USA: still a developing country?

[alex_antonin]

Earlier, I was examining this horrible and horrifying stretch of road while waiting for the bus, with ramshackle houses not too far away. It struck me as crazy that in a city as good as Portland, that there were still such bad spots. And then I decided it meant that the United States is still a developing country, not much better than the 3rd world

Comments

[brockulfsen]

Roman roads last a long time under foot traffic, have to repaved occasionally if iron wheeled carts are used. Start driving cars on them and you have to completely re-cobble every few years.

Add semi-trailers, forget it.

[alex_antonin]

The fact that the Roman roads get driven on by cars all the time and are still around disproves this assertion.

[brockulfsen]

They repave them if it is more than a few cars a day, or there is a layer of modern road built on top that they relay. The original roman road surface is seldom at ground level these days.

There are now robot repavers that lay cobbles like a bowling alley pin setter, or perhaps like a modern mechanical Gandy Dancer.

PS

[alex_antonin]

Further, I have seen more recent cobble streets, circa the early 1900s or earlier, and they've been driven on by cars and semis for decades without a problem.

[kengr]

Keep in mind that minor side streets don't get paved if the folks living along it don't want to pay for it.

If the city finds a reason that the street *must* be paved, then they can make you pay for the upgrade. Otherwise, if you don't want to pay, it won't get done.

Keep in mind that paving the street will also raise property values,thus increasing the property tax owed by folks along the street as well.

[alex_antonin]

Pardon? City streets are the city's problem, not the problem of the people living on those streets.

[kengr]

Nope. The law says *quite* differently.

As I said, unless there's a *very* pressing need, the city isn't going to exert eminent domain and force the people to pay for the paving (initial paving is a lot more expensive than minor repairs later).

So as long as the majority of the folks along that block aren't willing to pay for (it's only partial payment as I understand it, but it's still expensive) the street will remain unpaved.

The city is responsible for *maintaining* the streets. *Improving* them (at least residential streets) is up to the property owners.