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Procedures for Repair of Potholes in Asphalt-Surfaced Pavements
- OgsyedIE 8mo agoAs an aside, why do DoT pdfs have such gigantic margins/padding around the text content?
- ceejayoz 8mo agoIt allows note taking and corrections on drafts. Same deal with things like SCOTUS opinions. (Random example: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/24-624_b07d.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/24-624_b07d.pdf)
- conductr 8mo agoAlso allows flexibility in terms of binding options
- lostlogin 8mo agoI’d have thought the 20+ pages before getting to the point would have allowed scrap paper for notes. Maybe the foreword, acknowledgements, preface and various notes contained something of value.
- ceejayoz 8mo agoWhen you're driving a small car, do you expect the lanes to automatically shrink for you? It's a standard so no one has to think "does this page have enough space", and the notes are often relevant to the current page. Stuff like the photo in https://www.thedailybeast.com/photo-details-obamas-speech-edits/ https://www.thedailybeast.com/photo-details-obamas-speech-ed...
- lostlogin 8mo agoI was referring to the notes, notices and various preambles occupying the first quarter of the document.
- ceejayoz 8mo agoWhich are a very different sort of notes than the ones I'm talking about. They print it out and people go over it with a pen, make corrections, comments, etc.
- dylan604 8mo agoTo me, I read it as they are stating those pages are really useless fluff that could essentially just be ripped out and used as scratch paper as they seemingly serve no other purpose.
- lostlogin 8mo agoYes, this. But as ceejayoz points out, taking notes on the actual page is better. I was having a dig at how long it took for the document to get to the point.
- gucci-on-fleek 8mo ago> Same deal with things like SCOTUS opinions. (Random example: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/24-624_b07d.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/24-624_b07d.pdf) I don't think that that's quite right. SCOTUS opinions do indeed use a narrow text size (4 1/8" by 7 1/8" [0]), but that's because they're designed to be printed on unusually narrow paper (6 1/8" by 9 1/4" [0]), not to leave room for taking notes. This paper size actually only leaves 1" margins on either side, which leaves less room for taking notes than most other documents. [0]: https://www.supremecourt.gov/filingandrules/2023RulesoftheCourt.pdf#page=47 https://www.supremecourt.gov/filingandrules/2023RulesoftheCo...
- ceejayoz 8mo agoWhen the SCOTUS justices and staffers are marking up drafts, they’re likely using regular old letter sized paper. That they can lop those margins off in the final printing that goes in a bound book is just saving a bunch of paper.
- HPsquared 8mo agoPaper industry lobbying?
- gucci-on-fleek 8mo agoMy guess would be that this was designed to be printed on smaller sheets of paper, like used in paperback novels and similar. But for some reason (possibly to make it more convenient to print on standard paper), the PDF was produced with Letter dimensions. I don't think that it's for taking notes like the other reply [0] suggests, because if that were the case, I would expect for the cover to take up the whole paper width (since nobody would ever take notes on the cover), and I would expect the margin width to alternate between pages (since it's really hard to write on the inner margin in a bound book). Using the example given in the other reply [0], the SCOTUS opinions are so narrow because they're printed on a bizarre paper size of 6 1/8" by 9 1/4" [1] [2], not to leave room to take notes. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46887595 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46887595 [1]: https://www.supremecourt.gov/casehand/guidetofilingpaidcases2023.pdf#page=2 https://www.supremecourt.gov/casehand/guidetofilingpaidcases... [2]: https://www.supremecourt.gov/filingandrules/2023RulesoftheCourt.pdf#page=47 https://www.supremecourt.gov/filingandrules/2023RulesoftheCo...
- seanhunter 8mo agoI think they should have included the official NYC procedure, which is: 1. Dig out around the affected area 2. leave massive dent in the surface for what seems like years 3. Maybe cover it with a few janky bits of wood and/or metal sheets that make a hideous clanking noise all day and night and have the same approximate surface friction as an ice rink so are pretty murderous to any 2-wheeled road user 4. Leave this solution to mature like a fine wine 5. I really mean single malt whiskey. You can leave it basically as long as you like 6. There is no step six.
- idiotsecant 8mo agonobody leaves a dent in the surface on purpose, the problem is that whatever caused the pothole is almost certainly still causing it to sink under the surface. A patch doesn't fix the problem, it just makes it less bad.
- deepsun 8mo agoLess bad is ok.
