Bad roads

2nd Mustang said:

especially Lemon Avenue, just north of the 91 fwy. They had it repaved a couple of years ago, and it turned out worst than the original pavement. They actually made it MORE bumpy! I guess the low bid won the contract.

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why do you think they called it LEMON ave?

I wouldn't doubt it. A lot of the time they'll redo a road and it will either break a pipeline and have to be redone again 2 months later, or it comes out the same as before, but with the asphalt looking a little fresher.

Last I heard, Missouri had the 3rd worst roads. A while back our Cherokee lost a wheel weight and I didn't even notice it was out of balance.

-Chelle

I'm going to have to vote for Missouri on having some of, if not the worst roads....for example, they are rebuilding the Grandview triangle and literally already they have had to cut out and patch sections of a bridge/entrance point that is BRAND NEW, built early this spring.

syberjunkie said:

I'm going to have to vote for Missouri on having some of, if not the worst roads....for example, they are rebuilding the Grandview triangle and literally already they have had to cut out and patch sections of a bridge/entrance point that is BRAND NEW, built early this spring.

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I was going to mention the Grandview Triangle. Last time I drove through there the potholes were huge and it's almost impossible to go around them.

-Chelle

2nd Mustang said:

Heard this in the news yesterday. Apparently California has some of the worst roads in the country. No money for upkeep? Where's all my gasoline taxes going too? In the course of my daily driving, I must say that the city of Fullerton has the worst roads, especially Lemon Avenue, just north of the 91 fwy. They had it repaved a couple of years ago, and it turned out worst than the original pavement. They actually made it MORE bumpy! I guess the low bid won the contract.

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AHHHHH! I know EXACTLY what you are talking about. The damn utility/sewer covers now swallow the wheels and spit them back out. I have to use this almost everyday. I learned how to put my left wheels in between the lane divider and the bumps.
These are pathetic.

foghorn67 said:

AHHHHH! I know EXACTLY what you are talking about. The damn utility/sewer covers now swallow the wheels and spit them back out.

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Hwy 50/Broadway through Sedalia is like that. There's drainage grates about every 75' along the curb that stick out about 2' into the far right lane. It wasn't that bad until they repaved. Now the grates are about 2" - 3" below the road surface. If you hug the center line you can miss hitting them.

-Chelle

Ahhhhh, yes our local road crews are quite the same. We live just off an intersection where State Highway 95 hangs a left and heads south towards beautiful San Luis, Sonora, Mexico. Last year, the southbound portion was chopped up for new storm drains, even cutting into my neighborhood; the patched up roads would have been smoother if the crews didn't patch. Then six months later, they tore out all the pavement on all edges of the intersection and repaved - it was great for maybe two months after they fininshed. Whoops, gotta bring in a new 24" water line north to the intersection, around the corner and eastbound up 16th Street (still S.R. 95) and halfway through town. All the new pavement and the 6-yr-old fairly smooth stuff are getting ripped out in a 6' trench more or less centered onthe dotted line between the two eastbound lanes. The patch will suck, then in another two years they'll rip it all out and repave; blocking off a major cross-town and through-town artery between Las Vegas and Mexico!

I need to get one of these kinds of jobs; where you get paid well and rewarded with obscene bonuses for coming in 0.05% under budget while genuinely pi$$ing people off regularly.



Still Dreamin'

I'm lucky to live in Atlanta where we have some of the best roads in the country, hands down (And I would know as I have driven in Arizona, California, every state between here and texas, every state from here to oklahoma, every state betweetn ohio and Oklahoma, every state between here and ohio, between here and wisconsin and every state on the eastern seaboard.

My 2 cents: if you think California's roads are bad, you haven't been to the midwest recently! Illinois and Arkansas have the worst roads in this country (well that I've seen anyhow) hands down. Leaving Oklahoma and entering Arkansas one time, I litterally pulled over immediately after I crossed the state line because the road had become so bumpy that I thought I'd had a blow out.

Illinois...Oh God...the painful memories....

