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I remember a civil engineer telling me once that if highways only had cars on them they would last 100 years between repavings.
by pinko 7y ago
I remember a civil engineer telling me once that if highways only had cars on them they would last 100 years between repavings.
- zip1234 7y agoI highly doubt this in cold areas but might be true elsewhere
- CydeWeys 7y agoPlow trucks aren't cars.
- seattle_spring 7y agoPretty sure GP is referring to the damage caused by the freeze/thaw cycle.
- gbear605 7y agoThe problem isn’t the plow trucks, but the expanding and contracting water causes cracks. Roads that never get trucks on them get potholes
- Spooky23 7y agoMy dads driveway in upstate NY was paved in the 90s and is pretty pristine, but it’s surfaced every 2 years and well drained.
- tyfon 7y agoI don't doubt it, we have a local road here that has been fine, but this year they decided to drive a lot of truck loads of snow to save a skiing event from another city up that road and now it's completely destroyed and it needs new pavement and possibly new foundations in several places. Trucks should really only be a last resort for the last mile to the store and the rest should be sent by rail or boat and loaded onto trucks if necessary. They also have huge externalities when it comes to damage to other cars, when my car is hit by rocks on the road it is always coming from a truck.
- MisterTea 7y agoWe have such roads here in NY called parkways, cars only no busses or trucks. Absolute disasters. I frequently take the Belt parkway in NYC to long island via the southern state parkway. That thing looks like it was carpet bombed. They have been patching massive delaminations and joint failures on a weekly basis all winter and we have barely had any freezing weather or snow (it's been spring all winter.) One delam by an interchange was so deep that it took out a few car tires with low side walls. I was annoyed at these failures and some light reading. You can make more robust roads by making them thicker with a sturdy foundation. Of course this comes at a much higher cost. For example, the autobahn pavement thickness is 27 inches. Whereas by me they mill a few inches off the top of whatever sad situation in below and top it with another 4 inches or so. This is because robust roads are costly and there are so many other things in a muni budget which need attention. So they compromise and lay down a cheap road.