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Iowa Makes a Bold Admission: We Need Fewer Roads

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

#141

Post by feld »

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…

I'm from Wisconsin. We don't seem to have a problem keeping our roads paved and functional. Assuming I didn't screw up any math reading these tables:

  Iowa: 114,429 miles of roads
  Wisconsin: 115,145 miles of roads
  
  Source: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2013/hm10.cfm
  
  Unpaved Functional Length:
  Iowa: 13,363 miles
  Wisconsin: 566 miles
  
  Paved Functional Length:
  Iowa: 81,273 miles
  Wisconsin: 102,482 miles
  
  Source: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2013/hm51.cfm
I think you need a better Department of Transportation, because even the population difference shouldn't really account for that huge of a gap.

  Population:
  Iowa: 3.107 million
  Wisconsin: 5.758 million
  
  Source: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=iowa+wisconsin+population

  Square miles:
  Iowa: 56,270 sq mi
  Wisconsin: 65,500 sq mi
  
  Source: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=wisconsin+square+miles
  Source: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=iowa+square+miles

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

#142

Post by jecxjo »

feld wrote: post #141
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…

I'm from Wisconsin. We don't seem to have a problem keeping our roads paved and functional. Assuming I didn't screw up any math reading these tables: Iowa: 114,429 miles of roads Wisconsin: 115,145 miles of roads Source: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2013/hm10.cfm Unpaved Functional Length: Iowa: 13,363 miles Wisconsin: 566 miles Paved Functional Length: Iowa: 81,273 miles Wisconsin: 102,482 mi…

I grew up in Wisconsin and went to college in Iowa and the one thing I noticed between the two was how horrible the Iowa DOT was.

In Wisconsin we know that every year there will be snow. Lots and lots of snow. In 18 years of living there I never once remember a time where there was more than half a day of our rural road not being plowed. I remember seeing plows driving around when there was no snow falling because they knew it was coming and as soon as the first flake hit the ground the buckets went down.

In Iowa, ever year there were multiple times when I'd be stuck at home, unable to get to school or work because the roads weren't plowed. Major Highways! I'd call the DOT and their response was "we are just waiting until the snow stops so we don't have to plow multiple times." This was their response in the afternoon having not plowed all morning. One year they ran out of salt for the roads and had to use expired Seasoning Salt from a local manufacturer. Everyone complained because their car smelled like Garlic Bread. No one seemed to care about the fact that Iowa is in the Midwest and for some strange reason the people running the DOT didn't think to have adequate supplies.

Wisconsin has a huge vacation market. A large amount of road usage is by people traveling from out of state up to the north woods for hunting, fishing, camping, etc. Iowa does not have this type of road usage.

Iowa has two main highways. Hwy 80 is a shipping lane that connects Chicago to the western half of the US. Hwy 35 is a north south route going from Minneapolis/St. Paul all the way down to Austin Texas and connects a lot of major cities along the way.

Hwy 80 (and hwy 88) are used so much in Illinois that Illinois actually charges you a toll to use it. Iowa has the same traffic on 80 but does not charge a toll. One state has figured out how to pay for their road usage while the other has not. THIS is the real issue with why Iowa's DOT can't do anything right. They spend money in the wrong places, don't get enough income to pay for things they should and for some strange reason don't understand that they have a problem.

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

#143

Post by feld »

jecxjo wrote: post #142
feld wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm from Wisconsin. We don't seem to have a problem keeping our roads paved and functional. Assuming I didn't screw up any math reading these tables: Iowa: 114,429 miles of roads Wisconsin: 115,145 miles of roads Source: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2013/hm10.cfm Unpaved Functional Length: Iowa: 13,363 miles Wisconsin: 566 miles Paved Functional Length: Iowa: 81,273 miles Wisconsin: 102,482 mi…

I grew up in Wisconsin and went to college in Iowa and the one thing I noticed between the two was how horrible the Iowa DOT was. In Wisconsin we know that every year there will be snow. Lots and lots of snow. In 18 years of living there I never once remember a time where there was more than half a day of our rural road not being plowed. I remember seeing plows driving around when there was no snow falling because th…

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9852951...

I wonder if residual garlic had any effect on insects/pests

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

#144

Post by tsotha »

orbifold wrote: post #138
tsotha wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the west coast Amtrak is more of an amusement park ride than a practical transportation option. If you want to go from San Francisco to Los Angeles the Amtrak trip planner has you on two trains and two buses before you arrive after nine hours. If you want to take a train the whole way there's only one each day and it takes 12 hours (as compared to about 6.5 driving). It's kind of a joke. We should either get serio…

Well a high speed rail like the TGV going ~300-350km/h would cut that down to roughly 2.5 hours, admittedly that is still higher than going by air, but a lot better than 12 hours.

Flying isn't any faster than 2.5 hours once you figure in the extra time at the airport.

In any event I would be happy to take a conventional train if took less than about eight hours. I don't like flying and the drive is grueling, particularly in traffic.

The problem is AFAIK Amtrak doesn't own any track on the west coast. It's all single track, routing is optimized for freight, and passenger trains have a lower priority than freight trains.

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

#145

Post by jmadsen »

stephencanon wrote: post #96
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.

Surely you have frost heaves in Wisconsin? Aren't paved roads severely potholed by your winters as well?

oh, definitely! simply trying to remember back to what the gravel roads were like (been a while since I've lived there)

I seem to recall they get pretty awful, and ones that are not proper county roads become impassable at normal driving speeds

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

#146

Post by kjs3 »

redcalx wrote: post #90
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.

Yeh gravel shifts significantly once you get pools of water forming. Gravel roads need annual levelling work even for low traffic routes.

But wouldn't driving a road grader down the route, even once a year, be cheaper than repaving every couple of years? Just in material cost it should be cheaper, not to mention cheaper equipment (grader v. paver+dump trucks) and staffing. I fully confess, however, that I have no objective numbers.
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