9 ms·

This happens CONSTANTLY in Atlanta. They'll spend a bunch of money fixing a road, then a month later Public Works digs a huge hole and leaves a steel plate on i

• ASalazarMX 2y ago
  This happens in other countries too. Some people theorize that it's done because of internal rivalries between dependencies/political factions, but I suspect local governments are just inept at logistics.
  • jakjak123 2y ago
    Its also a difficult problem. They need the right digger and the right crew at the right time and possibly the right weather to get the job done. Many times there will be weeks of juggling around schedules and suddenly the digging started three weeks after the road was finished
    • lo_zamoyski 2y ago
      Let me ask you: how many buildings collapsed during the reign of Hammurabi?
      • Carrok 2y ago
        I.. I have no idea. I don't even know who Hammurabi is. Is there a point you're trying to make? If so, care to enlighten us without assuming we all have history degrees?
        • PittleyDunkin 2y ago
          He's a rather famous chap: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammurabi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammurabi Regardless, I suspect there's a point being made about the timeless ineptitude of bureaucracy (even if I don't agree with it—some cultures are notably more competent at managing logistics of public works than other are).
        • 6equj5 2y ago
          > 229 If a builder builds a house for someone, and does not construct it properly, and the house which he built falls and kills its owner, then that builder shall be put to death. http://faculty.collin.edu/mbailey/hammurabi%27s%20laws.htm http://faculty.collin.edu/mbailey/hammurabi%27s%20laws.htm
          • InDubioProRubio 2y ago
            Thus the builders guild began to charge 50 silver for insurrance yearly from its members, which resulted to all road projects having a yearly 100 silver talent cost-addition on start. 5 years after the code, the empire went bankrupt
        • yulker 2y ago
          Not obscure enough of a figure to necessitate a history degree. Well known for being one of the first to establish building codes.
          • tharkun__ 2y ago
            Yet many including myself have never heard of him. Would it have been so much to ask to put a Wikipedia link and nerd-snipe some of us in the process?
            • shiroiushi 2y ago
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      • btreecat 2y ago
        1? 1000? Regardless the answer, the lack of context makes the figure meaningless.
      • ASalazarMX 2y ago
        He reigned for 42 years (1792–1750 BC), so I hope not too many.
      • written-beyond 2y ago
        I'm guessing exactly equal to the number of building contractors he or his donors had beef with
      • kergonath 2y ago
        Considering that we don't even know how many buildings there were at that time, I don't think anyone can give you an answer with any certainty. But that was your point?
  • brnt 2y ago
    Here, the gov gives time windows for utility owners to dig and do maintenance, after which it'll be repaved. If you want to do maintenance on your infra, you request a timeslot and the gov groups the maintenance (eg sewer and gas). You best not miss your window.
    • MikeTheGreat 2y ago
      Sure, but what happens if you have maintenance issues that arise after the window closes? Are we really going to tell people that they can't live without sewer / clean water / electricity / whatever because the window closed 2 months ago and their problem didn't start until today?
      • scherlock 2y ago
        It's a carrot, not a stick. It's designed to spread the digging.and repaving costs around so the work is cheaper. It's more that the city knows it's doing work in an area, digging up the road, so they tell all the utilities, hey if you are thinking of doing work on Main Ave, we'll be starting work on September 3rd, if tell us now and can get a crew out before September 21st, you won't need to pay to excavate and repave.
      • brnt 2y ago
        Emergencies are emergencies. Maintenance is largely required to be scheduled, so utilities cannot wait until things break, they'll be required to perform maintenance/replace at pre-established frequencies. So we might not know when in 2030 the road gets torn up, but we do know it will be, since maintenance is required that year on infra X,Y,Z. Scheduling of the precise dates is then done according to the window.
  • tourmalinetaco 2y ago
    We were getting our roads redone in my town and the county commissioner ordered an asphalt miller to run on one singular road, when we needed it (and said for it to run) on all of them. It cost us the same to run it on one road or all of them, because most of the costs were transport of machinery. So I definitely lean towards ineptitude.
