How Much Does a Mile of Road Cost?
strongtowns.org
strongtowns.org
"If you can choose among three lanes, pick the middle lane for the smoothest driving."
When I learned to drive (in the UK), the official guidance was to stay in the left-most lane except when overtaking. And then, after overtaking, to immediately return to the left lane.
For denser areas with multilane highways that are entirely in use, the best you can say is that the people in the passing lane probably want to go faster. :-)
On a motorcycle it's all about riding between the left-most and its neighbor. More cars expect you there because most motorcycles ride there, so they make more room. The next lane-line is a death trap, from cars in the second lane moving over for a motorcyclist over there.
Interesting perspective. I feel a little differently:
- cars meeting to enter shouldn't affect you, because it's their responsibility to get to the right speed and time their entry to a gap; an entering car should never cause you to need to change speed or direction
- an exiting car shouldn't affect you, because there's usually no reason for them to slow down before exit
- you can overtake the slow trucks when you encounter them: just change lanes to overtake, and then pull back into the right lane afterwards
Driving in the middle lane is optimal from each driver's own perspective but, globally, it reduces road capacity and increases journey times.
People merging onto the highway are supposed to reach highway speed before attempting to merge, but they very often do not do that.
And they're supposed to to find a gap, but there may not be one or other drivers may deliberately try to deny them one.
The merging lane may be very short.
The merging car may start to change lanes even if it's not safe to do so.
Congestion may require more deliberately courteous behavior.
The right lane often has many trucks clustered together and rote exercise of the keep-right rule will require an excessive amount of lane changing.
And on a limited access highway, lane changing is the most dangerous routine maneuver so one should be thoughtful of balancing lane changing with expediency.
And the idea that a driver has no responsibility to accommodate another merging driver, if applied strictly, also means that one cannot always leave the right lane at will, because driver in the left lane are not permitting. So you change speed a lot, which is rough on fuel efficiency and precludes cruise control if it's adaptive.
Being religious about keep-right is kind of miserable on a congested highway, especially one with a differential of speed speed limits depending on vehicle type. The people most steadfast about traffic laws get punished at the pleasure of people who flout them, which doesn't seem correct.
Exactly. Each person acting in their own self-interest causes a reduction in road capacity and longer journey times. Those who try to stay in the right-most lane that's going their speed don't gain anything for themselves, as they only increase road capacity for people behind them.
But two things.
Tragedy of the commons. You're arguing that some drivers should elect to have poor travel times to, frankly, accommodate those who are breaking the law. Maybe the law should be changed (different speed limits are bad) and more zealously enforced.
Second, your greatest responsibility on the road is safety and accident avoidance, not expediency. It is not defensible to change lanes or refuse to accommodate another driver when it may cause an accident that could have been avoided. Changing lanes or refusing to accommodate is least safe when there is a lot of congestion.
I don't know the best way to drive. I don't always obey the law and neither do I only do those things that give me individually an immediate. Mostly, I try to be safe and not instigate road rage.
But I don't think it's as simple as you're suggesting, either. You absolutely have to drive in a way that anticipates that others are acting selfishly. It's part of avoiding accidents.
- I'm not saying that minimising your own journey time should be your only or main objective
- I'm not saying that minimising other people's journey time should be your only or main objective
My observation (no judgment) is that we'd each like less traffic in front of us, but it's most convenient for us to drive in a way that slightly increases traffic for those behind us.
Whether this is good or bad, I don't know. On the 280 and 101, it's common to see cars driving 80+, when the posted speed limit is 65. Perhaps better lane discipline would increase those speeds and make the roads less safe...
But they do, because when they don't it's potentially your life on the line.
> an exiting car shouldn't affect you
But they do, because there's always a reason.
> just change lanes to overtake, and then pull back into the right lane afterwards
I look at the act of driving on the freeway as gambling with my life. Every single action I take (or don't) has the potential to kill me. This is anecdotal, so I'm happy to take actual facts and change my opinion, but I see a much higher order of accidents (or near misses) caused by changing lanes than I see from people staying in their lane. My conclusion is that staying in a lane is inherently safer than drifting from lane to lane based on its occupancy level.
> Driving in the middle lane is optimal from each driver's own perspective
I generally stay in the middle lane when the load on the freeway is low to moderate. When the load is high it doesn't matter which lane you're in; they're all sub-optimal. But if there are so many people driving in the middle lane that journey times are increased, then people will start to pass more often and the lanes will even out. If they don't, then you're in high load.
> it reduces road capacity
It doesn't reduce road capacity. It could reduce road capacity utilization, but if you're hitting that point then the utilization has already taken a hit, and driver patterns change to utilize the road more fully (for better or worse).
Ultimately the lane choice of each driver doesn't matter, because drivers won't sit in bumper to bumper traffic with a wide open lane next to them.
In fact, changing lanes reduces road capacity utilization. For the duration of the lane change and for a short period before and after the car is effectively taking up two cars places (their place in the old lane and the new).
So instead of constant lane switching, use the middle lane for going straight ahead, and the leftmost lane for passing.
California didn't even adhere to Federal Interstate guidelines for exit numbering until relatively recently (sometime in the early to mid 2000s, IIRC), decades after most other states. California's scheme predated the Federal Interstate system and they weren't keen on changing it.
Massachusetts is about to embark on a project to renumber all of their exits per federal mandate. The consensus is that the only way they can take "exit 17"[1] from us is by lasering it out of our brains. I know people who are planning a guerilla renumbering campaign for this sign after it is harmonized.
This means that they generally stay in the rightmost lane, as slower traffic is supposed to keep right.
Yeah, but the advice in the California DMV handbook is to stay in the middle, not the right.
The difference is that, in the UK, the middle lane is explicitly only for overtaking. If you're going the same speed as the cars in the left lane, you're not overtaking, so you shouldn't be in the middle lane. California's guidance is directly contrary to this.
