9 ms·

We can't afford it. Roads are a massive treadmill of maintenance. To step back, why do we have so many square feet of road space? Why do we keep expanding high

We can't afford it. Roads are a massive treadmill of maintenance. To step back, why do we have so many square feet of road space? Why do we keep expanding highways when it is proven that it does not help? The automobile and its inefficient infrastructure is bankrupting this country. We keep building more roads rather than investing in transportation infrastructure which is far cheaper in the long run. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM

criddell 5y ago
> why do we have so many square feet of road space? Because that's what voters want. If true self-driving cars ever become a reality, there's going to be a big demand spike for more and bigger roads.
- winkeltripel 5y ago
  > If true self-driving cars ever become a reality, there's going to be a big demand spike for more and bigger roads Why would there be a need for more roads? It seems like the opposite would be true: self-driving cars don't need safe following distance to each other. They could form a massive train (the more you look at self driving cars, the more they look like trains), with 1 inch of space between each vehicle. Highway lanes are so wide, that small self-driving vehicles could sit 2-across, with an inch of space between them. On-demand self-driving-cars could cut the total number of cars on the road by a big factor. Self-driving cars might never crash, so they won't need all those tons of safety equipment that each car lugs about, saving a pile of net energy.
  - ryukafalz 5y ago
    > They could form a massive train ... with 1 inch of space between each vehicle. Okay, now a deer or a moose runs onto that road during a short gap in traffic. What happens next? > the more you look at self driving cars, the more they look like trains Sure, really big trains, with a tiny fraction of the carrying capacity.
  - criddell 5y ago
    Self driving cars will eventually be significantly less expensive than current vehicles. They will be small and electric inexpensive to operate and trips will be very cheap. When the cost of a trip drops, more trips will be made. If self-driving succeeds to the point where I can send my car to pick up my dry cleaning or food without needing to be in the car, then expect the number of vehicles on the road to go up a lot. We might be able to pack two times as many cars on the road and make intersections way more efficient, but that won't be enough.
  - tqi 5y ago
    I don't think most people conceptualize commutes in terms of distance, but rather time. So if commutes are now faster, people will move further out into areas that previously were less developed ie require new/more roads.
cinntaile 5y ago
You can afford it, but you don't want to. Increase the taxes on vehicles and on fuel and earmark these taxes for transportation infrastructure. If too many people would just fill up their tanks in a neighboring state require a miles logger instead. Technically it's easy to fix but this is a people's problem.
- nitrogen 5y ago
  require a miles logger instead That's a huge non-starter warranting much harsher language than is reasonable for HN.
  - gumby 5y ago
    Why? It ties taxation to usage and is uniform between dino-burners and electrics. Every street-legal vehicle already has one, so the question is really how to get an authenticated reading once per year/period.
    - HWR_14 5y ago
      I assume you are talking about annual mileage charge (based on odometer readings) and it was read as constant GPS tracking to charge continuously based on mileage.
      - nitrogen 5y ago
        Annual odometer reporting is totally fine, of course. I read "logger" as "continuous data logger." That's never going to be acceptable.
        cinntaile 5y ago
        I assume you already carry a continuous data logger in your pocket. At least it's voluntary. ;) I don't know what the most practical solution is while still being respectful of people's privacy. It could be a combination of GPS and an odometer or just one of these or something else. It doesn't have to leave the car and only the total number each year is important. You just need to somehow make sure the results weren't tampered with.
toast0 5y ago
> Why do we keep expanding highways when it is proven that it does not help? Expanding highways increases throughput almost everytime. Certainly, it rarely ends congestion. It often reduces congestion, but that depends on how far the capacity is behind the actual demand. In most places I've lived, road expansion is a response to increased demand from increased population, either through density or sprawl (but usually both). If you let population increase without increasing tranport capacity, you get congestion. That's true for roads and mass transit. Ideally, as the population grows, you expand both. But, expanding roads is often simpler, as you can do it in parts, addressing bottlenecks one at a time, whereas mass transit isn't very effective with piece-wise solutions; I can't easily drive to a highway transit station, take that 10 miles, then drive to my final destination, I need at least one of the local trips to be on transit/walkable and have parking available or have favorable conditions for biking (weather, physical ability, room on transit, managable hills).
- ryukafalz 5y ago
  > road expansion is a response to increased demand from increased population, either through density or sprawl Though it's the road expansion itself that often leads to more sprawl. It's worth noting that congestion in mass transit leads to better service. (Well, if you have a halfway competent transit agency, anyway.) More riders leads to more fares leads to more frequent service leads to getting you where you need to be more quickly. Road congestion doesn't have the same effect. Maybe it's a toll road in which case you have some increased revenue, but often it isn't - so congestion is typically net negative for drivers.
  - nitrogen 5y ago
    Though it's the road expansion itself that often leads to more sprawl. Every trip taken is an economic activity that would not have otherwise occurred. Traffic is commerce. Sprawl allows the middle class to continue to exist. More people, more property taxes, more fuel taxes, more money for roads.
    - ryukafalz 5y ago
m4rtink 5y ago
Narrow gauge railway siding for every house! ;-) (And I'm just half joking, that would be insanely cool!)
- masklinn 5y ago
