261–270 of 324 posts
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?
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…
I'm not sure what you're gunning for here. Spending road money on other projects? Or that real estate used for roads is somehow removed from the overall real estate market (in the active commerce sense, not active listing sense)? If it's a new project, even if land is behind expropriated, the market value is being paid. (I assume, bring Australia) So it does balance out, even in land value. For appreciated value, it…
Given the huge historical capital investment states have made in their roads they should be making money; or if they are not, we should be acknowledging that we are choosing to not make money at market rates when we compare the costs involved with roads with other forms of transport (especially rail).
I don't think we should necessarily do anything different with roads, but we should acknowledge that, well, pretty much everything at this scale needs to be subsidized out the wazoo - roads as well as public transport. I'm not arguing for some sort of dystopia where the government does some crazy user-pays thing on even public asset; just an end to the endless rhetoric about how roads "break even" while public transport "needs to be subsidized".
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That depends on the region and age of the road. In more rural areas where the freeways are newer things are much more consistent and usually just as you'd expect. In older areas like New York or California where many of the freeways predate the Federal Interstate system, and where lane expansions, lane extensions, and exits have grown far more organically, there are inconsistent designs (although often consistent wit…
>California's scheme predated the Federal Interstate system and they weren't keen on changing it. Massachusetts is about to embark on a project to renumber all of their exits per federal mandate. The consensus is that the only way they can take "exit 17"[1] from us is by lasering it out of our brains. I know people who are planning a guerilla renumbering campaign for this sign after it is harmonized. [1]: https://i.i…
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And a lot more people die per mile.
It’s a trade off. You can’t neatly organize ox, a guy pulling a heavily loaded cart, an ox driven cart, a bicycle, a scooter, a motorcycle, a rickshaw, a car, and a heavily loaded truck which is probably overcapacity.
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It’s a trade off. You can’t neatly organize ox, a guy pulling a heavily loaded cart, an ox driven cart, a bicycle, a scooter, a motorcycle, a rickshaw, a car, and a heavily loaded truck which is probably overcapacity.
You can certainly neatly organize those. First of all, ox and horsecarts don't even really need tarmac, and so in many countries where these means of transportation persist, they are only allowed to use the earth surface parallel to the road. Scooters should be expected to do the same, as even the cheap Chinese motorbikes found throughout the developing world have tires thick enough for earth or even sand.
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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.
In all of Europe, undertaking is illegal. When we come to the US, driving feels like you are in a third world country.
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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.
In all of Europe, undertaking is illegal. When we come to the US, driving feels like you are in a third world country.
If you are European, although the significantly increased government control of its population will mitigate things somewhat, reality is that as Europe has now imbued itself with third world people and the customs and proclivities they carry, the road behaviors will also change even more than they clearly have, as anyone who has driven in Europe for more than 20 or so years, can attest to.
And before anyone gets triggered on some conditioned and well trained pavlovian assumptions, what I described above was equally observable when East Germans started meshing with West Germany, where after 55 years of having been exposed to relentless psychological engineering to break East Germans of their German-ness and proclivities and identity, they lacked what are commonly understood to be certain German traits and preferences for methodical order, systematic structure, and social courtesy; all of which the East Germans had far less of a connection to. That led to a lot of poor driving on roads and that has really not changed all that much either since as anyone who spends any distinct time on West German Roads and East German roads can attest to, even though the impact is being muddled by things like Polish drivers in East Germany and increasingly foreign drivers from all over the place.
Essentially it also comes down to the fact that now people with drivers licenses from various other European countries with lower driving standards, are also just allowed to drive in Germany without having to meet the far higher German driving class standards. It's yet another way in which democracy itself is being utterly disassembled, as foreign minorities are advantaged over native majorities … a total in version of democracy and even basic morality and ethics.
As for the USA, things have gotten so bad in many states that just ignoring the overcapacity of most of the road system due to unfettered and uncontrolled invasion by foreigners driving on US roads, you now have a whole ethnic driving license racket going on where an ethnic communities pass their own in spite of essentially not passing or being safe drivers.
I know that is not what people here want to hear, but reality simply is that this whole system is failing and it is failing due to deliberate bugs intentionally injected, and instead of fixing those bugs, people are just covering them up and making excuses and using ever mounting number of hacks to obscure and hide the ever more brittle system. It's quite telling that even in this kind of forum no one seems to understand that they are looking at a totally broken system and one that is failing at every increasing speed; all while willfully ignoring the inevitable cascading and total failure.
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In all of Europe, undertaking is illegal. When we come to the US, driving feels like you are in a third world country.
So many aspects about driving in the US are so terrible. The road conditions are pretty bad, and what i would like to understand are the gas taxes and other taxes which ostensibly go into road infra. We have high gas taxes and drive more miles than most countries on the planet - where is that money going? Some countries have high vehicle costs and their roads to me seem pristine and perfect by comparison. Specificall…
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…
One thing about driving, it's the closest we get to bellum omnium contra omnes. You don't see the other vehicles as an extension of the driver, a person, but rather a singular inhuman being you want to fight. People lose their humanity on the road.
> I think this isn't taught anymore.
Driver instruction is a joke here in the USA. I got my license around 2001 in NYC. The test was 20 brain dead questions such as "what sign is this: [school crossing]" and you look up and on the wall is a huge PSA poster of the school crossing sign with the slogan "Schools open. Drive carefully." So they practically gave the answers away. Driving school is optional and all they do is show you an hour long video that nobody watched which the proctor turned off after 15 min. Then you drive around the neighborhood for a half an hour with two others and an instructor a few days. No rules of the road, no etiquette, no nothing. The tests should be much harder, rules and etiquette drilled. The bar must be raised.
I'll give the CDL (commercial Drivers License) more credit. It's the equivalent to what I think is an HGV license in Europe. Though I never got the license I took the test for class A with as many endorsements as I could(tank, hazmat, and doubles/triples). Quite challenging and you have to know how some of the systems on the truck work such as air brakes. I failed it the first go as I thought I knew better but some old terminology tripped me up.
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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.
I always find it interesting when people brag about not paying fines — especially when the fine is issued in a foreign country. To me it shows a lack of responsibility and a huge lack of respect for the local laws. I guess not everyone feels that way though.
fwiw, I take traffic flow very seriously. I will always move over if I notice someone driving close behind me.