In the US there is no priority with 3+ lanes
You can legally plod along in the left lane without passing anyone.
Reason for the CA rules is that, in the US, the rightmost lane is where all the entrance and exit ramps are, so you often have people speeding up or slowing down as they enter and exit. Rather than have to do a ton of lane changes to pass people as they merge on, the advice to stay in the middle lane if you just want to stay a constant speed is so you don't have to deal as much with people entering and exiting your lane.
"You should always drive in the left-hand lane when the road ahead is clear. If you are overtaking a number of slower-moving vehicles, you should return to the left-hand lane as soon as you are safely past."
When I learned to drive (many years ago), the guidance was more specific: the middle lane for overtaking a vehicle, and the right-most lane for overtaking multiple vehicles.
With that said, in free-flowing traffic, it can be incredibly dangerous when people fail to follow this protocol, and I often wish there was more enforcement.
https://www.oregonlaws.org/ors/811.425
Not doubting you, just wanna know.
> Vehicles proceeding at a speed less than the flow of traffic and moving on a two-lane highway where passing is unsafe, must turn off the roadway at the nearest place designated as a turnout or wherever sufficient area for a safe turnout exists, if a line of 5 or more vehicles forms behind them.
https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/pubs/hdbk/driver_ha...
California, on the other hand, allows people to drive in whatever lane they feel like for however long they feel like as long as they maintain sufficient speed. The slower traffic is supposed to stay to the right and the faster traffic is supposed to stay to the left. The police can intervene if they feel that someone is driving too slow in the wrong lane, but I've never seen that happen.
There are no rules in California to prevent overtaking on the right, so you can choose which lane you want to move into to overtake someone.
Left-most lane on controlled access highways should be rear car, by default, has the right-of-way.
Source: South Floridian driver who does felonious speeds in the left lane (typically in a speeding convoy, with everybody else doing the same speeds, if not higher)
And I would expect behavior improvement, if nothing else, on the fact that ambiguity is removed and time of conflict is reduced.
>king of the road, get out of my way" behavior.
I get that's not something people might want to "encourage" , but a certain amount of conflict and congestion is resolved by allowing the people who think they're king, be king in the left lane. If you don't want to go faster than the car behind you, you can be king in the right (or any other) lane.
It might not feel right based on principle, but in a practical sense it solves a lot.
I'll move back when the passed car is in my rear view. Oh, you really to ride my rear, and pay me on the right? Will Joe we have a problem because I'm happy merged into the right line and you're on my as, and now you're 3 feet from both me and the car were passing.
That's what I got from this comment... Just forget encourages already aggressive driving.
Of course, some people do not pass, and that is frustrating.
You don't have to do that, and I won't judge you for it. It just seems like a harmlessly nice thing to do for your fellow driver.
And it's rare to be in a situation where it's reasonable for you to overtake at 5 mph more than the other car while there are +20s whizzing by so it doesn't seem like it's really something that needs defending.
>Not my fault I don't want to go 20+ over.
No, but I think that people see it this way is part of the problem. It becomes a sort of moral game of chicken, with one side thinking one rule is more important, and vice versa. It shouldn't be debatable. Both sides should automatically know who has r-o-w without thinking, even if the rule is arbitrary. The entire system operates around this premise.
And because speed is always going to be a personal sliding scale (maybe 5 over is ok but 20 isn't), the simplest, most practical, consistent resolution (whether "fair" or not) is to yield the lane to the passer behind you.
Look at it this way: You wouldn't worry about momentary speed to pass someone on a two lane road, if you needed to. You'd focus on getting past and getting over before the oncoming traffic gets to you. It should be the same way on multi-lane highways, even if the traffic is overtaking instead of oncoming. That's why it's called the passing lane.
Just pass and get over, regardless of if anyone is behind you. Driving rules should be as simple as possible.
The fact that the lane isn't being used by anyone else isn't an excuse for you to use it as you see fit. Anymore than driving on the wrong side of a 2-lane road, just because there's no oncoming traffic.
This type of regressive behavior is disgusting. When someone tries to pass I now have to be extra careful about switching lanes because they may pass me on the right. This leads to even slower switching which fuels even more passing on the right.
Just follow the damn rules.
It's just that people don't do it, and have little incentive to. Part of what I'm suggesting is that you should have to be ultra cautious anytime you're in the passing lane. Which is an incentive to quickly get out of it.
I am actually usually pretty impressed with LA drivers. Most respect the zipper merge.
Most. Maybe 1/10 are that prick that believes you merging in front of them is an affront to their pride, and opts to block you from entering or exiting the freeway. I see this most on the 10, but also on the 110 going from pasadena to downtown when you have to merge over 3 lanes to stay on the freeway then merge back 3 lanes to get on the 10 west.
I felt like I could tell the moment when they realized that the repairs on their car would be more expensive than my entire car, and slink back into their lane.
Ahem... he's the one that actually knows what a zipper merge is, and you are the one who needs to learn a thing today.
There is no line in the zipper merge. You are supposed to merge at the very end to keep the traffic flowing, like a zipper would.
Read up, and don't be that guy: https://auto.howstuffworks.com/traffic-lane-zipper-merge.htm
(Unless you are talking about something else entirely, but the parent comments were talking about this scenario)
The parent is likely talking about situations like those presented where a relatively less dense (and ending) lane is merging into a fully-loaded thru-lane, and the traffic in the relatively less dense lane, rather than matching speed and finding the tooth-gap correspondence that's implied in the name zipper merge, zooms as quickly as possible to the last merge point, and then either cuts in without having negotiated a corresponding gap (causing the traffic column in the thru-lane to brake dramatically) or ends up having to slow/stop until an opportunity presents itself (causing a build-up in the ending lane). Or maybe even the latter and then the former.
