A transportation engineer has a simple solution to potholes: pave better roads • Hacker News Board

Re: A transportation engineer has a simple solution to potholes: pave better roads

#101

Post by coldtea » Sat, Mar 10, 2018, 1:07 PM UTC

yousir wrote: post #58

coldtea wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are you calling North America "America", and then go on and call Florida "south America", as if there isn't such a place in the world as South America? Depending on the geography class you took, and where, there might not be a "South America". Some countries just call the whole continent America: Most North Americans are taught that there are 7 continents: Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Eur…

As you are fully aware you are well within your rights to not approve. But if you call the whole continent America then surely its very southern part will not be Florida.

The USA is also called America in short by most of the world. Not just the continent.

Sometimes languages use the same name for different things, and people can trivially disambiguate from context.

Re: A transportation engineer has a simple solution to potholes: pave better roads

#102

Post by detaro » Sat, Mar 10, 2018, 1:15 PM UTC

stevenwoo wrote: post #76

abacate wrote: post #64

It does not solve anything, just pushes the problem a little further.

I recall there was an article on the front page of hacker news not long ago that argued that it was a better use of public money to not pave every road and to let some roads just be dirt roads because the maintenance cost was not justified by the amount of road traffic. This was not the article but similar to it: https://www.wired.com/2016/07/cash-strapped-towns-un-paving-...

That's how it seems to work with smaller roads in northern Sweden. They have a surface which is kind of compacted sand/gravel, which isn't all that robust long-term but can't really crack and is very easy to fix: a specialized machine drives over it and basically breaks up the top layer, re-applies it and smoothly and compacts everything again, and the road is good again.

Re: A transportation engineer has a simple solution to potholes: pave better roads

#103

Post by pbhjpbhj » Sat, Mar 10, 2018, 1:32 PM UTC

drspacemonkey wrote: post #71

zentiggr wrote: post #24

> Nichols said the AMIR “has great potential” to extend the life of roads, and “save significant taxpayer dollars.” In 2016, an MTO analysis found that the province would save $50 million annually if roads on the MTOs highways could last even one year longer. And there you go... goes against the contractors' interests to use more efficient means, so this compactor's use will have to be mandated by city governments wh…

I wonder if that could be resolved by the government offering an annual bonus for every road that requires no pothole maintenance. If the bonus were bigger than the profit they'd make from filling in the pothole, it would be free money for the contractor + a savings for the government because they don't have to pay to fix something that isn't broken. Mostly, I wonder how different the world would be if there was an i…

There are plenty of incentives to build stuff that's resilient; usually financial profit is opposed to it, which I presume was your point.

Re: A transportation engineer has a simple solution to potholes: pave better roads

#104

Post by pbhjpbhj » Sat, Mar 10, 2018, 1:51 PM UTC

mitchty wrote: post #65

yousir wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>America refers to The United States of America. Well, that might be true for people living in the US but, and I might be going out on a limb here, it might not be so true for others.

> Well, that might be true for people living in the US but, and I might be going out on a limb here, it might not be so true for others. And for a comment referencing Florida, is it charitable to apply something for continents to your stated interpretation? Principle of charity says not. Specifically who refers to America/Americans in English as meaning "People who live on the continents in North and South America"?…

I refer to USA as that and its people as USAmerican or USian variously. America is a continent and whilst a good deal of North America is USA plenty isn't.

USA is a terrible name, it could equally apply to any country, Canada say, in the American continent formed from multiple states.

It is wrong to call societies only for USAmericans "The American ...". The whole thing supports the idea that the only Americans worth bothering with are USian, it's extremely pompous and self-agrandising.

You should get a proper name.

Perhaps if things work out in Korea they'll call themselves the United States of Asia ...

Re Mexico, there's no continent called Mexico, no ambiguity or appearance of narcissism attaches to not using the full title. It's not at all equivalent.

