How good are American roads?

This happens CONSTANTLY in Atlanta. They'll spend a bunch of money fixing a road, then a month later Public Works digs a huge hole and leaves a steel plate on it for a year, then patch it with either concrete that is an inch or two below the rest of the surface, or they don't pack the earth they put back and in 3 months the patch has sunk into a new pothole in a brand new road. The city has been trying to force public works to go do those things BEFORE road projects, but it's an uphill battle.

This happens in other countries too. Some people theorize that it's done because of internal rivalries between dependencies/political factions, but I suspect local governments are just inept at logistics.

Its also a difficult problem. They need the right digger and the right crew at the right time and possibly the right weather to get the job done. Many times there will be weeks of juggling around schedules and suddenly the digging started three weeks after the road was finished

Here, the gov gives time windows for utility owners to dig and do maintenance, after which it'll be repaved. If you want to do maintenance on your infra, you request a timeslot and the gov groups the maintenance (eg sewer and gas). You best not miss your window.

Probably everywhere frankly, but Dallas is terrible, too. My wife and I took up skateboarding recently and it became much more obvious. Go out to the suburbs or a running trail or nice park and it's smooth sailing. You can push and coast. Where we live near downtown, it's cracks, rocks, discontinuities, metal plates. The gas company also dug up a bunch of bedrock 7 years ago, left a huge pile of it on the corner, rain came a few days later, and for the last 7 years, our sidewalks have been covered in dirt and the houses and cars all get a thin yellow film on them because there is so much dirt in the air all the time.

That's before considering what regular construction crews do. Most of the sidewalks are closed most of the time. They're routinely torn out and never fixed. There are nails and other debris in the roads all the time. When we first moved to our current address, my wife had all four of her tires go flat within the first year. I didn't own a car until two years ago, but both front tires have gotten nails in them already. That's also on top of the city's contracted out private dump truck crushing my rear windshield and smashing the hatch and leaving a business card with a claim number on one of my front wiper blades. That was nice to walk out to.

Then there was the crew across the street stealing all of my power tools when I accidentally left my garage open one day.

I'm not a NIMBY, but experiencing this makes me weary of the Hacker News zeitgeist railing against communities that don't want their neighborhoods turned into constant construction. There are entirely non-evil reasons homeowners might want that because building where people already live is incredibly disruptive.

Sure, but what happens if you have maintenance issues that arise after the window closes?

Are we really going to tell people that they can't live without sewer / clean water / electricity / whatever because the window closed 2 months ago and their problem didn't start until today?

Let me ask you: how many buildings collapsed during the reign of Hammurabi?

How did a pile of Rick seven years ago lead to continuous dust even today?

I.. I have no idea. I don't even know who Hammurabi is.

Is there a point you're trying to make? If so, care to enlighten us without assuming we all have history degrees?

He's a rather famous chap: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammurabi

Regardless, I suspect there's a point being made about the timeless ineptitude of bureaucracy (even if I don't agree with it—some cultures are notably more competent at managing logistics of public works than other are).

> 229 If a builder builds a house for someone, and does not construct it properly, and the house which he built falls and kills its owner, then that builder shall be put to death.

http://faculty.collin.edu/mbailey/hammurabi%27s%20laws.htm

Not obscure enough of a figure to necessitate a history degree. Well known for being one of the first to establish building codes.

Hammurabi is an ancient ruler of Mesopotamia/Babylon who is famous for establishing a written code of laws, of which copies inscribed in steles have survived to this day). I don't know of it's the earliest example of a written legal code but certainly one of the earliest that we have a record of.

Among these laws were civil penalties for builders who performed shoddy workmanship:

> If a builder constructs a house for a man but does not make it conform to specifications so that a wall then buckles, that builder shall make that wall sound using his own silver.

By the way, the Romans also had building codes, and engineers who built bridges and roads were liable for the durability of those structures, thus a tradition of over-engineering.

It's a carrot, not a stick. It's designed to spread the digging.and repaving costs around so the work is cheaper. It's more that the city knows it's doing work in an area, digging up the road, so they tell all the utilities, hey if you are thinking of doing work on Main Ave, we'll be starting work on September 3rd, if tell us now and can get a crew out before September 21st, you won't need to pay to excavate and repave.

one of my classmates really resented having to take GE classes outside his major in order to graduate but looking back on it, he said they really helped him out in ways he didn't expect.

