The Real Reason U.S.Highways Are Always Under Construction - Cheddar Explains

Wherever you drive, highway construction seems unavoidable, but U.S. roads have needed so much repair and maintenance, you start to wonder if we’re doing something wrong. Now that a landmark infrastructure bill promises to transform the country’s roads, the important decision is where to begin.

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U.S. Public Interest Research Group

Grist

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[lordofduct]

This video makes a heavy implication the omission that:
1) The US doesn't generally use concrete for highways (despite showing pics of Houston, who uses concrete for their roads)
2) That concrete is significantly better than asphalt due to some pros (while leaving out its cons).

The further south you go the more concrete highways you'll find. Houston for example, as well as Florida where I spent 25+ years of my life. These are the quote "young highways", most of the construction that is going on there is because of the ever growing population and expansion that is being done. There's actually not that much "maintenance", because they use concrete for those benefits!

But here's the thing... they CAN use concrete easily.

Aside from cost, some problems concrete have is:

1) They crack more easily than asphalt. Note how you talk about if there is cracking they replace a much larger section? The reason is... it's concrete. You have to replace that large region if it cracks. When the concrete cracks the damage is likely to have reduced the integrity of much of the concrete around it. Odds are high that nearby concrete is cracked or will crack soon. So you must replace all of it.

2) Concrete does not play well with salt. You must seal the concrete if lots of salt will be touching it, and the sealer needs to be replaced frequently. Furthermore things like plowing and the sort can wear out this sealing layer requiring more frequent resealing.

...

I think you might be seeing where I'm going here... the northeast... is cold. There is a lot of snow, necessity to plow, and a lot of salting of the road to keep it from icing in the winter.

Concrete does not do well in this setting.

...

But but Germany!

Germany is warmer than New York and New England. The whole western and northern (basically near the water) the climate is more like say the UK. Sure it gets a winter... but's a very mild winter. And you can see if you say go on google maps and look at their highways (autobahn) areound say Dusseldorf (a region of Germany where there is much more highways primarily because the region, North Rhine-Westphalia, is the most populated region of Germany).

Dusseldorf has an average temperature in its coldest month of about 0.5->6 Celsius, so just above freezing, while sometimes dipping below it. Cold, but compared to say New York where the average temp is below freezing (NYC average a low of -2.7C, places like Albany average low is -10C), it's warmer.

But now lets travel to the southeast, up into more hilly inland regions of Germany, where it's much colder climate wise versus the lowlands.

Let's go to Nuremberg. Where the average low in January is -2.3C, a bit more like NYC.

What's that I see when I drop into street view on say highway 9, or highway 6... is that.... ASPHALT!???

I fucking wonder

[luxuryhub]

The thing is that it’s not just removing highways, that’s relatively easy. You’ll need densification (the kind that was rejected by Rochester), new mixed use developments, and the provision of adequate mass public transit to replace that demand for transportation. It’s so much more than taking down concrete

[UniquelyCritical]

We overbuilt the number of roads due to the "suburban dream" of seas of single family homes. Now it's too expensive to maintain. It's the result of lobbying and poor planning. This is what happens when profits take precedent over people.

[rolandgonzales]

Here in Houston they spent years rebuilding freeways and large portions go underwater during floods so now they're going to rebuild them again. Anyone living in the city could have told them that these parts next to flood prone areas weren't going to be above water during floods. At the time they were building them I assumed they had a plan to keep that from happening but apparently they didn't. I went to a meeting on a development plan for a large residential area they are building next to downtown and when I asked if it would be above Hurricane Harvey level flood waters, none of the planners had an answer to that question. In fact I don't think they even considered it before I asked. A large residential building next to downtown had it's foundation damaged from Hurricane Harvey and is being evacuated with no date for return of tenants. Hurricane Harvey has to be the standard to which everything in Houston has to be built going forward.

[BariumBlue]

Most roads don't produce enough taxable value/wealth to pay for themselves.
Detroit was one of the first cities to build large and long roadways - the cost of maintaining those and the associated services was one piece that lead to it's bankruptcy.

[AaronSmith-kryf]

The real failure of the interstate system IMO was routing thru traffic into cities. Nashville is a perfect example of this, I-65, I-40, and I-24 all connect in downtown. There is no damn good way to avoid the downtown lane crunch/stop/go traffic clusterfuck if you just want to go straight thru on one of those interstates. Yes we have I-840, but its 20 miles longer to get around Nashville vs going straight thru downtown if you are driving I-40 straight thru. Unless you time things wrong to rush hour, its 30 minutes quicker or so just to go thru downtown if you are a truck driver. Not to mention that almost 3 gallons of fuel you save when you do the shorter route thru downtown. Cincinnati has a similar problem with their outer belt, no traffic its like 30 minutes quicker to go thru downtown, so that's what most of the lemmings do, then traffic backs up thru downtown and southern Kentucky because of that god forsaken stupid double decker 3 lane bridge over the Ohio River.

