What happened?

[Anonymous No.2012179]

How did we fall so far?

[Anonymous No.2012186]

>>2012179
If you're not pretending to be stupid, the first "roads" clearly doesn't allow you the same thing as the second one, for example the first gets slippery really quickly when it rains/snows.

[Anonymous No.2012190]

>>2012179
Most roman roads were just well traveled dirt.

[Anonymous No.2012194]

yeah because the first roads didn't have to deal with multiple heavy vehicles driving across them everyday

[Anonymous No.2012196]

>>2012186
>doesn't allow you the same thing
What exactly was prohibited? The Romans were quite accepting of public fornication, for example.

[Anonymous No.2012197]

>>2012179
Modern roads trade durability for being gentle on the vehicles because it's cheaper to fix a road than have everyone fix their car every week

[Anonymous No.2012206]

>>2012197
that must be why they spread corrosive salt on everything, rather than let people drive with studded tires.

[Anonymous No.2012217]

>>2012196
Language barrier, my apologies, I meant the doesn't give you the same technical properties as the "roman roads".

[Anonymous No.2012221]

>>2012179

Sorry to ruin the fantasy, but those nice basalt roads require maintenance too.

[Anonymous No.2012222]

Modern roads involve a lot of engineering.

[Anonymous No.2012223]

>>2012222
That's...that's the problem OP's picture implies.

[Anonymous No.2012224]

>>2012206
A car won't rust away in a year or two, but it will need new ball joints, shocks and bushings after driving on stone roads for that long.

[Anonymous No.2012227]

>>2012223
Oh, I haven't actually read the captions.

The photos imply the complete opposite by showing the whole construction and layers of the roman road versus a slab of asphalt.

[Anonymous No.2012228]

>>2012223
no OPs picture implies that educated engineers that design modern roadways don't actually know what they're doing while laborers in the past could build roads that last forever while wearing pants on their head.

Neither are true of course, the people designing roads back then would have been nobles and people like OP would have been the slaves building them. Also they're still engineered, I know its hard for some people to realize but back then it was still possible to design and test things just like we do now.

truth is this thread is gay, you're gay, and OP is really gay. And anyone who agrees or resonates with OPs image has an IQ that about on par with room temperature.

[Anonymous No.2012243]

>>2012179
Road wear gors up with something like the sixth power of vehicle weight iirc. Foot traffic and even large carriages are nothing compared to cars, much less large trucks.

[Anonymous No.2012245]

>>2012179
didnt know the romans had 40 tonners

[Anonymous No.2012249]

They paved part of my road a few days ago, it's already falling apart, several large holes appeared. I've been noticing this over the past several years, seems like every time they do it, it lasts less and less. Now we're down to a few days, wow....progress.

[Anonymous No.2012250]

>>2012228
aaand you would have been a slave too my pseudo intellectual friend

[Anonymous No.2012251]

>>2012249
I bet you they saved $50 in materials! Totally worth it!

[Anonymous No.2012255]

>>2012249
Unless you live in the Southern Hemisphere it's way too cold currently to pave right now. If you do they could have used a bad mix.

[Anonymous No.2012258]

>>2012255

I kinda thought that, don't ever remember them repaving a road in the middle of winter before but...that's what they did. Results speak for themselves, I guess.

[Anonymous No.2012264]

>>2012179

Try driving a car across a Roman road, I dare you

[Anonymous No.2012267]

>>2012250
seethe

[Anonymous No.2012268]

>>2012264
How can I get my car from America to Rome, you silly billy!

[Anonymous No.2012270]

>>2012264

We used to have brick roads in a nearby city where I lived. Wasn't bad, i mean the speed limit was like 35 tops everywhere. Those roads have lasted almost 100 years in parts.

[Anonymous No.2012274]

>>2012250
He never claimed he wouldn’t be

[Anonymous No.2012276]

>>2012228
>IQ about on par with room temperature
Kek, in Celsius too!