So, yes, there is "no line" in the zipper merge. There are two lines. And yes, you are supposed to merge at the very end.
But if that's where the thinking/behavior stops, then the parent is right to complain. Drivers who are not matching speed before the merge point are not doing a zipper merge.
But that isn't the world we live in, so at the end of the day, the simplest rule is to use as much lane as possible and take turns merging.
I see these conditions frequently in LA. Either two merging lanes are highly congested in which case they are moving at roughly the same speed anyway, or there's one congested lane and one less dense lane.
The latter case shows up at almost every onramp when traffic gets thick, so it's pretty common. It doesn't take any special skills to negotiate well: accelerate to the speed of thru traffic and proceed to the end of the lane looking for a gap to match with. If you feel like it or just don't want the people behind you who don't understand this to feel impatient, accelerate to maybe an additional 30% above matched speed, then slow down to matched speed and look for a gap as the end of the lane gets close.
Every once in a while you see the reverse situation, where for some reason the merging lane is thick and the thru lane is moving at speed. That is indeed a really difficult situation. Thankfully it's rarer.
> The simplest rule is to use as much road as possible.
Right. While matching speed.
1) It keeps the rules simple. If we should merge at some arbitrary point before the lane is up, it will always be arbitrary, and different drivers will have different opinions.
2) By getting to the end and slowing down, the driver now has matched the speed of traffic. It's a self correcting problem.
3) Not going to the end of the lane is wasting capacity. If it's 4 lanes reducing to 3, how far back is it fair to expect that ending lane to go unused?
4) For on ramps, it gives more cars the chance to merge at once, which will either help the flow of traffic, or quickly reach equilibrium with the through lane.
5) And finally, if everyone always used the full lane, it wouldn't give "cheaters" the opportunity to pass everyone else and cheat.
>causing the traffic column in the thru-lane to brake dramatically
Theoretically, where the car merges doesn't have any bearing on this occurring or not. It shouldn't be any different at the beginning of the lane or the end. If traffic isn't moving, there's no breaking to be had. If it is, it should only give better opportunity to match speed and merge without disruption. Practically, the problem has as much to do with the aggression of the through lane drivers as it does the merging one.
They certainly have the right of way. I'm just saying that where the merging driver comes over doesn't really change any of that, unless the through traffic is behaving differently in response.
It’s a scheduling problem where people that join the lane early are starved by the people joining late.
In cases where there is roughly an equal exchange of vehicles between two lanes it doesn’t matter much, and maybe that’s the norm where you are.
Where I am, congestion is more localized to chokepoints where too many people need to use an exit or on ramp. In this case if time matters it’s usually better to be aggressive and merge at the last minute rather than be passive and get in line early.
People may think you are a jerk. For people where it’s important not to be thought of badly, they get in line first. For people who don’t care (or occasionally for other reasons) they skip the line and merge late.
There's no dispute on this point. It's the right call to merge at the last workable moment.
One can also make another wrong call in failing to match speed and negotiate tooth-gap arrangement (still in separate lanes) before doing so.
If drivers don't do that, it isn't a zipper merge, even if everyone waits.
- everyone effectively stopped in the exit lane has to stop for even longer
- everyone in the thru traffic lanes has to deal with this person merging all the way from the left to the right with no blinker, then coming to a stop in the right most thru lane desperately trying to force themselves into the exit lane, usually driving over the gut in the process
- the end result is the entire freeway becomes even more backed up because this one person couldn't think more than 1 exit ahead, or worse, they convinced themselves that risking a brutal death like this is worth the 20 seconds it saved them
For merging (on ramps), waiting to the last moment is collectively efficient. For diverging traffic (exits) it isn't, especially if there's a backup.
It made driving so much better. The behavior of every car was basically predictable. I've never seen anyone pay much attention to their lane here.
Examples where it's considered acceptable to undertake:
- In heavier or queuing traffic inside lanes might move faster than outside lanes: this is OK, and it's considered better and safer to stay in lane than keep changing lanes to overtake.
- Motorcycles filtering through traffic, which generally occurs between the middle and outside lane on motorways. Where gaps are bigger motorcyclists will often move from the outside to middle lanes to get around slow moving vehicles in the outside lane. Again, this tends to apply when traffic is heavier.
No mercy shown! Jokes on them though I never paid the ticket and I'm never going to.
To me it shows a lack of responsibility and a huge lack of respect for the local laws. I guess not everyone feels that way though.
fwiw, I take traffic flow very seriously. I will always move over if I notice someone driving close behind me.
That's not a US only phenomenon. For example, in the UK there is a - somewhat justified - suspicion that some speed[1] cameras have nothing to do with safety and everything to do with revenue raising.
[1] Ahem, sorry, I mean "safety" not "speed", obviously.
the US has a somewhat fraught history with traffic laws. by default, police are not really allowed to stop you for no reason and possibly search your vehicle/person. of course, this is very inconvenient for police, so over the years many traffic offenses have been created to remedy this. if a cop wants to (legally) pull over the most upstanding citizen in the country, all they have to do is follow them on the road for a mile and they'll have a reason.
Super annoying when you're cruising along in the inside lane and then have to cross the entire width of the carriageway to overtake some clown hogging the middle lane: always feels a bit risky, especially if there are vehicles coming up from behind in the outside lane.
Same when you get someone who's pulled out to overtake a lorry but can't be bothered to pull in again even though the next vehicle they'd overtake is hundreds of metres ahead of them.
The problem with undertaking for me is that it reduces options when you need them the most.
If I'm in the middle lane doing 70mph and thinking "I can't pull into the inside because that car is only 30 foot off my bumper", that driver deciding to keep up with me at 70mph or undertaking reduces my outs in the event of a tyre blowout or other incident (e.g. a broken down car or debris in the middle lane ahead).
