Broke Counties Turn Failing Roads To Gravel 717
To save money, more than 20 Michigan counties have decided to turn deteriorating paved roads back to gravel. Montcalm County estimates that repaving a road costs more than $100,000 a mile. Grinding the same mile of road up and turning it into gravel costs $10,000. At least 50 miles of road have been reverted to gravel in Michigan the past three years. I can't wait until we revert back to whale oil lighting and can finally be rid of this electricity fad.
Michigan is fucked (Score:5, Interesting)
Real shame about that. Nice people and beautiful country.
Not the only cost... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Gravel roads are cheap but need more maintenanc (Score:5, Interesting)
I certainly wouldn't want to try this tactic anywhere out west though, where vast distances make driving on gravel roads much more of a chore.
In Santa Fe NM you pay extra for a gravel road (Score:5, Interesting)
In parts of santa fe, dirt (or gravel) roads increase you home value. Sort of perverse but Santa Fe is all about style and aesthetics over function. (and if you've seen it, you can see they have a point. It's very serene.) So home owners fight the city when they try to pave their roads.
Gravel Roads are great - just ask West Virginia (Score:5, Interesting)
Why is it $100K per mile in the first place? (Score:5, Interesting)
Its been well over a decade, but I recall seeing an episode of NOVA on PBS about road construction in the US and how hopelessly behind the curve we were. Their analysis was that our problems stem from corruption in the industry. That road construction companies are buddies with the various local politicians so that they are able to get contracts that don't require them to modernize. The end result being that our roads deteriorate much faster than they do in places like Europe, requiring much more frequent repair work for higher prices. Maybe things have changed in the intervening decade, but I doubt it.
Re:Gravel roads are cheap but need more maintenanc (Score:5, Interesting)
Long ago - as someone who worked in a glass shop (in accounting) - no gravel roads aren't all that great unless you like replacing glass a lot or supporting your local glass shops.
Sure - there are people who will reply they've lived down gravel roads all their life and never had glass problems, but seriously - I created ran reports and found that well over 80% of our auto-glass business came from rural residents who lived down - gravel roads - I can still remember the most replaced parts too DW-1099 (Ford F series windshield) and DW-1117 (might be wrong on this part - its been ages, but its supposed to be a Chevrolet C series pickup truck windshield) - we had literally hundreds of these parts in stock at any one time and we made sure delivery trucks always brought more and more.
Anyhow from what I could tell many of these windshields were damaged by flying debris, and stress on the vehicles themselves.
Re:financially sound (Score:2, Interesting)
> Unless they are very lightly traveled....
I think that is kinda the point. Michigan has been depopulating for decades. They are also talking about solving the vast wastelands of depoplulated cities by simply removing most of them and leaving small clusters of communities and returning most of the former cities to wilderness with a few parks sprinkled around.
It's what happens when Democrats rule an area for too long, everyone leaves. California will be dealing with these problems in just a couple more years at the current rate the productive population is fleeing.
Re:Gravel roads are cheap but need more maintenanc (Score:3, Interesting)
You obviously don't mind chipped paint and increased erosion of your undercarriage etc. It's also painfully obvious you don't ride a motorcycle....
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why is it $100K per mile in the first place? (Score:2, Interesting)
No, you're pretty much right on with this.
My local town handles the main road through town and its been going on 20 years without issues where as the road connecting to the town needs to be replaced every 10 years. Oddly enough also we paid less for our road.
Re:In Santa Fe NM you pay extra for a gravel road (Score:5, Interesting)
This is true pretty much anywhere you have a section of property with a "rural" feel that really isn't rural. It's almost like a theme neighborhood whose uniqueness is its own value.
There's been a bit of conflict over rebuilding a road in Eden Prairie, MN that the neighbors love for its rural feel but that the city bureaucrats insist needs to be torn up and rebuilt per "modern" building standards (gutters, drainage, signage, curbing, etc). The suburb is pretty much totally built out and full of shopping centers and the usual ugliness of suburbia, so its not like some country town "resisting" urbanization.
I'm kind of torn. On one hand, I hate the idea of project-oriented city bureaucrats who feel the urge to standardize every last square inch with unnecessary building projects. On the other hand, I hate "we're special" local interest groups that think their little stretch is immune from the same rules everyone else has to follow (which often amounts to "we don't want the taxes" and "it makes my property more valuable").
Re:Crazy Administration blame game accusations (Score:2, Interesting)
And another guy wrote, goomygoomy writes, "I don't understand the problem. Why would you complain about PAVED ROADS, being turned in to GRAVEL ROADS? It's just CHANGE. I thought you all VOTED for CHANGE? Well...You've got it. Michigan, the Great Liberal Basket Case, is leading the way. As goes DETROIT, so goes Obama Nation. Aren't you IDIOTS bulldozing your towns down? This is UNCHECKED LIBERALISM. This is Obama SOCIALISM."
Ha, I heard Rush Limbaugh making the same claim as goomygoomy, good to know that his logic was on-par with a forum troll's.
Dust and the EPA (Score:1, Interesting)
I wish Phoenix, AZ (Maricopa County) would follow this example. Mainly to reduce the "heat island" effect that we are currently creating.
