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This does not address a larger question: how much does a mile of road cost to keep? This is the installed base question. Consider the amount of road that has b
by dougweltman 7y ago
This does not address a larger question: how much does a mile of road cost to keep? This is the installed base question.
Consider the amount of road that has been built out in the US relative to the populations that road is serving. Maintenance and expansion is paid out mainly from state and local taxes. That's an enormous civilizational overhead the US contends with, not to mention the economic cost of a large portion of household capital being tied up in rapidly depreciating assets: cars.
I'm looking at you, suburbia.
- maxerickson 7y agoYeah, my town resurfaces streets either when they qualify for federal funds or when it is an emergency.
- Eric_WVGG 7y agoThis reminds me of a blog post about the unsustainability of suburbs — https://mikethemadbiologist.com/2017/03/20/the-fiscal-unsustainability-of-sprawl/ https://mikethemadbiologist.com/2017/03/20/the-fiscal-unsust... Even if this $1.5m figure is wildly inflated, calculate how few people live on a given mile in the suburbs, a conservative estimate on how much it costs to maintain a road, and the numbers just don't add up. The suburbs were a ponzi scheme and the bottom is about to fall out.
- kazinator 7y agoOr maybe how much road costs in the USA is a bit of a strawman version of how much road costs. Come on, some remote villages in the third world have paved roads to them.
- Retric 7y agoThe third world has a lot more miles of dirt roads than paved roads. The slightly more expencive gravel roads are fine for suburban cul-de-sac‘a / side streets that don’t get that much traffic.
- Polylactic_acid 7y agoThey kick up a shitload of dust so everything is dirty all of the time. They also become unusable/get destroyed in the rain. It makes sense for rural roads since the expense is massive and the dust not so much of an issue.
- randomfool 7y agoThe dust is much less when speeds are kept lower, such as suburban cul-de-sacs as GP states. Dust can be further mitigated with an annual oil coat. A well built gravel road will have a decent amount of rock which drains in the rain without turning to mud, culverts are needed on the steeper slopes to limit erosion. While the total cost is much less than asphalt, dirt roads do need more regular maintenance which municipalities frequently try to skimp on. A good read of the pro's and con's: https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-10/documents/2003_07_24_nps_gravelroads_appd_0.pdf https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-10/documents...
- stevenwoo 7y agoAnd in the USA some rural areas have been "unpaving" roads because they have done the financial math : https://www.governing.com/topics/transportation-infrastructure/sl-dirt-roads.html https://www.governing.com/topics/transportation-infrastructu... https://www.nap.edu/read/21935/chapter/1 https://www.nap.edu/read/21935/chapter/1 very limited discussion a few years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15272140 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15272140
- magicnubs 7y agoYou'd be surprised how many unpaved roads there are. Even in Europe https://i.redd.it/4xau5auzqg741.png https://i.redd.it/4xau5auzqg741.png
- MiracleUser 7y agoThe suburbs will maintain their own roads before the bottom falls out. low income suburbs probably will not survive, but there's no law that says they cant have shitty roads that require a jeep to drive on
- notatoad 7y agowhen the roads require a jeep to drive on, it's no longer a suburb - it's the country. the promise of the suburbs is that it's all the luxuries of city living, with all the space of rural living. Losing the amenities of the city is exactly how i would interpret "the bottom falling out"
- niftich 7y agoMiddle- to upper-middle-class suburbs will still exist, they'll just be a municipality a few miles over, where all the houses and roads are 25 years newer, and the long tail of opex costs hasn't quite hit as bad yet. It will, eventually. If a suburb can attract some retail or office space or manufacturing, they can be like Irvine or Tysons or Bloomington -- the suburbs that have made it. Those that cannot will accumulate the same problems with fiscal sustainability that inner cities once did.
- asdff 7y agoHigh income suburbs will struggle, too. Gotta pay for the roads somehow if federal subsidies stop trickling in. People on HN talk about moving to texas on taxes alone all the time.
- tomrod 7y agoTo be fair, suburbia was supported as a potential recovery effort following a nuclear war.[0] Its difficult to immediately urbanize people's lives. We agree there are accelerating maintenance costs, but suspect we don't see the same opportunity cost. [0] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?lookup=0&q=Disaster+and+decentralization:+American+cities+and+the+Cold+War+&hl=en&as_sdt=0,44#d=gs_qabs&u=%23p%3DwTwGieuzQFQJ https://scholar.google.com/scholar?lookup=0&q=Disaster+and+d...
- njarboe 7y agoI also think people underestimate the desire of men to have their wives and childern living in the suburbs that would survive if a nuclear bomb hit the downtown. By the mid 60's there were so many bombs that this did not make much sense any more, but the roads were already built and there are some nice things about having a large house and a yard.
