Iowa Makes a Bold Admission: We Need Fewer Roads • Hacker News Board

Re: Iowa Makes a Bold Admission: We Need Fewer Roads

#121

Post by eitally » Fri, Jul 10, 2015, 1:35 AM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #95

bduerst wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So for comparison of 50-yr maintenance costs (in Maine): - Low-use gravel roads are ~50% of paved road maintenance cost. - Moderate-use gravel roads are ~350% of paved road maintenance cost. Yikes.

TL;DR Road maintenance is expensive, and the bill is about to come due.

And the scary thing is that it's not just road maintenance. It's sewer/water, electricity, and bridges, too. There has been so much exurbian expansion in the past two decades where the initial infrastructure costs were paid by the developer but then handed over to the town/county/state for maintenance. The municipalities count on property taxes to cover the cost, but with A) the real estate crash in many markets, and B) a general recession and a move of many younger earners back to urban areas, that money just isn't there.

Re: Iowa Makes a Bold Admission: We Need Fewer Roads

#122

Post by jessaustin » Fri, Jul 10, 2015, 1:44 AM UTC

ams6110 wrote: post #49

AcerbicZero wrote: post #28

A bit old, but still relevant - http://archive.gao.gov/f0302/109884.pdf I'm no expert on the topic, but it seems to me that if heavily loaded trucks are causing a disproportionate amount of damage they should be taxed at a rate which allows for proper maintenance of those roads.

Trucks are taxed more already. The problem is legislatures using those tax revenues for other pork and then claiming to not have enough money for roads.

Semi trucks reduce the quality of the roads much more than lighter vehicles do. The slightly greater tax they pay doesn't begin to make up for it.

http://fhwicsint01.fhwa.dot.gov/policy/hcas/addendum.cfm

Re: Iowa Makes a Bold Admission: We Need Fewer Roads

#123

Post by pekk » Fri, Jul 10, 2015, 2:04 AM UTC

mholt wrote: post #106

usaphp wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with gravel roads is that after a heavy rain a lot of potholes appear and some of them can be pretty big, it's relatively ok during the day travel, but driving at night will most certainly cause a lot of car damage and accidents in a long run.

You're right. But the cost is still lower than fixing potholes in asphalt due to wear & tear, freezing and thawing, and slippery ice is less of a problem too. Not surprisingly, most Iowa folks are good drivers in bad weather. Generally it's avoided altogether. When it has to be done, most people are smart enough to slow down and be careful, or pull over and wait it out. There will still be accidents, but less cars sl…

The cost to the government may be lower than fixing potholes in asphalt, but not necessarily to the people driving cars.

Re: Iowa Makes a Bold Admission: We Need Fewer Roads

#124

Post by pekk » Fri, Jul 10, 2015, 2:07 AM UTC

jff wrote: post #36

maxerickson wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A related question is whether (and how) you make the people in those towns bear the cost of the town existing. Lots of small towns are nice and scenic. Lots of other ones are vestigial organs of some long forgotten economy and would better disappear.

> Lots of other ones are vestigial organs of some long forgotten economy and would better disappear. In a big city with rising rents, people who already live somewhere ~have a right to be there~ and shouldn't have to go. In a small town, apparently, there's no possible reason people would want to stay.

You don't have a right to unlimited quantities of other people's money to support you being there. If we could pull all support for communities which are a persistent drain then maybe you could argue you had a "right to be there" (without subsidies).

We really have much bigger social problems than insufficient subsidies to people who choose of their own volition to live in places which are expensive for everyone else to maintain.

Re: Iowa Makes a Bold Admission: We Need Fewer Roads

#125

Post by dataker » Fri, Jul 10, 2015, 2:17 AM UTC

I briefly studied in South Dakota and Iowa without a car and it was a living nightmare.

Relying on friends and "taxis", I had to go through negative temperatures to get a simple can of soda.

After that, I could never complain about BART.

