Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Much Does a Mile of Road Cost?

strongtowns.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 324 posts

Re: How Much Does a Mile of Road Cost?

#211

Post by randomfool »

Polylactic_acid wrote: post #98
Retric wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The dust is much less when speeds are kept lower, such as suburban cul-de-sacs as GP states. Dust can be further mitigated with an annual oil coat.

A well built gravel road will have a decent amount of rock which drains in the rain without turning to mud, culverts are needed on the steeper slopes to limit erosion.

While the total cost is much less than asphalt, dirt roads do need more regular maintenance which municipalities frequently try to skimp on.

A good read of the pro's and con's: https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-10/documents...

Re: How Much Does a Mile of Road Cost?

#212

Post by pintxo »

smueller1234 wrote: post #198
cortesoft wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, there's the law and there is every 10th driver being a prick. Also in Germany.

Re: How Much Does a Mile of Road Cost?

#213

Post by onion2k »

bartread wrote: post #203
Stevvo wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In all of Europe, undertaking is illegal. When we come to the US, driving feels like you are in a third world country.

In the UK it's actually not illegal: it's just advised against, and considered bad form in most situations by most drivers. And, of course, if you cause an accident by undertaking the police will (rightly) throw the book at you. Examples where it's considered acceptable to undertake: - In heavier or queuing traffic inside lanes might move faster than outside lanes: this is OK, and it's considered better and safer to…

If you do it on a reasonably clear road to get around someone hogging an overtaking lane, and the police see you, they're going to pull you over and give you a fixed penalty notice for careless driving though. I know this from experience.

Re: How Much Does a Mile of Road Cost?

#214

Post by scarejunba »

briffle wrote: post #156
rahimnathwani wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was surprised to read this in the California DMV driver handbook: "If you can choose among three lanes, pick the middle lane for the smoothest driving." When I learned to drive (in the UK), the official guidance was to stay in the left-most lane except when overtaking. And then, after overtaking, to immediately return to the left lane.

Oregon has a law that if you have 5 or more vehicles behind you, you must let them pass. It's more for the highways, not the freeway, but I haven't seen it enforced in many, many years

California has this:

> Vehicles proceeding at a speed less than the flow of traffic and moving on a two-lane highway where passing is unsafe, must turn off the roadway at the nearest place designated as a turnout or wherever sufficient area for a safe turnout exists, if a line of 5 or more vehicles forms behind them.

https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/pubs/hdbk/driver_ha...

Re: How Much Does a Mile of Road Cost?

#215

Post by scarejunba »

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...…

Surely it's only polite to allow the faster guys past before you do your thing. It doesn't really matter to me generally because few things on the highway annoy me, but it's sort of habit for me to not be in the way. So even if I'm doing 10 over and there's a chap coming up doing 20 over, I let him go before I go.

You don't have to do that, and I won't judge you for it. It just seems like a harmlessly nice thing to do for your fellow driver.

And it's rare to be in a situation where it's reasonable for you to overtake at 5 mph more than the other car while there are +20s whizzing by so it doesn't seem like it's really something that needs defending.

Re: How Much Does a Mile of Road Cost?

#216

Post by scarejunba »

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…

Friend's bike got stolen off Muni while he was on it. I'm not going to do that. I was car free in SD for almost a decade. It was good, but this is also good.

Re: How Much Does a Mile of Road Cost?

#218

Post by clarry »

rayiner wrote: post #27
ryanar wrote: post #2

I 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?

The relevant number here is the cost to repave, not reconstruct, which is about $330,000-$350,000 per mile for a minor arterial road in a rural or urban area. As to how small towns afford it--you don't repave that often, and you focus efforts on what to repave. For example, Cedar Rapids, Iowa calculated it would cost $500 million over 10 years to repave everything that needs to be repaved: https://www.kcrg.com/conten…

> The relevant number here is the cost to repave, not reconstruct, which is about $330,000-$350,000 per mile for a minor arterial road in a rural or urban area.

Sounds a tad more expensive than it needs to be. Skimming search results for my country (.fi), I get numbers ranging from 30 000 to 50 000 eur per kilometer. I know murican roads are wider, but I don't think they're that much wider. And I don't think we're particularly effective or cheap at doing it..

Re: How Much Does a Mile of Road Cost?

#219

Post by jamiek88 »

onion2k wrote: post #213
bartread wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK it's actually not illegal: it's just advised against, and considered bad form in most situations by most drivers. And, of course, if you cause an accident by undertaking the police will (rightly) throw the book at you. Examples where it's considered acceptable to undertake: - In heavier or queuing traffic inside lanes might move faster than outside lanes: this is OK, and it's considered better and safer to…

If you do it on a reasonably clear road to get around someone hogging an overtaking lane, and the police see you, they're going to pull you over and give you a fixed penalty notice for careless driving though. I know this from experience.

Me too! M4 from London to Cardiff for the Ryder Cup. Had lived in Texas for years, was fresh off the plane and forgot it wasn't legal.

No mercy shown! Jokes on them though I never paid the ticket and I'm never going to.

Re: How Much Does a Mile of Road Cost?

#220

Post by romwell »

erulabs wrote: post #209
asdff wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Most respect the zipper merge. Most. Maybe 1/10 are that prick that believes you merging in front of them is an affront to their pride, and opts to block you from entering or exiting the freeway. I see this most on the 10, but also on the 110 going from pasadena to downtown when you have to merge over 3 lanes to stay on the freeway then merge back 3 lanes to get on the 10 west.

Oh man particularly from the 110 to the 5 south - that one lane change - there is _always_ one person go tries to skip the line and merge at the very end, only to get stuck, and cause a massive hangup. That line of cars is ~30 long, so 1 in 10 is perfectly high enough for it to be broken all the time.

>there is _always_ one person go tries to skip the line and merge at the very end,

Ahem... he's the one that actually knows what a zipper merge is, and you are the one who needs to learn a thing today.

There is no line in the zipper merge. You are supposed to merge at the very end to keep the traffic flowing, like a zipper would.

Read up, and don't be that guy: https://auto.howstuffworks.com/traffic-lane-zipper-merge.htm

(Unless you are talking about something else entirely, but the parent comments were talking about this scenario)

Post reply on HN