Where there is a dynamic hard shoulder or all-lane running, options become fewer still and the chance of a problem even higher.
And then there are the lorries on the inside of a 50mph average speed check contraflow undertaking in narrow lanes at 0.25mph more than the outside lane - that's just an accident waiting to happen.
I've also been on the outside lane overtaking somebody who was doing 65mph in the middle lane with an empty inside lane who as I moved to overtake sped up. Not undertaking: just blocking me from moving past and back into the middle lane.
I then had a boy racer come in behind me at 90mph and have to throw the anchor out whilst flashing his lights at me, and my options are basically "hope for the best". We were on a relatively tight corner for a motorway (it's that horrid section of the M60 that runs through Stockport), so deciding to accelerate to get out of this would have meant potentially losing control of the car, and the guy in the middle lane was likely going to pin me there anyway...
For me then - especially in the narrow lanes of UK motorways - it is not just about using middle and outside lanes for passing only, there is a responsibility of the drivers on the inside to allow that to happen and give those around them enough options if they need them, and not doing so should be considered just as much a case of careless driving as undertaking in most other scenarios.
The road conditions are pretty bad, and what i would like to understand are the gas taxes and other taxes which ostensibly go into road infra.
We have high gas taxes and drive more miles than most countries on the planet - where is that money going?
Some countries have high vehicle costs and their roads to me seem pristine and perfect by comparison. Specifically in fresh memory is both Singapore and Hong Kong.
The condition of their roads just seem to be flawless.
In the US we even have potholes jokingly having birthdays thrown for them, gas prices include large per gallon taxes and road conditions never appear to improve - and yearly reports of “crumbling infrastructure” and “deteriorating dangerous bridges” keep coming out.
A. You don't have high gas taxes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_tax#/media/File%3AFuel_ta...
B. You build a lot of roads.
California comes in second on the list of states with the highest gas tax at 72.76 cents per gallon. Rising fuel prices and increased taxation are the primary reasons for this.
A law that was passed in 2017 allowed the state of California to increase the gas tax by a steep 12 cents, because it seemed like the most viable way to obtain the funds needed to replace several bridges and fund other important road projects.
You can expect the state’s gas tax to increase further by 7.5 cents per gallon in a few months.
We consume 10% of the US’ gas consumption i. California.
We consume more than 40 million gallons per day. There are opaque additonal taxes on each gallon sold at the nearly 9,000 gas stations and billions in taxes are also missing.
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/energy-green/s...
And not all taxes are hitting our roads...
Edit: Your numbers for california amount to about $10.6B per year - and the transportation budget for california for the current fiscal year is $23.5 billion [0]. So the tax pays for less than half of the costs.
[0] = https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/3948#Overview_of_Gove...
Another reason might be due to regulations. I faintly recall hearing that European highways are built on an 18" base, whereas the US only a 12" base, but I'm sure it varies...
The testing is remarkably pathetic. It's impressive this system works as well as it does. Red light runners, meh, just fine them! Pot smokers, fine and imprison them even if they weren't near a vehicle!
Honestly it's so backwards.
If you are European, although the significantly increased government control of its population will mitigate things somewhat, reality is that as Europe has now imbued itself with third world people and the customs and proclivities they carry, the road behaviors will also change even more than they clearly have, as anyone who has driven in Europe for more than 20 or so years, can attest to.
And before anyone gets triggered on some conditioned and well trained pavlovian assumptions, what I described above was equally observable when East Germans started meshing with West Germany, where after 55 years of having been exposed to relentless psychological engineering to break East Germans of their German-ness and proclivities and identity, they lacked what are commonly understood to be certain German traits and preferences for methodical order, systematic structure, and social courtesy; all of which the East Germans had far less of a connection to. That led to a lot of poor driving on roads and that has really not changed all that much either since as anyone who spends any distinct time on West German Roads and East German roads can attest to, even though the impact is being muddled by things like Polish drivers in East Germany and increasingly foreign drivers from all over the place.
Essentially it also comes down to the fact that now people with drivers licenses from various other European countries with lower driving standards, are also just allowed to drive in Germany without having to meet the far higher German driving class standards. It's yet another way in which democracy itself is being utterly disassembled, as foreign minorities are advantaged over native majorities … a total in version of democracy and even basic morality and ethics.
As for the USA, things have gotten so bad in many states that just ignoring the overcapacity of most of the road system due to unfettered and uncontrolled invasion by foreigners driving on US roads, you now have a whole ethnic driving license racket going on where an ethnic communities pass their own in spite of essentially not passing or being safe drivers.
I know that is not what people here want to hear, but reality simply is that this whole system is failing and it is failing due to deliberate bugs intentionally injected, and instead of fixing those bugs, people are just covering them up and making excuses and using ever mounting number of hacks to obscure and hide the ever more brittle system. It's quite telling that even in this kind of forum no one seems to understand that they are looking at a totally broken system and one that is failing at every increasing speed; all while willfully ignoring the inevitable cascading and total failure.
So illegal != taken seriously. In Spain it was both.
Until you get to a road with more than 2x2 lanes. You have people half asleep in the middle lane going 10 km/h under the speed limit.
I don't know if it's laziness, ego, or fear of motorways but it should be taught as a rule. I usually make it a point to overtake and then, if possible, go straight back across to the left lane. Highly doubt the hogger is paying any attention, but I feel more content feeling like I've taught something...
Still amazing still motorway driving isn't taught or tested at all (I think? Been quite a while since I got my license).
As mentioned elsewhere in the thread, there's a lot less hogging in 2 lane scenarios, which I why I try and find A roads now rather than motorways.
As the old saying goes "everyone who drives slower than you is an idiot, everyone who drives faster than you is crazy".
