# Why aren't there more durable roads? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 30, 2015, 1:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-there-more-durable-roads/736170 "2015-10-30T13:12:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2015, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-there-more-durable-roads/736170/21 "2015-10-30T16:54:15Z")
The roads on Guam are insane. When I used to live there the roads became treacherous, like black ice, every time it rained. And rain is not rare there (the rainy season is half the year). > **[Transportation in Guam](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_in_Guam)** > > The United States territory of Guam has no railways or freeways, nor does it have a merchant marine. The largest port is Apra Harbor, which serves almost all commercial traffic including cruise, cargo and fishing vessels. There are smaller harbors located on the island (most notably one in Hagatna and one in Agat) which serve recreational boaters. Roads are primarily paved by a coral/oil mixture that, when it gets wet, tends to have oil float to the surface, making the roads dangerous. This Hi... The problem is that they mix oil and coral to make the roads. Why coral? It’s because the island is on a coral reef and it’s everywhere, so it’s extremely cheap to use. So yes, cost is going to be the #1 factor when people are paving roads, and quality is going to take a back seat, because you have to pave a lot of roads no matter where you are, the cost comes from taxes, and people hate to pay taxes. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2015, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-there-more-durable-roads/736170/22 "2015-10-30T17:03:37Z")
We really don’t need roads to last a long time because flying cars are always just around the corner. ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2015, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-there-more-durable-roads/736170/23 "2015-10-30T17:13:07Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > We really don’t need roads to last a long time because flying cars are always just around the corner. Flying cars require runways, which as mentioned above, are even more expensive to build and maintain. So now you know why we don’t have flying cars yet. ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2015, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-there-more-durable-roads/736170/24 "2015-10-30T17:30:49Z")
my wife and I were having this conversation today. We’ve had a week in Italy and today we were in the [Ostia Antica](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostia_Antica), the old Roman port (a wonderful place and nicely off the tourist trail). The thing that struck us was the 2000 year-old roads still being in pretty good nick. You could certainly drive cars down it even though it’d be noisy and a little bumpy. As as already been said up thread, the limiting factor is money. The Romans had an exacting standard for roads. They knew the importance of quality construction and stuck to it. The surface slabs we saw today were either basalt or granite and obviously chosen for their durability. I should imagine that to replicate such road construction today would be ruinously expensive to our modern thinking. ---
**Author:** ![drew870mitchell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drew870mitchell/32/3946_2.png) [@drew870mitchell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drew870mitchell)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2015, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-there-more-durable-roads/736170/25 "2015-10-30T17:52:36Z")
Having established that asphalt is cheaper, here are some cases other than airport runways where concrete’s expense is usually worth it: - Roads with heavy truck or bus traffic, especially where the traffic will be braking and stopping (this action will shift around the asphalt under your tires if your vehicle is heavy enough - this is why some roads have one-off concrete sections called bus pads for bus stops on fixed routes) - Gas stations (spilled gasoline will dissolve asphalt) ---
**Author:** ![Dinsdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2015, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-there-more-durable-roads/736170/26 "2015-10-30T19:37:39Z")
It seems I’ve heard at times that there is also an element of “planned obsolescence” - building roads that will need regular rebuilding, as a sop to - I don’t know exactly who - paving associations? Jimmy Hoffa? I’m somewhat dubious of such claims, but wondered if any of you had any reasons to accept/reject that factor. Sure, there would always be infrastructure to be rebuilt. But cheap, shortsighted governments will tend to ignore anything that is not in-your-face and that can be ignored, until you get a catastrophic bridge failure or such. Meanwhile, you can count on constituents bitching about potholes they drive over every day. ISTR hearing that pothole repair was an insanely huge percentage of constituent services here in Chicago… ---
**Author:** ![watchwolf49](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9c0ed/32.png) [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2015, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-there-more-durable-roads/736170/27 "2015-10-30T19:38:41Z")
… gravel … ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2015, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-there-more-durable-roads/736170/28 "2015-10-30T20:05:50Z")