Here in Georgia (like wise for Oklahoma and Missouri BTW) we have GREAT roads! except for one little problem: the engineering on them SUCKS!

I-20 East bound going into Atlanta. Rush hour every morning, every semi is required to take I-285 unless they have business in the city. So you'd think the ramp from 20 to 285 would be one that would allow tractor trailors to easily merge right? Well, you'd think that, but you'd be wrong. It's a single lane clover-leaf, and a tight one at that. Hella fun to drive down in next to no traffic at high speed (how well can YOUR car handle? haha) But backs up for 2 miles during rush-hour. They you have idiots thinking they'll get to the front of the line onto the ramp by getting intot he other 2 lanes and stopping traffic until someone lets them in...AGH night mare. Then the I-85 GA400 ramp is about the same way. Whose idea was it to make what was projected to be and turned out to be one of the busiest interchanges in Atlanta into a reducing radius clover leaf?

I could go on for hours.

skywalker said:

Here in Georgia (like wise for Oklahoma and Missouri BTW) we have GREAT roads!

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I can guarantee that the roads around my part of Missouri are a far cry from great.

-Chelle

Digging up an old thread

Was poking around in the very bottom of the thread pile and came across this one. Since I've been back there recently (almost a month ago now); I thought I'd comment!

t_chelle16 said:

I can guarantee that the roads around my part of Missouri are a far cry from great.

-Chelle

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I dunno, over on the other side of MO that roads seemed pretty good. Surface streets right around the north side of St Louis Airport were a little rough; but the short bits of I-70 and I-270 were pretty nice! I-44 was cool.....I was flying along at a pretty good clip (75-80 in the 75 zones) along about midnight - only thing that seemed rough was the view out the window of my rented econo-box at the wheel lugs of semi's (at eye level) getting closer and closer on curves. I even started to fall asleep! Decided that was probably a bad thing so I whipped into a reast area somewhere around Doolittle. Couldn't find any animals to talk to (Bad pun, but I couldn't resist), so I rolled the seat back and caught some Zzzzz's.

I woke up from my 4 hour nap because the sun in my face pried my eyes open at 0540 - 20 minutes before the alarm would have awakened me Got back on the road and, after the first couple of turns, decided that Chelle was right in warning me before I left; the pavement may be good but the drivers were a little left of center. 75 MPH on that curvy mountain road seemed a little bit much for this old road warrior driving what Alamo Rent-a-Wreck called a midsize and Chebbie called a Malibu Classic; but didn't seem all that much larger (or even as big as) a Focus! And when I looked out at the lug nuts and couldn't look up high enough to see the top of the Kenworth; I started driving like I was a motorhome with Missouri plates in Arizona!

The only really rough road I saw was the entire section of Highway "Z" between I-44 and the main gate of Ft Wood. Under contruction, looked like it had been for a while; and there was one pothole outside my motel that made me think I would need a rescue chopper to get out if it decided to swallow my Hoop-ty
But all the other roads around the greater Waynesville/St Robert metroplex were actually nice!

By the way; I was off by a year in my guesstimate of how long it would take before they tore up and repaved (again) the State Highway intersection and roads right outside my neighborhood.
It wasn't two years.
They should be finishing up the two-month-long repave this coming Wednesday.
I hope.

You guys must not have ever driven in PA. Our roads are horrible. PennDOT does a miserable job of patching concrete roads with black top patch causing huge bumps or massive Dips.

Personally, I don't understand why they are building new roads out here with concrete, when Blacktop is so must faster to put down and IMHO, smoother to drive on.

They are building a new section ofthe 222 highway between Lancaster and Reading. 4 lanes (6 in some spots) all concrete. THey have been working on it for over 2 years and they don't plan to be done until spring/summer 2006.

I should have gone into civil engineering

jes72mustang said:

You guys must not have ever driven in PA. Our roads are horrible. PennDOT does a miserable job of patching concrete roads with black top patch causing huge bumps or massive Dips.

Personally, I don't understand why they are building new roads out here with concrete, when Blacktop is so must faster to put down and IMHO, smoother to drive on.

