Why is it so expensive and is there an alternative out there that won’t break so easily especially in the winter? My state is spending like a billion dollars a year on roads that they’ll probably have to fix in 5 years, it really seems like a huge waste of money.
Good Public transportation would fix a lot of these costs I know but what other road materials/solutions are out there?
Thank you for the answers and for putting up with my follow up questions. I’m learning a lot!
asphalt is cheap (and flashy) part of road construction, the really important, expensive, non-flashy and prone to corner cutting part is building solid, thick, high-quality layer of aggregate underneath. if you don’t have that, no matter how many layers of asphalt you slap on top it will break every winter
this is an instance of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_problem
Roman roads exist over 2000 years later, and are still in use, because they made the foundations about 30m deep.
I’m not a road enthusiast but I want to point out that such large cobblestones with irregular surfaces and gaps in between may not be optimal for heavy trucks going across them at over 100 km/h.
They were smoother when they were maintained, several of them have been paved over with asphalt, and they hold up
Roman roads don’t see 80000Lb semi trucks rolling over them.