Time Out!

[samsara15]

Could we interrupt the partisan bickering temporarily to discuss why it is that road work is so slow, badly done, and inefficient? Roads messed up and lanes blocked for months, sometimes, years, on end.

I'm sure some of the blame lies with government, some with road contractors, who are private business (Free Enterprise), some with the process of bidding and letting contracts in itself, but I'm not real strong on the details of how such a mess gets to be made. Not just once, but over and over again, and neither political party in any state seems to be able to solve it. Why is this seemingly low-tech problem so impossible to solve?

 

[Pandora]

We have road problems here too, just recently one main road was paved and when it looked like they put one coat on it they started painting the lanes, its uneven, looks terrible and wont last. In 3 years the will be forced to do it again since it was not done right.

I dont know about in your state but in Oregon we have prevailing wage (spelling) what it means is if you work on roads, schools or court houses you get more than double what you would get doing the exact same job for a private person or business.

In this case on our main road the work was done mostly by people who did not speak english, I only know that because they ate lunch at the same place I did and needed a translator.

I think they can jack us on roads because there is no bottom line or bottom dollar and no one really has to answer for a bad or slow job.

oops, did I just bring politics into it

 

[ASPCA4EVER]

Could we interrupt the partisan bickering temporarily to discuss why it is that road work is so slow, badly done, and inefficient? Roads messed up and lanes blocked for months, sometimes, years, on end.

I'm sure some of the blame lies with government, some with road contractors, who are private business (Free Enterprise), some with the process of bidding and letting contracts in itself, but I'm not real strong on the details of how such a mess gets to be made. Not just once, but over and over again, and neither political party in any state seems to be able to solve it. Why is this seemingly low-tech problem so impossible to solve?

In my state...the bid is let and the contracts are signed and then the original companies that have been awarded the bid has bitten off more then they can chew {work/schedule/equipment/manpower problems} so they contact to another subcontractor who could basically give-a-**** and hire unqualified workers cheep. How do I know this: they just pulled this **** on a overlay project this past year and now the company filed bankruptcy so that they wouldn't have to come back and redo what they had screwed up.

Add to that: unqualified, fully funded with our tax dollars lousy job...the way in-which semi-trailers are skirting around the highways that they know have the permanent 'scales' and then our non-interstate highways are taking the abuse of the overloaded heavy semi-trailers that are pulling those larger then regulation allows up & down our highways...and then there are the residential trash haulers who will/can pack their trucks heavier then they are supposed to and you'll notice that every place along the highways/side streets/off main thorough fairs, every place that they do a residential pick-up is always, ALWAYS broken up and heavily rutted from their tire tracks and speeding up and slamming to a stop brakes the overlay down and then wears & eats into the underlayment and the highways and streets suffer for that abuse too

 

[Pidgey]

I've got a friend who makes a product for road surfacing. He's said some interesting things about how they make roads and what a crappy job they often do. Concrete's something like 20% more on the initial cost and will last three times as long. Something like that, anyhow. People don't often like the feel of concrete roads, though. Another big factor is what the winter weather is like in the area of question. Some places have some pretty up-and-down temperatures complete with plenty of precipitation--that's pretty hard on a road.

 

[samsara15]

In NC, they took so long working on Highway 40 between Greensboro and Winston-Salem, and messed up the roads so badly, that they finally dumped the contractor and got a new contractor, but that is the only case I recall in which they ever did so. The new contractor did much better, and did eventually actually fix the road. My path seldom takes me down that route anymore, though. I know very little about it.

 

[chestnut]

It seems the roads up north, and those states that have snow, have more road problems and need more maintenance due to the snow.

I remember being in Syracuse, NY and it was pretty bad. Of course it snows there probaly 6 or 7 mos out of the year.

Here in FL the roads seem pretty good. But I guess we get a lot of help with the tourism taxes.

Another thing, we have too many toll roads.. but those roads are kept up pretty nice.

 

[ASPCA4EVER]

I've got a friend who makes a product for road surfacing. He's said some interesting things about how they make roads and what a crappy job they often do. Concrete's something like 20% more on the initial cost and will last three times as long. Something like that, anyhow. People don't often like the feel of concrete roads, though. Another big factor is what the winter weather is like in the area of question. Some places have some pretty up-and-down temperatures complete with plenty of precipitation--that's pretty hard on a road.

You made an excellent POINT; the weather extremes plays a huge part in how fast the sub-layer {underlayment Will or will not breakdown} and here in Kansas we have the extreme rain monsoon in early spring and again in late fall...extreme temperature swings from 110º {high humidity in summer} to -30º below {not counting the wind chill index in winter months} with long periods of ice build up. So the really good concrete highways are susceptible to those variances and suffer without the other criteria of: overloaded truck traffic, JAKE-BREAK STOPS, poor quality job performance, poor quality resurfacing...lots & lots of chip & seal highways around here.

 

[dahermit]

I've got a friend who makes a product for road surfacing. He's said some interesting things about how they make roads and what a crappy job they often do. Concrete's something like 20% more on the initial cost and will last three times as long. Something like that, anyhow. People don't often like the feel of concrete roads, though. Another big factor is what the winter weather is like in the area of question. Some places have some pretty up-and-down temperatures complete with plenty of precipitation--that's pretty hard on a road.

Concrete does not absorb as much heat, become soft in hot weather also. However, concrete is eaten up, destroyed quickly by salt. So in places like Michigan, where the roads have to be salted often during the Winter, concrete is a bad choice. Therefore, it is not the best choice in all areas.