sheep foot

[darkoshi]

I got home tonight expecting the whole road to be paved, considering how far along they were this morning. But no, it's still just ground up on one side, and looks pretty much like it did when I left this morning, except with gravel on top instead of dirt.

I forgot to mention, the driver of one of the big pieces of equipment* appeared to be a woman. That was nice to see.

*I looked it up, and it's called a sheep foot roller.



Back when my brother was staying here for a while, one thing he said has stuck with me. He was commenting on how quickly roads over here deteriorate and need to be repaved. He said that in Germany, they have better paving technology (or they use a better paving substance?) and don't need to pave roads as often.

Since then, I've wondered if that is really true. First I thought, "well the climate is different here than there, that probably makes a difference." But there are probably a lot more freeze-thaw cycles over there per year than here, so if anything I'd expect the roads to deteriorate faster over there. Then I wondered if my brother was mistaken about roads needing to be repaved less often over there. But still, I wonder if there is any truth to what he said, and if so, why can't it be done better over here too?

Comments

[marahmarie]

That's makes for an interesting Google search, too:

https://www.google.com/search?q=german+paving+technology

(What I gather from titles alone there have been several apparently German innovations.)

[darkoshi]

That's interesting. This link in the results:
https://www.mlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2014/04/why_are_germanys_roads_better.html
says that in Michigan they did a side-by-side comparison, and the German-style road didn't seem to outperform the other. But those roads were done 25 years ago; surely the tech has advanced since then on both sides.

This is cool - glow in the dark paving stones:
https://www.architectmagazine.com/technology/german-company-makes-glow-in-the-dark-concrete_o

[marahmarie]

In the US (not sure how Germany handles it) road work is often contracted out to the lowest bidder, so that would mean lower quality materials, less workmanship and attention to detail, higher likelihood of physical failure and so on, I might think.

[darkoshi]

That could be true for here too, but I don't know. Considering that there's always roadwork needing to be done somewhere in the area, I was thinking that the county and/or city had their own permanent roadwork crew. Either way, it probably comes down to funding. If you've only got so much money in the budget, there's only so good a job that can be done. And if there's bidding going on, how can you know that the people with the higher price will really do a better job? Especially when the durability of the road may take years to discover.

[randomdreams]

I think it's funding. To make a very durable road you end up digging down quite a ways, and filling in with several different layers of material. In the US, they usually grade it flat and put down asphalt, and if it's a larger road, they'll put down concrete and then asphalt on that.

Pavement

[(Anonymous)]

Based on Wikipedia stats on roadway length and population, Germany simply has much less pavement to maintain, on a per-capita basis. Considering roadway length as a whole, the U.S. has 2 1/2 times as much (OK, the factor is 2.57 to be precise), and considering highways only, 1.5 times as much, and that’s not even taking into account that, for a given length of roadway, the typical U.S. street has more and wider lanes. That’s a huge difference, and means that it’s far more costly for the US to maintain its roads.

Why? German is a far more dense country, without anything comparable to the American West with vast scantly populated areas. Plus, within cities, the density is much greater, as single-family homes are rare and past history and current zoning mean that most people live in multistory apartment buildings — all of which means that the footprint of any given city is much, much smaller than a similarly-sized American city, which also means, in turn, that mass transit is, quite simply, substantially more viable, as it requires, not just political will, but a significantly greater level of density than most Americans consider acceptable. And this also means that the roads themselves, even major crosstown arteries, generally have fewer lanes, so there’s less total paved surface per kilometer.

Re: Pavement

[darkoshi]

Good point.

Road pavement

[(Anonymous)]

You must know that the state of Texas was settled largely by German immigrants. That’s why you always hear them tell how everything is bigger and better in Texas. Need I say more?

Re: Road pavement

[darkoshi]

I did not know that there were a lot of German immigrants in Texas. Now I do.

Re: Road pavemen Texas

[(Anonymous)]

You'll note in the gallery above that, despite their Germanic origins, I omitted towns with "spring" and "garden" in the name because I felt they had likely been chosen for its Old English roots rather than their German ones.
While more than a few metros have a splash of Deutsche for convenience's sake, several of them are directly influenced by early German settlers.
In the 1800s, a group of Germans, the Mainzer Adelsverein, or Nobleman's Society, made grand attempts to colonize Texas. According to the Texas State Historical Association, the Adelsverein aimed to create a "New Germany" by attracting colonists to Texas; the purpose being that it would provide jobs for German workers while also supplying the European country with raw goods and overseas commerce.
Unfortunately for the Adelsverein, the group later found itself in bankruptcy by the mid-1800s. Several communities vanished due to lack of funding and support, forcing some settlers to re-populate in already-established areas, like Boerne. Despite the group's failings it did succeed in bringing more than 7,000 German settlers, influencing a good portion of Central Texas in the process.