My guess would be that this was designed to be printed on smaller sheets of paper, like used in paperback novels and similar. But for some reason (possibly to make it more convenient to print on standard paper), the PDF was produced with Letter dimensions.
I don't think that it's for taking notes like the other reply [0] suggests, because if that were the case, I would expect for the cover to take up the whole paper width (since nobody would ever take notes on the cover), and I would expect the margin width to alternate between pages (since it's really hard to write on the inner margin in a bound book).
Using the example given in the other reply [0], the SCOTUS opinions are so narrow because they're printed on a bizarre paper size of 6 1/8" by 9 1/4" [1] [2], not to leave room to take notes.
I think they should have included the official NYC procedure, which is:
1. Dig out around the affected area
2. leave massive dent in the surface for what seems like years
3. Maybe cover it with a few janky bits of wood and/or metal sheets that make a hideous clanking noise all day and night and have the same approximate surface friction as an ice rink so are pretty murderous to any 2-wheeled road user
4. Leave this solution to mature like a fine wine
5. I really mean single malt whiskey. You can leave it basically as long as you like
I like Atlanta’s solution even better: after becoming egregious enough sloppily bolt down a much too tall metal plate over the pothole and those that have proliferated nearby. Cross fingers and hope they won’t coalesce as a sink hole and as with everything else: “Go Dawgs”
The root of the problem (literally) is that when potholes appear it's mostly because what's under became too porous and humid so what's over it separates easily. Patching the hole isn't a good fix but the alternative is closing roads which wrecks the economy. The other problem is that the public always asks: "why isn't it patched ?" and if you don't do it you look like you're not competent enough to be in charge. And the cycle continues.
I've literally watched them approach a pothole full of water, blow the water out with compressed air, retract the blower while the pothole refills, excrete asphalt mix into the watery hole then pat it down and compress it with a roller -- then proceed to the next pothole, driving over and denting the just-"repaired" one.
Oakland CA had a pothole vigilante group doing good work several years ago, bless their hearts. Not sure if they're still around, but their DIY approach was commendable and could be replicated. I believe they used "cold patch" asphalt which can be purchased at Home Depot and the like.
It sucks that illegal DIY approaches are necessary, but at some point people just need to take matters into their own hands. It feels like road repair is one of the most visible and perhaps common indicators of local government corruption. My personal favorite is when a perfectly good stretch of road gets repaved to use up tax dollars, while streets in terrible condition get ignored.
I don't think there will be a post oil industry, at least not as long as we have roads and cars.
We don't really need as much oil for walking paths, trains, or bike trails, and potholes are a different problem with different solutions for those.
As long as we have cars as we know them, we'll have oil. Road construction require s oil, all of the plastics in cars require oil, trucks require oil, shipping vessels require oil, it's oil all the way down.
It would require a seismic shift in life as we know it to live in a post oil world. Our stockpiles are pretty low (maybe a month in the US).
Traditional oil extraction (drilling a well, not things like the oilsands or fracking) is actually relatively eco-friendly compared to other building products like concrete or steel; the problem is that burning it isn't great for the environment, and the heavy demand due to burning most of it means that lots of it is extracted using the less eco-friendly methods. So I think that the current plan is to continue extracting it more-or-less forever, just in much lower volumes than right now.
I did a little (very little, I asked an LLM) what it would cost to produce this report in today's dollars. The answer came in as roughly $90,000–$180,000. Worth it or accurate? I don't know but it is interesting.
Reading all of the crabby comments about pothole repair make me feel great about my city in MN. Leave voice mail about pothole on my way to work in morning, pothole filled when I return home in the afternoon.
I wonder if there are existing data sources that could be used to implement an optimal pot hole patching priority lists at scale.
Identify pot hole locations. Combine with traffic metrics for those locations. Then use a combination of some pot hole nuisance metric (size, depth, location in lane, number of cars that could hit it per unit time based on traffic metrics), a cost to repair for a given repair type metric (should include traffic disruption cost estimates), then have an estimate for future degradation if it is not repaired and the cost of that applied at a few time points .... I'm sure there are plenty of implementations of various versions of the algorithm, but I wonder whether there are open data sources ....
A quick search suggests that most approaches are municipality based crowd sourcing efforts. A stream from the radars from various vehicles could provide something that was up-to-date enough to avoid false positives that had already been fixed .... Things like streetview and various aerial photography datasets probably update too slowly ... though I know of some potholes that have existed through multiple recaptures.
