This happens a lot with sidewalks usually because shiat head delivery drivers and people too in a hurry to find a place to park will saddle their cars on the sidewalk. Whenever you walk past one that is in poor repair and looks like it has been pushed into the ground that usually means it's a favorite stopover for your neighborhood UPS, mail carrier or FedEx guy. Not DHS because who really uses them?

Politics: Somebody got paid. Somebody is going to get paid.

Sid_6.7: SockMonkeyHolocaust: This happens a lot with sidewalks usually because shiat head delivery drivers and people too in a hurry to find a place to park will saddle their cars on the sidewalk. Whenever you walk past one that is in poor repair and looks like it has been pushed into the ground that usually means it's a favorite stopover for your neighborhood UPS, mail carrier or FedEx guy. Not DHS because who really uses them?

Or tree roots. Or washout. Or frost heave. Or a number of other things. But hey, it must be those damned delivery drivers, right?!

Yes, speaking as someone who is a building mechanic of a very tall building in a very busy section of an American city it generally is the fault of shiatheads parking their cars and trucks on sidewalks in commercial areas. Frost heave exacerbates it but people and their cars start it.

SockMonkeyHolocaust: Sid_6.7: SockMonkeyHolocaust: This happens a lot with sidewalks usually because shiat head delivery drivers and people too in a hurry to find a place to park will saddle their cars on the sidewalk. Whenever you walk past one that is in poor repair and looks like it has been pushed into the ground that usually means it's a favorite stopover for your neighborhood UPS, mail carrier or FedEx guy. Not DHS because who really uses them?

Or tree roots. Or washout. Or frost heave. Or a number of other things. But hey, it must be those damned delivery drivers, right?!

Yes, speaking as someone who is a building mechanic of a very tall building in a very busy section of an American city it generally is the fault of shiatheads parking their cars and trucks on sidewalks in commercial areas. Frost heave exacerbates it but people and their cars start it.

Your building was located, designed and built with inadequate access, so it's the delivery drivers' asphalt?

TheOther: Your building was located, designed and built with inadequate access, so it's the delivery drivers' asphalt?

Yes, they are usually asphalt.

Your tax dollars at work and government planning at it's very best.

can't wait for all those carved crosswalks to start falling apart

the mosaic sidewalks once hailed for their eye-catching elegance are liberally patched with dollops of black asphalt in the place of absent bricks and granite

I don't get things like this. It would seem to me that replacing a brick with another brick would be quicker and cheaper than getting a crew to patch holes with asphalt. The granite could be trickier.

Yes, but, will the pavers feast on exotic mustards flown in from the Orient?

Should have built a monorail.

DarthBrooks: Worcester is the Flint Michigan of Massachusetts.

That's probably the best description of Worcester I've ever heard. Every other block looks like a slum, and those that don't tend to look like they did in the Seventies.

Rapmaster2000: Should have built a monorail.

Aw, it's not for you. It's more of a Shelbyville idea.

This is like most political thinking,
Political thinking is just cargo-cultism. Politicians do not understand economics any better than Pacific Islanders understood airplanes 60 years ago. Or if they do, they can not admit it, because the derp classes on the left and right will be outraged.

Top down imposition of prosperity never works. Whether it is 'trickle-down' or 'job subsidies' like tax rebates to corporations for relocating or staying. Or building sports stadiums or just making down town 'prettier' in that homogenous, mundane civic-corporate committee esthetic.

Make something LOOK like what you want it to be, and naturally it will become that. That never works.
Lipstick on a pig won't make it a hot chick.

If you really want prosperity, stop hitting your businesses and people with ruinous taxes and regulations. Let them use their property they way they want, provided they do not bother their neighbors, and stop hounding them out of town.

Ah, but that would leave the politicians with nothing to bamboozle the populace with.

This was never going to work. If I wanted culture and a pretty downtown area, I'd move to Lynn!

This is a picture of a street in New York City that is paved with brick. There are still quite a few streets in New York that are paved in Belgian block or brick. Most of this paving is over 100 years old. Most of these brick/Belgian block streets are still in pretty good condition, despite having been pounded by horses, wagons, cars, trucks, taxis, and fat Midwestern tourists for over 100 years.

How is it that our great grand fathers could pave a street with brick and have it last 100+ years, but we can't manage to pave a sidewalk and have it last 20 years? We have truly become a pathetic country.

Trance750: Any chance that track could bend?

Not on your life my Hindu friend!

