U.S. Transportation Budget Woes? Just Copy Canada

By Keith Edmund White

Canada may just save U.S. state legislators from raising taxes to fund road repairs.



From The Detroit Free Press:

Colbeck said stronger concrete roads, such as those built in Canada and Europe, would last about 40 years compared to about 20 years for the roads the state builds now.

"While the initial costs will be more expensive, the ongoing maintenance costs would be much lower, resulting in potential savings of over $1 billion per year," he said.

And the U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration has caught on too:

Maintenance techniques: In general, most of the countries visited have had little or no need to do maintenance of concrete pavements. Joint resealing is conducted in a sporadic manner, if at all. One widely used maintenance technique is a thin asphalt overlay to correct rutting caused by studded tires or to mitigate tire-pavement noise. Only in Canada is diamond grinding used to improve smoothness on bare concrete pavements. In the United Kingdom, concrete pavement is overlaid with asphalt to reduce noise.

Precast slabs for rapid repair: Canada is evaluating the use of U.S.-developed precast concrete technology for rapid repair. In a field experiment the scan team visited, the team observed that panels were used for individual slab and multislab replacement. The Michigan and Fort Miller methods of placing precast slabs were examined in the Canadian experiment. Canada is also examining modification of the Michigan method. While both applications exhibited some premature distresses in the Canadian tests, primarily because of issues related to installation, the Ontario Ministry of Transportation believes that this will become a practical specialty method of construction and repair.

But even adopting this strategy, which emphasizes long-term savings for what is a sizable investment upfront, won't solve everything.

The real problem is the number of cars on American roads (along with weather).

Outside of large, economically growing urban areas, I doubt the U.S. driving trend-line is going downward anytime soon.

Especially if federal and state governments refuse to add driving's economic externalities into gasoline prices.

Yes, that means increasing gasoline taxes.