Daily reminder that if a road is designed to last 15 years, by definition that means you need to replace 1/15th of your entire road network each year. If you can’t replace that much you fall behind… And things break and stay broken.

It also takes longer to replace the roads you can work on because they’re more damaged than you planned for when you built them and planned out the lifecycle, meaning you end up even further behind.

Also the economic benefit of a road mostly happens when it’s brand new, or upgraded to carry heavier traffic it couldn’t before. That’s an actually return on investment. Replacing anxexisting road to it’s old state is replacing a broken window in broken window theory. It doesn’t cause lasting increases in economic activity.

All of this is to say, fuck cars. I hate them. I hate how much we spend on infrastructure that rots and gets invoiced by rent seeking construction companies and municipal and provincial/state governments being complicit in rent seeking with these companies.

I wish we had more trains and less sprawl. It would cost a lot less and would actually be sustainable. Oh well… The hard way it is…