Re: Iowa Makes a Bold Admission: We Need Fewer Roads

#126

Post by foobarian » Fri, Jul 10, 2015, 2:37 AM UTC

bigtunacan wrote: post #5

mholt wrote: post #3

I'm from Iowa. There are a handful of population centers, and a sprinkling of homes and small communities between miles and miles and miles of farmland. The thing is, most people don't travel between the small communities - most driving takes people to or from town. If they're not going to town, they're going to visit neighbors or their fields, in which case gravel roads work great. Gravel roads work better than dete…

Fellow Iowan here. I have traveled much faster than 50 mph on gravel roads; straight or not. Definitely a cheaper option that should be preferred in some cases. Even in in the more populated cities, CR, Des Moines, etc... existing road maintenance is always terrible.

You would do excellent transporting nitroglycerin over washboard [1] [2]!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washboarding [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wages_of_Fear . The protagonist drove a load of nitroglycerin over washboard by going fast enough to float over the bumps.

Re: Iowa Makes a Bold Admission: We Need Fewer Roads

#127

Post by pyre » Fri, Jul 10, 2015, 3:54 AM UTC

mholt wrote: post #3

I'm from Iowa. There are a handful of population centers, and a sprinkling of homes and small communities between miles and miles and miles of farmland. The thing is, most people don't travel between the small communities - most driving takes people to or from town. If they're not going to town, they're going to visit neighbors or their fields, in which case gravel roads work great. Gravel roads work better than dete…

> you can safely travel 50 mph on a flat, straight gravel road

You obviously haven't lived on a gravel road in the middle of nowhere. People book through there are much faster than 50mph. ;)

Re: Iowa Makes a Bold Admission: We Need Fewer Roads

#128

Post by bkjelden » Fri, Jul 10, 2015, 4:13 AM UTC

ccurtsinger wrote: post #104

protomyth wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm from North Dakota, and yeah, I would rather drive on gravel than ill-maintained pavement. ND has had to go the other way in the west because of the large amount of traffic[1] and pave and maintain some roads that would normally not merit it. I am actually a little ticked that the northern states are not doing research on alternate materials / surfacing technology. 1) western North Dakota now has traffic such that…

Minnesota does a significant amount of research on road surface materials. There is a section of I94 northwest of the Twin Cities that has three segments of highway, and traffic can be diverted onto one of the segments to test new road surfaces. Here's the MN DOT site with some test videos: http://www.dot.state.mn.us/mnroad/testcells/mainline.html (thrilling stuff). Now that I'm in MA, I have heard several people say…

I had always heard that ND had all concrete interstates (the only state with no asphalt interstates, in fact) because of the harsh winters.

Re: Iowa Makes a Bold Admission: We Need Fewer Roads

#129

Post by bkjelden » Fri, Jul 10, 2015, 4:17 AM UTC

david-given wrote: post #92

jmadsen wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From northern Wisconsin here - I always had the impression growing up that gravel roads became gutted with potholes from the snow after a few winters if not maintained, and generally pretty horrible. Especially in WI, our small roads are "milk roads" where they drive the heavy milk trucks in for collection. Certainly like the idea of cutting back unnecessary expenses, but I'd also like to see some data on this.

In Australia, there are lots of dirt tracks, and it's standard to regrade them ever year after the rainy season. (At which point they're pretty much impassable.) But those are dirt roads, which are not the same thing as a proper, old-fashioned gravel Macadam road. They can be excellent, and are pretty easy to maintain --- if potholes develop, fill them promptly with the right grade of gravel --- but don't do high spe…

In the parts of the US discussed in this thread - there really isn't a rainy season. They get moisture pretty much year round - snow in the winter, rain in the summer.

So more frequent gradings are needed if the traffic is heavy enough.

Re: Iowa Makes a Bold Admission: We Need Fewer Roads

#130

Post by Sanddancer » Fri, Jul 10, 2015, 4:18 AM UTC

closetnerd wrote: post #80

This may make sense in Iowa but it makes no sense in California. Gravel roads would would slow the effective max speed down to a crawl which would further exasperate traffic. If anything we need a higher driving speeds.

Really does depend on the location of the road. Yeah, turning I-80 to gravel would be a bad idea, but what about the multitudinous little mountain roads? Speed limits there tend to be in the 25-35mph range anyways, and are lightly traveled. There would be little effect on traffic aside from concentrating the expensive parts of maintenance on the roads that actually need it.