Fun fact: I also take routes that minimize the number of times I have to turn into oncoming traffic and/or judge gaps where the landscape gives poor visibility of the traffic, so long as the detour is no more than a few minutes.
If you stick to the middle when the slow lane is even going faster than you, that's definitely the time to move over.
My aim is to be a good road citizen and obey by rules and convention to ensure everyone's journey is smooth, not only my own.
Comparatively, it's pretty chaotic here.
Adding new capacity to shorten journey times is a fools errand. The new capacity soon fills up as longer and more commutes become acceptable.
One thing about driving, it's the closest we get to bellum omnium contra omnes. You don't see the other vehicles as an extension of the driver, a person, but rather a singular inhuman being you want to fight. People lose their humanity on the road.
> I think this isn't taught anymore.
Driver instruction is a joke here in the USA. I got my license around 2001 in NYC. The test was 20 brain dead questions such as "what sign is this: [school crossing]" and you look up and on the wall is a huge PSA poster of the school crossing sign with the slogan "Schools open. Drive carefully." So they practically gave the answers away. Driving school is optional and all they do is show you an hour long video that nobody watched which the proctor turned off after 15 min. Then you drive around the neighborhood for a half an hour with two others and an instructor a few days. No rules of the road, no etiquette, no nothing. The tests should be much harder, rules and etiquette drilled. The bar must be raised.
I'll give the CDL (commercial Drivers License) more credit. It's the equivalent to what I think is an HGV license in Europe. Though I never got the license I took the test for class A with as many endorsements as I could(tank, hazmat, and doubles/triples). Quite challenging and you have to know how some of the systems on the truck work such as air brakes. I failed it the first go as I thought I knew better but some old terminology tripped me up.
And that was with renting a car ~3 times per year. If I wanted even monthly trips it would have been cheaper to buy a car and park it the rest of the time.
I use Zipcar for random errands and rent one for overnight trips. Last year I think I spent around $1500 on cars, all in.
Zipcars are parked nearby, probably closer than I'd find a parking spot on average and basically always available. The rental place I use is 1/4 mile away. They know me by name. I never move a car for street cleaning, deal with a busted window, or pay tickets.
If you don't need one for work, or have mobility issues or kids, they're entirely optional and (at least to me) life is better without them.
I thought that maybe I'd occasionally rent a car and drive out to a state park, but what I quickly discovered was that, once driving stopped being a part of my daily life, the idea of regularly driving out to a forest preserve lost its palatability. Largely because I am no longer inured to driving, so any plan for how to spend my leisure time that involves devoting a significant percentage of it to being stuck behind the wheel on a freeway is kind of a non-starter. So instead I road bike 4 seasons and take a few camping trips per year. So far it's working for me. Less time stuck in a car and more time out walking in my neighborhood means I have a greatly reduced need for things like mountain biking to help me unwind in the first place.
That said, I think that when I originally calculated it out, I figured out that renting a car 4-5 days a month was still cheaper than owning an inexpensive car. And not too much of a hassle in most cities - out of 4 urban addresses I've lived at, only one wasn't close to a car rental office, and even then it was only about 15 minutes by bus.
I used to live in Denver and never understood why people would find the need to drive 10 miles to the nearest trails when you could just ride to them. Then I realized, once you're done with those initial 10 miles, you could link up routes that covered practically the entire rest of the state.
Now I'm writing a guidebook on those routes.
Bummer about buses not accepting bikes - that sounds crazy to me. They just don't have room underneath or a bike rack up front? I can hardly understand how that could be true!
Because they are usually up in the hills so its a fairly large effort to get there and by the time you are there you have no energy left to do the trails unless there is a ski lift to get you to the top.
As they say, "Any Distance Is Cycling Distance!"
A cross country or downhill bike doesn't fit on the rack though. Longer wheelbases, wider tires and wider handlebars make it very difficult or impossible to rack or bring inside (if the driver even allows it, usually not the case unless the bus is very empty).
The trains here have front wheel hooks, dedicated spots and more space, which is better. The size of XC and DH bikes still makes it a hassle though, and obviously you're limited to spots near the train stops.
Bike racks make a lot of sense here in CO - we have regional bus routes that can be 25 or 250 miles in distance. They, "why ride the bus when riding the bike is faster" isn't always true.
I do kind of live in cycling Mecca here in CO, where Chicago just ain't.
This is what I tell people now when they ask how I get around without a car. Renting 1-2x/month for a road trip is still cheaper than parking, insurance and maintenance even on a fully owned car
Before this I did zipcar or other services for the occasional trip, and sure, it’s convenient enough to physically get to the cars (unless they get fully booked in my neighborhood which does happen) but it’s still quite a bit of overhead. It’s a pain always having to know exactly how long you’ll be gone to book the right number of hours, since someone might book right after you so you can’t rely on being able to extend it at the last minute. And every time you book one for a day, you have to do the calculation - is it really worth spending $100 to go to a friend’s bbq in the suburbs? You also don’t have specific gear you may need like snow chains or mountain bike racks. I just ended up not using it all that often, only for specific big planned trips, and even then it adds additional stress.
Owning a car will certainly be more expensive for me overall, but I‘ll also use it a lot more. And I consider myself an urbanist, I’ve always been proud not to own one. Now I feel like I’ve been tilting at windmills all this time and it’s nice to give it up. SF is an insanely car-centric place for being so-called progressive, which sucks for density, and walkability, and street life, and pedestrian and biker safety. Public transit, especially on the weekends, is pretty bad. For instance getting from the east side of the city out to ocean beach or land’s end, would take over an hour on muni, but it’s a 20-30 minute drive. Public transit to get to even very popular destinations close to the city, like Napa or Muir Woods, is often non existent. Instead of being annoyed by it, now I can take better advantage of the perks of living here and do more with my free time, which is absolutely worth it to me right now.
