On Aug 31, 2011, at 13:53 , frank theriault wrote: > n Tue, Aug 30, 2011 at 7:15 PM, Joseph McAllister <[email protected]> wrote: >> On Aug 30, 2011, at 14:31 , Charles Robinson wrote: >> >>> On Aug 30, 2011, at 16:14, John Sessoms wrote: >>>> >>>> Put the utilities underground where they belong and you don't got to worry >>>> about trees falling over on them. > <snip> > > <major rant> > > <snip> >> DOWN WITH THE WIRES, AMERICA!!! (and everywhere else) (think what a bounty >> of jobs that would become available if the go'mint formed a DWW whose goal >> was to transition overheads to buried, one street at a time. Tell your >> representatives, local, state, and federal about this plan. Improve the >> economy with me! > > Yeah, you're mostly right, but there's a down-side to putting > everything underground: Every time there's a problem holes have to be > dug at great cost of money and time, along with all the disruptions > that causes. Once the fix has been made and everything filled in and > patched up, the pavement is always uneven and bumpy. > > Real bumpy. > > Dangerously bumpy to cyclists. > > And after a winter or two those patches begin to disintegrate into > huge (and even more dangerous) potholes. > > And that's only repairs, Over the past decade or so private concerns > (read: cell phone and cable companies) have been installing fibre > optics under our streets with the expected bumpy roads left behind.
You live in the north, where winter freezes the rainwater that seeps into the patches when it's warmer. Breaks 'em up over time. When I've lived in similar climes, Boston and New York, men with dripping buckets of warm tar attempt to seal all the cracks and edges of new patches every spring. Seattle's way is to first, lay two new inches of blacktop from intersection to intersection where the streets are bad. After two of those layover, before the third the grind the old blacktop down to a level where the curbs are exposed enough so two more series of blacktop overlays can fit still leaving the curb protruding. Second, Seattle has some of the best blacktop patching crews I've ever seen. They leave a repair smooth, heavily hand edged 4 to 6 inches wide, slightly bulged so that a week after it's repaired, the traffic has compacted the patch to be level with the rest of the road. They respond to a called in report of a pothole within 24 hours, immediately if it looks like a suspension buster. You see their dump trucks with several yards of cold patching blacktop all over the place, mostly at night. Having driven heavy buses I've paid attention to the experimentation that the state has done over the years when studying roads. We have one brown macadam highway that is closed by snow every winter for 3 to 5 months. It has very little truck traffic when it is open. A repaving has only been done twice in 70 years, though occasionally a rock slide will take out or damage a 100 yards or more. This state allows studded tires from Nov 1st to April 30. but this road never sees them. However, the concrete Federal highways lose from 1/8 to 3/4 of an inch every year in the tracks of the cars in the two left lanes. The two right lanes get busted up by the trucks, or made into dips between the two edges of a panel so your car gets to doing a roller coaster thing if your shocks are not in good condition. Cracks are rarely patched. When it rains, the water fills the depressions worn by the studded tires, making it much more likely to aquaplane, at least to throw water up in the air causing the cars ahead of you to disappear in the sheets of water. I hate studded tires. It would cost less to have skid pad training in drivers ed in the schools or private firms to teach these morons to drive in the snow and ice than it is costing the state and the feds to repair the roads laid down by the Eisenhower edict 60 years ago. It's called tender touch on the pedals, easily learned! Joseph McAllister [email protected] I couldn't remember most of what I know today if it weren't for others sharing their knowledge of my past on the Internet. Thank you… -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