They are building a new section ofthe 222 highway between Lancaster and Reading. 4 lanes (6 in some spots) all concrete. THey have been working on it for over 2 years and they don't plan to be done until spring/summer 2006.

I should have gone into civil engineering

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#1 asphalt is a petrol product and requires a lot fo it to put down.
#2 there is a new technique with concrete where they run astro turf across it and it becomes quieter, provides good grip andgood run off
#3 it stands up to salt really well, the salt is what kills your roads.

One of the worst roads I've traveled is I-85 between atlanta, ga and charlotte, nc. They've been widening that segment since 1997/98 I think, and you say concrete is better? Why the heck would they pave the southbound in asphalt and the northbound in concrete? You'd think at least they would use the same method both ways. The one section they finished that was on my way to and from work ended up bumpier than it was before they started.

I think they need to take a few lessons from the autobahn builders in germany. Not to mention the original builders of the interstate system seemed to be much better at building smooth roads.

mustangracer said:

One of the worst roads I've traveled is I-85 between atlanta, ga and charlotte, nc. They've been widening that segment since 1997/98 I think, and you say concrete is better? Why the heck would they pave the southbound in asphalt and the northbound in concrete? You'd think at least they would use the same method both ways. The one section they finished that was on my way to and from work ended up bumpier than it was before they started.

I think they need to take a few lessons from the autobahn builders in germany. Not to mention the original builders of the interstate system seemed to be much better at building smooth roads.

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Spoken like a man who has never driven through illinois or arkansas.

Problem in Georgia is that the idiotic DOT there takes years to complete anything. That also has something to do with the feds ganking funding after they approve it and then they'll reapprove it, gank it again. It also has to do with our lacking funding due to our smog levels being to high (not that it has anything to do with us having one of the busiest airports in the world) and they think allowing our insane traffic to continue is going to solve that problem....suuuuuure.

The ideas of using concrete more and more is a pretty new idea (read: past 3 years). It has been used forever but in the past few years techniques with concrete on roads have gotten a lot better.

2nd Mustang said:

Heard this in the news yesterday. Apparently California has some of the worst roads in the country. No money for upkeep? Where's all my gasoline taxes going too? In the course of my daily driving, I must say that the city of Fullerton has the worst roads, especially Lemon Avenue, just north of the 91 fwy.

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Dude, I will cause pain to anyone who argues otherwise! The most populous and RICHEST state with the most income from gasoline/road tax......for upkeeping the roads......has the worse paved driving surfaces.

You should have seen it up here in the high desert and mountains after the January floods. Entire lanes(on a two-lane road) washed away and for the most part only half of either were lost. What didnt wash away got undermined and sank unevenly and ALOT. What got fixed is worse than the road was before. They're still working on them. I got pictures.....

A while back when I went down to Arkansas, they were doing a lot of construction around the border (HWY 71). There was a sign that said "Left lane closed ahead." 50 feet beyond that, the right lane was closed.

-Chelle

skywalker said:

Spoken like a man who has never driven through illinois or arkansas.

...

The ideas of using concrete more and more is a pretty new idea (read: past 3 years). It has been used forever but in the past few years techniques with concrete on roads have gotten a lot better.

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Ha, I'll raise you numerous trips on 80/94 from Gary, IN through to Iowa, and at least 4 trips through AK on 40 going cross country. I will say the GA portion of 85 is better than the SC and NC bits. But the concrete sections in SC are just horrible, I'm starting to think they do it on purpose now. The original interstates were made much smoother since the speed limits were higher and the cars didn't ride as well, but now I think they are trying to keep the speeds down with rougher roads...

I've made that trip. It's not the worse one I've had to make.

Arkansas was by far the most miserable trip I've made EVER! The whole state smelled like a paper factory, the roads were so bad that I litterally pulled over immediately after entering the state becuase I thought I had a blow out. Then there is the strict speed limit enforcement. By strict, I mean STRICT. Oh God, the memories, the pain. I hate that state with a passion.