ScyLarc

When we arrived late last year it took me a good month to realise that all the crap driving i saw (swerving all over the roads) was actually just people trying to avoid pot holes. I dropped our old banger down one last week and actually thought i had killed it - fairly certain i have gouged something out from under the car but i am too afraid to look!

cindyabs

Well look at the sheer volume of traffic-we don't have a good or widespread public transport system in the US, so more cars, not to mention bigger country.......

elfman

And it's not going to get any better with Bush in the WH: His latest budget has eliminated federal funding for Amtrak, so we may be seeing the end of long distance passenger rail travel in this country.

Bob

There's hardly any rail anyway...but having said that, the line has finally opened public use from portland to boston...shame that you have to go there to get up to canada though....very weird...

Desdemona

It's only going to get worse before it gets better We all know where Bush's priorities lie. And it's not with the concerns of folk like you and me.

Scarlett in Texas

Er.... Do we live in the same Texas, Snowbunny?

Hands up all Dallasites who think the roads are a disaster???

psb182

yeah our street is a mess right now....ice all over the road and snow all over our yard.....I recon if Kerry was in office my street would look totally different....that Bush is gonna get a piece of my mind

snowbunny

The constant construction in the DFW Metro area is a hassle, but in large part, the rural roads are pretty good. Any really good sized potholes? I'll be up there at the end of April for a gig.

Desdemona

Well!! If you're up in New England, that's no surprise At least in our city/county there have been no cut-backs on the snow-ploughs and what not. I don't know how long you've been living up north but the roads always end up a mess when winter's over with the freeze/thaw cycle. But you probably already know that

Scarlett in Texas

Ah rural roads [Grin!], I remember them.... My mum still sells bacon sarnies on the A66 near Cockermouth when the snowploughs let her out...

The only rural road I get to use much here is 80 on the way out to my mother-in-law's. I have to agree it's not bad at all - I taught my hubby to drive on it. The roads between downtown and North Dallas are a nightmare - so much so that they've driven me onto the highways out of desperation after a year of saying, "I will never go back to the I-75". Potholes and ditches are the only thing holding parts of Abrams and Skillman together!



Regards
-=-
Scarlett

snowbunny

North Central expressway has been a nightmare forever. It's cursed. I guess now that I think about it, there aren't the same kind of freeways/expressways in English cities that there are in American cities -- meant for intracity travel. I guess the freeways there are the various transit systems (trains/tube).

Actually if you really want a scare, check out the state of bridges in the US -- over rivers, or cricks, or other roads. If we'd wanted to blow a load of dough and pull loads of Americans away from their regular jobs, I would've rather seen the resources used to rebuild roads and bridges and build / renovate schools and other public buildings. Curious that.... if they'd done that, it'd be labelled socialism, but go take over other countries, and it's considered kick-ass democracy.

cindyabs

Actually that's what the WPA did during the Depression under FDR. It created needed jobs and it served a civil purpose.

snowbunny

Yep, and we could use that about now. I've read yet another "Educated but unemployed" article in the jobs section of the paper. There was a good quote from an unemployed electrical engineer: "We can't all go into gene splicing." To move into the latest high tech jobs can take years of expensive schooling, and to have to make such a move every few years means trying to hit a moving target. There is a lot we could accomplish without retraining (think of the ageing power grid, and the huge blackout in the Northeast last? summer) and it's hard to be sidelined (or should that be touchlined? ).

Pulaski

Your not kidding - on the interstate near me, a couple of years back, they found a "pot hole"* that was twenty feet wide, thirty feet long, and five feet deep in places. The state engineers climbed down inside and were able to walk around in it! It was only when the hole spread under the shoulder, causing the asphalt surface to collapse, that anyone noticed it.

* What had happened was that the packed clay under the road had been washed out leaving the road surface concrete slabs bridging a huge cavity.

Bob

Now that must have hurt bouncing over that one