My goal this year is to get out more, do more day hikes and other short trips, and so far it’s going great. I feel kind of dumb now for holding out this long, actually.
It's a chicken and egg problem... if most people didn't own cars there would be much more reasonable and convenient ways to rent a car. But given that most people do anyway because even groceries without a car are a chore in a poorly design city, the market for the good rentals is not there.
I'm always amused here in Australia when governments like to make the spending on roads and the amount raised through petrol taxes and registration fees "balance out". Uhhh, ok, you're sitting on billions of dollars worth of capital and you're patting yourselves on the back that it's "breaking even".
If it's a new project, even if land is behind expropriated, the market value is being paid. (I assume, bring Australia) So it does balance out, even in land value. For appreciated value, it doesn't occur in a vacuum. The local transportation is factored in to the market rates for property.
So I'm not sure in what sense you don't see it as balanced out. Or what you'd like to see as the alternative.
Given the huge historical capital investment states have made in their roads they should be making money; or if they are not, we should be acknowledging that we are choosing to not make money at market rates when we compare the costs involved with roads with other forms of transport (especially rail).
I don't think we should necessarily do anything different with roads, but we should acknowledge that, well, pretty much everything at this scale needs to be subsidized out the wazoo - roads as well as public transport. I'm not arguing for some sort of dystopia where the government does some crazy user-pays thing on even public asset; just an end to the endless rhetoric about how roads "break even" while public transport "needs to be subsidized".
However, we could only afford it because we got a grant from the state. Our annual town budget could not afford the road maintenance.
Do you experience freezing temperatures?
What we don't have is frequent heavy vehicles at speed. The state actually bans certain types of commercial vehicles on specific roads in the spring when road beds are soft.
The figures cited in this story seem high. Or maybe they're normal in Illinois or some other state where costs are extraordinary. Their not in line with what I see.
An acre of land which is large for a town is 43,560 square feet or 208’ x 208’ though you can get significantly narrower along a road. A mile is 5280’ so ballpark that’s 25 per side or 50 properties = 4,800$ per property every say 20 years or 240$ per year.
Not unreasonable if planned for and if other expenses are not chewing up all property tax revenue.
The trick is, communities can usually get outside subsidy (state and federal) for _expansion_ projects. So when the road breaks down and they don't have local money to fix it, one of the strategies is to go to the higher level government for an "economic development" project to get outside money to pay for the road to be widened / expanded. This is true even when the added capacity isn't needed.
Often, they don't. Examples:
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2010/1/11/the-cost-of-de...
https://www.sdnewswatch.org/stories/small-s-d-towns-struggle...
https://www.wpr.org/small-wisconsin-towns-paved-roads-return...
Many places in the US spent and borrowed to build infrastructure without budgeting for long-term maintenance; they also encouraged development patterns (e.g. suburban sprawl) that are cheap to build, but quite expensive when you take into account the long-term maintenance requirements.
This is a problem even in more urban areas, which is why lots of urbanists (including Strong Towns) advocate cutting back on new road construction, and taking into account the local tax base before building out infrastructure.
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/1/22/paved-with-goo...
Living in a small town, our roads are in poor shape.
Additionally, we have a US highway that cuts through the center of town.
The state administers the maintenance of that particular road, so we have had incidents where the state will hire contractors to modify the sidewalks along the highway, to make them ADA compliant, but not coordinate w the city.
So, the city winds up ripping up the sidewalks, because of an infrastructure upgrade for the water system.
So, short answer, we don’t maintain our roads.
Unless you have a really good tax base, the money just is not there.
Of course, there are a ton of non-local funding that gets drawn from:
- federal and state gas taxes
- state vehicle registration fees (varying by type and weight of vehicle)
- state, county and municipal specific property, income and / or sales taxes
As for highways, there is the federal highway trust, and grants and loans can be taken out to pay for them, but that typically does not fall on the town's shoulders alone (if at all).
Also note there are a _lot_ of grading options available, some as simple as gravel and tar.
As to how small towns afford it--you don't repave that often, and you focus efforts on what to repave. For example, Cedar Rapids, Iowa calculated it would cost $500 million over 10 years to repave everything that needs to be repaved: https://www.kcrg.com/content/news/Annual-road-repaving-to-st....
Cedar Rapids has about 53,000 households, so that's about $943 per household per year. To put that into perspective, we can do a calculation. 18% of DC metro area commuters use Metrorail. If you take 18% of the 2.2 million DC metro households, that's about 400,000 households (roughly) using Metrorail. The rail capital budget is about $1 billion annually, so about $2,500 per household per year. Excluding the cost of new rail cars, its about $1,500 per household.
(Obviously this is a very back-of-the-napkin calculation, but it puts things into perspective.)
[1] https://www.wmata.com/initiatives/budget/upload/FY19-Propose... (p. 76)
for more perspective, cedar rapids average income is $54,465 per household, compared to $99,669 for the DC metro area.
My parents retired somewhere nice (read: wealthy) and there was recently a big stink at the town meeting because they wanted to repave a road that doesn't need it to the tune of a mil or so and it was an obvious handout to a well connected paving/construction company.Meanwhile my city (who's name is synonymous with urban blight if you ask my parents neighbors) bought a pavement milling attachment for a skid steer (an item that costs less than a pickup truck) and it made the regional news because they're known for being so tight with money. I could go on but I won't since you get the picture.
You're comparing an all-inclusive capital budget versus simply repaving roads. How much does DC Metro spend on track maintenance annually? How much does Cedar Rapids spend on lighting and signage?
How much do Cedar Rapids residents spend on their cars? The average used car payment runs in excess of $4,800 annually. New cars run around a hundred or so bucks a month more.
The DC metro is a bit of an odd duck since a large chunk of its users don't actually live in DC. The Census Dept. puts metro ridership at about 21% of all commuters commuting into DC, and overall about 34% of all DC residents use public transit (of all modes) as their primary means of transportation.
