8 ms·

There's one bit of jointed concrete road that I know of in the UK, a few miles where I live on the A90 near Laurencekirk. It's bloody awful, like driving over

There's one bit of jointed concrete road that I know of in the UK, a few miles where I live on the A90 near Laurencekirk. It's bloody awful, like driving over smashed paving slabs. In my big old Range Rover with its off-road air suspension and massive reinforced tyres it's a noisy and uncomfortable couple of miles. In a modern vehicle with ultra-low profile tyres and incredibly stiff "sporty" suspension it must be like being rolled down a hill in old washing machine. So yeah it's entirely possible that it's a very US thing, I've never seen it anywhere else. Edit: here you can see a section, with repairs showing up as dark lines across it. https://www.bing.com/maps?osid=55db8ed6-35d8-4916-82c3-14131e11a722&cp=56.752882~-2.651094&lvl=18&style=a&v=2&sV=2&form=S00027 https://www.bing.com/maps?osid=55db8ed6-35d8-4916-82c3-14131...

bombcar 4y ago
The US interstate moves insane numbers of huge ass-trucks that weight one billion metric pounds each or something. Anything less than airport-grade concrete dies instantly, and then dies again when it invariably freezes to -40° Kelvin, because fuck physics when shit gets cold.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  The reason for the interstate trucks is the taxation system that punishes railroads for owning their right-of-way. The trucks cause by far the most damage to the highways, but taxpayers subsidize that with the gas tax. Trucks also do not pay property tax on the highways. Long haul freight should be done by loading the semi's trailer onto a flat car, and picking it up near the destination. Another myopic government decision is to try to replace the diesel trucks with electric ones, you know, for the environment. Far better for the environment would be to do away with long haul trucking and use freight trains instead, which are far more efficient. Trains also do not spread tire and brake dust all over the place, either.
  - engineer_22 4y ago
    Trucks pay much higher tolls. Tolls are based on axles and weight.
    - josephcsible 4y ago
      But not nearly higher enough. Driving on roads damages them in proportion to the fourth power of per-axle weight, which is about 17,000lbs for a fully loaded semi and 2,000lbs for a car. To put that in perspective, if the toll for the car were $0.25, it'd have to be over $1,300 for the truck for it to be fair in that sense.
      - nemo44x 4y ago
        It will just raise shipping costs and therefore raise the cost of goods. By charging trucks more it creates a regressive tax effectively. By subsidizing them this is a way we utilize socialism to ensure lower wage people have access.
        WalterBright 4y ago
        That's why move the freight by rail.
        UncleEntity 4y ago
        They move a bunch of freight by rail, nobody wants to pay someone a bunch of money to drive it when they can just throw it on a train. And trains are relatively time inefficient so people in Maine couldn’t have their fresh Californian strawberries a couple days after they are plucked out of the field. Maybe people don’t deserve to have fresh produce but that’s another discussion altogether.
        WalterBright 4y ago
        Did you know that one of the very first uses of the first transcontinental railroad was shipping fresh California produce back east? And this was a century and a half ago.
  - nemo44x 4y ago
    The USA has possibly the best freight rail system in the world and it’s used extensively. Trucks pay a ton of tolls, licenses, and fuel tax.
    - WalterBright 4y ago
      The interstates are a constant stream of freight trucks. Trucks cause 4x the pollution of trains. Trucks spew tire and brake dust all over the countryside. Most of the maintenance on highways are the result of trucks, and this is paid for by taxpayers.
      - nemo44x 4y ago
        Trucks are what get goods to their destination. Rail can only get you so close.
        WalterBright 4y ago
        Right. For a 3,000 mile journey, 2,998 of those miles can be by rail with the trailer set on a flatcar. The mile in and the last mile the trailer is picked off the flatbed and hooked up to the semi.
    - sfpotter 4y ago
      In what sense does the US have the best freight rail system in the world? Not trying to be antagonistic, here---just want to know why you think this. Regarding your other comment ("trucks get the goods where they have to go"): in other countries, such as Switzerland, many buildings (think an Ikea store) are required to be reachable by rail, in which case regional trains can deliver goods to a hub, and then local trains can take goods from the hub to the store. No need for trucks in this case.
