Most active commenters

    ←back to thread

    How good are American roads?

    (www.construction-physics.com)
    193 points chmaynard | 11 comments | 20 Nov 24 14:45 UTC | HN request time: 0.458s | source | bottom
    Show context
    rconti ◴[20 Nov 24 17:52 UTC] No.42196461[source]▶
    > Interestingly, in all cases urban roads are worse quality than rural roads, presumably because they see higher traffic than rural roads.

    There's more infrastructure under urban roads. Crews come in to fix some utility, shred a section of a lane, patch it poorly with dissimilar materials, and leave.

    replies(12): >>42196522 #>>42196736 #>>42197205 #>>42197899 #>>42198008 #>>42198655 #>>42198873 #>>42199005 #>>42199037 #>>42200024 #>>42201080 #>>42201777 #
    vel0city ◴[20 Nov 24 18:24 UTC] No.42196736[source]▶
    You're probably also going to have far fewer massive vehicles on those rural roads. More things like pickups yes, but probably considerably fewer semi-teicks and busses and fire trucks and cement mixers what not. Those big trucks passing through are going to stick to interstates far more often when going through rural areas.
    replies(4): >>42196925 #>>42196937 #>>42196979 #>>42197960 #
    1. Loughla ◴[20 Nov 24 18:47 UTC] No.42196937[source]▶
    We have large farm machinery though.
    replies(5): >>42197006 #>>42197074 #>>42197229 #>>42197511 #>>42197822 #
    2. tcmart14 ◴[20 Nov 24 18:54 UTC] No.42197006[source]▶
    There is large machinery. But does it go down the same stretch of road 20 times a day all days of the year though? May also depend on location. You ain't taking the combine down the road several times a day in the middle of winter. So you do get the wear and tear of large farm equipment, but its still probably less than an urban road and not year round.
    replies(1): >>42197080 #
    3. vel0city ◴[20 Nov 24 19:04 UTC] No.42197074[source]▶
    Do those go down the road every 10-20 minutes like the poor bus service on the urban street outside my home does? And that is just the busses. Add 2-3 semi-trucks every five minutes.

    Oh, and there's still farm equipment every now and then. I am in Texas after all.

    4. olyjohn ◴[20 Nov 24 19:05 UTC] No.42197080[source]▶
    Also their slow speeds and larger tires probably lead to less wear than another vehicle of the same weight traveling at normal highway speeds.
    replies(1): >>42197896 #
    5. jgeada ◴[20 Nov 24 19:23 UTC] No.42197229[source]▶
    Large machinery, but typically very low ground pressure. After all, that same machinery is designed to operate on arable soil without sinking or bogging down. It is my understanding that it is ground pressure more than absolute weight that correlates to road surface damage/erosion.
    replies(2): >>42197905 #>>42199247 #
    6. greenavocado ◴[20 Nov 24 19:57 UTC] No.42197511[source]▶
    Axle loading limits
    7. macksd ◴[20 Nov 24 20:32 UTC] No.42197822[source]▶
    I think other explanations replying are on point. I live in a town that's surrounded by a lot of farm traffic, and most of those roads are in good shape. But there are also routes used heavily by trucks servicing fracking sites, and those roads are TRASHED.
    replies(1): >>42198021 #
    8. bluGill ◴[20 Nov 24 20:42 UTC] No.42197896{3}[source]▶
    Farmers are using normal semis to move the crops from the field to elsewhere on the road. Farm equipment on the road is generally unloaded.
    9. amatecha ◴[20 Nov 24 20:42 UTC] No.42197905[source]▶
    yeah, the farm vehicles usually have gigantic tires too, compared to any regular passenger vehicle
    10. oblio ◴[20 Nov 24 20:55 UTC] No.42198021[source]▶
    My grandma used to live close to a road servicing an oil derrick, back in 90's Romania (so 0 infrastructure investments for probably 10 years).

    At one point my family was in a Dacia 1310 (crappy and very cheap Romanian car) and we literally went very slowly (probably 10kmph) through a section where the road was basically sunk, there was a "pothole" probably 10-15m long and 80% of the road wide (both lanes), about 1m deep, I think.

    The funny thing is that there were potholes inside the uber-pothole :-)))

    11. potato3732842 ◴[20 Nov 24 23:29 UTC] No.42199247[source]▶
    At some point axle load starts mattering more than ground pressure because whatever's below the pavement itself starts being extruded. I don't think that matters in most cases though.