Discussion
Just got back from a few days in NYC - didn't do any driving, but even as a Taxi/TownCar passenger, the standards of the roads were shocking.
We are used to crap roads in the UK, with the current budget allowing roads to be resurfaced once every 150 years or so - but in the US, and in one of the biggest cities in the world, the roads were rediculous. Pot holes so big that put massive steel plates over them...for years. 12" ridges to bounce over at intersections, and manhole covers that are not so much raised, more elevated.
The upside is the maintained love for V8s, greater quantity of European cars (all 3.0 and above), the on-off driving style use of a throttle (traffic light drag-races are just the way you drive) and fuel that comes in at an all time high of $4 per gallon (about 65p per litre).
We are used to crap roads in the UK, with the current budget allowing roads to be resurfaced once every 150 years or so - but in the US, and in one of the biggest cities in the world, the roads were rediculous. Pot holes so big that put massive steel plates over them...for years. 12" ridges to bounce over at intersections, and manhole covers that are not so much raised, more elevated.
The upside is the maintained love for V8s, greater quantity of European cars (all 3.0 and above), the on-off driving style use of a throttle (traffic light drag-races are just the way you drive) and fuel that comes in at an all time high of $4 per gallon (about 65p per litre).
Matt Harper said:
It would be more appropriate to entitle this 'NYC vs UK'. New York streets are not representative of the rest of the country's road system, in fairness.
This is an important point, in the rest of the US, the streets are much much better than the UK.This is my area of work - managing the street construction in NYC. The steel plates you see aren't covering potholes, they are put there by utilities over trenches to access wires/pipes.
For the rest of it, one of the main problems is logistics - its very difficult to close down many of these streets for any length of time at all to do the resurfacing, therefore it gets left until the road is almost unusable. The road density in NYC is so high that in reality there is a huge amount of tarmac to be maintained, and as rich as NYC is, this costs a huge amount of money.
Weather is also a big issue - can't use the same materials as in the UK (or even the southern states) as it breaks up too easy.
Finally a big issue is the utilities need to upgrade/maintain the infrastructure - everything in NY is under the ground (you wouldn't believe the amount of s
t under the streets) - so even once a street is resurfaced, chances are within a few weeks it will be cut open for someone to access what is underneath - this is a huge issue as once the surface is cut it quickly forms potholes etc, pretty much regardless of how well you try to repair it.I know it ould never work in a million years, but NYC looks like a city that would very much bennefit from a congestion charge to try and reduce the volume of traffic on the roads and perhaps look at reinvesting any revenue gererated back into improving the road system. When I went to Manhattan in April I found the state of the roads utterley shocking.
kambites said:
Yes but I bet you haven't driven down every road in NY. 
All countries have their good and bad areas, I think.
Well, no... But I did do considerable milage to NY, long island, up the coast, the Adirondacks, the lake areas, and so on, and so forth, so saw a large chunk of it.All countries have their good and bad areas, I think.
ChiChoAndy said:
Well, no... But I did do considerable milage to NY, long island, up the coast, the Adirondacks, the lake areas, and so on, and so forth, so saw a large chunk of it.
Admittedly I've only driven in upstate NY once (around Poughkeepsie) but some of the roads were pretty poor. off_again said:
And people wonder why US cars (in general) are softly suspended?
Big lazy engines to go massive distances with ease and soft suspension to cope with the rough roads - and oddly everyone who owns a European car seems to get into a rage about why rarely work outside of the US....
EFABig lazy engines to go massive distances with ease and soft suspension to cope with the rough roads - and oddly everyone who owns a European car seems to get into a rage about why rarely work outside of the US....
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