What are these miles and ft you speak of ?
Actually I decided to look it up. It’s about $2.5 million per mile for a basic 2-lane asphalt road. welovepaving.com/how-much-does-it-cost-to-pave-on….
That number can get much higher very quickly if you use concrete, have more lanes, need bridges or tunnels, and whatever else comes up.
A mile of 4 ft wide concrete sidewalk is about $182,265.6
www.lawnstarter.com/…/concrete-sidewalk-price/
And very few are walking/bicycling from Perth to Brisbane, but there’s still trucks going in between which depend on the road network.
More money per mile and more miles means it costs more.
DavidDoesLemmy@aussie.zone 1 day ago
Kaboom@reddthat.com 1 day ago
Sorry, 1.69 (nice) Kilometers and .305 Meters, or roughly 1/2 of a Futball/Soccer Ball
Zagorath@aussie.zone 1 day ago
Sorry we’re not big on soccer here. Got that in football lengths? (I’ll accept either Aussie Rules or rugby footballs.)
Kaboom@reddthat.com 1 day ago
A foot is about two cm longer than a Rugby ball
Zagorath@aussie.zone 1 day ago
But what you’re neglecting there is the fact that our road network is already complete. Aside from new developments, all it needs is maintenance. Our bike network is woeful. There are almost no trips that can be taken entirely on separated bikeways. There are hundreds of kilometres of bikeways needed in Brisbane alone before we could be considered to have even a moderately successful bike network.
And, again, this is positive ROI.
Also: we have too much of a reliance on trucks as it is. Any inter-city road that gets more than half a dozen road trains per day should probably have actual trains to take that freight far more efficiently. Ditto roads seeing the equivalent of that in regular semis. But that’s a conversation for another thread.
Kaboom@reddthat.com 1 day ago
Y’all apparently pave it with asphalt, which has sky high maintenance costs compared to concrete + rebar. That would be something I consider to be the actual issue, especially when you run super heavy truck trains like y’all do. If I was in charge of your road network, which I’m not, I’d start paving your big roads properly. But that’s neither here nor there.
Zagorath@aussie.zone 1 day ago
Wait, where are you that they make roads out of concrete? I’ve never heard of such a thing.
Longmactoppedup@aussie.zone 1 day ago
Can be fairly sure they are in the USA.
To grossly simplify a very expansive topic of concrete vs asphalt, vs bitumen…
Concrete = more upfront cost, slower to built. It is more durable. Costs more to repair. Less traction. More noisy to drive on due to joints.
Bitumen = cheapest up front to build. Less durable, but can still get a fairly good life out of it if designed to meet expected loads. Can be repaired more cheaply.
Asphalt. Middle ground between the two. (It’s effectively bitumen with cement binder added) Most of our freeways, major arterial roads here are asphalt.
Things that effect the choice: Different CAPEX vs OPEX strategies, especially with politics for public roads.
Local availability of materials.
Local environmental conditions i.e. freeze / thaw cycles we don’t have to deal with in most of Australia. High temperatures we do get, which does effect bitumen.
Fair to say that costs in one country for different labour and materials look a bit different too.
Tau@aussie.zone 1 day ago
We don’t do them anywhere near as much as America does but since I believe you’re around Brisbane I can pretty much guarantee you’ve driven on concrete roads (it’d be a lot less likely if you lived in Woop Woop). Look for it on primary routes that get a lot of heavy vehicle traffic - for example head south on the Pacific Highway and you’ll find large sections of concrete.