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How good are American roads?

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193 points chmaynard | 1 comments | 20 Nov 24 14:45 UTC | HN request time: 0.208s | source
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xyst ◴[20 Nov 24 15:17 UTC] No.42194608[source]▶
> The US has the largest road network in the world, about 4.3 million miles of road, and Americans drive much more than residents in most other countries

This is insane. This just proves how entrenched this country is in car centric transportation. We spend trillions in building, subsidizing, and maintaining this infrastructure. Only for this cycle to repeat itself in 25 years as the roads/highways breakdown and people move further out (induced demand). Then there’s the billions in lost productivity due to traffic. Significant decrease in activity and increase in obesity.

Then the increased emissions from vehicles result in poor air quality. Then there is decreasing water and food quality as tire and brake particles make its way into the water and food supplies.

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hammock ◴[20 Nov 24 15:53 UTC] No.42195041[source]▶
Couldn’t driving more be a sign of a strong and productive economy? Other large countries like Russia or Australia or something that drive less have smaller GFP as well.

Can we make a better comparison of how much Americans drive, plus total travel, vs total travel for other countries of similar density and size?

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1. PittleyDunkin ◴[20 Nov 24 16:02 UTC] No.42195176[source]▶
I imagine you'd have to weigh this against alternative forms of transit. The freight rail industry is the largest in the world and directly represents (presumably productive) economic activity. Personal transit makes up a much larger percentage of road usage, even in metro areas with healthy public transit. It's hard not to see this as some form of inefficiency.