Countries with Best Roads, Infrastructure

[Glaucus]

Honestly, our roads aren't too bad. They're not great, but when you think about spending a finite pool of resources, should you spend loads on roads to get them from "okay" to amazing when that money could be used on something like health care or other important services to bring them from "poor" to "okay"? Certain areas really are bad, but it's not terrible. As another poster mentioned, I'm more concerned with people's ability to use them. Lane discipline in this country is atrocious

I would rather that government had the foresight and actually spent a bit more upfront for longterm savings, rather than penny-pinching and building poorly, that then requires a large amount of money to upkeep. see it all the time in my job.
I mean last night 3 well paid people, van and fuel costs. Sat downloading data from a location (300kb which takes 30mins to do) rather than just fitting a modem. They could at least wrap the data up so it could be transferred to a laptop in seconds, but no, that costs to much and would rather the longterm hidden cost of man power/inefficiency. Things like this happen all the time, in so many industries the government controls.

government contracts are unbelievably inefficient and doesn't matter if its private/public.

 

[Devrij]

I would rather that government had the foresight and actually spent a bit more upfront for longterm savings, rather than penny-pinching and building poorly, that then requires a large amount of money to upkeep. see it all the time in my job.
I mean last night 3 well paid people, van and fuel costs. Sat downloading data from a location (300kb which takes 30mins to do) rather than just fitting a modem. They could at least wrap the data up so it could be transferred to a laptop in seconds, but no, that costs to much and would rather the longterm hidden cost of man power/inefficiency. Things like this happen all the time, in so many industries the government controls.

government contracts are unbelievably inefficient and doesn't matter if its private/public.

I agree, and I have to ask : how does it take 30mins to download 300kb of data?

 

[Glaucus]

I agree, and I have to ask : how does it take 30mins to download 300kb of data?

Crap design, has to download each individual bit of information separately.
What's even better is the system is designed to be remote access, but to cheap to pay for that. Even though it obviously works out many times cheaper per year. There's even telecoms at these locations. Our biggest location has 12 downloads, I'm sure you can imagine how boring that shift is, and how much it takes away from actual work.

 

[Devrij]

Crap design, has to download each individual bit of information separately.
What's even better is the system is designed to be remote access, but to cheap to pay for that. Even though it obviously works out many times cheaper per year. There's even telecoms at these locations. Our biggest location has 12 downloads, I'm sure you can imagine how boring that shift is, and how much it takes away from actual work.

Yes that's absurd. I find that the bigger and older an organisation is, the harder it is to effect positive change which I imagine is partly your point here. Inefficiency is a bit of a given with our government and the way we repair and maintain our roads, and nobody seems to be willing to consider a capital investment to reduce long term costs.

 

[rIcK]

I cycled hundreds of miles across the Netherlands last year, my girlfriend and I flew over with our road bikes and travelled most of the country for around 3 weeks. It was wonderful, consistently the infrastructure for both cars and bikes was superb. A million miles away from the crap fest we have here and the consist hatred for everyone else on our roads.

 

[Glaucus]

oh yeah, the cycle lanes and footpaths in Netherlands are just amazing, so many totally separate from roads cutting through the countryside as well. due to that well partly due to that, bikes are stupidly popular. I'm sure the flatness helps as well.

 

[rIcK]

"Road tax" (Vehicle Excise Duty) just goes in a big treasury pot like other taxation, it doesn't get specifically allocated to roads (I wish it did!).

Here is an interesting fact, the damage done by cars, vans, lorry's and buses causes considerably more damage than is 'gained' in road tax. So as a general rule of thumb, people who don't drive subsidise people who do to make up the shortfall out of general taxation and council tax.

oh yeah, the cycle lanes and footpaths in Netherlands are just amazing, so many totally separate from roads cutting through the countryside as well. due to that well partly due to that, bikes are stupidly popular. I'm sure the flatness helps as well.

Cycling is only so popular since they made the infrastructure rather than the other way around.

Amsterdam in the 70s vs now... fuel crisis made people abandon cars. They built tonnes of cycling infrastructure and made it the most convenient way to travel, naturally people followed.

 

[Jaaay]

I would rather that government had the foresight and actually spent a bit more upfront for longterm savings, rather than penny-pinching and building poorly, that then requires a large amount of money to upkeep. see it all the time in my job.
I mean last night 3 well paid people, van and fuel costs. Sat downloading data from a location (300kb which takes 30mins to do) rather than just fitting a modem. They could at least wrap the data up so it could be transferred to a laptop in seconds, but no, that costs to much and would rather the longterm hidden cost of man power/inefficiency. Things like this happen all the time, in so many industries the government controls.

government contracts are unbelievably inefficient and doesn't matter if its private/public.

Keeps council busybods in jobs though doesn't it, thats the problem. If things were done properly there wouldn't be enough work for them to do/money to waste.

