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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?

#191

Post by asdff »

AcerbicZero wrote: post #99
geddy wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The real damage to suburban roads is old man winter.

Re: How Much Does a Mile of Road Cost?

#192

Post by asdff »

MiracleUser wrote: post #54
Eric_WVGG wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of a blog post about the unsustainability of suburbs — https://mikethemadbiologist.com/2017/03/20/the-fiscal-unsust... Even if this $1.5m figure is wildly inflated, calculate how few people live on a given mile in the suburbs, a conservative estimate on how much it costs to maintain a road, and the numbers just don't add up. The suburbs were a ponzi scheme and the bottom is about to fall out.

The suburbs will maintain their own roads before the bottom falls out. low income suburbs probably will not survive, but there's no law that says they cant have shitty roads that require a jeep to drive on

High income suburbs will struggle, too. Gotta pay for the roads somehow if federal subsidies stop trickling in. People on HN talk about moving to texas on taxes alone all the time.

Re: How Much Does a Mile of Road Cost?

#193

Post by oblio »

habosa wrote: post #178
slowhand09 wrote: post #57

I think of this as I drive 30ish miles each way to work. 5 miles of surface roads, 19 miles of interstate (2 lanes each way), and 6 miles of surface (2 lanes each way). One cause for increased construction is the need for more capacity. My frequent lament is poor driving habits. We have regular instances of sub-optimal speeds in both lanes. A 65 mph limit and vehicles driving 55mph in both lanes, frequently with 1/4…

I recently drove around Spain for 2 weeks. My first significant international driving experience. I was shocked at how seriously they took the rule of only passing on the left. Every single car in the right line was driving slower than every single car in the left. It made driving so much better. The behavior of every car was basically predictable. I've never seen anyone pay much attention to their lane here.

As Stevvo said, it's not that they're serious, it's that it's illegal to do otherwise.

Re: How Much Does a Mile of Road Cost?

#194

Post by oblio »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #163
rahimnathwani wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"is the equivalent of the advice here to stay to the right" Yeah, but the advice in the California DMV handbook is to stay in the middle , not the right. The difference is that, in the UK, the middle lane is explicitly only for overtaking. If you're going the same speed as the cars in the left lane, you're not overtaking, so you shouldn't be in the middle lane. California's guidance is directly contrary to this.

So wait, in a 3+ lane setup in the UK, both the middle lane and the rightmost are only for passing? That seems weird to me. Reason for the CA rules is that, in the US, the rightmost lane is where all the entrance and exit ramps are, so you often have people speeding up or slowing down as they enter and exit. Rather than have to do a ton of lane changes to pass people as they merge on, the advice to stay in the middle…

Everywhere in Europe it's the same as the UK. Exits add extra, temporary lanes 90% of the time, the right lane keeps going forward.

Re: How Much Does a Mile of Road Cost?

#195

Post by asdff »

MiracleUser wrote: post #65
Polylactic_acid wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The price of rail is pretty good when you consider the capacity. That single rail line is replacing at least 6 lanes of highway and would get people to their destination safer and faster with less air pollution which is a major issue they are trying to tackle.

(ime) Trains only get you to your destination faster if your destination is a train station

Depends on the average traffic speed. Subways go over 60mph and are generally the fastest vehicles in a large city besides helicopters and airplanes, and lane splitting motorcycles.

Re: How Much Does a Mile of Road Cost?

#196

Post by asdff »

glangdale wrote: post #22

This is interesting information, but from the perspective of a high-value urban area, even these fairly eye-watering numbers are a understatement. The capital represented both as infrastructure and forgone real estate usage (i.e. yes, we need roads, but building more roads than we need diverts incredibly valuable real estate from other purposes) is huge. I'm always amused here in Australia when governments like to ma…

When they built the harbor freeway alone (a half a block wide and 20 miles long), LA razed nearly 100,000 of some of the most affordable homes in the city in the process.

Re: How Much Does a Mile of Road Cost?

#197

Post by gjs278 »

ldoughty wrote: post #161
beerandt wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To get people to respect the passing lane, I propose: Left-most lane on controlled access highways should be rear car, by default, has the right-of-way.

If I'm passing at 5 over the limit, I'm still passing. I waited my turn. Not my fault I don't want to go 20+ over. I'll move back when the passed car is in my rear view. Oh, you really to ride my rear, and pay me on the right? Will Joe we have a problem because I'm happy merged into the right line and you're on my as, and now you're 3 feet from both me and the car were passing. That's what I got from this comment...…

if you don’t want to go 20 over don’t even go in that lane

Re: How Much Does a Mile of Road Cost?

#198

Post by smueller1234 »

cortesoft wrote: post #171
slowhand09 wrote: post #57

I think of this as I drive 30ish miles each way to work. 5 miles of surface roads, 19 miles of interstate (2 lanes each way), and 6 miles of surface (2 lanes each way). One cause for increased construction is the need for more capacity. My frequent lament is poor driving habits. We have regular instances of sub-optimal speeds in both lanes. A 65 mph limit and vehicles driving 55mph in both lanes, frequently with 1/4…

Where I live (Los Angeles), all the lanes are filled all the time. There is no passing lane, so it doesn’t matter which lane you drive in. The skill that is important for drivers to have is the zipper merge, because those are happening all the time as fully utilized lanes merge and split. I am actually usually pretty impressed with LA drivers. Most respect the zipper merge.

That's actually mandated by law in Germany (Reißverschlussverfahren). Took me a few years of driving in other countries to realize that wasn't universal.

Re: How Much Does a Mile of Road Cost?

#199

Post by hanniabu »

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.

Shouldn't roads that are heavily trafficked by trucks by made out of concrete instead of asphalt? Surely it's known that it lasts much longer, I guess the question is if it's economically viable considering long term costs.

Re: How Much Does a Mile of Road Cost?

#200

Post by gjs278 »

lmm wrote: post #140
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 80,000lb trucks aren't supplying the inner-city bodegas, they're supplying the out-of-town malls the suburb model relies on. I agree with getting road use charged in line with what it costs, but the result is going to be that the cities stop subsidizing the suburbs so much.

no they’re not. the suburbs are not buying your kombucha. get a grip on the numbers. all the fucking food is going to feed the millions of people packed up like rats.
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