Why Your Highway Has Potholes

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

Originally Posted by WriConsult

As for mass transit, the whole point is to give people an option OTHER than driving. Since driving uses an incredible amount of resources it seems reasonable to me to tax it and use some of the proceeds to provide an alternative. And the private sector ain't gonna do it. Regardless of how one might feel about transit expenditures to date, wouldn't it be monumentally foolish to slash it now that we're finally on the cusp of genuinely expensive gas, and lots of people really need an alternative?

As Chris notes, it's very often not the congestion or the gas that moves people onto public transportation: it's the cost of parking. That's one of the two fundamentals that highway-heads miss. The other one is that the more volume you allow, the more volume you get, because commercial activity naturally congregates. Given that cars need parking space and public transportation dramatically reduces the need for parking, which do you think allows for a higher transportation volume?

And oh:

Originally Posted by Same old, same old

In cities like Los Angeles, commuters waste the equivalent of two extra weeks every year in traffic jams.

Originally Posted by Same old, same old

Transit is the biggest drain.

Do they really not see the irony in using a heavily-congested, sprawling, car-dependent city as an argument for more highways and less public transportation?

Maybe this was a journalist subverting the ownership's demand for an article supporting their political slate.

[08EscapeHybrid]

As with any gov't contract, the work is performed by the lowest bidder. I remember reading an article in the local paper here a couple years ago that described a stretch of highway that was repaved, and was supposed to last 10 years. 3 years after completion, the stretch of road was so bad it was put out for bid to be redone, and the gov't geniuses awarded the work TO THE SAME COMPANY AGAIN!

[08EscapeHybrid]

Originally Posted by WriConsult

As for mass transit, the whole point is to give people an option OTHER than driving. Since driving uses an incredible amount of resources it seems reasonable to me to tax it and use some of the proceeds to provide an alternative. And the private sector ain't gonna do it. Regardless of how one might feel about transit expenditures to date, wouldn't it be monumentally foolish to slash it now that we're finally on the cusp of genuinely expensive gas, and lots of people really need an alternative?

Corruption is often rampant in public transit. Here in the DC area, its scandalous how the affirmative action, and complacency have created an environment where the public safety is at risk, and budgets get misspent.

http://p.washingtontimes.com/news/20...pete/?page=all

a lack of diversity at one of the region’s largest employers that has led to an acknowledgment of failure in affirmative-action documents and spawned a series of lawsuits.

interviews with dozens of current and former Metro workers indicated, is a proxy to a clubby culture of favoritism in which merit has little to do with promotions, and accountability, such as noting safety violations, is a career death knell. In typical examples, court and Metro records show, a black man who spent eight years in prison for dealing PCP was promoted to a high-level management position soon after his release, and whites in the same positions as blacks with far less seniority are inexplicably paid less.

an environment in which hardworking employees are actively excluded and those who rise are those willing to do the bare minimum — never causing a stir by flagging rampant safety violations, reporting malfeasance or proposing improvements.

It is a culture in which a white male engineer near completion of a Ph.D. was passed over for a management position in favor of a black man who was barely literate, multiple staffers said.

[ALS]

Corruption is often rampant in public transit.

Boy how true that is with Pittsburgh's mass transit the Port Authority Transit. When it was formed in 1970 there was an addendum put in their charter that they didn't have to open up their books to any Government agency. Between the Fed, state, and county we're subsidizing it by at least $7 per passenger trip and they are still losing tens of millions each year.

They are cutting personnel and routes every year and the debts keep piling up and they keep whining for more and more money from the state. Problem is they refuse to open the books up to let anyone know where all the money went or is going. The public is now on to their game and the scare tactics are no longer working.

Now they have people starting to seriously discuss the privatization of the mass transit system. It is so broken there is really no way to fix it with out firing everyone and starting all over from scratch.

[WriConsult]

I guess I haven't lived in any of these places with stereotypically lousy, corrupt public transit. I've lived in Minneapolis (OK not great, but not horrible there), Seattle and Portland, and the systems work fine. Sure, our system is raising fares and cutting away at the edges of service right now, thanks to high fuel costs and reduced revenue (our system is funded by a payroll tax), but it's not like the system is fundamentally broken. Good grief, are things really that bad everywhere else?

Especially in the latter two cities, all have a public that generally supports the idea of public transit, and all have at least decent service, and a reasonable level of ridership.

Is this really just a case of people getting the government they deserve? Live in a place where people generally support the government and its functions, and you get decent government that mostly does what it's supposed to ... live in a place where you don't, and you get lousy government? Is that what it boils down to? There sure does seem to be a correlation sometimes.

[WriConsult]

Originally Posted by ItsNotAboutTheMoney

Do they really not see the irony in using a heavily-congested, sprawling, car-dependent city as an argument for more highways and less public transportation?

No, I'm guessing they really don't.

[Vooch]

Driving in the US is massively subsidized. If drivers paid fully for driving they pay about $12 a gallon for gas.

If we eliminated subsidies for driving, commuter rail would flourish

[herm]

The competition, and a superior solution, is privately owned Jitneys.. Miami tried that with great success but they quickly clamped down on it with excess regulation. It did make the Miami look like a third world South American city

[Earthling]

People in the picture:

I don't think they are filling a pothole. It looks like they are doing some utility work. They aren't DOT because they don't have their ANSI Class II hi-viz vests and they aren't wearing hardhats.

Potholes can form due to materials problems. New York, for example, ignored stripping in asphalt cement concrete for years. This is where high-silica aggregates like sandstones have a known issue in that they don't bond well with asphalt cement. The aggregates have a much higher affinity to water than to asphalt cement so over time water displaces asphalt and the blacktop weakens and disintegrates. Potholes are a visible result.

Other states have been far more proactive in using hydrated lime, liquid anti-strip agents, and polymer-modified asphalts to minimize stripping and have their blacktop last much longer.

Harry