1? 1000?

Regardless the answer, the lack of context makes the figure meaningless.

We were getting our roads redone in my town and the county commissioner ordered an asphalt miller to run on one singular road, when we needed it (and said for it to run) on all of them. It cost us the same to run it on one road or all of them, because most of the costs were transport of machinery. So I definitely lean towards ineptitude.

He reigned for 42 years (1792–1750 BC), so I hope not too many.

Yet many including myself have never heard of him.

Would it have been so much to ask to put a Wikipedia link and nerd-snipe some of us in the process?

interesting. I noticed something similar in the UK but not in Germany. Maybe some simple change in the way these utility repairs are regulated is to blame?

While interstates are nice, cities are where people live, so the quality of urban roads matters and is maybe the reason for the perception of US roads?

Anyone with a basic high school education should have heard of him.

And how hard it is for you to google for "wikipedia hammurabi" anyway?

>Hammurabi is best known for having issued the Code of Hammurabi, which he claimed to have received from Shamash, the Babylonian god of justice. Unlike earlier Sumerian law codes, such as the Code of Ur-Nammu, which had focused on compensating the victim of the crime, the Law of Hammurabi was one of the first law codes to place greater emphasis on the physical punishment of the perpetrator.

I don't think Wikipedia gets to the point quickly enough for this context to be relevant.

If it's crunched up fine limestone it has a hard time growing plant cover. Instead it will be loose debris that easily breaks down and produces dust.

That's a valid point, but I was just responding to someone who claimed that Hammurabi was so obscure that (in their minds) no one had heard of him, and additionally complained that there was no Wikipedia link. I feel like I should have used LMGTFY.

Whether the OP was making a poorly-articulated point by merely bringing up Hammurabi and expecting the reader to know about his history with building codes, I think, is a separate issue. Anyone with a basic education should have heard of Hammurabi, though they may have forgotten the specifics about him. And finding a Wikipedia link on your own is trivial.

Would it be so hard to google an unknown figure? Jesus christ, open the schools. If you're confused there's much less hostile ways to indicate you want explanation.

I did not claim that he was obscure nor that no one had heard of him.

I merely mentioned that your and other claims that "anyone with a high school education has to have heard of him" is bollocks.

I have both a high school and university degree and have never heard of him and don't think I need to have.

Now you even claim someone with a "basic education" should've heard of him (meaning someone that didn't even finish high school). If you doubt that, Google about different countries' school systems and what would go for "basic" education.

That said you definitely would've nerd sniped me with a link and if these replies here on HN hadn't been there to catch my interest first I would have just googled him.

Basically by trying to be a smart ass and belittling others you harmed your own cause so to speak.

>I have both a high school and university degree and have never heard of him

I question the value of your education.

Have you also never heard of Shakespeare or Bach?

For me it's not so much about that but the "how".

Parent definitely would've nerd sniped me with a link and if these replies here on HN hadn't been there to catch my interest first I would have just googled him.

Basically by trying to be a smart ass and belittling others they harmed their own cause of making Hammurabi more widely known.

Very much have. Don't care much for one, do care for some of the other.

The belittling continues I see.

Have you heard of Terry Fox? Anyone with an elementary school education surely has.

The antithesis to the "limited liability corporation".

> Basically by trying to be a smart ass and belittling others

You are reading way too much into someone not documenting their comment.

> they harmed their own cause

To me it looks like you and others paid even more attention this way.

> their own cause of making Hammurabi more widely known

I don't think that was their goal?

I might actually agree with you if I hadn't read all the other replies shiroiushi has made since. I firmly believe he's out on some crusade to belittle everyone he can now that didn't have the exact same education as him.

Or just do it for kicks and to feel better about himself.

>>This happens in other countries too.

This is everyday life in India. A big budget is sanctioned to build a road. Road gets built, then a month or two later, some body forgets they didn't do the sanitary/sewage pipes well enough and manholes are now overflowing, they tear down the whole road and then just leave it as is.

The process restarts again in two years or so. Here is the rub- The guy who builds it at the first place knows all this so builds it as cheaply as they can get away with.

