Why doesn't anyone want to fix one of America's scariest roads?
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
The ten miles or so on the Aspen side of Independent Pass, when leaving town, is so much worse. It feels like a true single lane road at points with a huge cliff on one side that has the road caving in.
So of course nobody cares about two cars a year going off a cliff on the federal highway when ten cars a year go off a cliff on the road that's the local shortcut between the center of town and Walmart in the next valley or whatever.
I've driven sketchy roads all over the world and the stretch just after you break out of the aspen outskirts on Independent Pass is genuinely terrifying at parts. For a while there it was not uncommon, if two large vehicles were passing, to have a section of your right front wheel barely over the cliff as there was a part of the outer edge line missing because the road caved in.
TBH, I find driving on I70 in full conditions to be much scarier because of the other traffic and the speeds.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogers_Pass_(British_Columbia)
>> to keep the highway and railway open during the winter, the Royal Canadian Artillery has since used 105-millimetre (4.1 in) howitzers to knock down unstable snow under controlled circumstances to reduce avalanche hazards. Stopping is prohibited in high-risk locations.
Then there is also the puzzle of locals driving fast to get through the avalanche risk, while terrified tourists like myself are crawling along worried I'll go around an unknown turn too fast and shoot over the cliffs edge.
In summary I have to say it's been helpful for me to paste directions into AI tools and ask them to tell me how the drive would be during the days I'm planning to make it. Just for good measure I also ask to find local dog friendly stops along the way for food and rest room breaks.
I'm not sure if this is something work spending hundreds of millions of dollars fixing when the risks can be mitigated with some additional planning. They should probably board up that tempting cave mentioned at the bottom of the article though and improve their avalanche guns.
The fact that this road was built in the previous century makes it part of that second category.
In general, we seem unwilling to invest in American road infrastructure. I'd be willing to bet that potholes, the unexciting normal kind you don't even notice in a car, cause more loss of life and loss of money than any particular dramatic road.
At least where I live potholes are the natural result of freeze-thaws cycles.
But maintaining current infrastructure in the meantime while we build better things is good too. Let's just not lose the plot on what needs to happen next.
I think what needs to happen now (not next) is fix the roads truckers drive on. I'm not one one of them but everything in America depends on them and we're making them drive unsafe roads.
Go out in an RV, big truck, or trailer and you'll see what these guys deal with on top of diesel prices, some of which is tax for road repair!
Building roads is expensive, and they don’t last forever. A good asphalt surface may be service worthy for 20 years. A ton of asphalt outside of California may cost in the ballpark of $150 to install. A 2 inch lift of asphalt will cover not quite 10 sqyd. So you can see how expensive this gets when we’re talking about thousands of miles.
I think it’s worth considering how policies may destroy much of the demand for roadways. Personally, I could imagine a future wear personal private transportation is basically unlawful or artificially expensive.
Therefore cities who need maintenance done will bundle routine maintenance they can't afford with expansion (lane expansion, streamlining). This lets them access federal dollars they wouldn't otherwise get.
Over decades, this has created a lot of infrastructure that isn't financially responsible as stuff has just gotten built and built and built. The ASCE (American Society of Civil Engineers) always grades the overall US as a "C" or worse for maintenance.
Part of the problem is that building things is sexy, maintaining them is harder and not sexy. Lotta money and focus on new stuff, maintenance is a secondary concern.
--Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire
I've got a Transalp over in the states now, so i'm looking forward to touring roads like the one mentioned in the article. Glad this popped up.
Pro tip: Take a different route, or drive 15mph.
It's a very sticky problem that doesn't lend itself to "Why don't you just...." solutions.
But do continue your charade, I also believe in free speech.
It just reinforced I didn't have the constitution live out in CO and drive those roads in those conditions.
It would be nice to fix all the things about roads. But the road in the article sounds like should be closed and the funds used to maintain it diverted elsewhere, perhaps to fix stroads.
Smart person, I would never travel on that road even if the long way is 8 hours longer. And driving in winter ? You have to be crazy.
In other news the ski resorts have cliffs and you can ski right off them. Also the snow is deep and it gets suddenly cold at night and that will kill you too.
Maybe they can just have a pull off where you sign a waiver if you can't answer a couple of verbal questions like "what is leftover salmon" or "which mountains are named after titties" or "what animal has two oysters" or whatever.
"Fix One of America's Scariest Roads?"
America is great and fun but also brutal in how the government will actively go out of its way to deny basic living standards. From healthcare to minimum wage, they want you to die just before you reach social security age.
Switzerland is just a really bad example to use because they're significantly wealthier than the US. The only other two non-city-states with a higher per capita GDP than the US are Ireland and Norway, but Ireland's is inflated because it's a tax haven (less real money available for public spending), and Norway's is inflated because of their oil and gas fields. Though, comparing the US to most any other country, especially individual European countries, is already specious. Switzerland is ~9 million, compared to ~340 million for the US. Scale matters, because of variance, selection bias, and the policy conclusions you can reasonably draw. A better apples-to-apples comparison would be between individual US states to individual European countries, or to compare the US to the EU as a whole[1]. People don't like to do that because such comparisons tend not come out the way they want. It would be interesting to read a follow-up comparing Colorado to Switzerland, not least because they're both mountainous regions. Not nearly as easy an analysis, though, because you'd have to figure out Colorado's share of Federal road infrastructure expenditures, plus Colorado-specific road data.
[1] To be fair, comparing the US to the EU can be a chore because many publicly available datasets, even from EU agencies, encompass not just the EU proper but larger geographic regions, or subregions of the EU. And of course Switzerland itself is just such an example as they're not a full member state. Like, try finding out the number of heat-related deaths. I couldn't find any numbers just for the EU proper. Some numbers included Russia, the Balkans, and/or Turkey, some were for subregions of the EU, and often it was a chore just to figure out which countries or regions were used in the report. It's a mess.