7 ms·
I feel like I am missing something here, a mile of road in a rural area costs $1,500,000 to reconstruct? How do small towns afford to maintain their roads?? Per
by ryanar 7y ago
I feel like I am missing something here, a mile of road in a rural area costs $1,500,000 to reconstruct? How do small towns afford to maintain their roads?? Perhaps there are many costs that don't inflate as the number of miles increases, like the equipment needed to break down and repave the roads?
- epicureanideal 7y agoI would be very interested to see the breakdown of raw materials, equipment, labor, and various fees.
- prawn 7y agoSame here. And from that, are there likely to be improvements in the future by automating processes and cutting labour, or finding cheaper materials, or saving on planning or re-routing traffic.
- beerandt 7y agoMost states transportation departments publish spreadsheets with itemized costs for recent bid lettings, as well as quarterly summaries with stats by item number. You need to be familiar with the items specs to know exactly what's included (ie installed cost vs material provided cost, etc), but it's a start.
- pchristensen 7y agoThey generally patch the worst spots rather than reconstruct, and accept generally lower quality.
- bobthepanda 7y agoPart of the "ponzi scheme" that Strong Towns likes to talk about is that a lot of the funding comes from state and federal levels. Because the locality no longer is completely tied to the cost of actually building the road, the incentive to cut costs is removed and roads funding is something that local politicians "win" to bring back to their area and show that they've done a good job.
- Ididntdothis 7y agoSeems public infrastructure in the US is run like health care. Very expensive, lots of hidden middlemen, not so great results.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- davideous 7y agoMy small town resurfaced (grinding and re-paving) 5/12ths of a mile for about $100,000. That's about $240,000 per mile. Or actually $120,000 per "lane-mile". However, we could only afford it because we got a grant from the state. Our annual town budget could not afford the road maintenance.
- dillonmckay 7y agoWhat is your town’s population size? Do you experience freezing temperatures?
- topspin 7y agoThose numbers are inline with my development where we maintain .9 miles of private road with HOA dues; the quotes we've received all orbit around $250-300k for the last several years. Yes we have hard winters. What we don't have is frequent heavy vehicles at speed. The state actually bans certain types of commercial vehicles on specific roads in the spring when road beds are soft. The figures cited in this story seem high. Or maybe they're normal in Illinois or some other state where costs are extraordinary. Their not in line with what I see.
- dillonmckay 7y agoAre you replying to a different comment?
- topspin 7y agoNope.
- davideous 7y agoPopulation was 277 at the last census. Yes, we experience freezing temperatures.
- Retric 7y agoThat’s not that expensive, as long as it’s a planned expense. An acre of land which is large for a town is 43,560 square feet or 208’ x 208’ though you can get significantly narrower along a road. A mile is 5280’ so ballpark that’s 25 per side or 50 properties = 4,800$ per property every say 20 years or 240$ per year.
- burlesona 7y agoYou're not missing something: they can't afford it, which is why roads are increasingly in poor condition. The trick is, communities can usually get outside subsidy (state and federal) for _expansion_ projects. So when the road breaks down and they don't have local money to fix it, one of the strategies is to go to the higher level government for an "economic development" project to get outside money to pay for the road to be widened / expanded. This is true even when the added capacity isn't needed.
- redis_mlc 7y agoIn more detail, the old suburb requiring maintenance tries to raise taxes for it, so buyers skip it and buy in the newest suburb.
- asdff 7y agoCleveland is a model for this, but it fits probably all but 4 cities in the U.S.. The city population has been in decline for 50 years while the metro population has been stagnant for 50 years. People just move around to the latest sub division cleared out of the raw forest when the last one starts to get rough around the edges or the school district numbers waiver, then wonder why the city is so anemic and degenerate.
- jzwinck 7y agoThereby doubling the cost next time repaving is needed. Oh well, just double the lanes each time the road wears out. In a few generations the problem will go away.
- wtallis 7y agoI can see it playing out as one or two subsidized rounds of widening, and then a subsidy to "modernize" to fewer lanes, but with on-street parking or bike lanes or something like that.
- dsfyu404ed 7y agoSome people see poor condition. I see a municipality that's smart enough not to spend money it doesn't have.
- azernik 7y ago> How do small towns afford to maintain their roads?? Often, they don't. Examples: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2010/1/11/the-cost-of-development-local-roads-edition.html https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2010/1/11/the-cost-of-de... https://www.sdnewswatch.org/stories/small-s-d-towns-struggle-to-fix-aging-streets/ https://www.sdnewswatch.org/stories/small-s-d-towns-struggle... https://www.wpr.org/small-wisconsin-towns-paved-roads-return-gravel https://www.wpr.org/small-wisconsin-towns-paved-roads-return... Many places in the US spent and borrowed to build infrastructure without budgeting for long-term maintenance; they also encouraged development patterns (e.g. suburban sprawl) that are cheap to build, but quite expensive when you take into account the long-term maintenance requirements. This is a problem even in more urban areas, which is why lots of urbanists (including Strong Towns) advocate cutting back on new road construction, and taking into account the local tax base before building out infrastructure. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/1/22/paved-with-good-intentions https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/1/22/paved-with-goo... https://www.strongtowns.org/nonewroads https://www.strongtowns.org/nonewroads
- dillonmckay 7y agoSo, first it depends if the area ever experiences freezing temperatures. Living in a small town, our roads are in poor shape. Additionally, we have a US highway that cuts through the center of town. The state administers the maintenance of that particular road, so we have had incidents where the state will hire contractors to modify the sidewalks along the highway, to make them ADA compliant, but not coordinate w the city. So, the city winds up ripping up the sidewalks, because of an infrastructure upgrade for the water system. So, short answer, we don’t maintain our roads. Unless you have a really good tax base, the money just is not there.
