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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 bigg

by 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,...

by mwill 6y ago

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,...