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How good are American roads?

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193 points chmaynard | 3 comments | 20 Nov 24 14:45 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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kube-system ◴[20 Nov 24 15:42 UTC] No.42194893[source]▶
> Interestingly, I expected cold places to have lower road quality in general due to things like freeze-thaw cycles and the impact of road salting, but there doesn’t seem to be much correlation. Plenty of cold places (North Dakota, Wyoming, Minnesota) have good-quality roads

Not sure about those states in particular, but I have anecdotally noticed that some of the places with the harshest winters do some of the least road salting -- because salt is mostly usable for light to moderate snowfall and the people who live in the harshest climates are often better equipped to drive on hard packed snow.

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hanniabu ◴[20 Nov 24 15:47 UTC] No.42194956[source]▶
Also depends on where you're looking. Cities will have worse roads because they're always digging working on gas and water lines, some of which leak. That disturbance of the ground will make things a lot worse than some rural road where the ground hasn't been disturbed since it was created.
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1. bluGill ◴[20 Nov 24 18:09 UTC] No.42196615[source]▶
The new suburb I live in they put all that beside the road not under it. That is what the space between the road and sidewalk is for.
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2. brewdad ◴[20 Nov 24 20:39 UTC] No.42197879[source]▶
This works well in suburbs with modern setback rules. It doesn't work so well in established urban areas where buildings often go right up to the sidewalk which goes right up to the road.
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3. bluGill ◴[20 Nov 24 20:58 UTC] No.42198040[source]▶
It doesn't work well here either. It frees up the roads a little, but as someone who bikes on those "shared use" sidewalks there are regularly "yellow vest people" blocking the sidewalks.