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

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

#71

Post by bostonpete » Thu, Jul 09, 2015, 8:52 PM UTC

ryen wrote: post #69

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…

When it snows, how effective is it to shovel the gravel roads?

I think the word is "plow"...

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

#72

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 09, 2015, 8:53 PM UTC

ryen wrote: post #69

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…

When it snows, how effective is it to shovel the gravel roads?

[deleted]

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

#73

Post by goodcanadian » Thu, Jul 09, 2015, 8:55 PM UTC

ryen wrote: post #69

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…

When it snows, how effective is it to shovel the gravel roads?

Plowing gravel roads works fine.

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

#74

Post by toomuchtodo » Thu, Jul 09, 2015, 8:57 PM UTC

bduerst wrote: post #61

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 spent some time doing work in rural NW Iowa, and I remember the sheer number of gravel roads that are run between the fields. (They are great for running on too) How does the maintenance per mile between gravel roads and paved roads compare? Does this article apply to both?

http://www.maine.gov/mdot/csd/mlrc/documents/pdf/Richmond199...

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

#75

Post by jmadsen » Thu, Jul 09, 2015, 9:00 PM UTC

bduerst wrote: post #61

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 spent some time doing work in rural NW Iowa, and I remember the sheer number of gravel roads that are run between the fields. (They are great for running on too) How does the maintenance per mile between gravel roads and paved roads compare? Does this article apply to both?

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.

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

#76

Post by toomuchtodo » Thu, Jul 09, 2015, 9:01 PM UTC

refurb wrote: post #44

toomuchtodo wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Transportation infrastructure spending at the federal level is currently 3%.[1] You could always argue that is low due to a lack of investment, but it pales in comparison to federal entitlement spending (59%). I'd be much more worried about the tax burden due to entitlement spending than I would about transportation infrastructure. [1] http://www.cbpp.org/research/policy-basics-where-do-our-fede...

The highway trust fund goes broke this month:

http://www.transportation.gov/highway-trust-fund-ticker

It would cost $3.6 trillion to bring infrastructure back up to par:

http://www.wired.com/2015/01/time-fix-americas-infrastructur...

> Unfortunately, highway fund revenues have been insufficient to fully fund existing highway spending, with Congress authorizing billions of dollars in transfers from the US Treasury’s General Fund into the Highway Trust Fund to keep it solvent, including a $10.8 billion transfer last August. It has ongoing funding needs that will continue unless a more permanent solution can be found, either by raising the national gas tax (which hasn’t been increased since 1993), or some other funding measure. The Congressional Budget Office expects the Highway Trust Fund to have an annual shortfall of $15 billion.

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

#77

Post by kps » Thu, Jul 09, 2015, 9:02 PM UTC

superuser2 wrote: post #50

refurb wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transportation infrastructure spending at the federal level is currently 3%.[1] You could always argue that is low due to a lack of investment, but it pales in comparison to federal entitlement spending (59%). I'd be much more worried about the tax burden due to entitlement spending than I would about transportation infrastructure. [1] http://www.cbpp.org/research/policy-basics-where-do-our-fede...

The social good supported by entitlement spending is sick people not dying and poor people not starving or being homeless. The social "good" supported by highways is geographical separation between the middle class and the poor (which largely means the white and everyone else.)

  > which largely means the white and everyone else.

Ah, that explains why highways only exist in the United States.

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

#78

Post by solutionyogi » Thu, Jul 09, 2015, 9:04 PM UTC

jordan0day wrote: post #66

innguest wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I feel like people need multiple-pass compilers for their logical arguments. On the face of it, your analogy kind of makes sense. Both trucks and women ( Allegedly . I don't know if your claim is actually based on fact? edit: link in parent seems to back up this claim) use a disproportionate amount of a shared resource, so they should be made to pay more for that use. The second pass of your compiler should catch the…

  > I feel like people need multiple-pass compilers for their logical arguments.

If you don't mind, I am going to steal that line for future discussion. :)

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

#79

Post by usaphp » Thu, Jul 09, 2015, 9:05 PM 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…

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.

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

#80

Post by closetnerd » Thu, Jul 09, 2015, 9:09 PM UTC

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.