  That was pretty much the standard in the late 19th and early 20th century. The lines were often economically non-viable and were shut down in the 30s, but on the eve of WWI you had villages of under 1000 people with their own train stations (as small as 20sqm), gauges so narrow you had to walk sideways to fit between the rails (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2_ft_and_600_mm_gauge_railways https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2_ft_and_600_mm_gauge_railways), and sometimes closer to trams than regular rails with the rails bolted straight onto road surface.
  - m4rtink 5y ago
    There were even dedicated estate railways! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_narrow-gauge_railways#Estate_railways https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_narrow-gauge_railways#... Not enough milk in the estate kitchen ? Send a maid with a train to the village to restock! Also on north Germany they have a 60 cm railway connecting an island at low tide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%BCttmoorsiel-Nordstrandischmoor_island_railway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%BCttmoorsiel-Nordstrandis... Or the famous Kurobe Gorge Railway in Japan at 762 mm that goes via hard moutain terrain and 40+ (!) tunnels: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurobe_Gorge_Railway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurobe_Gorge_Railway (We travelled it once, can recommend, superb experience!) Still apparently even if you switch to electric cars and/or trolley buses tire and road surface abrasion is still apparently a significant pollution hazard. I guess metal wheels on metal rails are less of an issues, so it might make sense to use rail based wehicles more heavily, especially with modern technology improvements (automatic routing/switching, battery powered trains, etc.).
xyzzyz 5y ago
> We can't afford it. Roads are a massive treadmill of maintenance. They are not. They are less than 10% of budget of most municipalities. We can easily afford the road, even at today’s highly inflated construction costs.
- ryukafalz 5y ago
  Okay, what percentage of the budget would they be if we were fixing them fast enough that we didn't have a constantly growing backlog of repairs?
  - xyzzyz 5y ago
    That depends on the the practices in that place. Many places have little no significant backlog and low expenditures. It’s all a matter of how the municipality contracts out the work, who gets the work and how, what work is prioritized etc.
    - ryukafalz 5y ago
      Got an example? I'd like to see a low-density city that's actually been consistently able to pay for its road maintenance. And not a place that only has relatively new roads, mind you: somewhere that's already had to go through the process of repaving them as they deteriorate at least once or twice.
      - xyzzyz 5y ago
        Sure. For example, consider the municipality of Wenatchee, in eastern Washington. In 2021, street maintenance is 3.5% of entire municipal budget. Another 6% is for capital improvements for road infrastructure (e.g. installing new traffic lights, new sidewalks, etc), but capital improvements do reduce maintenance in areas where capital improvements were done, so let’s say that 5% of entire municipal budget goes for road infrastructure maintenance. That’s hardly a large maintenance burden. As it happens, most places that are not having some unrelated problems, like eg. being depopulated after industrial collapse, can easily cover the road maintenance, considering how little they spend on it, compared to other items in the budget. If you don’t believe me, now it’s your turn to look at the data: pick a municipality with terribly maintained road, and tell me what percentage of their budget is spent on road maintenance.
BurningFrog 5y ago
The real cause is that we sell road access for $0. So the same thing happens as when you sell bread for $0. Supply runs out, you have long lines, and everyone is unhappy. Road pricing would make driving enormously much better, but it's counterintuitive and radical, so I doubt we'll see it in my lifetime.
- spywaregorilla 5y ago
  Toll roads?
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    Textbook regressive tax, even more so in this day and age where the less well off you are the more likely you are to have to live further out. You can always find someone poorer who commutes by bus to underpin an anecdote but going from renting an apartment within the public transit network to owning a car, renting outside the public transit network and commuting in is a big level up for most people because despite the commute arguably being worse it gives you flexibility when choosing your next jobs so your next steps up come easier.
    - BurningFrog 5y ago
      Paying for what you consume is not a tax! This argument is only applied to road consumption for some reason. Note that is road pricing makes traffic flow at the speed limit rather than crawling during rush hour, people can commute from much further away.
      - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
        >Paying for what you consume is not a tax! Everybody is already paying for it in their taxes. Furthermore everybody is also paying per use for the energy used, time and cost of vehicle ownership. How would you like it if the city started charging per use at the park beside your house? Maybe then you'd see how comically asinine it is to repressively tax public infrastructure that we have already decided is a net positive. And I'll preempt the obvious low effort retort by saying that city public transit should also be free at the point of use. >Note that is road pricing makes traffic flow at the speed limit rather than crawling during rush hour, people can commute from much further away. Yeah, if you're a doctor or lawyer or techie and can justify the cost relative to your increased earnings from commuting. The drywaller and the janitor have just as much right to sit in a traffic jam as you do. Increasing the cost per use for public good when not coupled to an increased cost to provide that good (last I checked bitumen prices didn't skyrocket) ALWAYS boils down to kicking the poors out so that whosoever left can have a better experience. This approach is completely antithetical to the reasoning behind spending money on these public goods in the first place. Making everyone endure the same crap equally ensures that the people who can most effectively load balance to something else or a different commute time do.
conductr 5y ago
> Why do we keep expanding highways when it is proven that it does not help? We're stuck inside of a ponzi scheme