[Anonymous No.2012280]

>>2012179
Try those roman roads someplace that freezes, where the roads are plowed, and have trucks carrying 40 ton loads.

[Anonymous No.2012282]

>>2012179
Romans built roads for carts with horses. Try to drive on these with 50 km/h.

[Anonymous No.2012283]

>>2012179
1. They didn't have a high flow of semi trucks and other heavy things going over the roads.
2. Just because something is a lot more hardy, doesn't mean it is the most efficient way to do something.
We have to span highways across the world, all over, it makes a lot more sense to use asphalt, something that is cheap and we have an abundance of rather than having to gather a mass of stones and carefully place them for every inch of road.

[Anonymous No.2012289]

>>2012179
It wasn't the engineers, it's the penny pushers who decided to cheap out on the materials and labor

[Anonymous No.2012296]

>>2012289
Yeah sure blame your boss when you do a shitty job

[Anonymous No.2012354]

>>2012179
for starters romans had to maintain their roads and your lower pic shows a non maintained road that is not an engineers fault.

[Anonymous No.2012357]

>>2012296
engineers design and make suggestions penny pinchers undermine those suggestions and then the poor bastards have to build it. once again it's the person that doesn't want to spend money to keep the road maintained who is at fault. no road (that is used or exposed to the elements) will stay perfect forever. cocksucking dipshit.

[Anonymous No.2012359]

>>2012289
This

Current roads are the result of minimizing costs per mile.
We know how to build roads that will last 3X as long, but they will cost 5x as much.

[Anonymous No.2012373]

>>2012179
Those Roman roads would have been ripped to shreds in months by modern vehicle traffic. The only thing that happened is you're making gross generalizations without considering enough information to make a even a particularly specific claim.

[Anonymous No.2012376]

>>2012373
I should also mention they would demolish modern suspension on the majority of passenger vehicles; they'd eat the shit out of tire rubber while they were at it; and there's no way you could travel on them anywhere near as quickly. None of that even addresses that they'd still need maintenance.

But this is a bait thread and OP wasn't interested in anything except sucking cocks.

[Anonymous No.2012409]

You guys severely underestimate the damage caused by commercial vehicles. Their tires are literally harder than asphalt and they regularly put down 2000 lb/ft of torque in the space of two dinner plates. Never mind the fact they can weigh as much as 80,000 lbs gross in the US. Look at a busy stop sign intersection with commercial traffic on a hot day; you can actually see the trucks bend the asphalt. The best solution to this I’ve seen are these weird rocky reinforced concrete squares that are used instead to build the road. They are far harder and more durable but the ride quality is complete shit as they are gapped and they are also loud as fuck

[Anonymous No.2012415]

>OP sees some holes in the surface and thinks the road is broken
that's just a small part of the road which is inexpensive to fix, and it's supposed to be fixed periodically
it can lead to serious damage though if unattended for too long

[Anonymous No.2012417]

>>2012194
Or freeze/thaw to any great extent. None of that cobble or brick shit holds up in the north.

[Anonymous No.2012431]

>>2012196
>The Romans were quite accepting of public fornication, for example.
This is false. You can't sum up romans habits in such a way - they were extremely diverse because of the whole conquest and assimilation thingy. There were groups with clashing customs living in the city of Rome next to each other when republic fell and empire was created. Etruscans and other early roman tribes were outnumbered by that time. Customs of one group would stand out as unthinkable by other, and that's why they were standing out so much. A snapshot of most common customs among plebeians from that era is early christianity, and christians aren't really known for being such easy going when it came to sexuality.

[Anonymous No.2012438]

>>2012228
>the people designing roads back then would have been nobles and people like OP would have been the slaves building them
Of course. Because not being forced to work for your living and knowing since early age you won't ever have to makes your naturally acquire virtuous qualities needed to design such an unearthly thing as a road.
Guess what - they had slaves designing them too.

