That was also how many years ago now? Everything changes. The point I made was that the asphalt formulation you grew up with is nothing like what is being used today.
Regardless of maintenance costs, concrete costs orders of magnitude more money to initially install than asphalt. That alone drives municipalities to use asphalt. Then, when it does need refurbishment or replacement, asphalt is much less expensive to remove and replace. They regularly run those grinding machines down the freeway and save the material to be used again. They can do miles in a day. It could last only a couple of years and still be less expensive than concrete.
Around this side of the state at least, frost heaves do a lot of damage. The areas with concrete do not weather that situation as well as asphalt either…
That hasn’t changed but now they just keep slapping patches over patches. Some stretches of my commute were like 4 wheeling in the Rockies!
10 years ago, I was one of our towns budget committee. Paving is one of our biggest expenses. And believe it or not the amount of paving we do each year hasn’t changed in the 30 years prior to when I was a selectman. Costs had gone up significantly. And even though traffic has drastically increased on our larger town roads we we’ve still been resurfacing them on the same schedule. I don’t know about the state roads that pass through our town which the state is responsible for.
People get to choose in Vermont; many have chosen to revert roads to gravel.
No slight on Dwight, but the movement to build the interstates was in the works for years before his presidency. He was amenable to it, because he saw Germany’s highways and commanded a platoon to cross the US after WW1, saw how bad ours were.
In my town, we’ve just been less proactive about re-paving due to costs. There’s a lot more tar applied to cracks, patching and other preventive maintenance being done to stretch the timeline for re-paving. The road agent is one job I would never want in town. Too much flak about everything. Big expense lately has been replacing culverts- the big ones streams and brooks run through. They also get blocked by beavers on a regular basis despite the design measures for discouraging them.
The state painted the highway through town on a day where rain was expected and happened. What a disaster. It took the better part of 5 years for that mess to fade enough it doesn’t look like such a mess.
Asphalt is a mixture of aggregate, sand, and bitumen binder. Bituminous is bitumen. IMO the aggregate and sand make asphalt a much more resilient surface than binder only.
But he implemented plans already in place, not to slight his contribution, but it took people who understood the problem and had thought about how to deal with it.
In general, all 4 of these seem to say that Asphalt is cheaper to put down but requires much more maintenance and does not last as long as Concrete…
Concrete cost more up front but last much longer, and taken into account the overall life of both, Concrete can cost less due to less maintenance and longer life…
Of course, different areas have pros and cons for both…
Here, Concrete Roads (mainly interstates only other than off/on ramps) last longer, with our heat and hills, we get a lot of wrinkles at intersections from heavy trucks stopping and pushing the asphalt forward…
Our neighbors concrete driveway has more than out lasted our asphalt driveway by leaps and bounds… It is 50+ years old and still like new, ours is only 30 years old and has needed replacing for a few years now…
Me, I had rather be driving on Concrete until the rain hits, then I feel safer on Asphalt
but now they just keep slapping patches over patches. Some stretches of my commute were like 4 wheeling in the Rockies! 