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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

#31

Post by Alupis »

bigtunacan wrote: post #27
Roodgorf wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

LOL; you are right there. I was of course I young wreckless driver at the time. Depending on the road condition, visibility and area speeds on gravel probably should be anywhere from 25 to 50mph during good weather. 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.

> Both gravel and blacktop are lower cost options that can be used in low traffic areas though

Blacktop is asphalt (what roads are normally made of). And requires an underlying concrete layer to lengthen it's lifetime (asphalt is a lot "softer" than concrete and more susceptible to ground movement, erosion by the elements and friction from tires, etc...)

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

#32

Post by gtCameron »

cjslep wrote: post #25

"The [Iowa] primary highway system makes up over 9,000 miles (14,000 km), a mere 8 percent of the U.S. state of Iowa's public road system." [0] 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…

North Carolina does not have the most maintained roads of any state, they have "largest state maintained highway network in the United States."

This is a function of them choosing to maintain roads at the state level instead of the county level. If you look at road miles by state [0] regardless of the actual entity that maintains them, they are 16th.

[0] http://blog.cubitplanning.com/2010/02/road-miles-by-state/

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

#33

Post by washadjeffmad »

blhack wrote: post #26
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…

Those gravel roads also need some upkeep, though. 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.

About a decade ago, I remember reading about a trial application near me for an unpaved road hardening agent called pavezyme, which I also believe was trialed not long ago in AZ.

Do you know if any in your area might have been a part of that, and if so, how it worked out?

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

#34

Post by Stratoscope »

bigtunacan wrote: post #27
Roodgorf wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

LOL; you are right there. I was of course I young wreckless driver at the time. Depending on the road condition, visibility and area speeds on gravel probably should be anywhere from 25 to 50mph during good weather. 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.

For many of us, the day we were no longer a wreckless driver was also the day we became a less reckless driver.

At least one can hope so!

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

#35

Post by jdhendrickson »

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…

How does this work in the context of motorcycles?

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

#36

Post by jff »

maxerickson wrote: post #9
cwyers wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think "the entire system is unneeded" is a bit of a stretch I read that differently than you, I think. I read it not as "we don't need roads" but as "we don't need all of the roads we currently have, we can get rid of some of them." I don't know if that's true, even with reduced demand, there are a lot of small towns that only have one main road going in or out of them. (I also am from Iowa.)

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.

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

#37

Post by sophacles »

darkstar999 wrote: post #29

So how do you let roads "deteriorate and go away"? Wouldn't there be huge unsafe potholes in the transition? What kind of roads would they abandon? I didn't click through to all the references, but this article doesn't give any solutions.

Huge chunks of the midwest are a paved checkerboard of roads spaced at 1 mile intervals. Many of these get 3-5 cars passing a day, if that. There is no need for a lot of these to be paved, as they serve as field access roads. The houses off these roads are farm houses, and most of the farmers I know don't mind either way if it's a gravel or paved road. Some actually prefer gravel, as in the winter, when it is icy, the gravel can provide better traction, and the county doesn't do a good job plowing.

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

#38

Post by innguest »

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.

Yes, and women should pay more for health insurance since they go to the doctor more often.

However neither of those things will happen because common sense and communism are polar opposites despite their shared etymological roots.

EDIT: sophists can downvote but what they can't do is cope, or they would engage my arguments.

EDIT 2: for the slow, the argument is that it is natural to want those who use a resource the most to pay the most, but people had rather not see this obvious truth when you replace trucks with women. To want trucks to pay more (I bet many leftists would agree with that after all "truck are driving for profit" and profit is bad in the eyes of leftists) for using the same roads because they use it more, and then to not want women to pay more towards health insurance because she uses doctors more, is the sort of contradiction that you can only find in a leftist's brain.

EDIT 3: Men and women both profit from going to the doctor. Otherwise they would not go, it would be a waste of their time. There's a cost to opportunity and the fact that a person chooses to go to a doctor over doing something else means, praxeologically speaking, that they stand to profit more from going to the doctor than doing anything else, including not going to the doctor.

EDIT 4: Hi jordan, thanks for your comment. The solution to the hitch is to break the healthcare monopoly. Trucks now, if roads were too expensive for them, would have no choice but to exit the market as you said; but if there were competition in roads then they could strike a deal with a competitor road provider and switch over, as I can do if Apple doesn't want my app, I can sell it to Android users. Of course I'm not suggesting women should "exit the market" because that would be the end of people. But we're not far off from the end of people if healthcare is a monopoly either. Competition in healthcare would allow for entrepreneurs to come up with ways to cut down on costs for women-related care.

P.S.: link for you: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10718692 -> "Studies have shown that women use more health care services than men."

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

#39

Post by maxerickson »

Alupis wrote: post #31
bigtunacan wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LOL; you are right there. I was of course I young wreckless driver at the time. Depending on the road condition, visibility and area speeds on gravel probably should be anywhere from 25 to 50mph during good weather. 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.

> Both gravel and blacktop are lower cost options that can be used in low traffic areas though Blacktop is asphalt (what roads are normally made of). And requires an underlying concrete layer to lengthen it's lifetime (asphalt is a lot "softer" than concrete and more susceptible to ground movement, erosion by the elements and friction from tires, etc...)

Asphalt roads are a type of concrete.

In my area, paved, minor county roads certainly don't have a Portland cement concrete base layer, when they are paving they might add some gravel during the surface preparation and grading, but that is about it. As you say, the ground movement shows through, and they are more susceptible to erosion.

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

#40

Post by mapt »

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.

It's merely a question of how heavily we subsidize their lifestyle with infrastructure & other spending from the state/federal purse, which ultimately comes from economically productive cities.

One of the things we currently do, through differential housing prices, is send retirees to small towns with dead economies. They get a pension, Social Security, and Medicare, and that income is often the sole thing keeping the town afloat. In more distant reaches (I'm thinking Appalachia and parts of the South), generous welfare policies have enabled people to stay in this excess housing capacity despite the lack of jobs.

But here's the thing - there are costs to this strategy, like greenhouse gasses and children/grandchildren that have to move away and human capital going to waste, and these people could just as easily have public services provided in a metropolitan area where it's much cheaper to reach them all and provide a good quality of life.

The phenomena shows up even at the state level - https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://... but it's much more stark when you start at an older town in the Eastern half of the country and make your way to a productive population center.

Hey, we have a fiscal union, unlike the EU; These places aren't Greece because of all those payments, and I don't support turning them into Greece, but because we have that union it's also on us to make deliberate decisions that concentrate less of the population in Stavrodromi and more in Berlin. The game-theoretically natural strategy of utilizing the entirety of the existing housing stock (stratified by income) no matter how decrepit the location, is a bit of a local optima, and better arrangements are not difficult.

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