I just drove over a pothole that was the entire width of the road. No way to avoid it. I thought I was going to go in. Holy fuck, if you're going to destroy public transit, then make sure your alternative actually works!
I can tell you, actually! Basically, the US federal and state governments heavily subsidize new development. Because of the low cost of investing in these subsidized projects, and because they spur short term economic growth, cities are heavily incentivized to expand the suburban sprawl as fast as they possibly can. However, that short-term growth isn't nearly enough to cover long-term maintenance of the infrastructure, and cities are left with an ever-growing financial burden that they can only offset with... you guessed it, more new development. It's a ponzi scheme, and it's systemically bankrupting American cities in order to transfer their wealth to real-estate developers.
https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IsMeKl-Sv0&
Ugh. I had forgotten about that dynamic. Its absolutely true, especially in California, where property taxes go up less than inflation, unless it changes hands. So cities don't give a shit about the old neighborhoods. Making them nice doesn't help their tax revenue. Creating new developments on the other hand, bring in new, full price property taxes. All they have to do is let some developer grease the wheels of government a little bit, and they make some protected land available for building.
Yes. So glad to see another person tuned in to this problem. You or me better make a big effort post on this soon. I feel like I'm going insane trying to spread this info.
Fun fact: most local governments will be bankrupt in 20-30 years bc they can't pay to maintain their massive infrastructure liabilities like roads and sewers. Think about the millions of miles of suburban strips and subdivisions. Flint and Detroit are America's future. I'm gonna do an effort post eventually on it.
hopefully in that long I'll be living in a guerilla camp in the rocky mountains and such things won't bother me
Wish I could find the source, but I remember reading an article (written by some mechanic) where the thesis was that the real reason that Americans tend to prefer SUVs and pickup trucks is because of deteriorating infastructure.
Larger vehicles that ride up high are less likely to get damaged by poor infastructure related accidents. Sedans and compacts only really work well when roads are maintained.
Thought it was pretty interesting and made a lot of sense to me.
Those same SUVs and pickups, because they weigh more than "normal" sedan cars, help to deteriorate the roads at a faster rate. Which of course pushes more people to buy large SUVs and pickups. The whole thing is a vicious feedback loop of shit.
If you break your car hitting a pothole you're now in the market for a new car. Win win!
This also reminds me of seeing trains still running after a snowstorm. All they need to do is just push snow off the top of the tracks, the trains run fine. So trains are MUCH easier to maintain, in other words.
No see, we drive cars because it makes the car and oil companies money, not so we can get from A to B.
not so we can get from A to B
How would we know if driving is useful unless it's been financialised into a investment vehicle?
When you'd rather let your country literally rot away then tax billionaires
First, check your city’s local resources for reporting potholes. Yes, those do exist for some cities. It might be they just aren’t aware of it and hopefully someone will come out and fill the sucker, but they probably have greater priorities. This might not work though, because sometimes they suck.
Road repair is a thankless job with some unique constraints, setting aside lack of funding and return on that investment. First, It’s often seasonal work depending where you live, and blocking off roads pisses pretty much everybody off. Business owners getting blocked off by road repair introduces a political element to it as well. This is without going down the rabbit hole of privately owned roads as we all know how that goes down.
In crowded areas like big cities it can be difficult to plan around, and in less crowded areas the priority is probably going to be the highest density roads and highways.
Why? You’d think just general safety, but also consider these roads are most likely where precious commodity-carrying semi-trucks travel so the government is incentivized to keep them useful, but also those roads often require more routine maintenance because they are quickly deteriorated as trucks with trailers weigh a fuck ton and just destroy them.
So why isn’t your road fixed? It’s probably a combination of not being a busy or useful road to the local economy, combined with low resources for infrastructure, local business politics, or simply nobody knows it needs fixed. Also what /u/Uncle said.
Anyways, I’m not an expert so most of this is probably bullshit.
Have you tried uhhhhh not living anywhere close to a place with potholes?
Roads are also designed to be obselete so money can be funneled continuously into construction firms
I can't remember all the details, but it turns out (I'm pretty sure) that road infrastructure is basically a Ponzi scheme for towns and cities to get funds from the federal government to pay for them. I think that they talked about this on Well There's Your Problem pod
