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I'm assuming you're speaking tongue in cheek, but I thought about why we have problems that the Romans didn't. I don't know about ease of maintenance and acces
by Naga 5y ago
I'm assuming you're speaking tongue in cheek, but I thought about why we have problems that the Romans didn't.
I don't know about ease of maintenance and access to utilities, but Romans did not have trucks that destroyed the roads (the ratio of weight of vehicles to the wear on the road is exponential, not linear), but I have no concept of how cobblestone is affected by trucks. Roman roads are also affected by survivorship bias (we see the roads that survived, not 90% of the roads that haven't) and they were not affected as much by freeze/thaw cycles as North American roads are.
My intutition says that they also probably were not generally as wide as North American roads. Drivers here have an expectation of being able to drive at high speeds without worrying about passing on coming traffic - Pictures I've seen of Roman highways were not two wagons wide. Less road width means less maintenance since there's physically less roads.
- rexreed 5y agoYes, somewhat tongue in cheek, but it's an interesting thought exercise. For the high traffic streets where there is high speed and also lots of heavy traffic, for sure, asphalt dominates for many good reasons. But for the problems this article discusses for smaller cities where their population has moved to suburbs and exurbs and where the commercial centers have similarly moved out of city core, perhaps the more durable approach to cobbles (or brick) might be an interesting way to address ongoing maintenance challenges. It's mostly a thought exercise, but an interesting one.