So even though you're including the cost of things like stations and vehicles, I think the overall cost is much closer (if not slanted in favor of transit) than you're letting on. That said, rail is typically one of the most expensive modes of public transit.
Per the budget the plan is to spend at most $249 million annually (less for most years) on track and structures rehabilitation. That's the closest you'll get to a repaving budget and includes things beyond track maintenance and replacement.
With that in mind the six year plan would call for per-capita spending of between $335 and $620 annually, cheaper than repaving the roads.
In any event, the point isn’t to say that road paving is cheaper, but to address GP’s question, which is how cities can afford it. It’s an order of magnitude comparison to put the number into context. (For one thing, the road maintenance budget for Cedar Rapids is overstated by a factor of two, because I used the projection of what the city thinks it ideally needs to spend rather than what it does spend.)
Sure, because municipalities typically externalize those costs (e.g. police doing traffic duty or parking control). Road signaling itself is simpler than rail signaling but still needs periodic maintenance. You've got stuff like generators (a necessity out here now that PG&E is introducing recreational blackouts. Presumably sensor lights increase the cost of repaving.
Likewise Cedar Rapids almost certainly has to plow the roads for a good chunk of the year where a subway and even a surface rail system typically wouldn't. Of course with plowing comes the cost of more frequent repaving.
In any event, the point isn’t to say that road paving is cheaper, but to address GP’s question, which is how cities can afford it. It’s an order of magnitude comparison to put the number into context.
Sure, because governments typically externalize the cost of roads but not public transit. In San Francisco, SFPD will bill the MTA for any sort of police presence on Muni. They sure as shit don't bill Caltrans for the cost of traffic enforcement.
Sounds a tad more expensive than it needs to be. Skimming search results for my country (.fi), I get numbers ranging from 30 000 to 50 000 eur per kilometer. I know murican roads are wider, but I don't think they're that much wider. And I don't think we're particularly effective or cheap at doing it..
In other words completely out of reach of the kind of town we're talking about?
All of this becomes expensive for single family homes to support. The revenue per area is just so low.
They make developers build them on the developer's dime, and then the roads don't need maintenance for a decade.
As long as your suburb keeps growing, the pain of maintaining decade-old roads can be offset by the increase in your tax base.
Once your suburb stops growing, you find yourself a mile down crap creek with no shovel.
(... sorry, I couldn't pass up on that one.)
Consider the amount of road that has been built out in the US relative to the populations that road is serving. Maintenance and expansion is paid out mainly from state and local taxes. That's an enormous civilizational overhead the US contends with, not to mention the economic cost of a large portion of household capital being tied up in rapidly depreciating assets: cars.
I'm looking at you, suburbia.
Even if this $1.5m figure is wildly inflated, calculate how few people live on a given mile in the suburbs, a conservative estimate on how much it costs to maintain a road, and the numbers just don't add up.
The suburbs were a ponzi scheme and the bottom is about to fall out.
Come on, some remote villages in the third world have paved roads to them.
A well built gravel road will have a decent amount of rock which drains in the rain without turning to mud, culverts are needed on the steeper slopes to limit erosion.
While the total cost is much less than asphalt, dirt roads do need more regular maintenance which municipalities frequently try to skimp on.
A good read of the pro's and con's: https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-10/documents...
https://www.nap.edu/read/21935/chapter/1
very limited discussion a few years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15272140
If a suburb can attract some retail or office space or manufacturing, they can be like Irvine or Tysons or Bloomington -- the suburbs that have made it. Those that cannot will accumulate the same problems with fiscal sustainability that inner cities once did.
[0] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?lookup=0&q=Disaster+and+d...
Definitely not a small number considering the installed road base…
I didnt read much judgement in th parent post, but it does imply suburbia is subsidized because it has higher infrastructure cost per dollar of tax revenue. The was a study on that very thing a couple years ago IIRC and they found the most solvent towns and cities are actually the higher density ones even if they are lower income areas.
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/2/1/the-surprising-...
It turns out that having more of them per acre is more cost effective.
However, I don't think your argument justifies that American policy prejudice towards cars and suburbs. Suburbs involve more roads - trucks may the force that mainly consumes roads but of course the higher the road-to-people ratio is, the more those roads are going to be consumed by those trucks. Which is to say, of course cars and trucks both go to the far suburbs and the nowhere's villes around the country and of course these trips are part of maintaining these places.
Moreover, if we moved to more rail transit, the little towns would be more in trouble because rail tends to require larger loads and so would raise the price of goods in far suburban malls and such.
It's like I'm happy to have the walkable grocery store and 24/7 piss smell, but when feeling adventurous driving out to the suburbs to set up camp in your garden.
I think most urban commuter parking is paid, whether public or private, and the expectation is that a city charges appropriate property taxes on commercial buildings to cover any costs imposed by commuters.
More importantly if we focused more on making transport costs in-line with the damage they do to the road surfaces (not to mention the environmental impact of long and short haul trucking, plus the traffic) instead of city/suburbia none issue, perhaps we'd all be a bit better off.
I also like the idea of making fines for moving violations somewhat proportional to vehicle mass. The danger posed to others by a 150 lb moped pales in comparison to that of a 4500 lb pickup truck. At least in the U.S., a ticket for speeding 50% over the limit through a residential neighborhood is the same for both, for example. Neither is OK, but considering the disparity in the potential for damage and injury to others, imposing equal fines is insane.
A fully loaded semi is 18,000 lbs per axle. A really huge personal vehicle, an F-350, is 4000 lbs per axle. That's 4.5x the weight, 4.5^4=410, so the semi is doing 410x as much damage. There's really no point in trying to tax personal vehicles for road damage when over 99% of the damage is being done by trucks.
