I bought a brand new car - 16 miles on the odometer - on Wednesday evening. Thursday evening, I got word that my aunt (also my godmother, also someone who did her best to help me while I was a problem teenager) is about to die.
Boom, in the car, and gone.
I lie; I did a load of laundry first, and threw some mildly damp jeans into the suitcase. Then I was gone.
Having just written a huge check, I’ve little or no interest in spilling money on the Thruway. Why then, New York, do you not work on any other highways in the state?
Route 17 is supposed to be Interstate quality now. I suppose it is, if one considers Interstate quality to be bumpity-bumpity-bumpity-bumpity-bumpity-bumpity-bumpity-WHAM-motherfucker-Goddammit-that’s a brand-new tire-bumpity-bumpity-bumpity-WHAM-WHAM-FUCK YOU NEW YORK for crying out loud-that’s a brand-new suspension too!-bumpity-bumpity-bumpity-bumpity-bumpity-bumpity-WHAM-WHAM-WHAM-WHAM
I think you’ve actually hit on a really good solution for fixing our roads during this budget crisis, Frank. If somebody can sell Shelly Silver on the idea it could actually happen.
It was very much what I-80 used to be. The last time I went east to Pittsfield, Mass., I picked up 80 from the Ohio Turnpike through Penn. until I cut up to the Thruway from Scranton (?), and it was fine. Should have done that again.
Chicago’s been a bitch too, both this year and last. They were particularly brutal these past two winters, especially last winter with its endless freeze-thaw-freeze cycles. With minimal exaggeration, I’ve been to war ravaged countries with better roads than this. I swear, our streets look like the aftermath of a NATO bombing.
Don’t put the roadworkers in the holes. They actually do something useful. Put the politicians in the holes. It’ll be the first time they’ve ever been useful in their lives.
I would like to nominate Dan Onorato as someone who should be stuffed into a pothole. I think it would be especially appropriate to stuff him into one of the potholes the bus hits on my way to work.
Michigan is a mess. The economy sucks and there is no money for road repair. The winter was very bad and the roads are cracking apart. I know 2 people who have had to replace tires. My wife dented a rim. The fun has just begun.
In my (SW) corner of Michigan the roads are great. I’ve heard they’re bad in the UP, and they didn’t look so good near Detroit.
That said try driving in Indiana sometime, where the only thing more nerve wrecking then roads is the drivers (motto:“passing three cars while playing chicken with an oncoming semi, in a school zone, is for wusses. You should see what I did on the way to work”). They teach you what bad road conditions really are, or PA, who has potholes so deep search parties have entered looking for lost motorists and never returned.
One town had gravel side roads. That’s right the actual city never bothered to properly pave some of their roads.
What do these ultra heavy trucks haul? Since they’d be limited to Michigan seems like they’re hauling some useful stuff for state. Does the economic gains outweigh the trucks?
I hope that don’t sound snarky. I’m really curious, driving in other parts of the country have given me new found respect for the state, and the way it does things.
There are several ways one might answer the OP.
The most cynical is to look at things from an Albany-centric POV: If you’re silly enough to drive on 17, you deserve what you get. Hell, most of those people on the border buy gas in PA, anyways, so they don’t deserve state funding being spent on them.
A little less cynical is to point out that a lot of highways in NY during the 80s and 90s were made of consecutive of slabs of concrete, vice being asphalt. This has the inevitable effect of regular bumps as vehicles pass from one slab to the next. And as the fill below the slab settles, each slab becomes less well congruent with the next. But when it’s time to patch, instead of replacing the slabs, which would often require pulling up the whole roadbed, and repaving, the state only authorizes using asphalt fill. So the slabs keep getting worse and worse.
The answer I think that is most honest is to suggest that the Rt 17 corridor, esp. west of Corning, is a very low population area, for NYS, and so transit funding is more expensive on a per capita basis. And so, harder to justify.
In case anyone is wondering, add my vote to those suggesting that Sheldon Silver would be useful for the first time if he were used for road fill.