criddell 5y ago

> why do we have so many square feet of road space? Because that's what voters want. If true self-driving cars ever become a reality, there's going to be a big demand spike for more and bigger roads.

winkeltripel 5y ago
> If true self-driving cars ever become a reality, there's going to be a big demand spike for more and bigger roads Why would there be a need for more roads? It seems like the opposite would be true: self-driving cars don't need safe following distance to each other. They could form a massive train (the more you look at self driving cars, the more they look like trains), with 1 inch of space between each vehicle. Highway lanes are so wide, that small self-driving vehicles could sit 2-across, with an inch of space between them. On-demand self-driving-cars could cut the total number of cars on the road by a big factor. Self-driving cars might never crash, so they won't need all those tons of safety equipment that each car lugs about, saving a pile of net energy.
- ryukafalz 5y ago
  > They could form a massive train ... with 1 inch of space between each vehicle. Okay, now a deer or a moose runs onto that road during a short gap in traffic. What happens next? > the more you look at self driving cars, the more they look like trains Sure, really big trains, with a tiny fraction of the carrying capacity.
- criddell 5y ago
  Self driving cars will eventually be significantly less expensive than current vehicles. They will be small and electric inexpensive to operate and trips will be very cheap. When the cost of a trip drops, more trips will be made. If self-driving succeeds to the point where I can send my car to pick up my dry cleaning or food without needing to be in the car, then expect the number of vehicles on the road to go up a lot. We might be able to pack two times as many cars on the road and make intersections way more efficient, but that won't be enough.
- tqi 5y ago
  I don't think most people conceptualize commutes in terms of distance, but rather time. So if commutes are now faster, people will move further out into areas that previously were less developed ie require new/more roads.

