Because it is cheaper to have contractors do it than for the DOT to do it themselves.
Because it is cheaper to have contractors do it than for the DOT to do it themselves.Thanks. Can't see why the State's DOT can't do the construction themselves.
I suppose there are exceptions like cutting a road over an unknown fault line or something unusual like that. Roads should be engineered for decades. It should not be let's lay this road in and see what time will tell.
Be it a road, a driveway or a roof, slope is critical to water management. Imagine buying a new home with a nice, normal peaked roof that shed's water as designed. After a couple weeks that peak has turned into a valley and your soaking wet. The shingles may not last more than a decade or two, but that roof structure should be there pretty much permanently.
It could be design, materials or workmanship, but it is the home-builder who responsible, not some luck of the draw as a consequence of father time.
Ground water and poor concrete/asphalt specs cause most road failures on non-freezing areas. Frost heaves add to that in those places with sub-freezing temps. Add to those the pounding many roadways get from heavy truck traffic, and roads fall apart. (Olds car discuss the maintenance headaches of CA freeways)
We do have a problem with our infrastructure, but the problem probably is not with our engineering. We have been building roads for a long time in all types of environments with extremely long useful lives:
http://lgam.wikidot.com/council-asset-useful-life-tables
It's very difficult to believe that they are designed with no fore-thought of the earth beneath them resulting in roads built for hydroplaning. Intentionally building unsafe roads and leaving the rest to the common sense of drivers is not the structure that even our mostly dysfunctional local governments follow.
Under-funding our infrastructure is a problem. Incompetent or corrupt contractors are a problem. Designing roads that cannot shed water after only a couple years into their useful life, I don't think so.
The Romans built roads all over their empire and they are still being used even to this day. Now why we can't build roads as good as the Romans did?
The people who do roads are VASTLY underpaid because you apparently are holding them to a standard that only a god could reach. What color is the sky in your delusional world? NOBODY can predict underground streams changing course y 1* over 20 years and undermining a roadway. NOBODY can predict an earthquake that might happen 50 miles away and cause ground to settle a couple of inches. NOBODY can account for drains getting clogged with ice or leaves.
Here in the real world where road crews don't have infallible Ouija boards to plan their projects, unusual road conditions happen every single day all over the country.
-Cars break down and block lanes
-Raining causes puddles (The horror, the horror)
-Tree branches fall
-Rocks slide
-Leaves cover roadways making them slippery
-Fog reduces visibility
-It snows
-wires come down
-Wet turns to ice
and many other things happen.
And in EVERY ONE of those cases it is the responsibility of the driver to be operating his vehicle in a manner that allows him to see and react to obstructions in the roadway without spinning off into the trees. If you can't handle a puddle or a tree branch in the roadway without it causing a problem then YOU ARE DRIVING LIKE AN ASSHOLE.
If you don't understand that I invite you to go into court and try to sue whoever built a road because you hydroplaned off the road when you hit a puddle. And please, for the love of all that is good and holy, videotape what the judge tells you when you present your case. We all would love to see what happens.
I bed to differ as it was the soldiers themselves who did the road building as a way to keep them busy.Slave labor.
I bed to differ as it was the soldiers themselves who did the road building as a way to keep them busy.
Because the Romans didn't have 80,000 pound semi trucks driving on their roads.The Romans built roads all over their empire and they are still being used even to this day. Now why we can't build roads as good as the Romans did?
all of your armchair quarterbacks are missing what really goes on out there. there are existing lanes and then they try and add Lanes. The Wiz bang engineers think they have it all figured out but too often they don't.
when you have originally supered corners and just try and tack a lane on, sometimes you just screw it up. these roads weren't widened from scratch.
very often the problem can be tracked back to unrealistic budget expectations.
Money, and lack of immediate need. There may also be some psychological analysis at play. In busy areas, roads will always reach equilibrium at clusterfuck stage. If you fix things so they aren't a clusterfuck, people that took trains/buses/carpools out of frustration will notice, and the improved roads will become a clusterfuck again. If you just leave the existing clusterfuck, and hopefully improve mass transit, it'll give a net improvement after awhile in both air quality and quality of life. It should also save money, but it requires a huge outlay up front they either can't afford, or don't want to afford cause they like their government jobs.So why not simply build 4 lane roads at the start?
A topic that concerns me greatly since I rollerskate and bicycle my town's streets. City streets here (Berkeley, CA and environs) are by and large dicey, often breathtakingly horrible. They passed a bill to finance repairs but AFAIK little if any of the allocated funds have gone into significant street improvements. No better way to gauge your city's streets than make a habit of skating on them (if seriously problematical, good luck finding a way from point A to point B without much aggravation).I am sure it is far more complex than we think. I guess we are putting down very few heavily trafficked roads where there were none before. More difficult
Pot holes in the city streets are another topic I guess.
A topic that concerns me greatly since I rollerskate and bicycle my town's streets. City streets here (Berkeley, CA and environs) are by and large dicey, often breathtakingly horrible. They passed a bill to finance repairs but AFAIK little if any of the allocated funds have gone into significant street improvements. No better way to gauge your city's streets than make a habit of skating on them (if seriously problematical, good luck finding a way from point A to point B without much aggravation).