[Anonymous No.2012442]

>>2012243
This is why we need to abolish trucks and massively expand freight rail networks. Plus trucks clog up roads by driving on average 20-30mph slower than the rest of the traffic backing up lanes and leading to large traffic jams.
They are literally clotting our roads. Ban trucks!

[Anonymous No.2012443]

>>2012224
never owned a GM product huh.

[Anonymous No.2012445]

>>2012289
>It wasn't the engineers, it's the penny pushers
spoiler: you're talking about the same people. Any idiot knows how to do something having unlimited funds and time. Engineers job is to optimize quality, cost and time. A road has to be good enough, but god forbid any better than that if it generates any additional costs

[Anonymous No.2012446]

>>2012442
We stopped using trains for a reason.

[Anonymous No.2012449]

>>2012446
and the reason was outsourcing heavy industry overseas

[Anonymous No.2012451]

>>2012446
Not for a good reason.

[Anonymous No.2012453]

>>2012446
cause your mom got pregnant with you and paternity became an issue?

[Anonymous No.2012454]

>>2012446
We didn't really stop using trains.

[Anonymous No.2012480]

>>2012454
I ran a train on yo mamma last night!

[Anonymous No.2012487]

>>2012445

Troll thread but I just got my PE so I'll bite.

Modern roads last something like 30 years. No, they're not stone, but they're hella cheap, easy to tear up, and also carry thousands of vehicles a day and depending on the roadway, hundreds to thousands of HEAVY vehicles.

Were not talking about 2 horses and your farms hay crop after harvest. Were talking multi kip point loads that transfer through a flexible surface to the subbase beneath, and are able to return to the state it was at before.

Look at the damage a semi truck does to bridge joints. Your fucking stones will suffer from differential settling and youll have a shitty, uneven surface.

Modern society causes modern problems. Not everyone wants to drive a rally course on their way to work.

[Anonymous No.2012492]

>>2012179
roman roads don't have 5 ton trucks driving on them.

the modern road is basically the same thing as the roman roads down to the design. a modern road if left to horse and carriage would last a lot longer, but because we put our roads under extreme stress they wear very fast.

pot holes form from putting extreme pressure on soft spots in the sub-soil. the asphalt mostly acts like a rubbery protection, as the asphalt "dries" it becomes less effective and more brittle. the resolution to this problem is to trim down and repave the road. it restores the elasticity of the asphalt and doesn't require you to build the entire road. much like your tires wear, the asphalt wears and the wear on the asphalt is expected and accounted for. the problem there in is that politicians often misappropriate funds and don't perform the necessary maintenance.

[Anonymous No.2012503]

>>2012186
Those roads were pretty pricey for their time though. How nice would ours be if we spent as much proportionally on infrastructure as they did.

[Anonymous No.2012510]

>>2012487
>Not everyone wants to drive a rally course on their way to work.
Maybe we should switch back. I like rally car racing and I don't like commuting.

[Anonymous No.2012523]

>>2012179

Capitalism.
There's no revenue cycle of the roads never have to be repaired.
Rome also didn't have semi-trailer trucks fucking up their roads.

[Anonymous No.2012525]

>>2012523
gtfo commie faggot

[Anonymous No.2012530]

>>2012525
not an argument

[Anonymous No.2012538]

>>2012523
this. there are stretches of concrete that have lasted for decades, but there is no money for the paving industry that makes permanent roads.

[Anonymous No.2012542]

>>2012186
They were unsafe!
>>2012190
They were really just dirt!
>>2012194
They couldn't handle heavy loads!
>>2012197
They were not economical!

Man I love how the answer is so obvious that everyone gives a different reason. 2000 years later plebs still seething in jealousy of Roman superiority. kekus maximus

[Anonymous No.2012560]

>>2012179
I'm a civil engineer for a Geotechnical firm that specializes in heavy highway. What we suggest usually gets cut in half and then everyone pats themselves on the back for saving so much money. If a highway was actually built to the original design spec they would last a very long time, but people never look farther forward than a couple fiscal years. Accountants ruin everything.