- SoftTalker 8mo agoYep. Step 0 in the above list is "build a road with insufficient subsurface/foundation preparation and drainage"
- dylan604 8mo agoThere's a section of town that was developed on an old swampy bit of land. They drained the swamp but did not let the land dry/settle long enough after draining the water. This caused parts of the road to sink, but not enough to break/crack the roads. Instead, they just have swells as you're driving along. It's actually impressive on how much sinking happened without breaking the road itself.
- ultrarunner 8mo agoThe local obscenely named utility company dug in our road a few years ago, necessitating a large patch. They proceeded to drive through their patch as they left. The tire dents & ridges are still there years later. You're right, of course, but I think you may be overestimating the concern patch crews give to their craft.
- tomasphan 8mo agoIn my beautiful hometown of Philadelphia they have a novel way of repairing potholes that I've yet to observe in other cities: 1. Do nothing for 9 months. This allows the pothole to mature until ready for step 2. 2. Put a traffic cone in the pothole. 3. After a couple weeks of public notice (traffic cone) dump hot asphalt into the hole, making sure to top off several inches above street level. 4. DO NOT WAIT for asphalt to cool down before opening the street. This allows for asphalt to stick to tires, shoes etc. 5. Make sure to leave a significant bump and don't compact the asphalt so next winter it will open up again. 6. Make sure to put any utility covers (manholes, drains etc) directly in the wheel path for maximum damage. 7. Profit!
- linkjuice4all 8mo agoPhiladelphia is blessed by several feet of sub-street layers (stone fill, belgian block, concrete backfill, and terrible asphalt), embedded rail, pipes, and utilities that are all owned and managed by different local, state, and private entities. Oh and fairly wide temperature swings throughout the year, generous precipitation, salt, and let's not forget the drivers themselves. It's a miracle the roads are in as good a shape as they are - but it does have a traffic calming effect :)
- simlevesque 8mo agoThe root of the problem (literally) is that when potholes appear it's mostly because what's under became too porous and humid so what's over it separates easily. Patching the hole isn't a good fix but the alternative is closing roads which wrecks the economy. The other problem is that the public always asks: "why isn't it patched ?" and if you don't do it you look like you're not competent enough to be in charge. And the cycle continues.
- observationist 8mo agoAnd when you go to your local government, demand a fix, they'll contract a union shop to do the work, often mandated by law, and they will advocate for the least durable, most expensive fix, so as to ensure recurring work happens at a maximum frequency. Attention to certain roads, duration of work is often politicized - someone with good friends gets quick, top tier fixes, but someone who annoys the local council might see months of roadwork dragging on forever, or halfassed repairs, or potholes ignored for years. Lovely little civilization we have, eh? edit: Huh, must be nice to live in places where that apparently doesn't happen? It's been a comically recurring theme in nearly every city I've lived in - potholes weren't just potholes, they were favors and tools and penalties and grifts. If you've never seen this happen, I'd recommend digging a bit deeper. Very few places have their collective shit together sufficiently to handle the relatively small problems like potholes very well. If your community does, then kudos!
- quickthrowman 8mo agoIt depends entirely on where you live. My city has its own asphalt batch plant and they spend a few weeks every late winter/early spring repairing potholes. Also, union labor is not mandatory for public work, but the prevailing wage scales that contractors are required to pay their workers do line up pretty closely to the actual union wages. It’s a good thing that people get paid a living wage, in my opinion. There are a lot of facilities that require union labor for certain trades due to the risk involved: mechanical, electrical, and plumbing for the most part.
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- btbuildem 8mo agoYou haven't lived until you've paid municipal taxes to see one of these things at work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVFFsKArEFk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVFFsKArEFk I've literally watched them approach a pothole full of water, blow the water out with compressed air, retract the blower while the pothole refills, excrete asphalt mix into the watery hole then pat it down and compress it with a roller -- then proceed to the next pothole, driving over and denting the just-"repaired" one.
- observationist 8mo agoYeah, but on the plus side, you're supporting local jobs!
- 6DM 8mo agoEven in the video it looks like it does a terrible job. Hilariously he drives past all the other potholes that was just shown at the beginning of the video.
- NegativeLatency 8mo agoWhy fix them, it's free traffic calming.
- chickensong 8mo agoOakland CA had a pothole vigilante group doing good work several years ago, bless their hearts. Not sure if they're still around, but their DIY approach was commendable and could be replicated. I believe they used "cold patch" asphalt which can be purchased at Home Depot and the like. It sucks that illegal DIY approaches are necessary, but at some point people just need to take matters into their own hands. It feels like road repair is one of the most visible and perhaps common indicators of local government corruption. My personal favorite is when a perfectly good stretch of road gets repaved to use up tax dollars, while streets in terrible condition get ignored.
