by G. Stolyarov II

Created on: December 23, 2006   Last Updated: April 19, 2007

I live on the North Shore of Chicago, one of the most affluent areas in the entire United States with some of the poorest roads I had seen anywhere in the country. Several times a week I must follow a convoluted labyrinth, bordered by orange cones and wooden signs that constantly jut out into my path, as if asking to be bumped into. I am distressed to remind myself that it had once been a single, straight traffic lane with kilometer-long cracks and potholes. It is said that there are only two seasons in Chicago, winter and construction, and, each winter, the roads are battered so extensively that the same stretches must be incessantly repaired every consecutive year.

What should spark even more indignation, though it is elevated by Chicagoans to the status of natural law, is the fact that the North Shore and other American neighborhoods like it are experiencing road deterioration unheard of even in the ancient times! Roman engineers, for example, were remarkable at building sturdy roads to transport the imperial legions throughout Europe and the Middle East. The roads were built with primitive materials, such as stone and gravel, but their foundations were dug deep into the ground, and multiple layers of mutually reinforcing materials gave the roads immense endurance and longevity. Parts of the Via Appia in Italy are still capable of bearing the load of automobiles today, and certain Roman bridges in Spain are routinely used to channel car traffic! The ancients, with far fewer technology than is available in our age, had created roads with two thousand times the life expectancy of the average street on the North Shore of Chicago.

It may seem paradoxical that technological improvements correlate with deteriorating road quality and lifespan. However, technology is not to blame. Though the typical layman in Chicago will overlook it, his "public" roads are meant to require constant maintenance! A brief glimpse at the depth that a typical road stretches as it is being excavated during construction will show that it extends no further than a quarter-meter from its surface, and contains no more than two layers of asfalt or concrete. Pressure from thousands of multi-ton vehicles traversing it for 365 days is almost certain to strain the surface beyond its capacity to endure, and, once the surface gives way, the entire road must crack or collapse due to its infinitesimal thinness. The Romans' elementary solution to this fenomenon was to make the road deeper and thicker!

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