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by Lazonedo 845 days ago
>It seems like the only thing we still know how to do and also want to do is roads.

And maybe not.

>But the Texas Department of Transportation says converting paved roads to gravel is the only safe plan it can afford.

https://www.texastribune.org/2013/08/19/conversion-of-roads-...

> Omaha’s Answer to Costly Potholes? Go Back to Gravel Roads

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/07/us/omahas-answer-to-costl...

A pretty sad trend that keeps on growing.

America has lost the ability to build and maintain. It's slowly deconstructing and dismantling itself.

2 comments

That's not a problem with building, tons of people in the US know how to lay down asphalt and make concrete because its a very local industry (the materials are too heavy to be economical long distance). It's a problem with white flight and the post-war suburban expansion that way overbuilt the supporting road system without considering how much it would cost to maintain in the future.

Now as more and more of the deferred maintenance bills come due, they have to make the hard decisions they should have made a long time ago.

People have been warning for decades that a multi-trillion dollar bill will come due for aggressive suburban expansion into SFH neighborhoods and car based policies. And now that we see that bill showing up it seems that many want to blame the wrong thing so they can maintain their current lifestyle at a low tax rate.
USA has never been able to maintain, we rely on constant expansion to increase taxes and then the Federal Gov't comes out and pays for the road repairs because the states would need to charge at least twice as much tax as they currently do.