Bay State Savings Bank's Franklin Street headquarters fronts a heavily patched section of sidewalk. The bank's president and chief executive officer, Peter B. Alden, said downtown businesses that benefit from pedestrian traffic desire sidewalks that are safe and attractive

If the Bank wants new sidewalks to steal money from the 99%, they can use their own money to build new sidewalks.

That tag does not belong. Politicians and their towers of Babel.

The only nearest crappy city that I know of that was able to turn itself around to become decent is Providence, RI. It's not the greatest city out there but Cianci did his best with it. Now if the city could only do something about the problems they have at Providence Place.

Boomhauer: This was never going to work. If I wanted culture and a pretty downtown area, I'd move to Lynn!


Lynn has culture ? Maybe some penicillin will clear that up.

Worcester can't portuguese pavement.

Fissile: This is a picture of a street in New York City that is paved with brick. There are still quite a few streets in New York that are paved in Belgian block or brick. Most of this paving is over 100 years old. Most of these brick/Belgian block streets are still in pretty good condition, despite having been pounded by horses, wagons, cars, trucks, taxis, and fat Midwestern tourists for over 100 years.

How is it that our great grand fathers could pave a street with brick and have it last 100+ years, but we can't manage to pave a sidewalk and have it last 20 years? We have truly become a pathetic country.

[forgotten-ny.com image 214x322]

...but low bid was WAY under. Looking at the photo in TFA, they look like standard cast concrete "pavers": great for your garden walkway, but for downtown side- and cross-walks, not so much. The difference between vitrified paving bricks and cast concrete pavers: the crushing strength of the vitrified pavers is about three times as much. Also, the substrate is critical and a typical place where corners are cut in projects like this.

/Worked as a hoddie for a talkative, third-generation mason.

NewportBarGuy: Fissile: How is it that our great grand fathers could pave a street with brick and have it last 100+ years, but we can't manage to pave a sidewalk and have it last 20 years?

Because we can't afford the labor to lay individual bricks? Though, if you think about it 100/20=5... So, if it costs 5 times as much and you get 100 years out of it, you're actually saving money in the long run. I think it's more than 5 times as much, though.

Any engineers in the house? You must get huge push back from the people who pay the bills wanting it cheaper over long-lasting. We did straight concrete on one street here and 30 years later it is in perfect condition, even with harsh winters. Every other road is a goddamn nightmare. Seems like all we ever do is fix crappy roads with more crappy roads.

================================

I watched as a brick driveway was installed here in my neighborhood recently. The Bricks were laid individually. I'm gonna guess that the brick sidewalks in Worcester were laid individually as well, as were the bricks paving those old New York streets. How is that a brick paved street can survive for 100 years in New York, with all the traffic, and frost heaving and the like, while brick sidewalks in Worcester can't manage to last for 20 yeas under the same conditions?

Fissile: This is a picture of a street in New York City that is paved with brick. There are still quite a few streets in New York that are paved in Belgian block or brick. Most of this paving is over 100 years old. Most of these brick/Belgian block streets are still in pretty good condition, despite having been pounded by horses, wagons, cars, trucks, taxis, and fat Midwestern tourists for over 100 years.

How is it that our great grand fathers could pave a street with brick and have it last 100+ years, but we can't manage to pave a sidewalk and have it last 20 years? We have truly become a pathetic country.

[forgotten-ny.com image 214x322]


Old European cities would also like a word with the construction crews of Worcester.

TheOther: Politics: Somebody got paid. Somebody is going to get paid.

They'll probably name a stretch of pavement after the mayor, too.

my folks live in a small city in NY... a few square miles and 2 routes that connect to the interstate are about all you really can say about the place. But this summer, their dead end street got all brand new paving. Ground up and hauled away the old asphalt, laid down new base to even and crown the street, put down a fresh black, shiny ribbon of new asphalt - they even replaced some broken curbstones and concrete sidewalk sections that they damaged during the job. It looks gorgeous and smooth now - 10 other streets around my folks got the same treatment this summer - each street about 2 or three city blocks long.

I was over at their house doing some landscaping when the work was going on. Since I had a truck and trailer with tools to worry about parking, I went out one morning to talk with the guy who looked to be the crew chief or foreman - make sure I didn't give them or myself any headaches with access in or out of the street. In conversation, it turned out he was one of the engineers assigned by the city to monitor the project. I mentioned in passing that it was gonna make it a lot easier to manage snow plowing and removal now that all these streets will be nice and smooth for winter. He laughed at that and said that it might be true for the first few months, sure - but wait until the real freeze hits. Then he explained to me how this project works:

The city got money from the state and the feds for street improvements, repaving and general beautification - it was a targeted grant of over a million dollars that could only be used for that purpose and in that year... couldn't be spent on anything else and couldn't be locked away for future expenses. The city engineers - who know a bit more about the infrastructure of the city than the politicians who applied for the grant - mentioned that the reason the sidewalks and asphalt were in such terrible shape to begin with was because of water leaking underground from hundreds of damaged sanitary and storm sewer junctions, 100 year old lead or terra cotta water supply pipes and damaged underground utility vaults. They also went on to say that putting fresh asphalt on top of these streets without repairing the damage underneath would cause the surfaces to begin to crack, heave and warp as soon as the water beneath them starts to freeze - and that a better use of funds would be to work underground first and put the finishing touches on when the repairs had been made.