Re: A transportation engineer has a simple solution to potholes: pave better roads

#105

Post by swaggyBoatswain » Sat, Mar 10, 2018, 2:48 PM UTC

pg_bot wrote: post #41

brianbreslin wrote: post #32

This strikes me as a classic separation of buyer interests from vendor interests leading to misaligned incentives. The contractors have no incentive to update their equipment. In fact if this is scientifically proven to be a major solution they should want to avoid this. If the province could incentivize the vendor to pay them more for every year there is no pothole and punish them for every pothole they would totall…

I would argue that lack of adoption is likely a discovery and design problem rather than an economic one. In a free market other people can choose to enter into the contracting business. If I have a leg up on my competition (paving better roads for the same cost) I will eventually out compete people who fail to adapt to the new method. This doesn't happen immediately, but you can't fool everyone forever if there trul…

> If I have a leg up on my competition (paving better roads for the same cost)

This sounds great in theory but it doesn't work this way, at least in the private sector. Recently, I had to contract out a 100k pavement parking lot job for the first time for property management. I talked to about 10 different contracting firms, some being indepedent firms - and some firms directly employed by the asphalt plant.

Its very hard to tell what you are going to get if you haven't worked with that contractor before. Sure, everything is on a contract with specific line items that specifies each piece of work done (e.g. uproot asphalt where concrete meets it to pave evenly, compact a 2.5" to 2" using a specific grade mix [there's about 3-10 different mixes]), you can read contractor reviews online, but really how are YOU specifically going to measure the results? How do you know your contractor is really going to be doing a better job than another competitor?

What it all boiled down for me in selecting the vendor is whether or not they actually specified every concern I had regarding the parking lot job. Did they actually care about asking the right questions, did they put every concern I had in writing under the contract? Was the price reasonable? Did this person seem knowledgeable based on past experience? Honestly this is what it all boils down to most of the time in contractual-based jobs when selecting a contractor that is not the lowest bid job.

Public jobs are going to be slightly different, but to the extent the same, depending mostly on the city's municipality. I can't speak from experience here, but it would make much more sense for a government entity to employ stricter regulations on major road arteries (3-4 lane roads) using equipment such as the AMIR. But this is when you have to deal with government bureaucracy, and some contracting firms are not going to look to highly on the need to invest in more expensive equipment and reduce the potential number of jobs they have in the future (since there would be less maintenance needed). Not only that, but also the infrastructure in housing an AMIR along with other cost such as maintenance / training could become costly for the contracting firm.

Minor road arteries / minor jobs (1 or 2 lane roadways) probably not so much since its traditional rollers are extremely portable, have high availability (both for renting, contractors familiar with / used the equipment, etc) and require smaller more versatile machines and can be loaded on one trailer.

In addition, every city municipality is different. Your rural city in the middle of nowhere is not going to really care about using AMIR.

I don't know how much the AMIR cost, but for it to be adopted for widespread use, it would have to have the following:

1. Compact and portability for small and large jobs alike

2. Justified cost for short-term profitability for contractors

3. Enforcement by government and regulations to private industries to use such technology

Re: A transportation engineer has a simple solution to potholes: pave better roads

#106

Post by nugi » Sat, Mar 10, 2018, 4:07 PM UTC

EvilTerran wrote: post #53

DubiousPusher wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2) Engineering a better road is simply too hard of an engineering problem, so what we have is the best we can do at the moment. Or equivalently, any better roads we do know how to make are too cost-prohibitive. This is essentially the case. Asphalt roads as they exist today are basically a really good compromise of all the variables you care about in a road. They are farely durable, are easy to repair, can be laid…

> relatively cheap This is a surprisingly big factor: we get bitumen from refining crude oil whether we want it or not, and the endless demand for the lighter fractions of crude means we're gonna do a lot of refining regardless, so the market had to find something to do with the left-over sludge. Also pushing the price down, asphalt is almost completely recyclable: when a worn-out road surface finally gets dug up & r…

I wonder what shifts in road construction we will see as petro offcast becomes less common, and go up in price? Lubricants, plastics, etc all stand to see a hike.

