How Much Does a Mile of Road Cost?
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How Much Does a Mile of Road Cost?
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Re: How Much Does a Mile of Road Cost?
#2I feel like I am missing something here, a mile of road in a rural area costs $1,500,000 to reconstruct? How do small towns afford to maintain their roads?? Perhaps there are many costs that don't inflate as the number of miles increases, like the equipment needed to break down and repave the roads?
Re: How Much Does a Mile of Road Cost?
#3I feel like I am missing something here, a mile of road in a rural area costs $1,500,000 to reconstruct? How do small towns afford to maintain their roads?? Perhaps there are many costs that don't inflate as the number of miles increases, like the equipment needed to break down and repave the roads?
I would be very interested to see the breakdown of raw materials, equipment, labor, and various fees.
Re: How Much Does a Mile of Road Cost?
#4I feel like I am missing something here, a mile of road in a rural area costs $1,500,000 to reconstruct? How do small towns afford to maintain their roads?? Perhaps there are many costs that don't inflate as the number of miles increases, like the equipment needed to break down and repave the roads?
They generally patch the worst spots rather than reconstruct, and accept generally lower quality.
Re: How Much Does a Mile of Road Cost?
#5I feel like I am missing something here, a mile of road in a rural area costs $1,500,000 to reconstruct? How do small towns afford to maintain their roads?? Perhaps there are many costs that don't inflate as the number of miles increases, like the equipment needed to break down and repave the roads?
Part of the "ponzi scheme" that Strong Towns likes to talk about is that a lot of the funding comes from state and federal levels. Because the locality no longer is completely tied to the cost of actually building the road, the incentive to cut costs is removed and roads funding is something that local politicians "win" to bring back to their area and show that they've done a good job.
Re: How Much Does a Mile of Road Cost?
#6I feel like I am missing something here, a mile of road in a rural area costs $1,500,000 to reconstruct? How do small towns afford to maintain their roads?? Perhaps there are many costs that don't inflate as the number of miles increases, like the equipment needed to break down and repave the roads?
Seems public infrastructure in the US is run like health care. Very expensive, lots of hidden middlemen, not so great results.
Re: How Much Does a Mile of Road Cost?
#7This does not address a larger question: how much does a mile of road cost to keep? This is the installed base question.
Consider the amount of road that has been built out in the US relative to the populations that road is serving. Maintenance and expansion is paid out mainly from state and local taxes. That's an enormous civilizational overhead the US contends with, not to mention the economic cost of a large portion of household capital being tied up in rapidly depreciating assets: cars.
I'm looking at you, suburbia.
Re: How Much Does a Mile of Road Cost?
#8I wonder what the numbers are like in west EU as a comparison.
Re: How Much Does a Mile of Road Cost?
#9I feel like I am missing something here, a mile of road in a rural area costs $1,500,000 to reconstruct? How do small towns afford to maintain their roads?? Perhaps there are many costs that don't inflate as the number of miles increases, like the equipment needed to break down and repave the roads?
My small town resurfaced (grinding and re-paving) 5/12ths of a mile for about $100,000. That's about $240,000 per mile. Or actually $120,000 per "lane-mile".
However, we could only afford it because we got a grant from the state. Our annual town budget could not afford the road maintenance.
Re: How Much Does a Mile of Road Cost?
#10I feel like I am missing something here, a mile of road in a rural area costs $1,500,000 to reconstruct? How do small towns afford to maintain their roads?? Perhaps there are many costs that don't inflate as the number of miles increases, like the equipment needed to break down and repave the roads?
You're not missing something: they can't afford it, which is why roads are increasingly in poor condition.
The trick is, communities can usually get outside subsidy (state and federal) for _expansion_ projects. So when the road breaks down and they don't have local money to fix it, one of the strategies is to go to the higher level government for an "economic development" project to get outside money to pay for the road to be widened / expanded. This is true even when the added capacity isn't needed.