TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/050492/0504310.000

Text File | 1992-09-10 | 9.4 KB | 193 lines

                                                                                TECHNOLOGY, Page 64

Why America Has So Many Potholes


While Europe rolls out high-tech highways, the U.S. is paved
with outdated materials and benighted bureaucracy

By BRUCE VAN VOORST/WASHINGTON


    For a seat-of-the-pants introduction to America's highway
misery, try rattling down the joint-jangling Southwest Freeway
in the shadow of the Washington Monument. On this long-neglected
strip of pavement, a washboard ripple effect experts call
rutting jiggles the front wheels into a dervish dance. Farther
along in a newly rebuilt section, potholes already lurk, like
so many blacktop booby traps.

    America's road system is a marvel and a mess. With 3.9
million miles of highways and roads, many of them built in the
asphalt rush of the 1950s, it is by far the world's biggest
system. Ninety percent of all U.S. travel occurs on highways,
and three-quarters of all domestic goods are shipped by road.
No stretches are busier than the 1.2 million miles of interstate
and other major highways. And yet, despite the $28 billion spent
each year on maintenance and construction, the Federal Highway
Administration admits that 52% of these thoroughfares are in
miserable condition. Some are rated "low fair," meaning rutted,
cracked and sometimes "unfit for high-speed travel." Others are
"poor," meaning they have excessive bumps, depressions and
potholes that "provide an uncomfortable ride." Roads like this
contribute to congestion and accidents, which the government
says cost the country $120 billion a year -- and untold lives.

    Highways in rotten condition are scattered across the
nation. I-35 south of Kansas City, Kans., is known as a
deathtrap for shock absorbers, while the pockmarked I-5 south
of Portland, Ore., and I-20 in Louisiana are renowned for
testing drivers' nerves and fannies.

    Highway experts often blame such conditions on the
unexpectedly heavy pounding delivered by American traffic,
especially from behemoth 18-wheelers. Many U.S. roadways carry
three or even four times their design weights. "Nobody in their
wildest imagination predicted these load factors," says federal
highway administrator Thomas Larson.

    But such excuses won't fly in Europe, where miles of
smooth-riding, durable autobahns and auto routes put American
roadways to shame. European highways actually carry more traffic
and considerably heavier truck weights than U.S. roads, yet they
are smoother and far sturdier. European highways are designed
by their builders to last 40 years; the projected life of
American roads is half as long.

    Why has the world's highway Goliath become the superpower
of potholes? A major reason is that in its haste, America built
on the cheap. Across the nation, state and local governments
have tended to award competitive contracts to the lowest
bidder, often meaning they got the shoddiest materials and the
sloppiest work. In addition, the Federal Government has
encouraged neglect by subsidizing new construction or major
restructuring at 90 cents to the dollar but awarding no
subsidies for maintenance work. One expert likens it to not
reimbursing drivers for the cost of changing oil in their cars
while paying 90% of the price of a valve job. "The attitude was
the faster it crumbles, the faster we'll get brand-new," says
New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a stalwart highway
watcher. Moreover, maintenance is un glamorous. "Nobody ever had
a ribbon-cutting ceremony for fixing cracks," notes Moynihan.

    In Europe, by contrast, maintenance and repair work begin
before damage is even visible. During a 1990 study trip to
Europe, a group of U.S. civilian and government experts was
amazed to see maintenance work under way on highways considered
to be in superb condition by American standards.

    Given the emphasis on new construction, U.S. highway
designers have badly neglected research and development, which
might have kept the roads abreast of mounting traffic. "For many
years, the Department of Agriculture spent more researching dog
food than the Department of Transportation did on highways,"
says Thomas Deen, executive director of the Transportation
Research Board. Europeans routinely spend 20 times as much per
capita on R. and D. Contractors in Europe add innovative
polymers to asphalt and mix new additives into concrete. One
additive developed in France -- based on a complex polymer akin
to shredded Tupperware plastic -- increased construction costs
8% while doubling the life of a road.