Re: A transportation engineer has a simple solution to potholes: pave better roads

#107

Post by 3pt14159 » Sat, Mar 10, 2018, 4:09 PM UTC

horsecaptin wrote: post #81

3pt14159 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know about the rest of Ontario, but this is 100% not true for the Toronto area. I used to be in the industry and I saw something shady only once and it was very, very minor. My brother is also a higher up at Ellis Don and he complains about concrete trucks getting stuck in traffic, not mob grift.

I know current senior engineers that see plenty of corruption and shady practice, including on road construction on a regular basis in Ontario, and yes, the Toronto area. Construction companies routinely don't build each layer of road up to code. Thus potholes appear much sooner than they should.

Corruption is bribing the construction inspector to look the other way—it’s not laziness or poor workmanship. I’ve both worked for pavers and for the TTC as a construction inspector. Never once saw real corruption or a bribe over 5 years. I bent the rules a tiny bit once when a concrete placement was going sideways in the interests of expediency (but followed up with additional testing to make sure everything was ok) and the CEO got me a 26 of Crown Royal as a thanks. That’s the full extent of the shadiness that I’d witnessed.

Re: A transportation engineer has a simple solution to potholes: pave better roads

#108

Post by horsecaptin » Sat, Mar 10, 2018, 7:51 PM UTC

3pt14159 wrote: post #107

horsecaptin wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know current senior engineers that see plenty of corruption and shady practice, including on road construction on a regular basis in Ontario, and yes, the Toronto area. Construction companies routinely don't build each layer of road up to code. Thus potholes appear much sooner than they should.

Corruption is bribing the construction inspector to look the other way—it’s not laziness or poor workmanship. I’ve both worked for pavers and for the TTC as a construction inspector. Never once saw real corruption or a bribe over 5 years. I bent the rules a tiny bit once when a concrete placement was going sideways in the interests of expediency (but followed up with additional testing to make sure everything was ok)…

Since we're talking roads - layers of gravel, and asphalt - it is very easy to save a a lot of money by shaving off some thickness at any level. Construction companies the world over do this and a mm here and there are usually tolerated. Toronto area construction companies skim so much that the roads cave in.

If it isn't corruption, then how are they getting away with it?

Re: A transportation engineer has a simple solution to potholes: pave better roads

#109

Post by woliveirajr » Sun, Mar 11, 2018, 11:10 AM UTC

khedoros1 wrote: post #70

yousir wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> South of south America, more or less equivalent to Florida Are you calling North America "America", and then go on and call Florida "south America", as if there isn't such a place in the world as South America? I do not approve of this North America-centric view of the world at all.

The way I read it, it would be better phrased as: "In the southern part of South America, more or less equivalent to Florida", probably referring to the southeast side of that continent. This map indicates that areas of Argentina's, Uruguay's, Paraguay's, and southern Brazil's climates would fit the description of "more or less equivalent to Florida": https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/World_K%...

Thanks, that's exactly that.

Re: A transportation engineer has a simple solution to potholes: pave better roads

#110

Post by woliveirajr » Sun, Mar 11, 2018, 11:13 AM UTC

teh_klev wrote: post #74

yousir wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> South of south America, more or less equivalent to Florida Are you calling North America "America", and then go on and call Florida "south America", as if there isn't such a place in the world as South America? I do not approve of this North America-centric view of the world at all.

The parent post by thowawaylalala already mentions Florida, so I think what woliveirajr means by "south of South America, more or less equivalent to Florda" is at a latitude in South America with the equivalent climate as Florida , rather than suggesting that Florida is geographically "south America".

Exactly that. Considering we were talking about snow and ice causing cracks, I was thinking about the weather, not about culture, race, ethnic aspects, politics, government, food, or any other aspect...