cinntaile 5y ago

You can afford it, but you don't want to. Increase the taxes on vehicles and on fuel and earmark these taxes for transportation infrastructure. If too many people would just fill up their tanks in a neighboring state require a miles logger instead. Technically it's easy to fix but this is a people's problem.

nitrogen 5y ago
require a miles logger instead That's a huge non-starter warranting much harsher language than is reasonable for HN.
- gumby 5y ago
  Why? It ties taxation to usage and is uniform between dino-burners and electrics. Every street-legal vehicle already has one, so the question is really how to get an authenticated reading once per year/period.
  - HWR_14 5y ago
    I assume you are talking about annual mileage charge (based on odometer readings) and it was read as constant GPS tracking to charge continuously based on mileage.
    - nitrogen 5y ago
      Annual odometer reporting is totally fine, of course. I read "logger" as "continuous data logger." That's never going to be acceptable.
      - cinntaile 5y ago
        I assume you already carry a continuous data logger in your pocket. At least it's voluntary. ;) I don't know what the most practical solution is while still being respectful of people's privacy. It could be a combination of GPS and an odometer or just one of these or something else. It doesn't have to leave the car and only the total number each year is important. You just need to somehow make sure the results weren't tampered with.

toast0 5y ago

> Why do we keep expanding highways when it is proven that it does not help? Expanding highways increases throughput almost everytime. Certainly, it rarely ends congestion. It often reduces congestion, but that depends on how far the capacity is behind the actual demand. In most places I've lived, road expansion is a response to increased demand from increased population, either through density or sprawl (but usually both). If you let population increase without increasing tranport capacity, you get congestion. That's true for roads and mass transit. Ideally, as the population grows, you expand both. But, expanding roads is often simpler, as you can do it in parts, addressing bottlenecks one at a time, whereas mass transit isn't very effective with piece-wise solutions; I can't easily drive to a highway transit station, take that 10 miles, then drive to my final destination, I need at least one of the local trips to be on transit/walkable and have parking available or have favorable conditions for biking (weather, physical ability, room on transit, managable hills).

ryukafalz 5y ago
> road expansion is a response to increased demand from increased population, either through density or sprawl Though it's the road expansion itself that often leads to more sprawl. It's worth noting that congestion in mass transit leads to better service. (Well, if you have a halfway competent transit agency, anyway.) More riders leads to more fares leads to more frequent service leads to getting you where you need to be more quickly. Road congestion doesn't have the same effect. Maybe it's a toll road in which case you have some increased revenue, but often it isn't - so congestion is typically net negative for drivers.
- nitrogen 5y ago
  Though it's the road expansion itself that often leads to more sprawl. Every trip taken is an economic activity that would not have otherwise occurred. Traffic is commerce. Sprawl allows the middle class to continue to exist. More people, more property taxes, more fuel taxes, more money for roads.
  - ryukafalz 5y ago

m4rtink 5y ago

Narrow gauge railway siding for every house! ;-) (And I'm just half joking, that would be insanely cool!)

masklinn 5y ago
That was pretty much the standard in the late 19th and early 20th century. The lines were often economically non-viable and were shut down in the 30s, but on the eve of WWI you had villages of under 1000 people with their own train stations (as small as 20sqm), gauges so narrow you had to walk sideways to fit between the rails (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2_ft_and_600_mm_gauge_railways https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2_ft_and_600_mm_gauge_railways), and sometimes closer to trams than regular rails with the rails bolted straight onto road surface.
- m4rtink 5y ago
  There were even dedicated estate railways! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_narrow-gauge_railways#Estate_railways https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_narrow-gauge_railways#... Not enough milk in the estate kitchen ? Send a maid with a train to the village to restock! Also on north Germany they have a 60 cm railway connecting an island at low tide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%BCttmoorsiel-Nordstrandischmoor_island_railway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%BCttmoorsiel-Nordstrandis... Or the famous Kurobe Gorge Railway in Japan at 762 mm that goes via hard moutain terrain and 40+ (!) tunnels: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurobe_Gorge_Railway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurobe_Gorge_Railway (We travelled it once, can recommend, superb experience!) Still apparently even if you switch to electric cars and/or trolley buses tire and road surface abrasion is still apparently a significant pollution hazard. I guess metal wheels on metal rails are less of an issues, so it might make sense to use rail based wehicles more heavily, especially with modern technology improvements (automatic routing/switching, battery powered trains, etc.).

