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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?

#91

Post by AcerbicZero »

dougweltman wrote: post #7

This 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 port…

Look all you want, but road maintenance costs are primarily a subsidy for the trucking industry, and by extension the businesses that rely on them. Businesses that are primarily located in.....cities. If Middletown USA didn't have to worry about 80,000 lbs trucks hauling kombucha to your local bodega tearing up their roads, perhaps road costs would be a bit more in-line with reality.

More importantly if we focused more on making transport costs in-line with the damage they do to the road surfaces (not to mention the environmental impact of long and short haul trucking, plus the traffic) instead of city/suburbia none issue, perhaps we'd all be a bit better off.

Re: How Much Does a Mile of Road Cost?

#92

Post by Polylactic_acid »

justinator wrote: post #73
mumblemumble wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mountain biking is one of the things I gave up when I moved to the city. I thought that maybe I'd occasionally rent a car and drive out to a state park, but what I quickly discovered was that, once driving stopped being a part of my daily life, the idea of regularly driving out to a forest preserve lost its palatability. Largely because I am no longer inured to driving, so any plan for how to spend my leisure time th…

Consider doing multi-day trips from your front door during the weekends (bikepacking). I used to live in Denver and never understood why people would find the need to drive 10 miles to the nearest trails when you could just ride to them. Then I realized, once you're done with those initial 10 miles, you could link up routes that covered practically the entire rest of the state. Now I'm writing a guidebook on those ro…

>10 miles to the nearest trails when you could just ride to them.

Because they are usually up in the hills so its a fairly large effort to get there and by the time you are there you have no energy left to do the trails unless there is a ski lift to get you to the top.

Re: How Much Does a Mile of Road Cost?

#95

Post by davidw »

geddy wrote: post #75
dougweltman wrote: post #7

This 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 port…

Lots of shade thrown towards people living in suburbia on here. Maybe not everyone wants to live in a (rented) closet sized apartment in a major city, complete with all the noise pollution, actual pollution, crime rates, and a lingering piss-smell 24/7, and all for the low price of _more than owning a house_?

Ideally, this discussion would not be emotional, but simply one of saying "hey, we should all be free to live like we want, as long as we're willing to pay the associated costs".

Re: How Much Does a Mile of Road Cost?

#96

Post by Polylactic_acid »

AcerbicZero wrote: post #91
dougweltman wrote: post #7

This 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 port…

Look all you want, but road maintenance costs are primarily a subsidy for the trucking industry, and by extension the businesses that rely on them. Businesses that are primarily located in.....cities. If Middletown USA didn't have to worry about 80,000 lbs trucks hauling kombucha to your local bodega tearing up their roads, perhaps road costs would be a bit more in-line with reality. More importantly if we focused mo…

The proper solution would be to tax trucks exactly the amount of damage they cause. This would cause the cost of imported goods to go up and the cost of local goods to go down. In the short term you would see the extra cost and lower taxes cancel each other out and in the long term, local goods become more common than imported.

Re: How Much Does a Mile of Road Cost?

#97

Post by lotsofpulp »

dougweltman wrote: post #7

This 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 port…

Also, the more road there is, the more pipes, wires, sewers have to be, and the distance all the water and sewage needs to be moved is longer.

Re: How Much Does a Mile of Road Cost?

#98

Post by Polylactic_acid »

Retric wrote: post #47
kazinator wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe how much road costs in the USA is a bit of a strawman version of how much road costs. Come on, some remote villages in the third world have paved roads to them.

The third world has a lot more miles of dirt roads than paved roads. The slightly more expencive gravel roads are fine for suburban cul-de-sac‘a / side streets that don’t get that much traffic.

They kick up a shitload of dust so everything is dirty all of the time. They also become unusable/get destroyed in the rain. It makes sense for rural roads since the expense is massive and the dust not so much of an issue.

Re: How Much Does a Mile of Road Cost?

#99

Post by AcerbicZero »

geddy wrote: post #75
dougweltman wrote: post #7

This 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 port…

Lots of shade thrown towards people living in suburbia on here. Maybe not everyone wants to live in a (rented) closet sized apartment in a major city, complete with all the noise pollution, actual pollution, crime rates, and a lingering piss-smell 24/7, and all for the low price of _more than owning a house_?

I live in a city, and I love cars. The issue isn't density, its road damage caused by long and short haul trucking. The shade being thrown towards the suburbs is because some people haven't learned the real enemy is (as almost always) crony capitalism that subsidizes trucking by distributing the costs of roads and road repair onto the local people, while the trucks do the real damage.

Re: How Much Does a Mile of Road Cost?

#100

Post by AcerbicZero »

Polylactic_acid wrote: post #96
AcerbicZero wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look all you want, but road maintenance costs are primarily a subsidy for the trucking industry, and by extension the businesses that rely on them. Businesses that are primarily located in.....cities. If Middletown USA didn't have to worry about 80,000 lbs trucks hauling kombucha to your local bodega tearing up their roads, perhaps road costs would be a bit more in-line with reality. More importantly if we focused mo…

The proper solution would be to tax trucks exactly the amount of damage they cause. This would cause the cost of imported goods to go up and the cost of local goods to go down. In the short term you would see the extra cost and lower taxes cancel each other out and in the long term, local goods become more common than imported.

Thats certainly one solution, and a perfectly reasonable one at that. It seems to be an excellent way by which we can also encourage more rail development, and reduce the overall amount of waste in the transport chain.
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