I work for the road crew in the summer. Crack sealing (the process you see above) is fairly quick and simple. (Though holding a hose that pumps literal tons of 350F tar into the road in the middle of the summer is NOT easy)
I think what a lot of people underestimate is just how much road there is in your city. And just how many directions the crew gets pulled.
For our city of around 50k people there are 8 of us.
Also, crack sealing is a wholly temporary measure, meant to slow the break-up of the roads, it’s not a permanent fix.
Roads tend to get closed for months on end because we have to tear the whole thing up, then, depending on the class of road, we either have to hammer-drill into concrete to lay rebar and the pour concrete, or we can get straight to paving. If it’s a road requiring concrete we’re required to wait at least 24 hours for it to set.
So after 2 days we’re finally able to pave. But the city allocates one (two if we’re lucky) 5 ton truck to transport material.
A relatively short paving job requires at a minimum of 60 tons. So that’s 12 trips to the asphalt factory and back. Each ton is around $80.
There’s a lot of road, not many of us, and soup is expensive.
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