- joshuamcginnis 8mo agoI did a little (very little, I asked an LLM) what it would cost to produce this report in today's dollars. The answer came in as roughly $90,000–$180,000. Worth it or accurate? I don't know but it is interesting.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 8mo agoIf nothing is being done about pot holes, consider drawing penises on them: https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-32448103 https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-32448103
- Perz1val 8mo agoDoes anyone know what is a post oil industry asphalt strategy? Do we have stockpiles till the end of time already?
- antisthenes 8mo agoGoing back to cobblestone roads.
- 0xffff2 8mo agoDoes anyone expect there will be a post oil industry? I would assume (with not particular knowledge on the subject mind) that once we wind down oil use for fuel and to some extent plastics, there will be enough oil in the ground to support enough extraction for asphalt and other currently trivial uses indefinitely.
- zdragnar 8mo agoAn asphalt roofing shingle company just closed in Minneapolis due to the city's new CO2 tax. The local environmental group held a little press conference crowing about it. Mind you, this won't change the demand for asphalt shingles, they'll just be shipped from further, generating more C02 on the whole. The only other current alternatives are all non-renewable as well- mined clay, slate, or metal. For residential roofs, I'm hoping metal continues to come down in price, as they tend to last longer and can be made to look quite good. For commercial / flat roofed buildings, there still needs to be some very thick rubberized underlayment below gravel or whatever to prevent standing water from getting in. The same is true for sod roofs in hobbit style earth homes. So, yeah, there's still people in power who expect that all petroleum based products are equally evil and must be punished.
- quickthrowman 8mo ago> An asphalt roofing shingle company just closed in Minneapolis due to the city's new CO2 tax. The local environmental group held a little press conference crowing about it. For what it’s worth, Owens Corning operates an asphalt shingle plant in North Minneapolis (1701 49th Ave N) and they have no intentions of closing it down. The commercial roof material you’re referring to is called EPDM rubber: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPDM_rubber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPDM_rubber
- NordSteve 8mo agoReading all of the crabby comments about pothole repair make me feel great about my city in MN. Leave voice mail about pothole on my way to work in morning, pothole filled when I return home in the afternoon.
- AndriyKunitsyn 8mo agoA manual from the U.S. federal agency uses grams, meters, and Celsius temperatures? How come?
- brunoborges 8mo agoMontreal has joined the chat... There is a great documentary on the Quebec situation around potholes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOOgJID6sac https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOOgJID6sac In short: politicians would rather direct funds to build new roads (and get votes) than to fix existing roads (and lose votes). It is that simple.
- tgbugs 8mo agoI wonder if there are existing data sources that could be used to implement an optimal pot hole patching priority lists at scale. Identify pot hole locations. Combine with traffic metrics for those locations. Then use a combination of some pot hole nuisance metric (size, depth, location in lane, number of cars that could hit it per unit time based on traffic metrics), a cost to repair for a given repair type metric (should include traffic disruption cost estimates), then have an estimate for future degradation if it is not repaired and the cost of that applied at a few time points .... I'm sure there are plenty of implementations of various versions of the algorithm, but I wonder whether there are open data sources .... A quick search suggests that most approaches are municipality based crowd sourcing efforts. A stream from the radars from various vehicles could provide something that was up-to-date enough to avoid false positives that had already been fixed .... Things like streetview and various aerial photography datasets probably update too slowly ... though I know of some potholes that have existed through multiple recaptures. 0. https://par.nsf.gov/servlets/purl/10636488 https://par.nsf.gov/servlets/purl/10636488 1. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jag.2023.103335 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jag.2023.103335 I guess the days of citizens grabbing their shovels and going to fix the roads are becoming a thing of the past. Which is a shame because the total cost of asphalt needed to fix most potholes is less than the cost of a single tire repair.
- quickthrowman 8mo agoThe weather is hell on roads in Minnesota, repeated thaw/freeze cycles really do a number on asphalt pavement. My municipality actually owns and operates an asphalt batch plant, that’s how much time and money is spent on repairing roads here in Saint Paul. https://www.stpaul.gov/departments/public-works/street-maintenance/asphalt-plant https://www.stpaul.gov/departments/public-works/street-maint... These are just band-aids, the subsurface is usually the problem and it’s expensive to rip up and replace an entire road vs repeated mill and overlay cycles.