21–30 of 146 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, to be fair, the history of railroads in the US is kinda crackheaded.
What do you mean by that?
A lot of the removal of rail capacity has been short-sighted, and often for the gain of automobile manufacturers.
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.
Sure, the people who frequently use those roads are the ones who will know them best and be able to predict their condition, but your stopping/maneuvering power is so much worse on gravel that assuming an average speed of anything greater than, maybe even near 50 mph seems pretty reckless.
Per capita driving may have peaked, but as long as the capita is still growing there will still be more and more cars on the road.
As long as those drivers can afford the tax burden to maintain the aging infrastructure, sure.
So while laudable, it would be very nice if North Carolina followed suit with its ~79,000 miles of maintained roads (largest of any state) [1]. But I doubt that would happen, my friend at NCDOT says the culture emphasizes building new roads (or the ones that get wiped out by hurricanes out on the outer banks), and change intersections in a manner that borders on the whimsical.
We like to build roads in challenging places, it seems [2].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iowa_Primary_Highway_System
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Carolina_Highway_System
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 also grew up in Iowa, and the difference between the gravel roads I took to get to my friends houses there, and the gravel roads we have here in AZ is night and day.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I don't know that anecdotal evidence about driving conditions is really a great way to talk about driving on gravel. I'm also an Iowan who grew up on gravel roads and frequently drove faster than 50 mph, but if I'm being totally honest I recognize that it wasn't a great idea. On more than one occasion a loose patch of gravel or surprise deer has nearly sent me into a tree at 60 mph. Sure, the people who frequently us…
Both gravel and blacktop are lower cost options that can be used in low traffic areas though. There are certainly large stretches of very low traffic high maintenance roads all over Iowa.
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.
What kind of roads would they abandon? I didn't click through to all the references, but this article doesn't give any solutions.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you sure about 50 mph being a safe speed? It doesn't take much washboarding to all but eliminate traction.
It's usually possible to evaluate the condition of large sections of road at once (since they do maintenance that way). So you don't often unexpectedly hit the washboarding at high speed. It also tends to be the case that going faster can reduce the effects of the washboarding (given a reasonable vehicle).
offtopic: reminded about this novel - the reasonable vehicle was a truck with several tonnes of nitroglycerin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wages_of_Fear
ontopic: anyway we'll soon be flying in quad-/octo-copters and the open low-populated spaces like Iowa will be among the most suitable areas for the initial application of those "flying cars".