Its just how corruption works, and money flow from tax payers to politically well connected contractors(often the politicians themselves, as the contractors are just shell companies owned by contractors). Even if the company is black listed a new one can always be floated next time.

>>I suspect local governments are just inept at logistics.

No they are just corrupt. Its easy money. No audits, no accountability and no questions of any kind.

> all the other replies shiroiushi has made

But it's lo_zamoyski that made the reference.

And yulker is the one that I replied to. That's all fair enough and yes yulker had quite some passive aggressiveness swinging in that "doesn't need a history degree" to start with.

Yet shiroiushi is the one directly insulting my (and others that I'm referencing as not having had to have heard of him)'s education without knowing anything about said education.

Depending on very specific and exact place of upbringing and schooling, there are a myriad of differences in what is regular curriculum or not. This is a global forum too, so it's even "worse" in that sense for making very absolute statements like shiroiushi has.

Has every Bachelor of Computer Science had to take a course that included learning about how regular expressions are implemented and had to implement a regular expression parser? I sure did, mandatory course and wouldn't have been able to get the BA and then go on from that even further without it at my university. Yet I've met people from other universities that didn't. Do I insult them and their education for it? I don't!

I'm guessing exactly equal to the number of building contractors he or his donors had beef with

Well you said "parent" so I thought you didn't mean shiroiushi. Yes shiroiushi is being belittling, thanks for the clarification of what you meant then.

The solution to this problem is utility tunnels. A tunnel network under road surface just for plumbing and cabling. Maintenance crews can just drive through in cars and do their jobs, without stopping traffic and digging out pipes. Many ultra-modern cities have one.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_tunnel

I remember the neighbourhood where I grew up. The roads were great until the cable TV company slices them all open to put their cables in. Then the patches would never hold, water would get in and under the road when it rained, and the roads were terrible for years.

> The city has been trying to force public works to go do those things BEFORE road projects, but it's an uphill battle.

Is Public Works a state agency? I would have expected them to be subordinate to the city.

> I don't know if it's the earliest example of a written legal code but certainly one of the earliest that we have a record of.

It isn't, but it was discovered early and benefited from intense popular interest in the Bible. Popular interest in Mesopotamian history fell off sharply as it turned out that history generally differed from what the Bible said.

It's still very early, roughly the 18th century BC.

>> If a builder constructs a house for a man but does not make it conform to specifications so that a wall then buckles, that builder shall make that wall sound using his own silver.

This is obviously a statement about who bears liability for fixing the wall, but it's funnier if you imagine it as a requirement for the builder to repair the wall with silver bricks, as a penalty for the original shoddy work.

> I merely mentioned that your and other claims that "anyone with a high school education has to have heard of him" is bollocks.

> I have both a high school and university degree and have never heard of him

With all due respect, it's far more likely that you have heard of him, but you didn't retain the information.

I like the 7 years bedrock story. Doesn't Dallas have the equivalent of New York City 311 complaints hotline? Literally, you call it for anything annoying / loud / dangerous, and the operator will help you raise the issue to the correct department.

To me, the trick about allowing more construction in established neighborhoods: Make the noise rules incredibly strict. Tokyo has non-stop construction everywhere. And the noise rules are very strict. It works. In Japan, I assume, for cultural reasons, most construction corps follow the rules. In other places ("The West"), you probably need expensive fines along with manual/automatic on-site inspections.

Simply forcing the utilities people to properly repair roads after they have been dug up would be sufficient.

> Some people theorize that it's done because of internal rivalries between dependencies/political factions

Or maybe corruption ? All utility builders have to fix the road -> more work -> more profit.

It happens in Germany as well though, not even that infrequently. It’s particularly common with the recent push for FTTH connections.

At my parents place, they resurfaced to road a few years ago. Only for Deutsche Telekom to swoop in a year later and dig in their FTTC gear. Street was patched after, but reasonably well. At least we got faster internet back then

You just described the process in a big central european country. I was wondering why a company from 300 km away fixes the local road ( an almost insignificant road).

If a society can't do construction without leaving nails in the road(!!!) there seem to be some more fundamental issues going on

No.

Another side of the problem is how often we need close a road to dig it up. If we just enforce the quality, we will just wasting more time and money for more works and less time actually using them .

Proper solution would be a utility duct or tunnel.

To be fair, Hammurabi’s code is often taught in middle/high school social studies (history).