  • kamaal 2y ago
    >>This happens in other countries too. This is everyday life in India. A big budget is sanctioned to build a road. Road gets built, then a month or two later, some body forgets they didn't do the sanitary/sewage pipes well enough and manholes are now overflowing, they tear down the whole road and then just leave it as is. The process restarts again in two years or so. Here is the rub- The guy who builds it at the first place knows all this so builds it as cheaply as they can get away with. Its just how corruption works, and money flow from tax payers to politically well connected contractors(often the politicians themselves, as the contractors are just shell companies owned by contractors). Even if the company is black listed a new one can always be floated next time. >>I suspect local governments are just inept at logistics. No they are just corrupt. Its easy money. No audits, no accountability and no questions of any kind.
    • hulitu 2y ago
      You just described the process in a big central european country. I was wondering why a company from 300 km away fixes the local road ( an almost insignificant road).
  • alextingle 2y ago
    Simply forcing the utilities people to properly repair roads after they have been dug up would be sufficient.
    • j16sdiz 2y ago
      No. Another side of the problem is how often we need close a road to dig it up. If we just enforce the quality, we will just wasting more time and money for more works and less time actually using them . Proper solution would be a utility duct or tunnel.
  • hulitu 2y ago
    > Some people theorize that it's done because of internal rivalries between dependencies/political factions Or maybe corruption ? All utility builders have to fix the road -> more work -> more profit.
  • citizenpaul 2y ago
    >inept This is not a place where Hanlon's razor applies. Gov construction is rotten all the way through as matter of course and policy. High volume material industries are the easiest to commit fraud. Especially when the bureaucrat that signs the checks is never going to bother themselves by checking the real world shipments match to the bills. And that is just the easy part to check, checking for fudging numbers requires real work. Its been going on so long that the corruption is now part of the system. Its trivial to look at various costs and see the "$10,000" hammer all over the place. Or how instead of price going down at scale it goes up. I probably will not convince you of this in a comment though, so do some research if you are interested.
    • gopher_space 2y ago
      > I probably will not convince you of this in a comment though I mean your statement goes against all of my experience and the experience of every person I've met IRL, but I think you're confusing redundancy, rent-seeking, and (yes) incompetence with criminal intent. Do you have any friends that work for a city? I'd just ask them about government work in general. The point of the domain is orthogonal to the business world, so you need someone to translate and explain what you're looking at. Trivial example: You walk into a city garage and see mechanics working on their own vehicles. Are these government employees committing fraud? The answer will *depend on local weather*. There's a direct connection between e.g. annual snowfall and paying people to sit on their asses, and you'll need to appreciate that connection to understand what's going on around you.
• nonameiguess 2y ago
  Probably everywhere frankly, but Dallas is terrible, too. My wife and I took up skateboarding recently and it became much more obvious. Go out to the suburbs or a running trail or nice park and it's smooth sailing. You can push and coast. Where we live near downtown, it's cracks, rocks, discontinuities, metal plates. The gas company also dug up a bunch of bedrock 7 years ago, left a huge pile of it on the corner, rain came a few days later, and for the last 7 years, our sidewalks have been covered in dirt and the houses and cars all get a thin yellow film on them because there is so much dirt in the air all the time. That's before considering what regular construction crews do. Most of the sidewalks are closed most of the time. They're routinely torn out and never fixed. There are nails and other debris in the roads all the time. When we first moved to our current address, my wife had all four of her tires go flat within the first year. I didn't own a car until two years ago, but both front tires have gotten nails in them already. That's also on top of the city's contracted out private dump truck crushing my rear windshield and smashing the hatch and leaving a business card with a claim number on one of my front wiper blades. That was nice to walk out to. Then there was the crew across the street stealing all of my power tools when I accidentally left my garage open one day. I'm not a NIMBY, but experiencing this makes me weary of the Hacker News zeitgeist railing against communities that don't want their neighborhoods turned into constant construction. There are entirely non-evil reasons homeowners might want that because building where people already live is incredibly disruptive.
