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What are those dents in I-90 outside Seattle?

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Re: What are those dents in I-90 outside Seattle?

#91

Post by someonewhocar3s »

WalterBright wrote: post #10
bombcar wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US interstate moves insane numbers of huge ass-trucks that weight one billion metric pounds each or something. Anything less than airport-grade concrete dies instantly, and then dies again when it invariably freezes to -40° Kelvin, because fuck physics when shit gets cold.

The reason for the interstate trucks is the taxation system that punishes railroads for owning their right-of-way. The trucks cause by far the most damage to the highways, but taxpayers subsidize that with the gas tax. Trucks also do not pay property tax on the highways. Long haul freight should be done by loading the semi's trailer onto a flat car, and picking it up near the destination. Another myopic government de…

[dead]

Re: What are those dents in I-90 outside Seattle?

#92

Post by WalterBright »

UncleEntity wrote: post #81
WalterBright wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why move the freight by rail.

They move a bunch of freight by rail, nobody wants to pay someone a bunch of money to drive it when they can just throw it on a train. And trains are relatively time inefficient so people in Maine couldn’t have their fresh Californian strawberries a couple days after they are plucked out of the field. Maybe people don’t deserve to have fresh produce but that’s another discussion altogether.

Did you know that one of the very first uses of the first transcontinental railroad was shipping fresh California produce back east? And this was a century and a half ago.

Re: What are those dents in I-90 outside Seattle?

#93

Post by mef »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #34
unixhero wrote: post #32

A forum! How refreshing.

Looks like a discourse.org one

wow, searching the thread is a nightmare. there's a non-native search panel that comes up with cmd+f, and you press cmd+f again to do a native browser search... and both of them don't actually search the thread, only the visible section. you have to scroll around to load all parts of the thread in order to actually search the whole thing, with either of the two searches!

Re: What are those dents in I-90 outside Seattle?

#94

Post by kelnos »

rkagerer wrote: post #75
mbauman wrote: post #3

A little funny to not link to the comment that had the answer — they're dowel bar retrofits. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowel_bar_retrofit

On mobile and no time to correct it myself, but I think there's a consistency mistake in that article: The retrofit begins with cutting of six slots (three in each wheel path) across all transverse joints or cracks. The slots are cut with ganged diamond saws that make six cuts in each wheel path.

The only other explanation I can think of is that the each slot is made with two cuts, each one starting at the crack and moving outward from it. So then the three slots in the wheel path takes six cuts to make (two cuts per slot, outward from the crack). (Or perhaps the opposite; maybe the cuts start away from the crack, and stop at the crack.)

But yeah, also perfectly possible it's just an error in the article :)

Re: What are those dents in I-90 outside Seattle?

#95

Post by UncleEntity »

WalterBright wrote: post #89
UncleEntity wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Trucks also do not pay property tax on the highways. Why would they pay property tax on a highway they don’t own? What they do pay is a per mile tax that is collected at the pump and divided up to the states through IFTA. Every single mile a truck travels is taxed by some state even if it’s just using it for personal use like shopping at Walmart.

Yes, they do pay a use tax. As noted elsewhere in this thread, the tax is far too low to account for the damage caused by the weight of the truck.

People make the assumption that the roads aren’t designed with truck travel in mind methinks.

The other option, making trucks pay their “fair share”, would just get passed along to consumers as higher prices and nothing would change. Like when fuel prices go up, truck drivers don’t eat those costs but they get a higher fuel surcharge which just gets accounted for when they’re pricing the goods on the grocery store shelves.

I also don’t think you fully understand how massively huge the transportation system is in the US. Assuming they could switch over to trains and assuming you live in the Bay Area they’d just have the trains deliver to Tracy or Stockton (where all the big warehouses currently are) and still have trucks deliver to the store down the street. Same amount of trucks you currently see with the only difference being the long haul truckers now doing local work.

