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You're probably also going to have far fewer massive vehicles on those rural roads. More things like pickups yes, but probably considerably fewer semi-teicks an
by vel0city 2y ago
You're probably also going to have far fewer massive vehicles on those rural roads. More things like pickups yes, but probably considerably fewer semi-teicks and busses and fire trucks and cement mixers what not. Those big trucks passing through are going to stick to interstates far more often when going through rural areas.
- hparadiz 2y agoOn average yea but when a rural road is neglected it's far far worse than any urban road. I'm looking at you Pennsylvania.
- burnte 2y agoBorn and raised in Pgh, the highways are awful. Always have been.
- Loughla 2y agoWe have large farm machinery though.
- tcmart14 2y agoThere is large machinery. But does it go down the same stretch of road 20 times a day all days of the year though? May also depend on location. You ain't taking the combine down the road several times a day in the middle of winter. So you do get the wear and tear of large farm equipment, but its still probably less than an urban road and not year round.
- olyjohn 2y agoAlso their slow speeds and larger tires probably lead to less wear than another vehicle of the same weight traveling at normal highway speeds.
- bluGill 2y agoFarmers are using normal semis to move the crops from the field to elsewhere on the road. Farm equipment on the road is generally unloaded.
- vel0city 2y agoDo those go down the road every 10-20 minutes like the poor bus service on the urban street outside my home does? And that is just the busses. Add 2-3 semi-trucks every five minutes. Oh, and there's still farm equipment every now and then. I am in Texas after all.
- jgeada 2y agoLarge machinery, but typically very low ground pressure. After all, that same machinery is designed to operate on arable soil without sinking or bogging down. It is my understanding that it is ground pressure more than absolute weight that correlates to road surface damage/erosion.
- amatecha 2y agoyeah, the farm vehicles usually have gigantic tires too, compared to any regular passenger vehicle
- potato3732842 2y agoAt some point axle load starts mattering more than ground pressure because whatever's below the pavement itself starts being extruded. I don't think that matters in most cases though.
- greenavocado 2y agoAxle loading limits
- macksd 2y agoI think other explanations replying are on point. I live in a town that's surrounded by a lot of farm traffic, and most of those roads are in good shape. But there are also routes used heavily by trucks servicing fracking sites, and those roads are TRASHED.
- oblio 2y agoMy grandma used to live close to a road servicing an oil derrick, back in 90's Romania (so 0 infrastructure investments for probably 10 years). At one point my family was in a Dacia 1310 (crappy and very cheap Romanian car) and we literally went very slowly (probably 10kmph) through a section where the road was basically sunk, there was a "pothole" probably 10-15m long and 80% of the road wide (both lanes), about 1m deep, I think. The funny thing is that there were potholes inside the uber-pothole :-)))
- FuriouslyAdrift 2y agoCity buses are what really shred urban roads (and winter plows) https://www.kgw.com/article/news/verify/yes-bus-more-road-damage-1000-cars/283-2cf2e8bf-3add-4fed-b598-6d7570a9799d https://www.kgw.com/article/news/verify/yes-bus-more-road-da...
- vel0city 2y agoYeah looking at any road around me it's obvious which lanes the busses prefer.
- PaulDavisThe1st 2y agoIn the mid-90s, Seattle started excavating its bus-stops-on-a-slope and pouring a new concrete foundation, because the busses were warping the asphalt so badly. I was just back there this last weekend, and you can no longer see any of the concrete - it has all been coated with asphalt. However, I assume its a rather thin layer because none of the bus stops I checked show the signs of damage that were becoming common in 90-96.
- wombatpm 2y agoThey opened a new truck stop near me with asphalt roads. 6 months later they tore it up for concrete because the asphalt shifted into lumps where the trucks were turning cono
- teh_klev 2y agoI did google "bus-stops-on-a-slope", but nothing jumped out. What are "bus-stops-on-a-slope"?
- ender341341 2y agoI think they meant that the bus stop is on a hill maybe?
- stonemetal12 2y agoAsphalt, like glass, is an amorphous solid. When a heavy truck sits still on asphalt, asphalt will flow out from under the tires. Not only do you get a depression and eventually a pot hole where the tire was, and you get a little hill next to it. You just about need an offroad vehicle to avoid hitting the street.
- AngryData 2y agoIn my rural area there are tons of gravel pits so the roads take a lot of abuse. However every gravel pit ive seen here open up on a new road has been forced to spend the money on upgrading that road to handle those gravel trucks.