[Anonymous No.2012577]

>>2012560
"Accountants ruin everything"
Fiat money ruins everything.

[Anonymous No.2012592]

>>2012542

[Anonymous No.2012601]

>>2012560
Unions ruin everything.

[Anonymous No.2012602]

>>2012560
Bean counters are consistently the ruiners of product.
IBM? bean counters.
Intel? bean counters.
Oracle? bean counters.
Roads? bean counters.
When will the shekelstein menace end?

[Anonymous No.2012614]

>>2012542
>The reasons Roman road building techniques cannot be applied to modern times are so myriad that several anons independently can name a different
>This must mean they are all wrong!
Is this your brain on Gallic wine, or what the fuck?

[Anonymous No.2012623]

>>2012602
Bold of you to assume that they're ruining things for monetary gain and not as a humiliation ritual

[Anonymous No.2012630]

>>2012614
>Must mean they're all wrong
Reading comprehension: You lack it.
>cannot be applied
Anon... please, you're embarrassing yourself.

[Anonymous No.2012823]

>>2012510
Yes, but unfortunately your locally appointed selectwomynx dont.

[Anonymous No.2012829]

>>2012228


Haha excellent point, gentlesir!


>>2012276


Kek indeed :^)


>>2012487

Yes, Yes YES!! THANK YOU for educating this dunce!!

[Anonymous No.2012830]

I love it the UK. people laughed when I bought a trials bike, but they ain't laughing now.

On-road is the new off-road here, LARPy biker bros shitting bricks every time they take their pretend Moto GP deathtrap to the shops, whereas I actively seek out potholes on rainy days.

[Anonymous No.2012837]

>>2012487
>Your fucking stones will suffer from differential settling and youll have a shitty, uneven surface.
with a robust enough base and sub base layer over well drained properly compacted select structural fill, the surficial topping doesn’t even matter in regards to stability. Imagine an extreme case of 20ft deep of just #57 with a cobble/crusher run topper, do you think that will have a failure mechanism of differential settlement?

Did you save your $300 pencil?

[Anonymous No.2012930]

>>2012179
>takes 50 times as long to install

[Anonymous No.2012939]

>>2012179
Cobble masterace reporting in

[Anonymous No.2012956]

>>2012487
>Not everyone wants to drive a rally course on their way to work.
well, they are wrong, and should be disregarded

[Anonymous No.2012963]

>>2012956
based and redpilled. I live for the snow in my area, and every time it comes down it makes for the best commutes, drifting my way all the way to work

[Anonymous No.2013008]

>>2012179
Simply put america got involved. Hail Britannia Hail the cobbles

[Anonymous No.2013052]

>>2013008
Father...I kneel...

[Anonymous No.2013062]

>>2013008
VGH BRITISH BVLLS

[Anonymous No.2013064]

>>2012523
Didnt know the free market made roads
>>2012538
And sure if that's the problem then let's build a government run company that paves better roads ohhh wait they already tried it where i live and its just as shit, il give them that they paved the roads just as good but the rural communities are fucked since all they do is just come and patch it up. There are places where i go through regularly and are full of potholes that have been there for at least a year
It took them 4 years to patch up one pothole that is in a major part of the city

[Anonymous No.2013067]

>>2013064
Just do what Wanksy did in Manchester until all the potholes are filled.

[Anonymous No.2013083]

>>2013067
Funnily enough i know a case of this happening but it still took them a month to get there and by then it washed
The reaction of the man in charge was priceless
"This is just vandalism, we repave the roads every 4 years this is just because we had heavy rain and semi trucks going thought there"
The road was in a residential area where the roads are just wide enough for 2 cars and at that time 5 years of record low rain fall
Also quick question. What happens every 4 years?

[Anonymous No.2013085]

>>2013083
Leap years!

