Before I had moved to the US five years ago I had never experienced concrete roads. Now that I have, they are easily the worst experience. They might work in some areas such as the south. But on the west coast they are cracked, potholed, sections lifted out of alignment, they are rough and loud, and the markings are often worn down to the point of being nearly invisible (not to mention white markings on white concrete is always invisible in the rain, and given they never replace the reflectors that come off after a year you just have to guess you're staying in your lane).
Agreed. The worst are the sectioned ones that ThumpThumpThump at about 20-50 cycles for miles. They collect rain in between sections and are more slippery, and less visible. Additionally, If you live where there is ice/snow, the road never heats from the sun and ices worse. I would love more asphalt roads, much easier and cheaper to patch, and maintain in non ideal situations, which is most roads.
It really stinks living on one of these stretches of roads, since you get to sit in your house and hear that thumping all day and night. That 40-45 mph range is where it starts getting loud.
I would love more asphalt roads, much easier and cheaper to patch
Concrete roads tend to be cheaper over the long term, as they require less maintenance. In some regions the difference can be significant depending on traffic volumes and climate.
This seems odd to me, living in Australia where alot of roads are asphalt I don't know how it would be cheaper to repair them like they do out here.
The just have a truck roll around and dump some more asphalt in the holes, tap it with the shovel and it usually fixes it up fine. If not they come around 6/12 months later and do it again.
With concrete, can you just drive by and drop some cement in the cracks and holes and move on? Don't you have to usually cut out parts, repave and block off the road for an amount of time?
It's the maintenance costs over time that are generally better. Asphalt is convenience in that it's much more of a patch job, but over time it tends to require more maintenance so the costs level out. Asphalt overlay atop concrete will generally result in a more long-term solution with an easily maintainable surface to avoid the noise complaints some have echoed.
As far as potholes go, my experience has been more the opposite, at least on local roads. I've lived in neighborhoods with both asphalt and concrete roads, both with infrequent maintenance from stingy local governments, and the concrete ones fared much better. Some of them had gotten basically no maintenance in 20 years and were still largely fine (the curbs being in worse shape than the road surface). But the asphalt roads without recent maintenance had giant potholes everywhere, and masses of disintegrating asphalt rubble at every place where they had a seam with a driveway / rail crossing / etc. It's hard to exactly compare like for like since I've only lived in a handful of places, and they differed in other ways too, but my impression has been that asphalt roads need much more frequent maintenance to keep from falling apart, and fare worse when that maintenance doesn't happen.
Concrete is great if you dig it really deep and thick and have great drainage.
Around here (NY) they don't do any new construction with concrete surface, sometimes they pour concrete in sections and surface it with asphalt. Asphalt is the superior coating, bar none.
> on the west coast they are cracked, potholed, sections lifted out of alignment, they are rough and loud, and the markings are often worn down to the point of being nearly invisible
I'm not sure that is exclusive to concrete. In the northeast coast our asphalt roads have all the same problems except the "lifted out of alignment" and noise).
Right now since it is snow season I have to constantly look out for foot deep potholes that will destroy an axle.
I vastly prefer concrete, especially on the expressway, even up here in Chicago. The road isn't as smooth but... that's because it's usually ten or twenty years older than our most beat up asphalt roads. One of our expressways up here, I-355, used to be concrete, and sure, it wasn't as smooth, it was noisier. But there was never construction on it, because the road really never required heavy maintenance.
Since they replaced large sections of it with asphalt, it's under construction every single year.
I think that's more a result of poor construction (i.e. the effect of the cheapest bid).
Back in 1992 I drove on some (formerly) East German autobahn that had not been touched since the end of WWII. Our speed was limited to about 45 MPH due to the state of disrepair, but jeeze, it was 50 years old!