Keeping with the Bay Area example, the last three times I delivered there two loads were going overseas out of Oakland and the third was a super small warehouse in San Leandro which didn’t even have a dock and I had to back a half mile down this tiny street — twice because there wasn’t anywhere to turn around and I was originally facing the wrong direction. I deliver to California all the time and all the warehouses are outside of the big cities. Well, except in LA but they’re just generally wrong about most things.

Re: What are those dents in I-90 outside Seattle?

#96

Post by mike_d »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #57
gpvos wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the top comment at the /30 URL is not the actual answer either...

Yep. Hilariously it was literally the first reply, which was promptly ignored by everyone. https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-those-dents-in-i-...

Because the original poster replied in #3 that it wasn't that.

I asked someone at WADOT about the very same thing and was told they were to create an irregular surface in one or two of the lanes (notice the street view from down thread they are only in the right most/truck lane) to prevent perfect ice sheets from forming.

Re: What are those dents in I-90 outside Seattle?

#97

Post by zerocrates »

mike_d wrote: post #96
KennyBlanken wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Hilariously it was literally the first reply, which was promptly ignored by everyone. https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-those-dents-in-i-...

Because the original poster replied in #3 that it wasn't that. I asked someone at WADOT about the very same thing and was told they were to create an irregular surface in one or two of the lanes (notice the street view from down thread they are only in the right most/truck lane) to prevent perfect ice sheets from forming.

Seems awful coincidental that they'd be exactly at the joints between the concrete, as they are in that Street View, if they were added just to make an irregular surface as you say.

Maybe it's both things: they're holes from dowel bar retrofits as their look and placement sure seems to indicate, but they're only visible in one lane because the lane was purposely re- (de-?) surfaced. Or alternatively only the slow lane needed the retrofit at the time it was done just because it carried more of the heavy loads.

Re: What are those dents in I-90 outside Seattle?

#98

Post by UncleEntity »

WalterBright wrote: post #92
UncleEntity wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They move a bunch of freight by rail, nobody wants to pay someone a bunch of money to drive it when they can just throw it on a train. And trains are relatively time inefficient so people in Maine couldn’t have their fresh Californian strawberries a couple days after they are plucked out of the field. Maybe people don’t deserve to have fresh produce but that’s another discussion altogether.

Did you know that one of the very first uses of the first transcontinental railroad was shipping fresh California produce back east? And this was a century and a half ago.

They still do…depends on the shelf life of whatever they’re shipping.

Re: What are those dents in I-90 outside Seattle?

#99

Post by zerocrates »

mef wrote: post #93
quickthrower2 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like a discourse.org one

wow, searching the thread is a nightmare. there's a non-native search panel that comes up with cmd+f, and you press cmd+f again to do a native browser search... and both of them don't actually search the thread, only the visible section. you have to scroll around to load all parts of the thread in order to actually search the whole thing, with either of the two searches!

Discourse's own search, the one that comes up first, is definitely supposed to search the whole thread, that's the whole point of it. Discourse does a lot of loading/unloading the page as you scroll on these big infinite-scroll threads so the native browser search would be not so useful, in the way you describe.

I don't notice the Discourse one having any trouble searching the whole thread as advertised here though.

Re: What are those dents in I-90 outside Seattle?

#100

Post by ehnto »

haunter wrote: post #4
mbauman wrote: post #3

A little funny to not link to the comment that had the answer — they're dowel bar retrofits. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowel_bar_retrofit

If a Wikipedia page about a technological topic (so not a person, place etc) has a very few languages available (in this case 2) then it always makes me wonder how other countries in the World solve the same issue. This seems like a very US thing for example but maybe I’m wrong

The idea that there are "webs" I am simply not privvy too thanks to language excites me for some reason. Even down to those webs having all their own memes and cultural hotspots etc.

The only other "web" I do have a small window into is the Japanese language web, thanks to importing cars and car parts, I have been learning Japanese. Web design there is incredibly different, and the approach to social forums like car clubs seems pretty novel too. One thing that transcends the language barrier seems to be information hierarchy which is cool. Parts don't have cars, cars always have parts, small example but that kind of thing.

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