Some of the repaving is due to politics of a different sort. Sometimes you have corrupt local politics where someone who coincidentally gave a lot of money to a particular campaign suddenly gets some lucrative repaving contracts after said official gets elected. And then you’ve got cases like I-70 on the western end of PA that was constantly under construction back in the 80’s. After it was all completed and looked all nice and pretty, they repaved it a few years later even though there was still a lot of life left in the road, just because PA needed to spend all of its federal highway funding so that they didn’t lose it the next year. If they are repaving every year, I would suspect something of this nature rather than the use of cheap materials just to make a smaller dent in the yearly budget. Even the cheap stuff should last for several years. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2015, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-there-more-durable-roads/736170/29 "2015-10-30T22:47:40Z")
> [@drew870mitchell](#): > > Having established that asphalt is cheaper, here are some cases other than airport runways where concrete’s expense is usually worth it: > > - Roads with heavy truck or bus traffic, especially where the traffic will be braking and stopping (this action will shift around the asphalt under your tires if your vehicle is heavy enough - this is why some roads have one-off concrete sections called bus pads for bus stops on fixed routes) > > - Gas stations (spilled gasoline will dissolve asphalt) airport runways wouldn’t begin to support the weight of a large plane. And the cement used is of a different mixture. You can’t have large rocks in the mix (at least on the surface) because they break loose and are pulled into engines. There are certainly better mixes of asphalt that could be used and are used in different countries. what would be interesting is a newer version of the macadam process that uses binder in the final layer. As it is the stuff is pretty sturdy and easy to fix. They make far better park trails then blacktop. ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2015, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-there-more-durable-roads/736170/30 "2015-10-30T23:11:14Z")
> [@robert\_columbia](#): > > "Almost hell now, Pennsylvania, > Blue ridge mountains, Conestoga river, > Roads are crap there, worse than New Jersey, > Last paved '73, bumps for you and me, > > Bumpy roads, take me home, > To the place I belong, > Pennsylvania, land of potholes, > Take me home, bumpy roads." Quoted for truth. You can almost always tell when you’ve crossed the state border, either direction. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2015, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-there-more-durable-roads/736170/31 "2015-10-30T23:52:19Z")
Chicago has a cold winter climate, but manages with concrete roads. I imagine graft and kickbacks explain most of the problems with road paving. ---
**Author:** ![Bijou\_Drains](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bijou_drains/32/2814_2.png) [@Bijou\_Drains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bijou_Drains)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2015, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-there-more-durable-roads/736170/32 "2015-10-31T01:05:15Z")
I read somewhere that German autobahns are built with much thicker concrete than US interstates. ---
**Author:** ![Mudshark](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f04885/32.png) [@Mudshark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mudshark)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2015, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-there-more-durable-roads/736170/33 "2015-10-31T04:22:04Z")
> [@Sailboat](#): > > To touch on something others have not (so far): when I learmned to drive, the Virginia driver’s manual claimed asphalt offers better performance in bad weather. > > Offhand Googling does not seem to support that, so I don’t have a cite, but they told us asphalt has a better coefficient of friction than concrete when both are wet. I can’t find anything to support this either, but I’ve found this to be true in my driving experience. I always assumed it was because asphalt held up better to the freeze/thaw cycle in Ohio. ---
**Author:** ![Dag\_Otto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/439d5e/32.png) [@Dag\_Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dag_Otto)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2015, 5:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-there-more-durable-roads/736170/34 "2015-10-31T05:26:17Z")
[Probably more than you care to know about pavement.](http://www.pavementinteractive.org/category/pavement/pavement-types/) One advantage to asphalt pavement is that you can usually mill only about the top few inches off of the pavement and repave the road with the final friction course for rehabilitating the road. No need to rebuild the entire road if the base course, drainage, etc. is still in good condition. ---
**Author:** ![Terry\_Kennedy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c57346/32.png) [@Terry\_Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terry_Kennedy)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2015, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-there-more-durable-roads/736170/35 "2015-10-31T19:15:47Z")
> [@bump](#): > > Another thing to remember is that when the concrete road does manage to degrade to the point of needing to be re-done, it’s often easiest and cheapest to resurface that road with asphalt over the concrete, as a old, beat up concrete surface is still probably better than prepared soil as far as substrates for asphalt are concerned. Jackhammering up old concrete and re-pouring it is probably the most expensive option available. The problem with simply putting asphalt over concrete is that the concrete sections are not always stable. That “whump-whump-whump” noise you hear on some roads is because the ends of the sections are not level with each other. If you just pave over that, you get cracks in the asphalt at those places, water gets in and freezes, and then the asphalt starts breaking off. A process called [dowel bar retrofit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowel_bar_retrofit) is used to fix the position of the slabs relative to each other. Combined with grinding of the road surface to even things out, it can greatly improve the lifespan of the road and outlasts asphalt resurfacing of a non-retrofitted road. ---