  • HeatrayEnjoyer 2y ago
    How did a pile of Rick seven years ago lead to continuous dust even today?
    • pixl97 2y ago
      If it's crunched up fine limestone it has a hard time growing plant cover. Instead it will be loose debris that easily breaks down and produces dust.
  • throwaway2037 2y ago
    I like the 7 years bedrock story. Doesn't Dallas have the equivalent of New York City 311 complaints hotline? Literally, you call it for anything annoying / loud / dangerous, and the operator will help you raise the issue to the correct department. To me, the trick about allowing more construction in established neighborhoods: Make the noise rules incredibly strict. Tokyo has non-stop construction everywhere. And the noise rules are very strict. It works. In Japan, I assume, for cultural reasons, most construction corps follow the rules. In other places ("The West"), you probably need expensive fines along with manual/automatic on-site inspections.
• LeanderK 2y ago
  interesting. I noticed something similar in the UK but not in Germany. Maybe some simple change in the way these utility repairs are regulated is to blame? While interstates are nice, cities are where people live, so the quality of urban roads matters and is maybe the reason for the perception of US roads?
  • moooo99 2y ago
    It happens in Germany as well though, not even that infrequently. It’s particularly common with the recent push for FTTH connections. At my parents place, they resurfaced to road a few years ago. Only for Deutsche Telekom to swoop in a year later and dig in their FTTC gear. Street was patched after, but reasonably well. At least we got faster internet back then
    • LeanderK 2y ago
      ah no, what i meant that I see these really low-quality, disregarding patches. It seems like, if for example there's some cobblestone-like road, they are not really required to redo it using the cobblestones but can just patch it up? Also some tar just seems way worse quality in these patches, very quickly disintegrating.
• numpad0 2y ago
  The solution to this problem is utility tunnels. A tunnel network under road surface just for plumbing and cabling. Maintenance crews can just drive through in cars and do their jobs, without stopping traffic and digging out pipes. Many ultra-modern cities have one. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_tunnel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_tunnel
  • nradov 2y ago
    You've got to be kidding. Utility tunnels are not even remotely a viable solution for Atlanta outside of maybe a few streets in the downtown area. The city (and wider metro area) is huge with thousands of miles of roads. They can't afford to dig utility tunnels.
  • tivert 2y ago
    > The solution to this problem is utility tunnels. A tunnel network under road surface just for plumbing and cabling. Maintenance crews can just drive through in cars and do their jobs, without stopping traffic and digging out pipes. Many ultra-modern cities have one [empahsis mine]. That does not sound like a general solution to the problem, because it would be fantastically, unreasonably expensive to put one under every road. Seems like something that would only be reasonable in a 1) particularly expensive central business district of a 2) city being built from scratch. IIRC, some of the biggest US cities don't have separate storm and sanitary sewers, because the cost of retrofitting an existing city would be prohibitively expensive. Installing utility tunnels everywhere would be even moreso.
    • mapt 2y ago
      They don't have COMPLETE and PERFECT separation of storm and sanitary sewers, but they are substantially separate systems at this time almost everywhere. They just have a finite capacity, and the overflow often ends up mixing in older cities during storms or "floods" (defined tautologically). The cost of retrofitting an existing city aside, the sanitary sewer is a subgrade utility tunnel, by design and by cost footprint. If you're already digging a big ditch and installing infrastructure there, it doesn't cost much more to have space for other utilities. We're not talking about building a basement for the entire roadway, we're talking about dropping modest size pipes under the sidewalks (or in many places, the lack of sidewalks) and enabling access through manholes.
• YZF 2y ago
  I remember the neighbourhood where I grew up. The roads were great until the cable TV company slices them all open to put their cables in. Then the patches would never hold, water would get in and under the road when it rained, and the roads were terrible for years.
• thaumasiotes 2y ago
  > The city has been trying to force public works to go do those things BEFORE road projects, but it's an uphill battle. Is Public Works a state agency? I would have expected them to be subordinate to the city.