- zdragnar 7y agoSince rural roads get significantly less traffic, they require less maintenance (Though get similar amounts of frost heave damage). Maintenance is often just filling in potholes and cracks, with occasional resurfacing. Of course, there are a ton of non-local funding that gets drawn from: - federal and state gas taxes - state vehicle registration fees (varying by type and weight of vehicle) - state, county and municipal specific property, income and / or sales taxes As for highways, there is the federal highway trust, and grants and loans can be taken out to pay for them, but that typically does not fall on the town's shoulders alone (if at all).
- tomrod 7y agoHaving lived in the midwest and the south, frost heave has a _major_ impact! Seems like the cycle is 12 years or so on road repavement, but that's anecdotal. Also note there are a _lot_ of grading options available, some as simple as gravel and tar.
- ryanar 7y agoAround where I live they call it stone and oil, and if it is the same thing as gravel and tar, that is the absolute worst way to regrade a road for the consumer. The sound of oil and stones smacking against your car when you unwittingly turned down a road that was recently stone and oiled is awful.
- timw4mail 7y agoChip-sealing is what I've heard it called
- rayiner 7y agoThe relevant number here is the cost to repave, not reconstruct, which is about $330,000-$350,000 per mile for a minor arterial road in a rural or urban area. As to how small towns afford it--you don't repave that often, and you focus efforts on what to repave. For example, Cedar Rapids, Iowa calculated it would cost $500 million over 10 years to repave everything that needs to be repaved: https://www.kcrg.com/content/news/Annual-road-repaving-to-start-next-week-in-Cedar-Rapids-507227201.html https://www.kcrg.com/content/news/Annual-road-repaving-to-st.... Cedar Rapids has about 53,000 households, so that's about $943 per household per year. To put that into perspective, we can do a calculation. 18% of DC metro area commuters use Metrorail. If you take 18% of the 2.2 million DC metro households, that's about 400,000 households (roughly) using Metrorail. The rail capital budget is about $1 billion annually, so about $2,500 per household per year. Excluding the cost of new rail cars, its about $1,500 per household. (Obviously this is a very back-of-the-napkin calculation, but it puts things into perspective.) [1] https://www.wmata.com/initiatives/budget/upload/FY19-Proposed-Budget.pdf https://www.wmata.com/initiatives/budget/upload/FY19-Propose... (p. 76)
- notatoad 7y agothe "$2,5000" typo is an extra 0, not a comma in the wrong place. $1b/400k = $2500 per household for more perspective, cedar rapids average income is $54,465 per household, compared to $99,669 for the DC metro area.
- rayiner 7y agoThanks, yes, the extra zero was a typo.
- Drunk_Engineer 7y agoThat's a very apples-oranges comparison. DC commuters benefit from Metrorail even if they don't use it. And the Metrorail capital budget is for much more than just trackway (i.e. railcars, buses, parking garages, etc).
- zaroth 7y ago
- burfog 7y agoWith property lines being about 100 feet apart, that comes to 100 houses. It's just $15,000 per house. The road should last 50 years without heavy truck traffic, making it $3000 per year per house.
- ip26 7y ago$3000 per year per house In other words completely out of reach of the kind of town we're talking about?
- redis_mlc 7y agoIn other words, a complete change of the town council in the next election. :)
- njarboe 7y ago$300 per year per house, I believe.
- Dylan16807 7y agoLook at the math again, it's $300 and they made a typo. That's affordable.
- projektfu 7y agoYou’re not discounting properly. It’s more like $500-600 per year because of the time value of money and inflation. Replacement costs are $300 this year, but initial construction is $500 this year because it’s on a bond. Maintenance isn’t included. The surface isn’t really going to last 50 years without looking like Fallout 2. So tack on another hundred. All of this becomes expensive for single family homes to support. The revenue per area is just so low.
- asdff 7y agoIf there are winters, a road with zero traffic won't last 10 years. The weather does more damage than traffic for roads in the suburbs of the midwest and northeast.
- vkou 7y ago> How do small towns afford to maintain their roads? They make developers build them on the developer's dime, and then the roads don't need maintenance for a decade. As long as your suburb keeps growing, the pain of maintaining decade-old roads can be offset by the increase in your tax base. Once your suburb stops growing, you find yourself a mile down crap creek with no shovel.
- ip26 7y agoThere's always the humble dirt road, perhaps with a little crushed gravel. Regrading it periodically is not free but with low traffic levels dirt can be cheaper.
- einpoklum 7y agoSo, you're saying it can really be dirt cheap? (... sorry, I couldn't pass up on that one.)
- not_kurt_godel 7y agoCities pay for rural areas, hand over fist: https://www.brookings.edu/research/why-rural-america-needs-cities/ https://www.brookings.edu/research/why-rural-america-needs-c... That's how.
- peter303 7y agoIn the US road costs are split among the three levels of government. Unfortunately road/fuel taxes at the federal and state level have not increased this century, resulting in a huge maintenance backlog.
- imtringued 7y agoUnmaintained asphalt roads are still better than unmaintained dirt roads.