Trucks and permit loads are pretty much the only things that get close.
Beyond the elastic limit, damage is an exponential function of the pavement loading, but only once that certain minimum psf is hit.
For the majority of a highway's loading curve, the damage-per-force is essentially nil. Plastic deformation and serious fatigue only start as you approach the design limits.
It's 99%+ because cars don't do any real wear or damage to pavement from typical use.
Even driven at gross weight, it's doing 5% of the damage per axle of loaded semi. The semi also has 4-5 axles, so it's more like 2% of the damage of the semi.
Mind you, we're talking here about the most damaging personal vehicle loaded to its maximum weight, and the semi is still doing 50x the damage of the personal vehicle. It's reasonable to say that essentially all road damage is done by semis.
That said, this type of tire is a very tiny fraction of the total miles driven on public highways, and so if you're looking for someone to tax based on the costs they create, it's all heavy trucks.
I just wonder what would happen if we charged trucks based on weight.
All of which creates overhead in the form of people to be paid, equipment to build/own/maintain, time lost at all stages, the usual political influence problems, jusrisdiction of different areas of road, implementing policy, and corruption. Most of it will end end up as pass through cost to individuals either way as both consumer goods and roadways are deemed essential. It's ultimately a fairness exercise of tax distribution so like most things in the public interest the arena any idea must be fought in is politics.
And yes, consumers will pay regardless, but at least the difference is reflected in the cost of goods. It could very well be that certain local goods are cheaper than imported goods after road costs are properly factored in, which could change how much is imported.
However, this feels a bit regressive since poorer people will pay more of the cost since roads are largely funded by income tax, but that can be accounted for by shifting other taxes. The idea isn't too punish poor people or shipping customers, but to allow the market to work more efficiently.
[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_axle_weight_rating#Imp...
A road is a spring, and will behave elastically, with almost no deformation, unless you exceed a certain point on the stress-strain curve.
This is why the main concern of highway departments is not exceeding maximum axel loads.
Worrying about the amount of wear commuters are responsible for is just a distraction.
It's like a toddler jumping on your mattress vs a 350 lb offensive-lineman doing it. They both technically cause some amount of wear, but it's not worth figuring out the proportions.
I can't see a plausible argument that cities consume a disproportionate amount of the country's truck traffic. It seems like Suburban malls and supermarkets require pretty much exactly proportionate truck traffic to their city counter-parts. Moreover, manufacture is not particular concentrated in cities so that too gets equal coverage in suburbs. And all of this stuff requires proportionately more miles driven in the suburbs due to the lower density.
I don't know if cities consume more Kambucha than suburbs but if they do, I assume that suburbs consume some other equivalently.
Half of that design chart is for reconstruction and repaving. What else are you looking for?
>an enormous civilizational overhead
You could eliminate suburbia overnight, and demand for those suburban and rural highways will still be there, since cities generally need things delivered from outside (like food) in order to continue being cities.
One would hope so, but it seems our VMT is going up over time whilst people are locking in very expensive, long-term car purchases.
The upsides are reduced cost of building, maintenance, and equipment, and better water permiability. Reduced speeds can be a benefit depending on the application.
I suspect NJ loses a lot of tax dollars from commuters that work in NYC or Philadelphia and pay income tax in those states.
Regardless the state brings in a lot of revenue. I suspect the pension obligations are the real killer here.
I read somewhere that China spends $30 million per mile of high-speed rail. 22,000 miles and counting.
The US is going to bankrupt itself trying to modernize its aging infrastructure.
Probably doesn't work in some urban sprawl American suburb but for more sensible layouts its the best option. Also the best for the environment.
yep, hi. It's also the same kind of area where road maintenance is the highest problem. Lot's of road wear and tear, and not enough funding to maintain properly
I live in Utah, and our "urban" area (SLC) is similar to many "suburban" areas in terms of population density. We have a commuter line that intersects with light rail, which intersects with the bus system. Rail hits most of the important business areas, and buses hit most of the residential areas, and each runs every 15-20 minutes. If you know the system, you can get around fairly well without a car. It was expensive to build, but it is used quite a bit so it is absolutely worth it.
[0]: http://miljobarometern.stockholm.se/trafik/motorfordon/bilin...
Motorways in France and Germany seem to be repaved more often, and billiard table smooth in a lot of cases.
Not sure about Germany, but they just have a super strong car lobby in general, and its one of their national pride things, so they tend to find money for that.
Here in Switzerland we have a very high gas price, but that leads to many people going for gas outside of Switzerland and we have no idea what to do when EVy really take off. The true cost of those roads is hidden in the 'normality' of the high gas prices.
Roads are a tricky problem, not just for libertarians.
An Autobahn built in/towards a city tend to get way more expensive.
[0] https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/soziales/bundesregierung-p...
plain road (on terrain) € 10,000,000 x km
viaduct/bridges € 20,000,000 x km
tunnel € 30,000,000 x km
with a variation of up to -15% or -20% in countries where workmanship and materials are cheaper and + 15% or + 20% in the more expensive ones.
That was interesting data set, and here by "cost" I guess "price" is meant.
How much margin/profits is included in it?
That's where it starts getting dubious. Technically, all roads and transit are built at a great loss on paper. However, connecting locations connects people and enables economic activity, so there is definitely a 'profit' per se but it would be difficult to quantify precisely.
Maybe Denver is particularly bad for concrete roads because our freeze/thaw cycles get really bad. We have so many warm days in the winter interspersed with cold days and freezing nights.
It seems like it would be tough to move to another type of material that would actually be more environmentally friendly after considering all the extra maintenance required for a less durable but more environmentally friendly construction.
As others have mentioned, it seems like the long term solution is to move to a less car-dependent society.
This is a pretty good wrap up of what the Strong Towns thing is about.