Really back in the 1950's the interstate system should have built alternate routes around downtown thru the cornfields that were 10-15 miles out, bypass that thru traffic from downtown. .

[walterh]

Infrastructure is at the heart of a country, investing in a good network is crucial. As is providing alternatives to cars, such as trains/trams/metros/busses.

[LakesideGazer]

The farther north of the Mason-Dixon Line you go, the more roads suffer. In my state, temps range from -30°F (-34°C) in the winter to over 100°F (38°C) in the summer. The actual physical laws of thermal expansion come into play here. Concrete roads can literally explode in the summer under the expansion stresses. Add in water infiltration and repeated melt/thaw cycles of winter and our roads are brutalized. Much of Europe doesn't experience these kinds of extremes.

[nomaderic]

I'm a delivery driver and I travel city to city doing so. I come across construction and poor roads every single day. One of the number one problems I realize is alot of places have grown so much in a short amount of time but the roads are meant to handle half of that population. It shows alot in the suburbs, especially in texas and other southern cities. Traffic in the suburbs of cities I can predict every day. With the way subdivions and suburbs are made every single person that lives there is pretty much going to use the same route to go to and from work. As a delivery driver I've mastered which roads to avoid and at what times. It doesnt matter what city in America I go to, it's all the same. The main point I'm getting at is its much much more than just an infrastructure problem. We have to change the way our cities are built and laid out, Americans also have to come to terms that if they want to live in the city or close to it that they will need to give up land and space to do so.

[commoncentstx]

The issue with switching to concrete entirely is concrete, and the materials used to make concrete, are very finite, and certain things like sand are scarce. Sand for concrete is currently in very short supply across the US, and we're using more and more of it every day. Meanwhile, asphalt can be milled up, and then laid back down on the same road, or elsewhere, repeatedly. That process very commonly done all over the US,

People hate the potholes that come with asphalt roads, but (Americans at least) hate tax increases more. If all our roads were redone in concrete, costs would skyrocket. In addition, concrete doesn't last forever either, and when it's time to resurface a concrete road, it has to be demolished piece by piece, and an insane number of dump trucks are needed to haul it away. Old concrete is either thrown in a landfill, or crushed down to make crushed concrete and other materials used underneath roads.

I believe the best solution lies somewhere in the middle. Providing better drainage infrastructure, combined with embedment for roads and highways, will allow asphalt roads to last much longer. New asphalt highways always have a thick layer of concrete under the asphalt, so the concrete provides support, while the asphalt can still be resurfaced as needed.

[BucketlistBeatty]

the real failure is that we don't invest in other modes of transportation. if people had options they wouldn't drive as much and then you wouldn't have to repair the roads as much.

[lostwizard]

Asphalt also holds up better when you have massive freeze/thaw cycles. But you still need a proper road bed under it, and you have to make the asphalt thick enough. Speaking from experiences, you *really* don't want to drive on a concrete road surface that's been beat to hell by heavy traffic combined with multiple freeze/thaw cycles *per year*.

[edwardmiessner]

We need more intercity railways, light rail and streetcars for smaller cities, light metro for midsized cities, and proper metrorail and regional rail for the big cities

[iemjay]

The goal should be to reduce traffic and the need for people drive at all or less often, not adding room for more traffic and increasing the necessity leading people to need to drive.

[Conantas]

Its crazy how we let politics and old, outdated companies (ie. Oil companies) keep us from having actual useful infastructure.

[Londronable]

The Bulgarian and Polish roads you showed were most likely build with EU money.

It's one of the big things the EU invests in. More transport means more business means more growth.

[Thomas-pqys]

I grew up in East Stroudsburg. I'm 72 now. Rt 80 was built when I was a kid, intersecting Rt 33, as I was becoming an adult.

As a young man, these roads were literal race tracks. Guys with fast cars would see how fast they could go on these concrete strips, devoid of traffic.

These road have gotten paved over so many times, I cannot count. Traffic is insanely busy, even at night.

As Bob Dylan wrote, "Time's, they are a-changing."

[Yin_Strider]

There has been a self repairing material for roads in existence for about a decade now. Also, the government LOVES repairing roads because the contracts for the work goes to their buddies and they get a cut. So they definitely want the roads to decay so they can repair to make $ out of those contracts.

[KG_BM]

oh i thought it was because construction companies intentionally delay completion of the projects so they can keep getting paid by the city without finishing the work. good way to launder money legally

[rabbit]

I worked at an airport for years as the ground crew and saw them replace a runway, 2-3 yards thick and took them only a few weeks to do. Priorities.