Change My Mind
(media.communities.win)
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And some of those same Roads and Bridges are still in use today.
Also worth pointing out. Many of the issues with a Modern Roads stem from using cheap materials prone to breaking down. Partly to save money and partly because it ensures a steady flow of business to fix the same roads. Then you add in the complexities of the Unions and Bureaucracy. Not to mention graft and corruption endemic in some Governments. Both Local, State, and Federal.
And you end up with the current state of Modern infrastructure.
I recall reading an article- maybe 25 years ago - in Readers Digest of all places that talked about this. It compared the,quality of roads in Scandinavian countries to the US. (Scandinavian countries were looked at because of the harshness of their winter seasons.) They drew the same conclusion - steady flow of work and graft.
They have a deep frost,so the road base is several feet thick. They don't do that in the south.
Came here to say something to this effect. planned obsolescence is in every product in today's world. Just imagine what we could accomplish if we weren't spend every year fixing the shit we built 2 years ago...
Also, to be fair, most of the damage in modern highways is from trailer trucks and other heavy vehicles - those old roads would be destroyed in quick order if they had the same weighted vehicles traveling on then
and at the same speeds!
It is the same in all industries. No money in the cure... Doesn't matter if it is a road cured of defects or a human cured of disease.
I heard it simply...
If you ever poke around google earth, some of the roads the Soviets built in remote Siberia look like they are pristine condition today even as they town is in a near-collapsed state.
The reason Western roads suck isn't that they are built badly, or with terrible materials. They are made too thin. Thin layers means lower bids, means cheaper roads, which ensures constant rebuilding.