Relative road damage from vehicles

[il padrone]

Which vehicle causes how much damage to our roads ??

No surprises here I guess.

[outnabike]

Good post IP.
The thought of being beside a huge truck and then getting yelled at to "get registered" is mind boggling.

[trailgumby]

10^4 of vehicle mass is about right. I have a mate who is involved in writing policy for RMS and that's the factor he quotes.

[softy]

yes it makes it a laughing matter with the registration thing.

But I can already hear the response, but you still use the road. The come back is so do pedestrians. Then it will be about peds don't walk down the road.

you will never convince them, they don't even want to admit what the laws is, when you quote it.

I have heard it all! it all comes down to the same argument in the end. They say bikes should be off the road.

Because it is all about "their" convenience.

[uart]

10^4 of vehicle mass is about right. I have a mate who is involved in writing policy for RMS and that's the factor he quotes.

Ok, but I'm still trying to figure out where exactly the 10^4 (10,000) figure comes from?

A heavy rider on a steel bike etc (they're talking about me there btw) could be around 120kg. A typical small/medium car is about 1600 kg, that's only 13 times the mass.

I'm not doubting the relatively low impact of bicycles on road wear and tear, just wondering where the "mass" figures come from. It's probably more related to both power transfer and mass.

[uart]

10^4 of vehicle mass is about right.

Ok I see it now, you're talking about the fourth power of the mass (m^4). That makes more sense of their figures.

[uart]

Whoops, double post.

[Thoglette]

Ok, but I'm still trying to figure out where exactly the 10^4 (10,000) figure comes from?
...just wondering where the "mass" figures come from. It's probably more related to both power transfer and mass.

IIRC (from many, many years ago) the basic figure for an asphalt/tarmac road is a fourth power of axle weight (yup, I do). It is varied (a bit) by tyre width but not much due to the way in which the load is carried by the road. A loaded bus or truck can present a 6T point load vs the sub-one-ton load of a typical passenger vehicle. At 0.05 ton cyclists don't even rate a mention.

Raise that to the fourth power and it's 1,300 vs 1 vs 6 millionths

[Shred11]

There's a statistic attributed to research conducted in Europe that claims to have found that a single log truck movement (typically 42 tonnes) does the same amount of damage to the road pavement as 160,000 passenger car movements. To see the degradation of Tasmanian roads when b-double and later, quad axle trucks were permitted, It seems to be about right.

To hear truck drivers grizzling about having to pay a paltry $5000 in annual registration really makes me wonder... After all, if they paid realistically for the damage their vehicles do to the road, they'd each be paying millions every year.

[brumby33]

A full bus with 63 pass on board will weigh about 15 tonne GVM (Gross vehicle Mass) give or take a tonne and if buses are constant enough in a particular stretch, they can create a lot of wear n tear on local roads.
But one of the biggest destroyer of roads imo are those contractors who constantly slice up a patch of road then fill it in again but it often sinks creating lots of toughs or highs in the road.
Up here in the Newcastle suburban area it's rife....lots of good through roads looking like patchwork quilts....patches everywhere with some higher and lower....who the hell signs off on these projects?
For those who know the area, in Tighes Hill, some years ago there were dangers of a landslide so that section of Elizabeth street was closed for some time....not sure for how long but it had since opened a couple of years ago with a beautiful nicely tarred road with a paved speed hump at the bottom of the Hill.....sure enough....within 2 Months of that road being finished.....these bloody contractors came and made a massive slice up job and destroyed all that good work and for Months after...it was a shambles....it became a very uncomfortable road to drive a bus on and an eyesore to boot....it stayed like that for nearly 18 Months till they tarred over the lot.
If you go own the main street of Newcastle (Hunter Street) it has been dug up so many times and patched so many times, a trip along the main drag will loosen many teeth.....i'm near pretty sure of it!!