[Anonymous No.2013097]

Cobblestone is fine for in the busy city areas where you're not driving more than 15-20 mph. But outside that, it's no good. Driving 50-60 mph on a cobblestone road, fuck that.

[Anonymous No.2013156]

>>2012560
Over specifying is an easy way to blame others for failure.

[Anonymous No.2013246]

>>2012560
OP ruins everything

[Anonymous No.2013247]

>>2012939
thats brick not cobble shitburg

[Anonymous No.2013282]

>>2012530
>implying communists dont have budgets too
lol I see youre a poser and don't actually know anything youre talking about.

[Anonymous No.2013410]

>>2013156
I'm not the one that over specifies it. They specify a traffic load and service life, I design to that spec, they cut it in half, then the road fails at roughly half the time they told their bean counters it would. The cycle continues. That is why you notice the roads are always shit but also always under construction.

[Anonymous No.2013527]

>>2013410
Wouldn't it be cheaper overall to just do it right?

[Anonymous No.2013529]

>>2013527
Yes

[Anonymous No.2013531]

>>2013529
But for each individual budget it probably saves some cash in the short run to do it the wrong way?

[Anonymous No.2013532]

>>2013531
Exactly. Nobody looks farther ahead than their current budget.

[Anonymous No.2013533]

>>2013532
What a fucking bummer. How can local governments solve this problem?

[Anonymous No.2013563]

>>2012224
Also, regarding rust, there's protective measures that can be taken against that.

[Anonymous No.2013785]

>>2012409
Those concrete squares are quite stiff and not flexible. They're also much more expensive to fix.

[Anonymous No.2013849]

>>2012190
>>2012179
The mayans are the ones who knew how to build roads niggers.

[Anonymous No.2013924]

>>2012179
>How did we fall so far?
Planned obsolescence. Modern roads will eventually fail, the city will have to hire them again to fix them. Keep that cashflow going, it's worth a lot.

If you don't think they can't build a road that greatly outlasts current ones then I have a bridge to sell you, and you should keep my number cause I'll have to repave it for you in a few years.

I've seen highways that bear a lot more traffic and lot heavier loads going without being repaved for years on end. Meanwhile, the neighborhood streets that have a few cars roll down it has to get repaved every few years.

Yes, it's a racket. It will keep going on for the foreseeable future.

[Anonymous No.2013928]

>>2012179
You just wanted to shitpost. You weren't serious or you'd already have found your answer which isn't simple.

[Anonymous No.2013939]

>>2013928

[Anonymous No.2013966]

>>2013928
OK smart guy, what's the answer then!?

[Anonymous No.2014127]

Romans had engineers you moron.

[Anonymous No.2014258]

>>2014127
/thread
I'm surprised mods haven't deleted it, this is /b/ tier

[Anonymous No.2014430]

>>2012542
Plebs were Roman fucktard

[Anonymous No.2014501]

>>2012274
It was implied though in his tone.

[Anonymous No.2014502]

>>2012258
Maybe you guys have a county commissioner's auntie nearby that needed some emergency service.

[Anonymous No.2014532]

>>2013247
No, Mr. know it all; it's granite cobbles and setts, with slate flags and whinstone kerb, re-laid about 25 years old in my hometown. Never seen brick paved road in the whole country. Fucking thick pratt.

[Anonymous No.2014579]

>>2014532
I don't see any state flags in that picture.

[Anonymous No.2014653]

>>2012179
in my country they asfalt over those stone roads.

Yet, they form pot holes anyway.
i guess asfalt does that because it's not permeable to water and dilates as a whole, like a rubber mat

[Anonymous No.2014657]

Isn't asphalt basically a waste product of the oil industry? Gotta do something with it.

[Anonymous No.2014660]

>>2014657
Why not put it in food?

