7 ms·

As an Australian, every time I see roads like this in the USA, they look positively third world. Potholes all over, lacking (or practically lacking) a footpath

As an Australian, every time I see roads like this in the USA, they look positively third world. Potholes all over, lacking (or practically lacking) a footpath, drainage, or space for on-street parking. Pine St looks like something I'd expect to find in a developing nation in South America or Asia, not a developed industrial nation like the USA.

nerdponx 6y ago
a footpath This is the biggest oversight of all. It's painful to see new development with no sidewalks.
astine 6y ago
It doesn't take a lot of work find photographs of roads like that in Australia. This isn't a main road, it's a tiny neighborhood road. It doesn't need a lot of infrastructure and I kind of wish that more roads looked like this because they're usually a lot more pleasant than the big ones. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/46/CSIRO_ScienceImage_3723_Aerial_view_of_the_rural_community_of_Burrawang_in_the_Wingecarribee_Catchment_south_of_Sydney_NSW_1999.jpg/1200px-CSIRO_ScienceImage_3723_Aerial_view_of_the_rural_community_of_Burrawang_in_the_Wingecarribee_Catchment_south_of_Sydney_NSW_1999.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/46/CS...
austhrow743 6y ago
As an Australian, what sort of life have you lived where you don't think we have roads like Pine St? Have you ever left a CBD?
- toomanybeersies 6y ago
  Sure, I've seen roads like this in tiny regional towns with half a dozen houses and a single pub, but Pine St is in McKinney, TX, roughly the same size as Bendigo or Ballarat, which don't have roads like this in residential areas.
  - astine 6y ago
    "roughly the same size as Bendigo or Ballarat, which don't have roads like this in residential areas." Eh, I don't know. Munroe in Ballarat is a residential road but doesn't have sidewalks or street parking either. I mean, the gutter is nicer, but that might be down to a soil/landscape difference. Pine St might have the better drainage because it's been built up so high from the ground. https://www.google.com/maps/@-37.5573014,143.8142714,3a,75y,350.73h,74.6t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s7CH622LRdvYZY7wHeinYUw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.com/maps/@-37.5573014,143.8142714,3a,75y,...
speby 6y ago
Climate is a massive factor in the deterioration and accelerated wear of roads. Australia doesn't have harsh, freezing winters with lots of freeze/thaw cycles creating potholes and expanding crack lines in your roads. It's a lot more expensive to maintain "good" roads in climates that have wide temperature cycles throughout their seasons.
- toomanybeersies 6y ago
  Our roads in Australia tend to melt instead, which poses its own unique set of engineering problems.
- zaarn 6y ago
  I live in germany where we do have freeze/thaw cycles. Our roads look better both from my experience when I went to the US and looking at pictures from the US. Don't think climate is a good excuse here. Nordic countries also manage a much better infrastructure in roads from what I hear.
- ryanmt 6y ago
  Of course, that part of Texas wouldn't have any freezing either, especially in the ground.
unishark 6y ago
This is a small town on the outskirts of Dallas. A few blocks from this neighborhood it becomes completely rural. Back when the streets were put in it was a distant commuter town. But there's no potholes in those pictures. Are you referring to others? Though there are really bad streets in some places. Generally seems to happen when the streets are not as needed as they were previously (e.g. urban decay where businesses and people left the area), and the city doesn't have good options about what to do with it. Street parking and walkways are optional things anywhere depending on whether they're useful. More of a dependence on the population density. Really expensive subdivisions often lack them too.
mwill 6y ago
A lot of comments saying this is a small town, and small towns in Australia are just as bad, googling shows the US town has a population of 191,000! That's bigger than Townsville. I live in rural Australia, in a town with a population less than 20% of the town referenced in the post, and I regularly drive the the nearest town which has a population of 0.2% of the US town, and the road in the post look absolutely dilapidated to me. Even the fixed up road, if I drove through that in my town, I would think "the council need to do something about that" Your comment reminded me of playing GeoGuessr when it was first released, I remember being absolutely shocked at some of the random locations in the US, the streetview looked about like I would expect a town here with a population of 100 people to look, and the map would show it as being part of an urban sprawl, 50km from a city center.
- astine 6y ago
  One thing you'll notice if you look at a lot of suburban sprawl in the US is that most of the roads are wide and have sidewalks, but the houses are ugly and samey for miles. Interspersed among those neighborhoods will be roads with smaller--or at least older--houses, and smaller streets. The reason being that those smaller streets are from the neighborhoods that existed before the area was built up and the locals resisted development in their neighborhoods. McKinney is a town that has apparently undergone rapid expansion in the past 20-30 years and I'm willing to bet that Pine St was initially build well before McKinney reached its current population. If you believe that every single residential road needs to have a certain width and have sidewalks as a matter of course, I don't know that I can dissuade you, but I'm willing to bet that the residents on that road are not eager to give up a portion of their yards for a wider road and sidewalk and they almost certainly would rather that road not receive more traffic as a result of 'improvement'. That said, there are definitely roads in Townsville Qld (your example of an Australian town that should have good infrastructure,) that look as 'bad' if not worse than Pine St: https://www.google.com/maps/@-19.3152528,146.8315158,3a,75y,316.97h,83.1t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s3GCaMvUdz4i2LNa-cRkydw!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo3.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3D3GCaMvUdz4i2LNa-cRkydw%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D231.79164%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i3328!8i1664 https://www.google.com/maps/@-19.3152528,146.8315158,3a,75y,...

