We have a lot of trouble with potholes and frost heaves here in Vermont. It’s the freezing and thawing that does it.
Concrete roads proved to be a mistake in the northern states, at least here in New England. When Eisenhower put in the interstates, they were mostly done in concrete, and that proved to be a mistake. First they tried resurfacing with asphalt, and eventually they replaced most of them entirely with asphalt, because they just kept buckling. They left expansion cracks between the slabs, but that just didn’t work.
High-tech concrete technology has a famous past
Almost 1,900 years ago, the Romans built what continues to be the world’s largest unreinforced solid concrete dome in the world—the Pantheon. The secret, probably unknown to the Emperor Hadrian’s engineers at the time, was that the lightweight concrete used to build the dome had set and hardened from the inside out. This internal curing process enhanced the material’s strength, durability, resistance to cracking, and other properties so that the Pantheon continues to be used for special events to this day.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2690198/posts
we should have hired non-union Romans.
My theory is our road issues are due to the extremes on both ends of the spectrum...throw in heavy use of road salt and that is destruction.
salt eats EVERYTHING and was a contributing factor to the 35W bridge gussets being corroded.