      - bombcar 4y ago
        The absolute amount of freight moved by rail in the US is insane. But the US is also roughly the size of Europe and is shaped so there are many population centers far from the ocean. If you remove bulk freight it’s quite a bit of a difference but still massive. Much of European freight goes by boat and truck without much train.
  - engineer_22 4y ago
    Can the efficiency of trains and trucks be quantified? It might make your argument stronger
    - WalterBright 4y ago
      "On average, rail is four times more fuel efficient than trucks, and emit 75% fewer GHG emissions. This fuel-efficiency can also help to reduce transportation costs significantly, while giving the business a promotional platform for sustainability initiatives." --- google "efficiency of trains vs trucks
  - UncleEntity 4y ago
    > Trucks also do not pay property tax on the highways. Why would they pay property tax on a highway they don’t own? What they do pay is a per mile tax that is collected at the pump and divided up to the states through IFTA. Every single mile a truck travels is taxed by some state even if it’s just using it for personal use like shopping at Walmart.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      Taxation of electric trucks is something that hasn’t been resolved quite yet.
    - WalterBright 4y ago
      Yes, they do pay a use tax. As noted elsewhere in this thread, the tax is far too low to account for the damage caused by the weight of the truck.
      - UncleEntity 4y ago
        People make the assumption that the roads aren’t designed with truck travel in mind methinks. The other option, making trucks pay their “fair share”, would just get passed along to consumers as higher prices and nothing would change. Like when fuel prices go up, truck drivers don’t eat those costs but they get a higher fuel surcharge which just gets accounted for when they’re pricing the goods on the grocery store shelves. I also don’t think you fully understand how massively huge the transportation system is in the US. Assuming they could switch over to trains and assuming you live in the Bay Area they’d just have the trains deliver to Tracy or Stockton (where all the big warehouses currently are) and still have trucks deliver to the store down the street. Same amount of trucks you currently see with the only difference being the long haul truckers now doing local work. Keeping with the Bay Area example, the last three times I delivered there two loads were going overseas out of Oakland and the third was a super small warehouse in San Leandro which didn’t even have a dock and I had to back a half mile down this tiny street — twice because there wasn’t anywhere to turn around and I was originally facing the wrong direction. I deliver to California all the time and all the warehouses are outside of the big cities. Well, except in LA but they’re just generally wrong about most things.
  - someonewhocar3s 4y ago
    [dead]
- Ancalagon 4y ago
  I love the hyperbole in this comment! :D
  - usrusr 4y ago
    Allow me to single out the metric pound, which is defined as precisely a billionth of the weight the local road surface can withstand. Noteworthy for being one of the few units that work for both mass and weight because the local gravity is conveniently factored in.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- Gordonjcp 4y ago
  You might be surprised to know that we have trucks in the UK, too. That road is nose-to-tail 40-tonne trucks every night, because everything that goes to the north of Scotland from anywhere else in the UK goes up it. To give you an idea of scale, Scotland has an area about the same as Alabama, but in terms of getting around you'd have to think along the lines of several times bigger than Texas.
- lamontcg 4y ago
  > huge ass-trucks https://xkcd.com/37/ https://xkcd.com/37/
fredoralive 4y ago
There’s an interesting blog post about the UK’s unloved and out of fashion concrete Motorways here: https://www.roads.org.uk/blog/diamond-rough https://www.roads.org.uk/blog/diamond-rough which notes that the US seems to occasionally grind the surface of concrete roads, whilst in the UK [INSERT WHATEVER THE HIGHWAYS AGENCY IS CALLED THIS WEEK][1] don’t (barring recent trials) leading to people driving on rough decades old surfaces. Although ISTR it was the expansion joints that were the real annoyance? But I haven’t personally encountered concrete roads in the UK in decades, it’s more of a thing from when I was a kid. [1] Or local / devolved authorities etc.