Cheers

brumby33

Dave

[find_bruce]

Weight of the vehicle doesn't mean much on its own - road damage is cause by axle load & that depends not just on the truck, number of axles & type of suspension but on the distribution of the load. It is a particular problem with trucks that pick up or drop off the load along the way - most don't redistribute the load along the way - those weighing stations you see along the highways measure the axle load.

[fat and old]

But one of the biggest destroyer of roads imo are those contractors who constantly slice up a patch of road then fill it in again but it often sinks creating lots of toughs or highs in the road...................who the hell signs off on these projects?

You do!

Well, you don't sign off on it exactly....you cause it, which could be worse!

They dig up the road because you want clean, potable water. A sewer system that works and doesn't block. You want NBN and Foxtel. You keep breeding and causing existing infrstructure to be upgraded, improved and enlarged. You want to be green, and have a seperate recycled water point in your house. You don't want power lines clogging up the streetscape.

Why do people assume that contractors will spend thousands of dollars, take out a case load of permits and wear untold amounts of shite from morons driving past just to rip up a perfectly good road for no reason? Dead set, I just don't get it.

As for the crappy reinstatement, again, blame yourself. You don't want to pay for it, so you get what you pay for. The days of the council Clerk of Works that ensures all this work is done properly is long gone. That money is spent on other things now, and no one I have ever spoken to has offered to up their rates to cover the costs. Yes, the rules are there to supposedly "make" those damned contractors fix things up. No one bothers enforcing them. In the City of Melbourne for instance, if an authority runs a new service in a road, then the full lane the trench is in is to be resheeted. Not just the trench. When was the last time that happened? I'd be surprised if many other councils are any different.


On the subject of road damage.......when cycling utopia has been achieved and cars are gone who will pay for the upkeep of the roads?

[find_bruce]

On the subject of road damage.......when cycling utopia has been achieved and cars are gone who will pay for the upkeep of the roads?

Same people who pay now - those who contribute to general revenue, ie rate & tax payers or to quote a wise man

You do!

[fat and old]

Wonder how that'll go down with genpop....

[brumby33]

I may be driving the vehicle that causes some of the damage....but that's the course of my job, It's public transport, it's a contracted run owned and run by the NSW State Government who really should be brunting the cost of wear and tear.
But as far as contractors are concerned, they have obviously tendered and won on such a price that it leaves little fat to do the job properly and in decades gone past, civil engineers or someone higher up who has trade qualifications has had to sign off on a job....but as you say...those days have long gone.
Councils have now got their own issues, especially lately with our State Gov. on the Council merging war path.....I guess that half the time their territories change so nothing gets done.
In my street alone, early last year the council came and re surfaced our road, now instead of smoothing out the major imperfections of the existing road, they just hot mixed over the top raising the surface up by about 10 mm and the camber of the road, it was fine for the first few weeks till the tar settled in and now you can feel every pre-existing holes and lumps that were there before as well as the issue that now the road height has been risen, the front end of my car now scrapes going in/out of the property's driveway. I'm renting in a Townhouse arrangement so I can't just get a late of metal to make it more shallower.
Our Street is a non-through street and not many heavy vehicles use it only for delivering furniture/removalists etc.....I just think it's more to do with "that'll do em" arrangement.


Cheers

brumby33

[il padrone]

As for the crappy reinstatement, again, blame yourself. You don't want to pay for it, so you get what you pay for. The days of the council Clerk of Works that ensures all this work is done properly is long gone. That money is spent on other things now, and no one I have ever spoken to has offered to up their rates to cover the costs. Yes, the rules are there to supposedly "make" those damned contractors fix things up. No one bothers enforcing them. In the City of Melbourne for instance, if an authority runs a new service in a road, then the full lane the trench is in is to be resheeted. Not just the trench. When was the last time that happened? I'd be surprised if many other councils are any different.

No, they should not get out of their responsibilities that easy.

I have absolutely no say over what the authorities' spending allocations and priorities are.