But I know this isn't going to happen because the EPA has already stated that Phoenix (and surrounding cities) have to pave all the gravel roads to reduce the particulate matter in the air, or else we loose our federal road subsidies.
So just wait a bit for the EPA to step in for those counties and force them back to paving their roads.
Re:More dangerous (Score:3, Interesting)
The real issue here is grip, gravel provides very little grip while tarmac/cement provides a reasonable amount. While gravel might be cheaper I bet the social cost from the increase in accidents makes it more expensive over the life of the road.
I say this as a person from Somerset in the UK, Somerset a county where they seem to think running some a variety of silly social schemes which benifit dozens of people are more important than resurfacing major roads through towns (benifiting thousands). Yeovils main roads have been dug up and poorly filled in so many times they are nothing but potholes. Given the choice between that mess and gravel I'd still prefer the potholed, bumpy tarmac.
Re:Not the only cost... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Gravel roads are cheap but need more maintenanc (Score:5, Interesting)
This is why we need to go back to Eisenhower-era concrete road beds meant for B-52's to land on. I'm talking foot deep steel reinforced concrete baby. Grew up with those bad boys in my little rural town in Texas. Of course we didn't have the freeze/thaw cycles people do farther north so I could be talking out of my backside, but these things appeared well-nigh indestructible.
Concrete isn't that great (Score:2, Interesting)
As a commuter who travels almost every day on I-90 through Spokane, WA, I can attest to you that concrete does require expensive maintenance. The interstate has developed horrible grooves from wear and tear needing the surface to be shaved and overlaid with asphalt. Maybe repaving with asphalt is cheaper than shaving and resurfacing the concrete.
Re:Try keeping your distance (Score:3, Interesting)
Keep in mind that a wheel will throw the pieces of gravel back in addition to up, which totally invalidates your calculation.
Not to dispute the "only a fool breaks the three second rule" concept.
Re:Why is it $100K per mile in the first place? (Score:2, Interesting)
5280 ft * 22 ft wide = 116200 ft^2
So that's $1.00 per square foot to pave a road with an OIL based substance which has to withstand repeated use by vehicles of around 1 1/2 to 20 tons on a regular basis for YEARS.
Let's see, is oil more expensive than it used to be, I wonder...
Think about all the equipment and time that goes into paving a road and moving all of that many tons of asphalt (which is almost certainly being shipped from a long way off, especially in a rural area).
Yes, there is corruption, but do you really believe it's building the price out by 50% ? I seriously doubt it.
Maybe some civil engineer could comment.
We have too many roads to maintain, that's the problem.
Re:Gravel roads are cheap but need more maintenanc (Score:3, Interesting)
We've got some serious heavy duty concrete roads here in florida too. Just giant slabs of the stuff seperated by flexible spacers every so often. They're amazingly smooth rides, almost never seem to get potholes, and whenever FDOT decides to play musical chairs with the roads they can just pick them up and slap them back down again.
Problem is they're also apparently expensive as fuck to put down to begin with.
Re:Easy to see coming (Score:3, Interesting)
Agreed. With shitty weather and high taxes, there's really no reason for anyone to stay in places like Michigan or Upstate New York, for that matter. I left NY for the same reasons. No jobs, high taxes, low pay. I don't like to generalize about parties, but the fact is that a reason that I consistently do not vote Democratic is because of those programs.
Many people, including myself, actually believe that a well-managed and properly planned system could work, but that's the rub, isn't it? Look at Social Security. It's just a withholding plan that is supposed to gain interest until you retire. So why is it running out of money? Congress couldn't keep it's hands off of something as incredibly simple as that, what do you think the plan is for the largest, most complex health care system in the world? How is *that* going to work out?
The states are even worse in their own areas. They basically use taxes to transfer money to politically important urban areas, where there are tons of programs that cater to just about anyone who opens their mouth, including illegal immigrants. It costs a lot of money to keep the bread and circuses going in a modern metropolis.
That's not to say that I don't think the Republicans are a bunch of screw ups too. The only thing they have going for them is that they are saying "No", and while that's an incredibly crappy platform, at least they might slow down the process of spending more money than our grandkids could ever pay back in 100 years. Of course with the last eight years, I'm not even sure of that.
Graveling up roads due to either lack of money or lack of need is one sign that your state is speeding in the wrong direction. You're losing population and tax revenues and considering that industry started in these places, you can't simply blame the weather for it. Years of policies where everyone thought they could tax the crap out of "corporations" and "the rich" brought about the expected response: the rich and the corporations moved away. Short term gains in programs for long term losses.
Re:Michigan is fucked (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Gravel roads are cheap but need more maintenanc (Score:3, Interesting)
(particularly since a colder state like Michigan probably goes trough asphalt roads a lot faster than warmer areas)
Only if the asphalt was not built with the local climate in mind. This happens in Hungary a lot, due to corruption and incompetence. We know we've arrived in Austria not because of the border, but because the car stops shaking.
Re:Gravel roads are cheap but need more maintenanc (Score:3, Interesting)
Gravel is a lot slower, if you're going faster than 15MPH on a gravel road, then you are moving fast.
