Though it's surprising that even a temperate US city would have dodgy road surfaces. In the north and northeast, it's at least understandable with our winters and the multiple freeze/thaw cycles we usually see before spring.
In the northeastern US, they have to fix the roads every spring from damage caused by plows and frost heaving. In SF and other mild cities, there's now much seasonal component to road maintenance so roads tend to go much long between repaves.
Poorly built roads will do this, yes. However roads with proper and deep foundations will crack very little due to frost heaves and other assorted phenomenon.
The difference is night and day when going between my hometown in Montana and a similarly sized city in Iowa. Our asphalt roads are well kept and maintained, but the roads in Iowa are a buckled nightmare.
Ehh, maybe. Philadelphia's roads are legendarily bad though.
One summer when I was living in Philadelphia they removed the surface of the road in front of my apartment. Two months later they put it back. And if it's not that, it's crews filling in holes from road-work with about half as much asphalt as the hole needed, or the random patches of cobblestone street still left in the city, seemingly with little rhyme or reason.
Weather alone does very little. Weather + road ware makes things dramatically worse much faster. You can see this effect with private driveways in the north vs public roads in the south assuming similar construction.
it's not so bad; where I grew up in France many streets were cobblestone and it was fine. It's pretty rare in the US though except I've noticed it in streets where they have trams running--presumably to reduce the need for maintenance on those streets.
Climate is a massive factor in the deterioration and accelerated wear of roads. Australia doesn't have harsh, freezing winters with lots of freeze/thaw cycles creating potholes and expanding crack lines in your roads.
It's a lot more expensive to maintain "good" roads in climates that have wide temperature cycles throughout their seasons.
Having lived in the midwest and the south, frost heave has a _major_ impact! Seems like the cycle is 12 years or so on road repavement, but that's anecdotal.
Also note there are a _lot_ of grading options available, some as simple as gravel and tar.
There is a similar effect for bitumen roads - cities choose a grade of bitumen for the range of temps that they are going experience - you're stuck between it all getting too sticky and cracking in the cold - too big a range and they make concrete roads.
Global warming leaves some cities (like mine) with an enormous inventory of roads that are failing when temps reach the (new) top end
Year round fair weather means that roads last longer without maintenance and perform better. If there were frost heaves and common storms to worry about then road maintenance would be a bigger issue, but as it is the condition of the roads matters less and so it gets less attention. The statistics are also skewed by extreme outliers like Oakland which have an unusually large number of unusually broad streets which naturally leads to an unusually large maintenance problem. Any rational person could see that, but road maintenance is not something most Americans relate to rationally.
While I may disagree with GP about the exact method of wear, regional differences are mostly due to construction not weather or wear. Roads ~50km west of us look almost new, while ours usually develop potholes or at minimum cracks, within a year. It's a different country, so different standards.
Maybe this is true. But honestly, we don't have that many roads in the PNW that are concrete. It was when I lived in the midwest that I noticed them everywhere. I really don't care for them. In the PNW we have relatively few, but the weather here is milder than the midwest. Not sure what that says about the freeze-thaw hypothesis.
Minnesota does a significant amount of research on road surface materials. There is a section of I94 northwest of the Twin Cities that has three segments of highway, and traffic can be diverted onto one of the segments to test new road surfaces. Here's the MN DOT site with some test videos: http://www.dot.state.mn.us/mnroad/testcells/mainline.html (thrilling stuff).
Now that I'm in MA, I have heard several people say that concrete highways do not last through the winter, despite the large number of concrete-type highways in good condition in MN. Maybe this is the result of careful local road surface research? Roads are certainly better in MN than they are in MA, even though MN has colder and snowier winters. That could just be anti-highway spending sentiment from the big dig though...
One thing to keep in mind about the white pavement - it will take longer for snow and ice to melt off of them, which means more equipment/salt/chemicals to clear them. Granted, in warmer climates it probably isn't as much of a concern, but after the mess we've had in Atlanta for the last week it is still a factor.
But we don't really have potholes in CA, at least not the quantity and quality that I experienced living in PA. It's a minefield there right now, so I would imagine freezing is part of the problem, or at least exacerbates it.
In regards to sidewalks, is that true? Serious question. I've been to several European countries, but never gave a second though to sidewalks, which leads me to believe they weren't noticeably better or worse. With all the older city centers, I would imagine there are some pretty bumpy and uneven road and sidewalk surfaces?
Not sure why it all has to be paved, using tiles or bricks works fine here.
We do have some problems with ZOAB-based paved roads if the freeze/thaw cycles are too high, but any big problems are repaired in two or three days, and all roads are maintained and replaced relatively quickly anyway, so it's not a big deal.
It's strange to see the broken roads and patchwork in the US. Every time I visit I wonder why there is no majority that agrees on fixing it. Short term "it works now" is such a bad idea...
Though it's surprising that even a temperate US city would have dodgy road surfaces. In the north and northeast, it's at least understandable with our winters and the multiple freeze/thaw cycles we usually see before spring.
reply