Local street - in two locations where properties have been developed there has been road excavations to access Yarra Valley Water water-points (I know not exactly who by). The road surface was filled, but this soon subsided to leave a wheel-crunching chasm. After a Snap-Send-Solve report to council it was passed to YVW and sort of rectified. Still an annoying lump there to this day.

Nearby - road surfacing was done by the council for some fractured & potted pavement. Perfectly smooth surface resulted.

Priorities and a level of damn care matters.

[fat and old]

Were the developements residential or commercial, and was the repair a total resheet or patches?

Not saying that they should get out of any responsibilities IP, just pointing out the facts. Apathy reigns in civil construction at a local level these days.

On the question of "who" asks for "what" services, I'm sure you understand we all do, if only at the level of voting in council elections.

Edit: Re brumby's resheet of a local road....doesn't sound like asphalt, more like a spray seal where they spray bitumen and coat it with small aggregate. That does nothing for ride quality, it's only used to prolong the life of the pavement. 10mm is a bit light on for asphalt.

[biker jk]

Wonder how that'll go down with genpop....

Motorists are heavily subsidised by those who don't drive. The problem is that motorists believe that fuel excise and registration pays for road building and its maintenance, the cost of road deaths and injuries, the costs of congestion and pollution. If there was full cost recovery then motorists on average would need to pay triple what they pay currently.

[fat and old]

Dont need to convince me, I'm well aware of the figures even if I don't take such a simplistic view.

I guess it's moot anyway, if we're all on bikes no one will worry about it

[il padrone]

Were the developements residential or commercial, and was the repair a total resheet or patches?

The developments were residential, single dwellings. The road surface was dug up to get to the water-main; the repair was a 1m x 0.5m patch. No idea whether it was YVW or the plumbers that did it, but suspect it was YVW, as it was a road resurface.

Council's road repair was a larger surface (>2m x 3m), and it WAS just a resheet I think, so not a comparable road depth of work, but I simply look at the outcomes.

On the question of "who" asks for "what" services, I'm sure you understand we all do, if only at the level of voting in council elections.

I get next to no chance to communicate road-repair matters to council, and it is not any sort of meaningful council election issue.

Edit: Re brumby's resheet of a local road....doesn't sound like asphalt, more like a spray seal where they spray bitumen and coat it with small aggregate. That does nothing for ride quality, it's only used to prolong the life of the pavement. 10mm is a bit light on for asphalt.

In my case the water-main access by developers/YVW was a full-depth cut; plugged with asphalt. The council's smooth resurface was also a cut but shallow, fill of asphalt; perfectly aligned and rolled smooth, not a sprayed down coating.

[jules21]

10^4 of vehicle mass is about right. I have a mate who is involved in writing policy for RMS and that's the factor he quotes.

it depends on a few factors, including the type of pavement (spray seal country rds vs. more reinforced freeways) and how the vehicle mass is transferred to the pavement. truck tyres run high pressures which tend to place more stress on the pavement, but this can be mitigated by running more axles - you see B-double with tri-axle groups. buses are terrible as many are single axles and they are heavy - that's why you often see rutting on bus routes and the use of those concrete pads at bus stops.

cars and bikes don't really wear out the road surface. but it's not just the upkeep of the road surface that costs - it's also the space consumed by vehicles and on that measure - cars are the worst. bicycles don't wear the road, nor do they need much space.

[webb_rowan]

It is true that diesel or petrol-powered vehicles obviously cause more harm to our roads than 2-wheelers. However, when it comes to safety, I think everyone has their very own responsibilities to handle in order to provide a conducive street environment for everyone to enjoy regardless of the number of wheels on our vehicles.

[cj7hawk]

cars and bikes don't really wear out the road surface. but it's not just the upkeep of the road surface that costs - it's also the space consumed by vehicles and on that measure - cars are the worst. bicycles don't wear the road, nor do they need much space.

Yes they do. Bicycles need just as much space as cars... Me, personally, I'd like as much space as two semi-trailers. Especially when they are passing by me

David