Obviously, you've never seen The Dukes of Hazard.
As a former dirt road resident....25 was easily attainable even in poor weather. You've never lived until you've driven a '76 Caprice Classic (4300 lb rear wheel drive car) at 50 mph+ on a freshly raked dirt road.
That was the first time I had any idea how great a Rally driver must feel driving in Finland.
Re:Gravel roads are cheap but need more maintenanc (Score:3, Interesting)
Concrete would never survive the frost.
Why not? Concrete buildings survive in the Great White North [wikipedia.org]. Significant parts of the Macdonald-Cartier Freeway [wikipedia.org] are concrete, and some of the planned upgrades will also be concrete.
For concrete to survive, one would have to prevent water from building up under the road. This is an almost impossible feat of engineering.
To prevent frost heaving, the roadbed must extend down into the ground significantly below the frost line. This is not impossible. It is just expensive. The Roman empire build roads through cold climates. Roads that are in use 2000 years later without significant changes to the roadbed. Of course, the Romans had slaves, which cuts down on the expense.
Re:One more example of how bad our infrastructure (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Gravel roads are cheap but need more maintenanc (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:In Santa Fe NM you pay extra for a gravel road (Score:3, Interesting)
> So home owners fight the city when they try to pave their roads.
I'd suspect the reason homeowners hight pavement is they know why the city wants to pave the road. Up until the housing bubble burst it almost certainly meant some developer had bought some property nearby and wanted a nice paved road into his new planned community of McMansions. I.e. there goes the nice quiet neighborhood the locals probably recently moved out of California to get.
Re:Gravel roads are cheap but need more maintenanc (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm talking foot deep steel reinforced concrete baby....Of course we didn't have the freeze/thaw cycles people do farther north so I could be talking out of my backside, but these things appeared well-nigh indestructible.
In my experience, there is a problem with concrete roads and freeze/thaw cycles. Concrete doesn't "flow" with temperature changes the way asphalt does, so it needs expansion joints cut into it at intervals. Water gets into these, freezes, and starts cracking the concrete. The result is, after a decade or so, a rhythmic kathunk-kathunk-kathunk sound as you drive over the joints.
Notice that I said "after a decade or so." I'm pretty sure they still last at least as long as asphalt, if not longer, before becoming rough.
Re:In Santa Fe NM you pay extra for a gravel road (Score:3, Interesting)
"The New Mexico state capital has more Californians, Texans, and East Coast turquoise fetishists living there than actual New Mexicans."
Chuckle. I see this sentiment every place with population growth. Colorado complains about people from California and Texas. Texas complains about people from California and the East coast. Kazakhs complaining about Uzbeks, Etc. It's always "those strange people" moving in and changing things.
I expect Michigan would be happy to have that kind of problem now.
Re:Gravel roads are cheap but need more maintenanc (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Michigan is fucked (Score:2, Interesting)
Well then I must have grown up in the Michigan where Spock wears a beard. Freezing winters, depressed economy, an more rednecks than exist in most Southern states. Couldn't leave fast enough.
Re:Gravel roads are cheap but need more maintenanc (Score:3, Interesting)
Michigan weather does do nasty things to roads, but I've been in plenty of other states (and even Canada) with similar weather and the local governments have zero problem keeping roads properly maintained. For being the automotive capital of the world, Michigan has always been completely bass-ackwards when it comes to cars and roads. One of the main reasons I'm looking to move out soon.
I've only heard of the legendary poor condition of Michigan roads--from a friend who lived in part of Quebec where potholes are already horrendous.
I figured the massive potholes in Michigan are left there deliberately to a) wear down regular cars faster so residents have to buy new cars sooner than should be necessary, and/or b) drive up sales of expensive trucks and SUVs.
Re:Gravel roads are cheap but need more maintenanc (Score:3, Interesting)
We still have a lot of brick roads here along the Mississippi river. It gets hot and cold here and I've never seen any maintenance needed for them. In the summertime a lot of green grows out from between the bricks which I guess could be a problem if they get too big. Personally I've always really enjoyed driving on them.
Re:Michigan is fucked (Score:4, Interesting)
The state banked put all their eggs in the auto industry basked and can't figure out where they went wrong.
Don't you see? On those gravel roads you will *need* a big 4x4 to be able to drive. By reducing road quality she intends to stimulate the car industry, thus solving two financial problems in one go. It's a masterstroke!
In other news, inability to maintain their network of roads (in the less important provinces, of course) was one of the signs of the roman empire falling...
Re:Michigan is fucked (Score:2, Interesting)
The #1 selling point of bigger government has been *roads* and other infrastructure (schools, electricity, water, sewer, police, fire) and when the economy sours those legitimate services are the first things the public are threatened with losing so as to pass larger taxes. It's a false choice; the correct choice is to cut waste in government which means cutting employees from middle management and "would be nice" departments like parks and rec. But its always core services that are threatened by government.
Instead of downgrading to gravel roads which have to be replenished more often, especially under heavy traffic, I propose we use the stimulus to build Roman roads. Those have lasted millennia. Of course, I also think the stimulus is counterproductive.