xyzzyz 5y ago

> We can't afford it. Roads are a massive treadmill of maintenance. They are not. They are less than 10% of budget of most municipalities. We can easily afford the road, even at today’s highly inflated construction costs.

ryukafalz 5y ago
Okay, what percentage of the budget would they be if we were fixing them fast enough that we didn't have a constantly growing backlog of repairs?
- xyzzyz 5y ago
  That depends on the the practices in that place. Many places have little no significant backlog and low expenditures. It’s all a matter of how the municipality contracts out the work, who gets the work and how, what work is prioritized etc.
  - ryukafalz 5y ago
    Got an example? I'd like to see a low-density city that's actually been consistently able to pay for its road maintenance. And not a place that only has relatively new roads, mind you: somewhere that's already had to go through the process of repaving them as they deteriorate at least once or twice.
    - xyzzyz 5y ago
      Sure. For example, consider the municipality of Wenatchee, in eastern Washington. In 2021, street maintenance is 3.5% of entire municipal budget. Another 6% is for capital improvements for road infrastructure (e.g. installing new traffic lights, new sidewalks, etc), but capital improvements do reduce maintenance in areas where capital improvements were done, so let’s say that 5% of entire municipal budget goes for road infrastructure maintenance. That’s hardly a large maintenance burden. As it happens, most places that are not having some unrelated problems, like eg. being depopulated after industrial collapse, can easily cover the road maintenance, considering how little they spend on it, compared to other items in the budget. If you don’t believe me, now it’s your turn to look at the data: pick a municipality with terribly maintained road, and tell me what percentage of their budget is spent on road maintenance.

BurningFrog 5y ago

The real cause is that we sell road access for $0. So the same thing happens as when you sell bread for $0. Supply runs out, you have long lines, and everyone is unhappy. Road pricing would make driving enormously much better, but it's counterintuitive and radical, so I doubt we'll see it in my lifetime.

spywaregorilla 5y ago
Toll roads?
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  Textbook regressive tax, even more so in this day and age where the less well off you are the more likely you are to have to live further out. You can always find someone poorer who commutes by bus to underpin an anecdote but going from renting an apartment within the public transit network to owning a car, renting outside the public transit network and commuting in is a big level up for most people because despite the commute arguably being worse it gives you flexibility when choosing your next jobs so your next steps up come easier.
  - BurningFrog 5y ago
    Paying for what you consume is not a tax! This argument is only applied to road consumption for some reason. Note that is road pricing makes traffic flow at the speed limit rather than crawling during rush hour, people can commute from much further away.
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      >Paying for what you consume is not a tax! Everybody is already paying for it in their taxes. Furthermore everybody is also paying per use for the energy used, time and cost of vehicle ownership. How would you like it if the city started charging per use at the park beside your house? Maybe then you'd see how comically asinine it is to repressively tax public infrastructure that we have already decided is a net positive. And I'll preempt the obvious low effort retort by saying that city public transit should also be free at the point of use. >Note that is road pricing makes traffic flow at the speed limit rather than crawling during rush hour, people can commute from much further away. Yeah, if you're a doctor or lawyer or techie and can justify the cost relative to your increased earnings from commuting. The drywaller and the janitor have just as much right to sit in a traffic jam as you do. Increasing the cost per use for public good when not coupled to an increased cost to provide that good (last I checked bitumen prices didn't skyrocket) ALWAYS boils down to kicking the poors out so that whosoever left can have a better experience. This approach is completely antithetical to the reasoning behind spending money on these public goods in the first place. Making everyone endure the same crap equally ensures that the people who can most effectively load balance to something else or a different commute time do.

conductr 5y ago

> Why do we keep expanding highways when it is proven that it does not help? We're stuck inside of a ponzi scheme