[Anonymous No.2014662]

>>2012179
>cheeping on material and building process
>strong winters and big temperature changes hurt roads
>heavy traffic
>in many parts of the world natural disasters

[Anonymous No.2014667]

>>2012179
Roman roads didn't have 2 tons of fucking steel driving over them, constantly, for 12 to 16 hours a day

They had at most, foot traffic, and the occasional cart driving over them

[Anonymous No.2014834]

>>2014667

[Anonymous No.2014843]

>>2014667

[Anonymous No.2014850]

>>2014667
.

[Anonymous No.2014852]

>>2014667
..

[Anonymous No.2014854]

The engineer's job is to design and build the road cost effectively, not build the strongest thing possible.

[Anonymous No.2014856]

>>2014667
...

[Anonymous No.2014857]

>>2014834
>>2014843
>>2014850
>>2014852
>>2014856
Those are sampietrini, theyre not roman. If i remember correctly they started using them during early 1600s. Also most of those you posted were redone with modern techniques.

[Anonymous No.2014860]

>>2014667
Also note that roman carriages used for moving bulk goods like grain and lumber weighed about half a ton and had iron wheels, usually pulled by two horses or oxen weighing another half ton each, with iron shoes. That's 1.5 tons minimum that were used in the most common logistical vehicle in ancient rome without luxury of rubber tires.

[Anonymous No.2014877]

>>2014857
I didn't think they were surviving roman roads retard, I'm just showing that the type of road can indeed handle heavy traffic quite easily, and actually hold up extremely well.
I don't know why there is even such a thing as modern roadway fanbois who are compelled to rationalize that roman roads somehow sucked compared to modern roads. Modern roads made from asphalt are designed to be repaired constantly by scraping them up, reheating, then relaying. It's convenience for sake of materials and cost, but certainly NOT durability nor longevity. Everyone knows they have absurdly short lifespans even with light use. They need constant maintenance to be even remotely viable. The concept only works when that constant maintenance is actually provided, which we all know it isn't.

[Anonymous No.2014909]

>>2012268
They make specialized cargo ships for that. Now get to it.

[Anonymous No.2014946]

>>2014834
>>2014843
>>2014852
To be honest those often get patched up with shitty asphalt blobs outside of the more touristy areas as can be seen in >>2014850

[Anonymous No.2015248]

>>2012179
and they were excellent roads until we started to drive cars over them
wank off to the romans more

[Anonymous No.2015278]

>>2012939
Yeab nah we have a town with cobble roads they suck.

[Anonymous No.2015439]

>>2014877
if you lived in a country with actual history you'd know stone roads are fucking awful for cars and need as much restoration and maintenance as asphalt roads

[Anonymous No.2015453]

>>2012359
They don't, they cost 2x as much and that would be a good long term investment over the current situation, but no one wats to be the guy who "paid too much". In 20 years when the road still holds no one will thank the guy for thinking ahead while every other road will be littered with patches.

[Anonymous No.2016197]

>>2012264
It's already been done. The test was completely uneventful, smooth sailing as it were

[Anonymous No.2016198]

>>2013563
>Also, regarding rust, there's protective measures that can be taken against that.

[Anonymous No.2016233]

>>2012179
The people who design a build our roads don't fear being put to death by the emperor if their shit sucks...

[Anonymous No.2016252]

>>2012179
overspecialization results in ignorance in evry accord thats not the spacialization

[Anonymous No.2016256]

>>2012264
You mean, across cobbles? Oh wow yeah crazy.

[Anonymous No.2017063]

>>2012179
corruption. then with what's left build shitty infrastructure so you can repeat the process since it falls down quicker.

[Anonymous No.2017066]

>>2012179
Mayans> roman and modern engineers

[Anonymous No.2017086]

If this shit is so good (and never needs maintenance ever) then why did Rome decide to abandon Sampietrini roads?

[Anonymous No.2017301]

>>2012179
Outside of cities roads where most of the time dirt roads and only 1-2 main routes per region would be made up in this fashion. It was the autobahn of the roman empire and not every city or village got connected like this. obviously they built them better than normal roads, they had to wihtstand water, snow, earth and lots of foot traffic.