bombcar 4y ago

The US interstate moves insane numbers of huge ass-trucks that weight one billion metric pounds each or something. Anything less than airport-grade concrete dies instantly, and then dies again when it invariably freezes to -40° Kelvin, because fuck physics when shit gets cold.

WalterBright 4y ago
The reason for the interstate trucks is the taxation system that punishes railroads for owning their right-of-way. The trucks cause by far the most damage to the highways, but taxpayers subsidize that with the gas tax. Trucks also do not pay property tax on the highways. Long haul freight should be done by loading the semi's trailer onto a flat car, and picking it up near the destination. Another myopic government decision is to try to replace the diesel trucks with electric ones, you know, for the environment. Far better for the environment would be to do away with long haul trucking and use freight trains instead, which are far more efficient. Trains also do not spread tire and brake dust all over the place, either.
- engineer_22 4y ago
  Trucks pay much higher tolls. Tolls are based on axles and weight.
  - josephcsible 4y ago
    But not nearly higher enough. Driving on roads damages them in proportion to the fourth power of per-axle weight, which is about 17,000lbs for a fully loaded semi and 2,000lbs for a car. To put that in perspective, if the toll for the car were $0.25, it'd have to be over $1,300 for the truck for it to be fair in that sense.
    - nemo44x 4y ago
      It will just raise shipping costs and therefore raise the cost of goods. By charging trucks more it creates a regressive tax effectively. By subsidizing them this is a way we utilize socialism to ensure lower wage people have access.
      - WalterBright 4y ago
        That's why move the freight by rail.
        UncleEntity 4y ago
        They move a bunch of freight by rail, nobody wants to pay someone a bunch of money to drive it when they can just throw it on a train. And trains are relatively time inefficient so people in Maine couldn’t have their fresh Californian strawberries a couple days after they are plucked out of the field. Maybe people don’t deserve to have fresh produce but that’s another discussion altogether.
        WalterBright 4y ago
        Did you know that one of the very first uses of the first transcontinental railroad was shipping fresh California produce back east? And this was a century and a half ago.
- nemo44x 4y ago
  The USA has possibly the best freight rail system in the world and it’s used extensively. Trucks pay a ton of tolls, licenses, and fuel tax.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    The interstates are a constant stream of freight trucks. Trucks cause 4x the pollution of trains. Trucks spew tire and brake dust all over the countryside. Most of the maintenance on highways are the result of trucks, and this is paid for by taxpayers.
    - nemo44x 4y ago
      Trucks are what get goods to their destination. Rail can only get you so close.
      - WalterBright 4y ago
        Right. For a 3,000 mile journey, 2,998 of those miles can be by rail with the trailer set on a flatcar. The mile in and the last mile the trailer is picked off the flatbed and hooked up to the semi.
  - sfpotter 4y ago
    In what sense does the US have the best freight rail system in the world? Not trying to be antagonistic, here---just want to know why you think this. Regarding your other comment ("trucks get the goods where they have to go"): in other countries, such as Switzerland, many buildings (think an Ikea store) are required to be reachable by rail, in which case regional trains can deliver goods to a hub, and then local trains can take goods from the hub to the store. No need for trucks in this case.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      The absolute amount of freight moved by rail in the US is insane. But the US is also roughly the size of Europe and is shaped so there are many population centers far from the ocean. If you remove bulk freight it’s quite a bit of a difference but still massive. Much of European freight goes by boat and truck without much train.
- engineer_22 4y ago
  Can the efficiency of trains and trucks be quantified? It might make your argument stronger
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    "On average, rail is four times more fuel efficient than trucks, and emit 75% fewer GHG emissions. This fuel-efficiency can also help to reduce transportation costs significantly, while giving the business a promotional platform for sustainability initiatives." --- google "efficiency of trains vs trucks
- UncleEntity 4y ago
  > Trucks also do not pay property tax on the highways. Why would they pay property tax on a highway they don’t own? What they do pay is a per mile tax that is collected at the pump and divided up to the states through IFTA. Every single mile a truck travels is taxed by some state even if it’s just using it for personal use like shopping at Walmart.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Taxation of electric trucks is something that hasn’t been resolved quite yet.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    Yes, they do pay a use tax. As noted elsewhere in this thread, the tax is far too low to account for the damage caused by the weight of the truck.
    - UncleEntity 4y ago
      People make the assumption that the roads aren’t designed with truck travel in mind methinks. The other option, making trucks pay their “fair share”, would just get passed along to consumers as higher prices and nothing would change. Like when fuel prices go up, truck drivers don’t eat those costs but they get a higher fuel surcharge which just gets accounted for when they’re pricing the goods on the grocery store shelves. I also don’t think you fully understand how massively huge the transportation system is in the US. Assuming they could switch over to trains and assuming you live in the Bay Area they’d just have the trains deliver to Tracy or Stockton (where all the big warehouses currently are) and still have trucks deliver to the store down the street. Same amount of trucks you currently see with the only difference being the long haul truckers now doing local work. Keeping with the Bay Area example, the last three times I delivered there two loads were going overseas out of Oakland and the third was a super small warehouse in San Leandro which didn’t even have a dock and I had to back a half mile down this tiny street — twice because there wasn’t anywhere to turn around and I was originally facing the wrong direction. I deliver to California all the time and all the warehouses are outside of the big cities. Well, except in LA but they’re just generally wrong about most things.
- someonewhocar3s 4y ago
  [dead]
Ancalagon 4y ago
I love the hyperbole in this comment! :D
- usrusr 4y ago
  Allow me to single out the metric pound, which is defined as precisely a billionth of the weight the local road surface can withstand. Noteworthy for being one of the few units that work for both mass and weight because the local gravity is conveniently factored in.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
Gordonjcp 4y ago
You might be surprised to know that we have trucks in the UK, too. That road is nose-to-tail 40-tonne trucks every night, because everything that goes to the north of Scotland from anywhere else in the UK goes up it. To give you an idea of scale, Scotland has an area about the same as Alabama, but in terms of getting around you'd have to think along the lines of several times bigger than Texas.
lamontcg 4y ago
> huge ass-trucks https://xkcd.com/37/ https://xkcd.com/37/

fredoralive 4y ago

There’s an interesting blog post about the UK’s unloved and out of fashion concrete Motorways here: https://www.roads.org.uk/blog/diamond-rough https://www.roads.org.uk/blog/diamond-rough which notes that the US seems to occasionally grind the surface of concrete roads, whilst in the UK [INSERT WHATEVER THE HIGHWAYS AGENCY IS CALLED THIS WEEK][1] don’t (barring recent trials) leading to people driving on rough decades old surfaces. Although ISTR it was the expansion joints that were the real annoyance? But I haven’t personally encountered concrete roads in the UK in decades, it’s more of a thing from when I was a kid. [1] Or local / devolved authorities etc.