I guess the days of citizens grabbing their shovels and going to fix the roads are becoming a thing of the past. Which is a shame because the total cost of asphalt needed to fix most potholes is less than the cost of a single tire repair.
The weather is hell on roads in Minnesota, repeated thaw/freeze cycles really do a number on asphalt pavement. My municipality actually owns and operates an asphalt batch plant, that’s how much time and money is spent on repairing roads here in Saint Paul.
These are just band-aids, the subsurface is usually the problem and it’s expensive to rip up and replace an entire road vs repeated mill and overlay cycles.
22 comments
[ 5.1 ms ] story [ 46.9 ms ] threadI don't think that it's for taking notes like the other reply [0] suggests, because if that were the case, I would expect for the cover to take up the whole paper width (since nobody would ever take notes on the cover), and I would expect the margin width to alternate between pages (since it's really hard to write on the inner margin in a bound book).
Using the example given in the other reply [0], the SCOTUS opinions are so narrow because they're printed on a bizarre paper size of 6 1/8" by 9 1/4" [1] [2], not to leave room to take notes.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46887595
[1]: https://www.supremecourt.gov/casehand/guidetofilingpaidcases...
[2]: https://www.supremecourt.gov/filingandrules/2023RulesoftheCo...
1. Dig out around the affected area
2. leave massive dent in the surface for what seems like years
3. Maybe cover it with a few janky bits of wood and/or metal sheets that make a hideous clanking noise all day and night and have the same approximate surface friction as an ice rink so are pretty murderous to any 2-wheeled road user
4. Leave this solution to mature like a fine wine
5. I really mean single malt whiskey. You can leave it basically as long as you like
6. There is no step six.
1. Do nothing for 9 months. This allows the pothole to mature until ready for step 2.
2. Put a traffic cone in the pothole.
3. After a couple weeks of public notice (traffic cone) dump hot asphalt into the hole, making sure to top off several inches above street level.
4. DO NOT WAIT for asphalt to cool down before opening the street. This allows for asphalt to stick to tires, shoes etc.
5. Make sure to leave a significant bump and don't compact the asphalt so next winter it will open up again.
6. Make sure to put any utility covers (manholes, drains etc) directly in the wheel path for maximum damage.
7. Profit!
I've literally watched them approach a pothole full of water, blow the water out with compressed air, retract the blower while the pothole refills, excrete asphalt mix into the watery hole then pat it down and compress it with a roller -- then proceed to the next pothole, driving over and denting the just-"repaired" one.
It sucks that illegal DIY approaches are necessary, but at some point people just need to take matters into their own hands. It feels like road repair is one of the most visible and perhaps common indicators of local government corruption. My personal favorite is when a perfectly good stretch of road gets repaved to use up tax dollars, while streets in terrible condition get ignored.
We don't really need as much oil for walking paths, trains, or bike trails, and potholes are a different problem with different solutions for those.
As long as we have cars as we know them, we'll have oil. Road construction require s oil, all of the plastics in cars require oil, trucks require oil, shipping vessels require oil, it's oil all the way down.
It would require a seismic shift in life as we know it to live in a post oil world. Our stockpiles are pretty low (maybe a month in the US).
There is a great documentary on the Quebec situation around potholes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOOgJID6sac
In short: politicians would rather direct funds to build new roads (and get votes) than to fix existing roads (and lose votes).
It is that simple.
Identify pot hole locations. Combine with traffic metrics for those locations. Then use a combination of some pot hole nuisance metric (size, depth, location in lane, number of cars that could hit it per unit time based on traffic metrics), a cost to repair for a given repair type metric (should include traffic disruption cost estimates), then have an estimate for future degradation if it is not repaired and the cost of that applied at a few time points .... I'm sure there are plenty of implementations of various versions of the algorithm, but I wonder whether there are open data sources ....
A quick search suggests that most approaches are municipality based crowd sourcing efforts. A stream from the radars from various vehicles could provide something that was up-to-date enough to avoid false positives that had already been fixed .... Things like streetview and various aerial photography datasets probably update too slowly ... though I know of some potholes that have existed through multiple recaptures.
0. https://par.nsf.gov/servlets/purl/10636488 1. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jag.2023.103335
I guess the days of citizens grabbing their shovels and going to fix the roads are becoming a thing of the past. Which is a shame because the total cost of asphalt needed to fix most potholes is less than the cost of a single tire repair.
https://www.stpaul.gov/departments/public-works/street-maint...
These are just band-aids, the subsurface is usually the problem and it’s expensive to rip up and replace an entire road vs repeated mill and overlay cycles.