Of course, reason and logic have absolutely nothing in common with politics or systemic graft, so rather than allocating money to fix the subsurface problems as the engineers requested, the city basically said "we're too poor to fix the sewers and the water lines, but we can still make the top look all shiny and new, so fark the engineers, just pave the damn streets so we can look good for the November mayoral and council elections".

And this they did.

Haven't even seen steady temps in the 20s yet, but the neighbors next to my folks already have a sunken spot in the street right next to the curb - right about in the spot that their sewer connection hits the city pipe along their side of the street. The gravel and concrete patch that they put in must have already failed because they now have a depression about 3 feet square and 2 inches deep right next to their driveway.

In the city's defense, it does look nice and shiny and black with just a light coating of rain on it, so well done there!

/sorry for the length
//fark needs an end of post button
///and more slashies!

Wooster!

Fissile: I watched as a brick driveway was installed here in my neighborhood recently. The Bricks were laid individually. I'm gonna guess that the brick sidewalks in Worcester were laid individually as well, as were the bricks paving those old New York streets. How is that a brick paved street can survive for 100 years in New York, with all the traffic, and frost heaving and the like, while brick sidewalks in Worcester can't manage to last for 20 yeas under the same conditions?

For paving the underlayment is crucial and the thickness of the pavers is equally so.

You have to rip it all up and have it packed in as much as possible and leveled. Then the stones, hopefully fairly thick, are placed.

This city wanted the paving look for concrete prices and got this as a result. If they did it right there is almost no chance a brick could be pulled up or severely broken without massive effort because the strength of paving stones is in how they distribute force to all the bricks nearby and their incredibly high crush strength.

The alley by Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago recently got repaved after over 100 years. The original paving was creosote-treated WOODEN block pavers. They've been replaced with identical wooden pavers again as part of a historic preservation effort. The old pavers looked like black rock, were quieter than stone, and were still in good shape, the alley had to be torn up for utility work was the only problem.

Evil Twin Skippy: Fissile:
I watched as a brick driveway was installed here in my neighborhood recently. The Bricks were laid individually. I'm gonna guess that the brick sidewalks in Worcester were laid individually as well, as were the bricks paving those old New York streets. How is that a brick paved street can survive for 100 years in New York, with all the traffic, and frost heaving and the like, while brick sidewalks in Worcester can't manage to last for 20 yeas under the same conditions?

Because the streets in New York were paved with larger odd-shaped stones, that were concreted into place. The bricks laid today are generally machined to a geometrical shape and held in place by sand and gravity. Water gets into the sand, and into all of those fancy geometric corners, and expands to destroy them. Old school paving techniques add irregularities that allow the pavement to withstand weathering better.

I don't know about the ones in NYC, but the older brick streets that I've seen weren't grouted. The whole idea was that they could be pulled up for repairs and relaid. As I wrote earlier, the substrate is a huge issue. It's not that water gets into the sand (and gravel, etc.), but that it doesn't leave. Most of the western European countries are fanatics about this and take meticulous care installing the base layers, geotextiles, drainage systems, etc.. Some of them, Germany for example, also include requirements for long-term warranties from the contractors.

Every few years, the city will repave the exact same same streets. Even if the don't need it and there are many, many other roads in terrible condition. It's strange.

When I used to live in Albuquerque, there was a crew putting up a brick wall to enclose the entire community across the street. They were building it 8' tall and were laying about 10-15 linear feet per day maybe. At that rate it was going to take the entire summer and probably into the fall. A friend of ours who lived in one of the houses getting the new back wall to their yard had her Grandfather over to visit. He had been a bricklayer in his day... He went out to look at the young guys doing the job and had some opinions. In his yelling at clouds moment, he told us all how his crew could have did the whole job in a week and have done it right with quality. I do suspect he was right though. The guys doing this were slow and not doing it well.

It always amazes me how modern brickwork seems so fragile and prone to rapid decay in comparison to the ancient work. Did we as a civilization forget how to work brick?