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

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.