It snowed a lot and inevitably it is melting, and savaging the decaying roads of the GJA with all the water the melting snow will produce. As you may have noticed Toronto’s residential streets in the Greater Junction Areas are overrun with cracks and gouges. This was not the case up to the early 80’s – before that the roads were smooth and maintained to a good working and looking standard.
The GJA we actually had curbs – nice deep ones that prevented cars from running up on the sidewalk, now the roads have been repaved over so many times – the curbs have all but been eliminated.
Today the city uses a particular model – Life-Cycle Cost Analysis-to decide upon road repair priority, rather than a simple fix and rolling replacement program. The roads were better without the Life-Cycle Cost Analysis model.
Below is some information on the Life-Cycle Cost Analysis method probably more than you wanted to know. But it is the reason for all those chunks of asphalt and cracks in our roads.
City of Toronto’s Road repair web page link
Life-Cycle Cost Analysis
The first systematic economic means of comparing highway investments that will be discussed in this primer is called life-cycle cost analysis (LCCA). It applies the discount rate to the life-cycle costs of two or more alternatives to accomplish a given project or objective, enabling the least cost alternative to be identified.
When to Use Life-Cycle Cost Analysis
LCCA is applied when an agency must undertake a project and is seeking to determine the lowest life-cycle-cost (i.e., most cost-effective) means to accomplish the project’s objectives. LCCA enables the analyst to make sure that the selection of a design alternative is not based solely on the lowest initial costs, but also considers all the future costs (appropriately discounted) over the project’s usable life.
LCCA is used appropriately only to select from among design alternatives that would yield the same level of performance or benefits to the project’s users during normal operations. If benefits vary among the design alternatives (e.g., they would accommodate different levels of traffic), then the alternatives cannot be compared solely on the basis of cost. Rather, the analyst would need to employ benefit-cost analysis (BCA), which measures the monetary value of life-cycle benefits as well as costs (BCA is discussed at length in the next section of this primer, page 17). Accordingly, LCCA should be viewed as a distinct, cost-only subset of BCA. Even with these restrictions, however, LCCA has many useful applications (see box).
I wouldn’t mind seeing alternatives to asphalt road surfaces to beautify some of the neighbourhood’s streets. Asphalt and poured concrete are so bland. Granite blocks and setts can make for tough road surfaces.
yes – Granite blocks and setts can make for tough road surfaces are more bumpy? and need greater maintenance, but the are a much more humanistic surface with a “real sensation when traveled over. Also they are visually appealing.
used commonly to pave surfaces in other areas.
Stone blocks just have to be relayed every few decades if laid properly in the first place–much like asphalt and concrete. You can probably reuse the stones over several reconstructions for a lifetime. Such streets are slightly more bumpy, but if laid properly can be reasonably smooth. It’s just the gaps between stones that result in a slight bumpiness. Aesthetically, the effect of a stone or brick-paved street is unparallelled.
fully agree