-ride/
======
em500
> Each American driver pays about $450 per year toward roads, according to the
> Journal of Infrastructure Systems. Europeans fork over on average 2 to 3.5
> times as much — the difference is largely in fuel taxes.

You get what you pay for I guess. Keep in mind that per capita income in
America, both nominal and at PPP, is much higher than Europe (even excluding
Eastern Europe). Even a relative poor state like Michigan (the setting of this
article) has a GDP/capita comfortably exceeding Germany, France or UK.

~~~
Feniks
To people who haven't been to Germany: the roads there are not great. Germany
did the same thing as the US has: cut funding.

You never EVER cut funding on infrastructure. Not even in a recession. It will
come back to haunt you.

~~~
quotemstr
New York City learned this lesson only after infrastructure got so bad in the
1970s that a concrete truck literally fall through an elevated highway.

[http://www.nytimes.com/1973/12/16/archives/truck-and-car-
fal...](http://www.nytimes.com/1973/12/16/archives/truck-and-car-fall-as-west-
side-highway-collapses.html)

------
ProfessorLayton
The root of the problem seems to be that those causing the most damage to the
roads aren't paying enough to maintain them. A semi causes _1,400x_ more wear
on the same stretch of road than a car! [1].

[1] [https://www.lrrb.org/pdf/201432.pdf](https://www.lrrb.org/pdf/201432.pdf)

~~~
justin66
There are some similar externalities when it comes to emissions. It's
something you can't fix with a fuel tax.

------
totalZero
> When Hulka started the job in 2003, asphalt cost between $24 and $27 a ton.
> “We’re seeing sixty-four dollars and up right now,” he said.

We've heard so much about the impact of today's dirt-cheap oil prices versus
the $100+ prices of 2014, but petroleum was substantially cheaper in 2003 than
it is now.

Maybe there is a non-petroleum binder that could be used instead of bitumen to
make asphalt cheaper.

The article mentions chip sealing, which should cost half as much as asphalt.
On a motorcycle trip in Mexico, I encountered a four-lane highway where the
left (passing) lanes were of lesser pavement quality than the smooth asphalt
right lanes. The idea being, you don't do distance travel on the passing lane
so why not reduce the cost by paving that lane in a less expensive fashion. Of
course, even that level of pavement would be farfetched for many degraded
county roads, but it's a clever way to reduce the cost of a four-lane highway.

~~~
maxerickson
I'd first want to see a breakdown of the other costs. For asphalt roads, most
of the mass is the aggregate, so a ton of asphalt should make a fair amount of
road.

(apparently hot mix is between 3 and 7 percent asphalt)

------
quotemstr
It's incredibly sad that we've basically given up on paved roads. Regression
to gravel represents the loss of important social technology for building and
maintaining infrastructure.

~~~
TheAdamAndChe
More like it's incredibly sad that we've basically given up on rural America.
We have no issue with paved roads in the biggest cities in the nation, but if
an area isn't economically profitable in a global marketplace, it's being left
to wither and die.

~~~
tomjen3
Counterpoint: Why spend (a lot) more on roads for a few instead of for the
many?

~~~
EGreg
That's exactly what unchecked capitalism says.

If there is no redistribution of wealth by any other mechanism, those who have
no money will by and large not get any resources.

While that may work well for LLCs, when it comes to people we don't want that.

~~~
fjsolwmv
Why should the poor urban people pay to subsidize the lavish rural lifestyle?

No one is forcing people to live out in the boonies.

~~~
uoaei
No one except all those folks running rent up in cities. Landowners and
renters are both to blame here.

------
kylehotchkiss
At the same time, more Americans are buying higher-clearance vehicles as the
price and mileage improve. Maybe there are some places where enough people
have vehicles with clearance and decent tires where gravel is ok? If gravel is
well done and has something to control the dust, you can go 40mph in it.

America is also a really really spread out country. I have a hard time seeing
why every secondary road needs to be blacktopped if it’s just servicing
residential areas.

~~~
cup-of-tea
And those bigger and heavier vehicles destroy the roads even more quickly. In
some parts of the UK the roads are really bad if you don't drive a giant 4x4
(medium sized by US standards), so more people get them, and the roads get
even worse. What's more is these giant vehicles make using the road less
pleasurable for everyone as now every road is essentially more narrow due to
the width of the vehicles and the damage at the edge.

It seems obvious to me that these larger vehicles should pay more tax to
compensate for the damage and the inconvenience for other road users, but they
pay exactly the same amount as small cars.

I've driven on gravel roads in South Africa and they often get this bumpy
texture to them which is due to people driving on them really fast with big
cars. It means if you have a medium-sized car you're stuck doing about 20mph
and buggering up your suspension.

~~~
Feniks
Aye here in the Netherlands because of the extremely high traffic density they
have to do maintenance on highways every 7 years. When they planned the road
network nobody imagined that there would be so many automobiles.

First world problems!

------
lithos
Upgrading to gravel indeed.

My parents house back in Wisconsin has the bitumen roads all around the area.
They litterly slap down tar, then pile small rocks on top of it, occasionally
they take a roller to if but mostly they don't and leave the weight of the
cars to finish the road. So there is no such thing as a flat road, and
continuous tire dips are formed along the whole length of the road for water,
snow and ice to collect in.

------
miguelrochefort
If you think roads in the US are bad, come to Quebec...

~~~
moltar
Amen! It’s the worst I’ve seen. Slightly for different reasons. The only plant
that makes asphalt in Montreal uses used engine oil as binding agent which
destroys roads much quicker. Common QC corruption.

------
mjevans
Is there a version of this that doesn't split it over three pages to try and
get me to load ads that ad and script blockers will just break anyway?

~~~
anonova
There's a "Download PDF" link right before the start of the article.

~~~
mjevans
It's javascript, not a link.

Though I did miss that the single page option wasn't actually JS, because I
stopped looking.

[https://harpers.org/archive/2017/11/bumpy-
ride/?single=1](https://harpers.org/archive/2017/11/bumpy-ride/?single=1)

------
hoodoof
Without reading it, is it because in the U.S. no-one wants to pay tax?

~~~
quotemstr
I'd call it a loss of the ability to pull together for the common good, part
of the continued fracturing of western society into individual-sized pieces.

~~~
ciconia
> part of the continued fracturing of western society into individual-sized
> pieces.

For the US, yes. For (some) European countries, not so. There's still a strong
concensus around paying taxes and getting your money's worth in education,
social security and paved roads.

------
nnfy
I doubt I'd be able to find anything to cite, but having lived in east Asia, I
think part of the problem is that Americans take substantially longer to
perform any kind of construction or repair. Things that would happen
practically overnight take weeks or even months in the States.

