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Comment by simlevesque | Hacker News Reader

The root of the problem (literally) is that when potholes appear it's mostly because what's under became too porous and humid so what's over it separates easily. Patching the hole isn't a good fix but the alternative is closing roads which wrecks the economy. The other problem is that the public always asks: "why isn't it patched ?" and if you don't do it you look like you're not competent enough to be in charge. And the cycle continues.

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And when you go to your local government, demand a fix, they'll contract a union shop to do the work, often mandated by law, and they will advocate for the least durable, most expensive fix, so as to ensure recurring work happens at a maximum frequency. Attention to certain roads, duration of work is often politicized - someone with good friends gets quick, top tier fixes, but someone who annoys the local council might see months of roadwork dragging on forever, or halfassed repairs, or potholes ignored for years.

Lovely little civilization we have, eh?

edit: Huh, must be nice to live in places where that apparently doesn't happen? It's been a comically recurring theme in nearly every city I've lived in - potholes weren't just potholes, they were favors and tools and penalties and grifts. If you've never seen this happen, I'd recommend digging a bit deeper. Very few places have their collective shit together sufficiently to handle the relatively small problems like potholes very well. If your community does, then kudos!

It depends entirely on where you live. My city has its own asphalt batch plant and they spend a few weeks every late winter/early spring repairing potholes.

Also, union labor is not mandatory for public work, but the prevailing wage scales that contractors are required to pay their workers do line up pretty closely to the actual union wages. It’s a good thing that people get paid a living wage, in my opinion. There are a lot of facilities that require union labor for certain trades due to the risk involved: mechanical, electrical, and plumbing for the most part.

It's awesome when unions serve the function intended. It's not awesome when there's mandatory contracts, 5 men standing around while a 6th holds a bucket, a 7th a shovel, an 8th a painbrush, while the 9th is driving a steamroller, etc. and they use cheap, inappropriate "repairs" that degrade on a predictable rolling 2 year basis. Noble institutions can be as corruptible as governments and private businesses and so forth, all it takes is one person willing to bend, a little, and poof, there's a tidy little predictable sinecure for a decade, with one or more middleman doing the subcontracting out to a union shop, or w/e. Peoples' capacity for grift and graft is endless.

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