nerdponx 6y ago

a footpath This is the biggest oversight of all. It's painful to see new development with no sidewalks.

astine 6y ago

It doesn't take a lot of work find photographs of roads like that in Australia. This isn't a main road, it's a tiny neighborhood road. It doesn't need a lot of infrastructure and I kind of wish that more roads looked like this because they're usually a lot more pleasant than the big ones. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/46/CSIRO_ScienceImage_3723_Aerial_view_of_the_rural_community_of_Burrawang_in_the_Wingecarribee_Catchment_south_of_Sydney_NSW_1999.jpg/1200px-CSIRO_ScienceImage_3723_Aerial_view_of_the_rural_community_of_Burrawang_in_the_Wingecarribee_Catchment_south_of_Sydney_NSW_1999.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/46/CS...

austhrow743 6y ago

As an Australian, what sort of life have you lived where you don't think we have roads like Pine St? Have you ever left a CBD?

toomanybeersies 6y ago
Sure, I've seen roads like this in tiny regional towns with half a dozen houses and a single pub, but Pine St is in McKinney, TX, roughly the same size as Bendigo or Ballarat, which don't have roads like this in residential areas.
- astine 6y ago
  "roughly the same size as Bendigo or Ballarat, which don't have roads like this in residential areas." Eh, I don't know. Munroe in Ballarat is a residential road but doesn't have sidewalks or street parking either. I mean, the gutter is nicer, but that might be down to a soil/landscape difference. Pine St might have the better drainage because it's been built up so high from the ground. https://www.google.com/maps/@-37.5573014,143.8142714,3a,75y,350.73h,74.6t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s7CH622LRdvYZY7wHeinYUw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.com/maps/@-37.5573014,143.8142714,3a,75y,...

speby 6y ago

Climate is a massive factor in the deterioration and accelerated wear of roads. Australia doesn't have harsh, freezing winters with lots of freeze/thaw cycles creating potholes and expanding crack lines in your roads. It's a lot more expensive to maintain "good" roads in climates that have wide temperature cycles throughout their seasons.

toomanybeersies 6y ago
Our roads in Australia tend to melt instead, which poses its own unique set of engineering problems.
zaarn 6y ago
I live in germany where we do have freeze/thaw cycles. Our roads look better both from my experience when I went to the US and looking at pictures from the US. Don't think climate is a good excuse here. Nordic countries also manage a much better infrastructure in roads from what I hear.
ryanmt 6y ago
Of course, that part of Texas wouldn't have any freezing either, especially in the ground.

unishark 6y ago

This is a small town on the outskirts of Dallas. A few blocks from this neighborhood it becomes completely rural. Back when the streets were put in it was a distant commuter town. But there's no potholes in those pictures. Are you referring to others? Though there are really bad streets in some places. Generally seems to happen when the streets are not as needed as they were previously (e.g. urban decay where businesses and people left the area), and the city doesn't have good options about what to do with it. Street parking and walkways are optional things anywhere depending on whether they're useful. More of a dependence on the population density. Really expensive subdivisions often lack them too.

mwill 6y ago

A lot of comments saying this is a small town, and small towns in Australia are just as bad, googling shows the US town has a population of 191,000! That's bigger than Townsville. I live in rural Australia, in a town with a population less than 20% of the town referenced in the post, and I regularly drive the the nearest town which has a population of 0.2% of the US town, and the road in the post look absolutely dilapidated to me. Even the fixed up road, if I drove through that in my town, I would think "the council need to do something about that" Your comment reminded me of playing GeoGuessr when it was first released, I remember being absolutely shocked at some of the random locations in the US, the streetview looked about like I would expect a town here with a population of 100 people to look, and the map would show it as being part of an urban sprawl, 50km from a city center.

astine 6y ago
One thing you'll notice if you look at a lot of suburban sprawl in the US is that most of the roads are wide and have sidewalks, but the houses are ugly and samey for miles. Interspersed among those neighborhoods will be roads with smaller--or at least older--houses, and smaller streets. The reason being that those smaller streets are from the neighborhoods that existed before the area was built up and the locals resisted development in their neighborhoods. McKinney is a town that has apparently undergone rapid expansion in the past 20-30 years and I'm willing to bet that Pine St was initially build well before McKinney reached its current population. If you believe that every single residential road needs to have a certain width and have sidewalks as a matter of course, I don't know that I can dissuade you, but I'm willing to bet that the residents on that road are not eager to give up a portion of their yards for a wider road and sidewalk and they almost certainly would rather that road not receive more traffic as a result of 'improvement'. That said, there are definitely roads in Townsville Qld (your example of an Australian town that should have good infrastructure,) that look as 'bad' if not worse than Pine St: https://www.google.com/maps/@-19.3152528,146.8315158,3a,75y,316.97h,83.1t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s3GCaMvUdz4i2LNa-cRkydw!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo3.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3D3GCaMvUdz4i2LNa-cRkydw%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D231.79164%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i3328!8i1664 https://www.google.com/maps/@-19.3152528,146.8315158,3a,75y,...