    But some of the most important differences between
American and European expressways lie well beneath the surface.
All highways are built by bulldozing softer subsoils and either
tamping them or replacing them with more durable dirt or gravel.
But in Germany the roadbeds tend to be 1.5 m or 1.8 m (5 ft. or
6 ft.) deep, twice the U.S. average. European engineers also
devote more time and money to designing roadbeds that resist
frost and have excellent drainage, addressing two problems that
play havoc with U.S. thoroughfares. Each step, from laying the
subsequent gravel or concrete layer to applying the asphalt
surface, is taken with long-term durability in mind.

    In the past few years, U.S. engineers and contractors have
begun to apply some of the lessons from overseas, particularly
in improving materials. Asphalt, a heavy petroleum residue that
is typically mixed with crushed rock or even slag from steel
mills, can be made much stronger and more durable by adding
various polymers, including polyurethane. About half of new
roads are built with asphalt (the other half are concrete), and
nearly 90% of resurfacing jobs employ the sticky material.

    American contractors are gradually introducing
stone-matrix asphalt, a surfacing mixture embedded with
uniformly sized rocks that help the material hold together
better and last longer. Road technicians are also experimenting
with a more porous asphalt that provides an anti-skid surface
and has the added benefit of reducing noise. And to cut costs,
builders have developed imaginative ways to recycle old chunks
of asphalt.

    Concrete -- a mixture of cement, sand and gravel -- has
also been enhanced. A slew of additives, such as fine steel or
urethane fibers, have toughened the product and lengthened its
service life. To minimize traffic disruptions during repair,
some quick-drying concretes cure so rapidly that highways can
be opened to traffic within an hour. New bonding techniques
enable concrete to adhere to old concrete slabs, which means the
old layers don't have to be laboriously removed. U.S.
contractors have begun to use new equipment that accelerates the
laying process, including one colossus that spews out two
parallel 3.7-m-wide (12-ft.-wide) strips of wet concrete like
newspapers off a press.

    Alas, few of these improvements are landing where the
rubber meets the road, because American contracting procedures
discourage the use of novel techniques. In Europe, govern ments
dictate only how long a highway should last under what
conditions, and contractors are left to their own devices to
deal with the challenge. In the U.S., contractors must meet an
avalanche of government specifications on materials and
procedures but are not required to guarantee the road's
performance. "The Europeans create a contract climate that
stimulates innovation; here we squash it," laments Douglas
Bernard, director of the Office of Technology Applications in
the Federal Highway Administration.

    Bernard and other highway officials would like to see the
U.S. move to a performance-contract system, similar to one
advocated by the National Academy of Sciences, but they face
roadblocks from builders. Heavy lobbying from the construction
industry eliminated such a provision in the 1991 federal highway
act, passed last fall. The industry especially dreads being
asked to guarantee the life-span of its products, arguing that
it is unreasonable without knowing for certain what the traffic
will be like, despite the fact that European contractors
routinely make these assurances. Such warranties, insists David
Lukens of the Associated General Contractors of America, are "an
invitation to litigation and a field day for lawyers."

    In fact, many U.S. road builders are small mom-and-pop
operations that would be hard pressed to pay for the new
equipment and training that innovative techniques sometimes
require, let alone to post the insurance bond necessary to
guarantee their product over several years. In France, by
contrast, the highway-construction business is dominated by half
a dozen or so well-financed giants.

    The 1991 highway act does address some of the problems
with American road building by giving more emphasis to
maintenance and research and development. In part, the
government is recognizing the exciting possibilities that truly
lie down the road: innovations that go well beyond surface
improvements. Initial government contracts are already out for
an "intelligent vehicle" system involving electronics embedded
in roadways that will someday permit drivers to punch in their
destinations and watch TV or snooze while their cars or trucks
race merrily on their way. But before the country can turn to
such 21st century roadway wizardry, it must first win the battle
against pesky and dangerous potholes.