 

[Telecaster]

The pitiful quality of resurfacing in the UK makes it a virtually pointless task.

This chip seal **** makes for crap roads, plus they never bother to properly sweep away the excess chips leaving it for the traffic to churn it all into the gutter for cyclists to plough into and years of pebble dashing pedestrians/parked cars.

 

[Glaucus]

Keeps council busybods in jobs though doesn't it, thats the problem. If things were done properly there wouldn't be enough work for them to do/money to waste.

not true at all.
it has far more to do with how these companies are run and funded( i don't mean the total budget or how that budget is derived, but how the funds are split up within the companies).

 

[B@Th*nG]

Here is an interesting fact, the damage done by cars, vans, lorry's and buses causes considerably more damage than is 'gained' in road tax. So as a general rule of thumb, people who don't drive subsidise people who do to make up the shortfall out of general taxation and council tax.



Cycling is only so popular since they made the infrastructure rather than the other way around.

Amsterdam in the 70s vs now... fuel crisis made people abandon cars. They built tonnes of cycling infrastructure and made it the most convenient way to travel, naturally people followed.

They do have the benefit of having historically built their cities with plenty of space too. It's makes putting infrastructure to meet the requirements of people, bikes, cars and frequently trams in actually plausible haha. You can't do that in the uk unfortunately. There's less need to cram everything in when there are zero hills. at all. Lucky dutch

B@

 

[rIcK]

They do have the benefit of having historically built their cities with plenty of space too. It's makes putting infrastructure to meet the requirements of people, bikes, cars and frequently trams in actually plausible haha. You can't do that in the uk unfortunately. There's less need to cram everything in when there are zero hills. at all. Lucky dutch

B@

Most cities in the Netherlands are just as constrained space as here, its just our cities are badly laid out consistently. Bad footpaths, poor junctions, crappy painted infrastructure and obviously the whole point of this thread poorly maintained roads.

 

[Fusion]

They do have the benefit of having historically built their cities with plenty of space too. It's makes putting infrastructure to meet the requirements of people, bikes, cars and frequently trams in actually plausible haha. You can't do that in the uk unfortunately. There's less need to cram everything in when there are zero hills. at all. Lucky dutch

B@

It’s more a case of political will. Tram systems can easily be threaded through tight city centres, look at the Nottingham system. We are heading in the right direction compared to previous decades, but as is often the case with public infrastructure here it’s very piecemeal. There’s just not the belief in it at the top level.

 

[Lopéz]

Our roads are an absolute embarrassment.

They are not. You need to experience roads in other countries, there are places all over Europe alive with much worse roads than we have.

 

[4K8KW10]

They are not. You need to experience roads in other countries, there are places all over Europe alive with much worse roads than we have.

There are too many patches in the UK cities and towns, for instance, in Southampton.
But the countries with infrastructure problems are not that many in Europe and globally - maybe Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Serbia and Poland.
And that's it - the bad thing is that African countries have no worse infrastructure than the aforementioned countries.

 

[Vonhelmet]

They are not. You need to experience roads in other countries, there are places all over Europe alive with much worse roads than we have.

No doubt, but given our history I’d like to think we might have better. We were at the top of the world for a good long time, but I think it’s fair to say we rested on our laurels and we’re decidedly on the way down now.

 

[ubersonic]

Yep, and it seems to be getting gradually worse each year.

I have noticed that over the past decade roads here are being built/resurfaced to a significantly worse standard, in some cases the surface actually being worse after resurfacing (sans pot holes ofc). It seems like the government are trying to save money by buying a much lower grade of tarmac, then telling the workers not to waste time flattening it properly lol.

 

[ttaskmaster]

Can you imagine how much damage these holes do to the cars' suspension?! These cars need to go for repair all the time.

I was on my bike at the time, so no need to imagine.
But yes, the friends I was visiting in Redhill did not drive their cars much when the roads were that bad.... and they were seriously bad - It wasn't a pothole until it was a foot deep!

 

[B@Th*nG]

It’s more a case of political will. Tram systems can easily be threaded through tight city centres, look at the Nottingham system. We are heading in the right direction compared to previous decades, but as is often the case with public infrastructure here it’s very piecemeal. There’s just not the belief in it at the top level.

not a chance. you couldn't put trams in large parts of london or bristol, for example. there simply isn't the space for more than 2 cars quite often because the buildings are so close together. This is why London has an underground and there isn't one at all in Holland; they can get away with light rail because there's space.

B@

 

[Glaucus]

not a chance. you couldn't put trams in large parts of london or bristol, for example. there simply isn't the space for more than 2 cars quite often because the buildings are so close together. This is why London has an underground and there isn't one at all in Holland; they can get away with light rail because there's space.

B@

What not all cities in Holland have trams. And not all cities in UK lack them. Your argument isn't making any sense. The UK also has plenty of space to link cities, towns and villages up with cycle paths and they don't even need to be on the side of the road. And yet very few of them exist.