After billions in U.S. investment, Afghan roads are falling apart - Polidicks

[QUOTE=Zonesylvania;43746083]Come to India bro, every other road even in the cities is in bad enough shape that without a good suspension system like in our car, you get your bones rattled about like dice in a cup even in short distance trips. The worst is when the rainy season hits, for then the roads melt like cheap paper screens. And they never seem to be repaired unless a major political rally is going to take place there. edit: [img]http://www.boydom.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/BadIndianRoads.jpg[/img][/QUOTE] Man the roads in delhi , and amritsar, my god.

Holy shit and here the Public Works Dept gets massive flak just for one or two potholes on a few roads.

its incredible to me that roman roads built 2000 years ago are still in good usable condition, yet our own become unusable in just a few/

The roads here are pretty shit too, but the drivers even worse

[QUOTE=Fish Muffin;43746464]its incredible to me that roman roads built 2000 years ago are still in good usable condition, yet our own become unusable in just a few/[/QUOTE] To be fair, Roman roads were built to endure horse and foot traffic, not cars and trucks. Also, think of the amount of traffic your average stretch of modern highway gets in one day alone - in a country like the US or the UK, it's easily an order of magnitude more than the Romans would have in an entire year. Also, our roads are simply more complex to repair. Rebar, concrete, asphalt, and painting is a lot more to do than laying a cobblestone road through the countryside. It was a real marvel of the time, yes, but not so much anymore, especially when compared to something like the United States' network of interstates.

[QUOTE=Cheshire_cat;43746539]To be fair, Roman roads were built to endure horse and foot traffic, not cars and trucks. Also, think of the amount of traffic your average stretch of modern highway gets in one day alone - in a country like the US or the UK, it's easily an order of magnitude more than the Romans would have in an entire year. Also, our roads are simply more complex to repair. Rebar, concrete, asphalt, and painting is a lot more to do than laying a cobblestone road through the countryside. It was a real marvel of the time, yes, but not so much anymore, especially when compared to something like the United States' network of interstates.[/QUOTE]Really though, if we built roads like the Romans did it would be far, far more expensive than it already is. Modern road construction is [i]dirt cheap[/i] compared to what it used to be, we have machines and materials that make it so much easier to lay road. Aside from that, if you were to build a four-lane highway in the style of Roman roads, they'd actually hold up a hell of a lot better than modern ones; provided traffic did not exceed a certain speed. Downside is, you're essentially carefully dumping various sizes of rocks in a long trench, and a four-lane highway would need [i]a lot[/i] of rocks, many of them roughly broke to fit properly. That's going to be slow, since there's only really one way to position stones quickly enough, and that's manhandling them. Since you're going to need a lot of hands to do this within a reasonable time frame, that means hiring on ten to twenty times more people. You'll probably need more equipment to do most of the heavy lifting, so that means more bucket excavators (they are really, really useful as cranes in addition to their normal duties) and bobcats and a bunch of other things. Really, the wear isn't really an issue, you're just driving over tough rocks. When asphalt came about, people stopped building cobbled roads because you could skip about two-thirds the labor involved with cobbled roads. Then, when reinforced concrete was proven as a viable road surface, asphalt began to decline because concrete can last longer and is less susceptible to geological factors. (less potholes, sagging, heaving, etc) Asphalt is now used mainly on low traffic roads, as a surface element (because it wears down evenly and replacement is as simple as scraping up the old, slathering on the new) or when the budget cannot immediately permit laying down a concrete road. All of this saves time [i]and[/i] money, which is what it's always been about. [editline]1st February 2014[/editline] After some google and some time with a calculator, an average four-lane US highway would need about [i]sixteen fucking thousand tons[/i] of rock for a mere hundred foot stretch. I can't even imagine what building a ten mile stretch would be like, but I'm certain all the rock quarries in a five hundred mile radius would love every minute of it. Every minute of the probably five years it would take to build the son of a bitch.

[QUOTE=Fish Muffin;43746464]its incredible to me that roman roads built 2000 years ago are still in good usable condition, yet our own become unusable in just a few/[/QUOTE] Our roads ARE Roman roads. We place asphalt on top to allow high speed traffic. The Romans are the ones who pioneered basically all of the tech that goes into modern road construction anywhere.

[QUOTE=GunFox;43747002]Our roads ARE Roman roads. We place asphalt on top to allow high speed traffic. The Romans are the ones who pioneered basically all of the tech that goes into modern road construction anywhere.[/QUOTE]Not exactly, the concept of using various sized aggregate is the same but the actual application is different. Romans did not have access to rollers and other pulverizing equipment, which is vital in modern road construction. Each layer is rolled individually after application, and it's done several times if needed to make it compact and sturdy. Also the base on modern roads is either bedrock, or a long reinforced concrete slab, while Romans used massive rocks (usually found on-site) which were maneuvered into position. Modern roads do not go as deep, and often are above the surface (to save on digging drainage ditches) in part or full, and there is much, much less support aggregate used. Say you brought a Roman engineer forward in time, he'd probably think modern civil engineers are retarded, lazy, or a combination of the two. We use far, far less materials when we build roads, mostly because we're given the advantage of equipment and techniques that allow us to do so.

The roads here are all maintained until you go north.

[QUOTE=croguy;43746357]Look on the bright side guys, your flat roads might be crapping out year from year, but at least you won't have to deal with shit: [IMG]http://dubrovacki.hr/datastore/imagestore/original/1287993780odron_stupica5_251010.jpg[/IMG][/QUOTE] I live on a mountain so I still have to deal with that. Though of course the people that fix the road, work really fast, was usable again a week or two later.

[QUOTE=proch;43741980]Oh don't you fucking dare to complain about your roads American [IMG]http://newzar.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/polskie_drogi.jpg[/IMG][/QUOTE] poland more like potholeland

The roads in Alabama are pretty nice, hell I rarely see any pot holes let alone anything fucked up unless I enter either one of the low,low,low income areas or the deepest back country road.

I remember the roads in my city in Texas were like the ones in Poland - potholes and bumps eveywhere. Then the cowboys stadium got built so then the city had some extra money to replace the roads. It's silky smooth now.

this is like giving someone a dog as a birthday present when they don't have the time or money to actually have it

[QUOTE=Badballer;43746416]Pfft guys get on my level, this is the road I take in the city! [img_thumb]http://freeaussiestock.com/free/Northern_Territory/dirt_road.jpg[/img_thumb] Actually our roads are pretty alright in Aus.[/QUOTE] isnt austrailia like virtually flat anyway? that "road" doesn't really seem improved, just a track that people drive on