**Author:** ![davida03801](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b5e925/32.png) [@davida03801](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davida03801)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2015, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-there-more-durable-roads/736170/36 "2015-10-31T19:46:20Z")
Big part is politics. Politician has the choice to build 20 miles of middling constructed road that will last 20 years or 10 miles of well constructed road that will last 100 they will choose the 20 miles of middling road every time. ---
**Author:** ![race\_to\_the\_bottom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c4cdca/32.png) [@race\_to\_the\_bottom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/race_to_the_bottom)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2015, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-there-more-durable-roads/736170/37 "2015-10-31T22:00:00Z")
> [@Omar\_Little](#): > > The answer is because government authorities look at things on a short term budgetary basis. Economically you can build a road or highway that will last for a long period of time with minimal maintenance, as such the net present value of the costs of building this road over a 20 year period will be significantly less than the alternative of paying less upfront for an inferior road, but which will require substantially more maintenance and resurfacing costs over that same 20 years. > > Many elected officials that are responsible for approving such expenditures are more concerned about the current budget than the 20 year NPV of a project because it won’t help them to get re-elected when they paid 3 times as much upfront costs for a road project, even though it will cost less over the long term. Also, many government authorities require departments to accept the low bid on projects like road building. > > As a result, this is why much of our countries infrastructure is shit. Yet ANOTHER example of why the system sucks big time. Sort of like a homeowner “saving money” by installing 15 year asphalt shingles. ---
**Author:** ![VOW](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/vow/32/3043_2.png) [@VOW](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VOW)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2015, 6:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-there-more-durable-roads/736170/38 "2015-11-01T06:04:00Z")
State budgets are getting major hits every single year. People scream to cut “excess State spending,” but by Golly, don’t touch their projects! I retired after 20 years at CalTrans (State of California Department of Transportation) and I saw a LOT of the nonsense to “save money.” What used to be done “in house” is contracted out to allegedly save money (because lawmakers can’t abide the thought of paying for State retirement!). Contracted jobs took longer, kept getting sent back to the contractor to fix, and then resulted in a much, much lower quality end product. Personnel cuts were brutal, and many services were consolidated and moved to Sacramento. Is it any wonder your call to any State agency is sent immediately to voice mail hell, to be answered sometime next millennium? What does this mean for drivers? Fewer improvements, fewer new roads, less maintenance, and more congestion. The highways and freeways you are driving on today were built on the needs projected 30 years ago. The crystal ball has gotten pretty cracked and foggy over the years, while the number of licensed drivers and registered vehicles have increased exponentially. One of the first places the highway agencies cut spending is on routine maintenance. For the first five or ten years following this “cost saving measure,” it’s not too bad. When the big stuff starts falling apart, it’s too late for the small repairs that should have been done on an annual basis. Whether it’s highways, bridges, electrical grids, water mains, whatever–throughout the United States this infrastructure is decaying, because it has not been adequately maintained. You would be horrified to know how many major bridges are doomed to fail very soon. Ah, but the taxpayers are tired of footing the bill! While you are tangled up in traffic, or waiting to have your shocks and tires replaced, or you’re fed up with bouncing on highways that feel like driving over railroad tracks, ask yourself if you voted for that last transportation measure. When you see the tables set up in front of the supermarket with the petitions to “Tell the State Legislators to Lower our Taxes,” just remember you get what you pay for! ~VOW ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2015, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-there-more-durable-roads/736170/39 "2015-11-02T01:37:00Z")
You can structure your contract bidding by insisting on, say, a 20 year guarantee. Trouble is that when the piper calls in the guarantee, the construction company is usually out of business (and often reconstitued as a “new” company with no legal connection to the old one). I have to ask my son about this. He is director of traffic for a small city, a job he started only last spring. He says a big difference with private enterprise is that it is hard to fire an incompetents, which means that incompetents tend to accumulate. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-arent-there-more-durable-roads/736170.md?page=1)