I think of this as I drive 30ish miles each way to work. 5 miles of surface roads, 19 miles of interstate (2 lanes each way), and 6 miles of surface (2 lanes each way). One cause for increased construction is the need for more capacity. My frequent lament is poor driving habits. We have regular instances of sub-optimal speeds in both lanes. A 65 mph limit and vehicles driving 55mph in both lanes, frequently with 1/4 of open lane ahead. Vehicles behind begin to crowd and we experience the slinky effect. After 3 years we add another lane. And the cycle continues. Driver education used to emphasize keeping right except to pass. I think this isn't taught anymore.
I recently drove around Spain for 2 weeks. My first significant international driving experience. I was shocked at how seriously they took the rule of only passing on the left. Every single car in the right line was driving slower than every single car in the left.
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.
Where I live (Los Angeles), all the lanes are filled all the time. There is no passing lane, so it doesn’t matter which lane you drive in. The skill that is important for drivers to have is the zipper merge, because those are happening all the time as fully utilized lanes merge and split.
I am actually usually pretty impressed with LA drivers. Most respect the zipper merge.
I have a similar commute and experience the same thing. People dragging along in left and middle lanes. This winds up aggravating selfish and entitled road rage types who then proceed to tailgate and forcibly cut across to get around these people.
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.
I was surprised to read this in the California DMV driver handbook:
"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.
It depends on the state. In Ohio you will actually get pulled over all the time for hanging out in the left lane. Not so in California in my experience so far.
Driver education doesn't matter when it stops at 16 years old. I've been in cars with these bad drivers doing less than the speed limit in the left lane... I told them they should get over... they said they prefer to drive "in the fast lane"... like they'll get there faster. They stayed in the left lane until the exit, and then exit across 2 lanes. I don't see how you can help these people.
I'm planning to live a car free life soon. I'll be moving in to the city so almost everything is within walking distance and just about everything is accessable via public transport. The only thing I haven't been able work out is how I will continue to go mtn biking since bikes aren't allowed on the bus. But I just can't justify the massive expense of owning a car and a car park for one activity.
Mountain biking is one of the things I gave up when I moved to the city.
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.
YMMV, but as someone who lives in the city in SF and hasn’t ever owned a car before, I just got a car a month ago and so far it’s been a great decision, I’m loving it.
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.
I feel you, I'd really love to get rid of the car but it would be impossible to go climbing/hiking (begging for carpools gets old fast).
Even in a car-centric place like the US (Seattle) it's possible to live in a house and still accomplish things cheaper and more conveniently via walking/bus/bike/Uber/Zipcar/rentals, except for the mountain trips, because it's so hard to get a car for 2-3 days at a convenient time and/or on a short notice.
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 live in the state of Colorado where there are a thousand interesting and fun places to drive to. Ditto when I lived in California. Life is too short to be sanctimonious. P.S. I have a vehicle that gets almost 50 mpg, nearly triple the popular hulking SUVs here.
You should see if the bus has racks for bikes on the front. Most do in the U.S. at least. Keep the wheel locked to the frame so if someone ambushes the bus for your bike they won't get very far.
This is interesting information, but from the perspective of a high-value urban area, even these fairly eye-watering numbers are a understatement. The capital represented both as infrastructure and forgone real estate usage (i.e. yes, we need roads, but building more roads than we need diverts incredibly valuable real estate from other purposes) is huge.
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".
I feel like I am missing something here, a mile of road in a rural area costs $1,500,000 to reconstruct? How do small towns afford to maintain their roads?? Perhaps there are many costs that don't inflate as the number of miles increases, like the equipment needed to break down and repave the roads?
This does not address a larger question: how much does a mile of road cost to keep? This is the installed base question.
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.
Look all you want, but road maintenance costs are primarily a subsidy for the trucking industry, and by extension the businesses that rely on them. Businesses that are primarily located in.....cities. If Middletown USA didn't have to worry about 80,000 lbs trucks hauling kombucha to your local bodega tearing up their roads, perhaps road costs would be a bit more in-line with reality.
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.
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.
To be fair, suburbia was supported as a potential recovery effort following a nuclear war.[0] Its difficult to immediately urbanize people's lives. We agree there are accelerating maintenance costs, but suspect we don't see the same opportunity cost.
Lots of shade thrown towards people living in suburbia on here. Maybe not everyone wants to live in a (rented) closet sized apartment in a major city, complete with all the noise pollution, actual pollution, crime rates, and a lingering piss-smell 24/7, and all for the low price of _more than owning a house_?
I think this is the real issue. I've witnessed that the problem is lack of maintenance on roads. Instead of taking care of issues as they arise, like patching cracks and small holes, they're left to just grow and spread and before you know it the entire road is garbage and needs to be repaved. If we took care of the roads they would last longer and over time would alleviate funds for other expenses. Not to mention that it seems work on pipes under the roads are never worked on until a few months after it's been repaved, which completely destroys a new road and throws all that money down the gutter.
Are expensive roads really needed? What if we see a gradual decline in roadway expenditures in the USA, transitioning our economy to involve less driving and more work from home, deliveries via drone/efficient vehicle, promote self-sufficiency, not to mention biking, walking, trains, etc...my point is maybe we won't need/use roads as much as we do now.
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.
I was always puzzled by how do English-speaking folk communicate such matter clearly? I mean the word "cost". It has two meanings: basically all expenditure that is associated with something or it might mean agreed upon price of product.
That was interesting data set, and here by "cost" I guess "price" is meant.
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.
USA is definitely a high labor cost market. The throughput per unit time from each worker is probably much lower compared to developing countries. I am actually more interested in seeing highway cost/mi. stats for each developed and developing country. If anyone got links, I appreciate.
Is there a Primer / tldr for Strong Towns? I kind of get the basic idea (maintaining town infrastructure sometimes exceeds revenue) but I was looking for "start here" but don't seem to be able to find it
[+] [-] slowhand09|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] habosa|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] cortesoft|6 years ago|reply
I am actually usually pretty impressed with LA drivers. Most respect the zipper merge.
[+] [-] MisterTea|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] rahimnathwani|6 years ago|reply
"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.
[+] [-] asdff|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beerandt|6 years ago|reply
Left-most lane on controlled access highways should be rear car, by default, has the right-of-way.
[+] [-] tonyedgecombe|6 years ago|reply
Adding new capacity to shorten journey times is a fools errand. The new capacity soon fills up as longer and more commutes become acceptable.
[+] [-] pg_is_a_butt|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Polylactic_acid|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mumblemumble|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] jedberg|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cactus2093|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] sershe|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] peter303|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nickik|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] asdff|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stevenwoo|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] OrgNet|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fulafel|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] glangdale|6 years ago|reply
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".
[+] [-] ryanar|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dougweltman|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] AcerbicZero|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Eric_WVGG|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] tomrod|6 years ago|reply
[0] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?lookup=0&q=Disaster+and+d...
[+] [-] geddy|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lotsofpulp|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hanniabu|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WhompingWindows|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] melling|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] oneplane|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hamilyon2|6 years ago|reply
That was interesting data set, and here by "cost" I guess "price" is meant.
How much margin/profits is included in it?
[+] [-] asdff|6 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] alpb|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fulafel|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dillonmckay|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TomMckenny|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] basicplus2|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lifeisstillgood|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] __m|6 years ago|reply