[Lancaster Online]

[Hammer]

So nothing`s changed in 105 years.

[Nativeson]

The roads were poor not because of a lack of cash and proper materials, Edison said, but because of an insufficiency of brain power.

"If you took the brains needed and combined them with the material you have here you could have the finest roads in the country," Edison said.

He did say "brains" and not "trains."

[runutz]

"What do you know about surfing, son? You're from g** d*** New Jersey!"

[LaPenna]

Having lived in numerous states before settling here in Lancaster, I, too, whole-heartedly agree the roadways in PA are some of the worst.
Roads have multiple names. Confusing!
Too many roads are one-way, making navigating confusing.
Traffic is congested. Why not widen the roads?
Too many intersections forbid right-hand turns on red or turning from the shoulder. Why? Prohibiting drivers from using common sense by continuous restrictions only serves to increase congestion.
The potholes & road surfaces in Lancaster are in very poor condition. Why is the blacktop rippled as though the ground wasn't leveled & properly prepared before laying the roadway? Why are there grooves in the roads from the tires weighing down the roadway?
I don't find these conditions in other states. Even in the other Commonwealth states (Virginia, Massachusetts & Kentucky) I don't find such poorly constructed & maintained roadways.
When I drive through intersections here, I've discovered it's typical to hit manholes. Why can't PennDot & the local townships learn more effective measures to properly construct & maintain roads? Just learn from the other states!
Has anyone else noticed that when you use MapQuest or GPS to travel here inside PA, it does not use real time? It will say a trip takes 17 minutes, only to discover upon my late arrival that the drive time is approximately 2 X what my GPS claims.
Only in PA do I find drivers who drive UNDER the speed limit! This is not even mentioning the law of using the left lane for passing only, or the horses & buggies! If you are going to pull out in front of someone & cut them off, at least put your foot on the gas pedal & get up to spee quickly.
Something else I've noticed regarding driving laws here in PA...
In other states, any licensed driver at any time is welcome to take the Defensive Driving Course. It not only removes up to 4 points already on your driving record, but it lowers your insurance premiums by 10% for 3 years! Prior to moving down here to PA, I would take the Defensive Drivers' Course every three years to keep my insurance costs down. Not here in PA! It's not even an option we have! Why not? Defensive Driving Courses have proven to increase driver alertness, safety & to decrease the number of accidents caused. Why would the State of PA prohibit our drivers from making our roads safer? Less accidents - a good thing. Lower premiums- a good thing.
What can we do as residents of PA to make PA's roads safer, better maintained? Improving the roads in PA would lower our cost of repairing our cars.

[sportsnut1662]

Only roads worse than PA are Ohio, from what I have seen.

[Harl Delos]

Only roads worse than PA are Ohio, from what I have seen.

Depends on the part of the state.

In the northwest part of the state, there was once the Black Swamp. They tried and tried to build roads there, and were unsuccessful.

General "Mad" Anthony Wayne was fighting the indians, and they'd use trees for cover. To make for safe passage, Wayne cut a swath, known as the "Wayne Trace", a mile wide. A mile? Sounds like overkill, but hey, killing trees is no big deal in wartime. Sometimes, they'd cut partway through the trees, and wait for a big wind to knock everything down, then drag the trees away and burn them. The ash that resulted was a valuable commodity; filter water through it, and you get lye.

But the Wayne Trace was impassible, especially for wagons with supplies, and for artillery.

Have you ever heard of a "corduroy road"? Cut down trees, and lay them crosswise to the direction of travel. It's awfully bumpy, I would imagine, but stone is hard to come by in a swamp. The problem is, in a swamp, those logs become waterlogged and sink below the surface, and you have to keep adding logs. They recently did some excavation, and found logs 30 feet below the surface. That's a lot of logs to keep adding.

Next, they dug ditches alongside the road on both sides, and the dirt from the ditches was piled in the center and smoothed out. Nice roads. The problem was, the roads were effectively dams, and the water "wanted" to head downhill, to drain into the Maumee river to get to Lake Erie. Every spring, the rains would come, and the roads would wash out.

Finally, they figured out that they needed to put drainage culverts under the roads, so water could get from the south to the north. Once they had roads that were crowned, so that they would shed water, ditches to drain the water away so that the roads didn't soak up the water, and culverts so that the water could cross under the road instead of washing it out, they finally could build decent roads that would last. In NW Ohio, they still build roads that way, and they don't have a lot of problems with bad roads.

Asphalt doesn't soak up water - but you don't want a 10-inch or 12-inch thickness of asphalt because it gets too soft in the summer sun. Underneath the asphalt, there's a foundation of stone.

However, in Lancaster County, they haven't learned to dig drainage ditches alongside each road. In fact, in many places, the road is lower than the land on both sides. When the snow melts, it drains away on the surface of the road, and when the sun goes down, there's an incredibly slick skin of ice on the road. What's more, the water soaks into the ground, and fills in the spaces between the stone. Things get cold, the water freezes, it expands, and the foundation under the asphalt heaves. The result is broken asphalt and potholes.

Yes, it costs a little more to build roads that way. The ditch needs to be deep enough that the bottom is below the stone foundation for the road. It doesn't take long, however, for reduced costs of road maintenance to pay for the one-time cost of digging the ditch, and the small annual cost to keep the ditch open.

It's like the guy on that old Fram oil filter commercial. You can pay me now, or pay me later. What he leaves unsaid - and we should realize - is that it's going to cost a lot more if we pay later. A conservative community like Lancaster County should be skinflint enough to pay for good roads, instead of the higher cost of bad roads. It's too bad that we're penny-wise and pound-foolish.