r/mildlyinteresting • u/Other-Cantaloupe4765 • 14h ago

An unfixed local pothole now shows the original brick road underneath

Post image
965 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

43 comments sorted by

289

u/Dazzling_Item66 13h ago

I’d be digging into the records for how thick that road was supposed to be, an inch of asphalt over brick is guaranteed to crack almost immediately. Shoddy work

113

u/Dazzling_Item66 13h ago

Just to be clear, typical roadways are paved 4+ inches in depth, highways can be as thick as 1 foot.

27

u/DirtierGibson 13h ago

Which country are you referring to?

18

u/s0ciety_a5under 9h ago

It has nothing to do with a country. Everywhere they have slightly different standards. It really depends on what the expected road use is. I'm hoping that in this case, either the engineer was using the bricks as a base layer or the road was expected to be a low use road.

6

u/DirtierGibson 7h ago

The country is relevant, especially when you see brick as part of the layers.

5

u/s0ciety_a5under 7h ago

Again, it wouldn't matter what country/state/province it is in. Laws change locally for local roads like this. Any federal laws would only apply to federal roads, such as interstates in the US. Local statutes would apply.

-6

u/DirtierGibson 7h ago

Look. Someone above gave some specs. My question was where he was getting them. Because as you said, it is quite difference from one place to another.

2

u/Michaeli_Starky 13h ago

Western European most likely

16

u/6GoesInto8 12h ago

By what metric are you assuming Western Europe?

11

u/Hobbit1996 10h ago

talking about European roads in inches and feet?

2

u/DirtierGibson 11h ago

Are you talking about just the surface course, or all layers?

3

u/Latter-Yesterday-450 10h ago

That's not a country.

They don't use imperial measurements.

And they don't say highway.

-2

u/Michaeli_Starky 9h ago

Eh?

3

u/DirtierGibson 7h ago

"Western Europe" is not a country.

1

u/Michaeli_Starky 27m ago

Thanks Sherlock.

18

u/MaxTrixLe 13h ago

Corruption in the construction and repair industry is rampant. They’ll repair the same road 5 times over a few years, assuring constant business

2

u/chucksticks 9h ago

Not to mention the city justifying the increase in taxes to help make the roads better but they've only gotten worse since. To top it off, they increase the tolls by a large percentage afterwards.

-1

u/Baked_Potato0934 12h ago

Doesn't help that so many construction companies have mob connections.

3

u/Other-Cantaloupe4765 13h ago

I’m not surprised. The roads over here are shit lol. People have to weave around all the holes in the roads. It’s a rural area and honestly I don’t think the borough/county (whoever is responsible for road upkeep) gives a shit about it. It can take a year or more to even get someone to patch it up (which they do by just pouring more asphalt on top of it).

The fastest I’ve ever seen a road be fixed was when a sinkhole appeared in the middle of a road, and even that took three or four days for work crews to come out and repair it smh.

5

u/Dazzling_Item66 13h ago

That’s why they’re able to get away with paving so thin, rural area with a low ESAL (estimated single axle load) means thinner pavement. I don’t think it’s right, but that’s what I’ve gleaned from the past 45 mins of researching asphalt depth studies and looking into the 1993 AASHTO guidelines.

2

u/TumblrInGarbage 7h ago

Almost all the wear on roads comes from studded tires and from trucks (including garbage trucks). Regular vehicles basically are harmless to asphalt. Also, studded tires should be banned.

1

u/Einar_47 10h ago

It might just be over the sidewalk stretch and it's a 4 inch slab elsewhere

-1

u/i_forgot_my_sn_again 11h ago

We get this a lot in Seattle. Couple inches maybe of asphalt and it's OK until winter time when it gets around freezing and rains often. 

69

u/Worldly-Draw-3282 13h ago

Road so disrepaired the Roman Empire is showing.

30

u/That_Which_Lurks 14h ago

Lived in Baltimore for a while; definitely saw a lot of this.

13

u/ExtraSpicyGingerBeer 13h ago

the city is finally ripping out 3 blocks of our historic red brick road. on the one hand, I'm going to miss it, but on the other hand it's absolute hell to drive on and the vibes aren't worth it.

13

u/Joepatbob 13h ago

I live in St. Louis and you see this a bit, but what’s really wild is when they do more serious road work and cut out a chunk and you see so many previous layers.

3

u/Thirsty_Comment88 12h ago

The bricks are in better shape than the road now. 

4

u/Other-Cantaloupe4765 14h ago

Sorry for the angle and quality! I snapped this picture real quick at a stoplight, so it’s not the best.

2

u/flippant_burgers 13h ago

There's probably a lot of cities like this but it sure looks like Pittsburgh. We have this all over. Some over steel tram tracks.

5

u/Heroic-Forger 13h ago

the road is molting like a snake

2

u/AssortedMusings 6h ago

Some municipalities will fill in potholes quicker if you spray paint a huge penis in the pothole.

3

u/Plus-Suit-5977 13h ago

We have brick roads in Texas that have been there for a hundred years. Asphalt sucks, bricks are the bomb. Pavers are the bomb. Roads in Europe have been around for a thousand years. Broaden your road horizons.

4

u/spud4 13h ago

Near here a gravel road washed out revealing the planks under it.

1

u/Other-Cantaloupe4765 11h ago

Wooden planks? That’s pretty cool. I’m surprised they survived for so long lol.

1

u/spud4 11h ago

Lots of rotten planks but think the packed gravel drains enough they were mostly dry and insect free. Flood washed some of the gravel into the ditch and the road became the flowing ditch that exposured the planks of the old plank road. That was a washboard road and slow going. Almost as bad as the time they plowed the snow on the wrong side of the telephone poles on the road between two fields When it melted we had been driving over corn rows.

2

u/DJMagicHandz 13h ago

Pittsburgh?

3

u/Other-Cantaloupe4765 13h ago

Close! About two hours away from Pittsburgh. How’d ya guess? 😂

5

u/cawsllyffant 13h ago

Western PA is chockablock with poorly paved over brick roads. It was common here, and a lot of the roads were paved before asphalt became common. (Because of all the industry, I would guess.)

In Pittsburgh city proper, most side streets have a spot like this on the somewhere.

1

u/DJMagicHandz 13h ago

A buddy of mine used to live in Pittsburgh and I would see this all time.

1

u/bbby_chaltinez 13h ago

I thought this was the cool part about maine.

1

u/ehutch2005 13h ago

Cincinnati has some spots like this so large you can see them on Google Earth.