- burfog 7y agoThis is no joke. My father used a map of likely nuclear fallout when choosing where his family would live.
- athenot 7y agoIsn't that under "Resurface existing lane" and "Improve shoulder"? Yes there are other costs associated with road upkeep, from vegetation trimming to pothole repairs. But I would think the first two are rather major parts of upkeep. To make things easy, assume a 10 year interval between these maintenance items so divide those line items by 10 for the annual cost. Definitely not a small number considering the installed road base…
- geddy 7y agoLots of shade thrown towards people living in suburbia on here. Maybe not everyone wants to live in a (rented) closet sized apartment in a major city, complete with all the noise pollution, actual pollution, crime rates, and a lingering piss-smell 24/7, and all for the low price of _more than owning a house_?
- phkahler 7y ago>> and all for the low price of _more than owning a house_? I didnt read much judgement in th parent post, but it does imply suburbia is subsidized because it has higher infrastructure cost per dollar of tax revenue. The was a study on that very thing a couple years ago IIRC and they found the most solvent towns and cities are actually the higher density ones even if they are lower income areas.
- SubuSS 7y agoAre you thinking of dollar revenue as an average OR considering suburbian dollar revenue separate? You'd think the suburbia also brings in more cash to the government (I got no sources).
- davidw 7y agoIt really doesn't, on a per acre basis. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/2/1/the-surprising-relationship-between-retail-taxand-property-tax https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/2/1/the-surprising-...
- animalgonzales 7y agoalso versus the cost of a mile of rail
- peteey 7y agoThe cost should be measured in part by death. Car accidents are the leading cause of death of Americans under the age of 25: https://www.cdc.gov/injury/images/lc-charts/leading_causes_of_death_by_age_group_unintentional_2017_1100w850h.jpg https://www.cdc.gov/injury/images/lc-charts/leading_causes_o...
- AcerbicZero 7y agoLook all you want, but road maintenance costs are primarily a subsidy for the trucking industry, and by extension the businesses that rely on them. Businesses that are primarily located in.....cities. If Middletown USA didn't have to worry about 80,000 lbs trucks hauling kombucha to your local bodega tearing up their roads, perhaps road costs would be a bit more in-line with reality. More importantly if we focused more on making transport costs in-line with the damage they do to the road surfaces (not to mention the environmental impact of long and short haul trucking, plus the traffic) instead of city/suburbia none issue, perhaps we'd all be a bit better off.
- Polylactic_acid 7y agoThe proper solution would be to tax trucks exactly the amount of damage they cause. This would cause the cost of imported goods to go up and the cost of local goods to go down. In the short term you would see the extra cost and lower taxes cancel each other out and in the long term, local goods become more common than imported.
- AcerbicZero 7y agoThats certainly one solution, and a perfectly reasonable one at that. It seems to be an excellent way by which we can also encourage more rail development, and reduce the overall amount of waste in the transport chain.
- Dylan16807 7y agoYou'll also see trucks use more axles with wider, softer tires. It's easy to get more than an order of magnitude in damage reduction.
- alamortsubite 7y agoThis is the right idea, but let's not stop there. Why not also tax privately registered vehicles to some degree by their mass? I also like the idea of making fines for moving violations somewhat proportional to vehicle mass. The danger posed to others by a 150 lb moped pales in comparison to that of a 4500 lb pickup truck. At least in the U.S., a ticket for speeding 50% over the limit through a residential neighborhood is the same for both, for example. Neither is OK, but considering the disparity in the potential for damage and injury to others, imposing equal fines is insane.
- lotsofpulp 7y agoAlso, the more road there is, the more pipes, wires, sewers have to be, and the distance all the water and sewage needs to be moved is longer.
- beerandt 7y ago>This does not address a larger question: how much does a mile of road cost to keep? Half of that design chart is for reconstruction and repaving. What else are you looking for? >an enormous civilizational overhead You could eliminate suburbia overnight, and demand for those suburban and rural highways will still be there, since cities generally need things delivered from outside (like food) in order to continue being cities.
- hanniabu 7y agoI think this is the real issue. I've witnessed that the problem is lack of maintenance on roads. Instead of taking care of issues as they arise, like patching cracks and small holes, they're left to just grow and spread and before you know it the entire road is garbage and needs to be repaved. If we took care of the roads they would last longer and over time would alleviate funds for other expenses. Not to mention that it seems work on pipes under the roads are never worked on until a few months after it's been repaved, which completely destroys a new road and throws all that money down the gutter.