I have to reconsider my current positions on the collapse of paved roads. If the only pavement option were tar, we are doomed. This is not the case. There is also concrete. And concrete is made with natural gas, rather than tar. Natural gas is also released in fracking, and is not exportable so we're going to use it here. One of those uses is making concrete. Roads made from concrete are called superslab, and when made properly are durable. You know when you're driving on them because concrete expands and contracts with the heat and moisture so it has to be cast slightly smaller than the ground it covers. The gaps, called expansion joints, make a bump-bump sound when your wheels go over them. The gaps can be a couple inches. Driving on superslab freeways is an long series of bump-bump, bump-bump, bump-bump, over and over again. Its very annoying. These gaps tend to catch seeds and grow grasses and shrubs when left alone, and these gaps are also weak points which can be broken by passing trucks with heavy loads. Superslab can get really beaten up, and really unsafe to travel on. The slow lane can become seriously dangerous on 2 wheeled vehicles at speed.
It is not terribly difficult to convert a car or truck to run on Compressed Natural Gas. UPS already uses CNG for their delivery trucks. Some other delivery companies and fleet vehicles use CNG. My local Waste Management now powers their big trash trucks with CNG. They have to refuel halfway through the route, but that's what they use these days. Honda offers a model of Civic running CNG, and built the hardware to compress the gas in your own home garage. The upshot is, it really is possible to shift over to that and use the natural gas which erupts along with liquid petroleum during fracking.
I suspect that every town that can afford it will switch from asphalt pavement to cast and grooved or otherwise decoratively surfaced concrete for its roads and streets. This will then be maintained by city roads department employees, using sweepers and probably some hand tools and weed killer to keep the surface clear. This is far cleaner and better than gravel roads, for example. Those which can't afford it will end up with gravel or dirt, like New Mexico or West Virginia or Detroit.
As previously determined, rich places will have the best pavement, to enable smooth transportation of the best cars and nicest bicycles, to show off their wealth. That's how it is now, after all. These places will have gates to keep out the burglars, yet will let in the gardener companies which often contain day laborers with night jobs as burglars. Isn't that always the way?
Really nice towns will put in their overhead wire electric powered streetcars, like in Lisbon and Portland and San Francisco, and cast nicely surfaced concrete roads carefully patrolled by police with an obligation to shoot to kill to keep the peace. Laugh if you want, but that's a thing. Read the news in Portland and Vancouver Washington. The police shoot a lot of junkies and maniacs, ending crime sprees very abruptly. This aggressive stance against crime also reduces the costs of housing criminals, since dead ones don't get cells. They get cremated or buried. I wish California cops were that sensible.
Considering that the Federal Govt recently floated the idea of selling off all the interstate highways to private contractors to repair into toll roads, and allowing them to charge whatever they wanted for access to roads originally built with tax dollars, superslab roads might become the very definition of prisons, with them being the escape route, charged by the mile. Will you still be able to get credit on your transponder or would you need to prepay in this age of digital theft? Do you need special authorization to travel beyond certain exits? Who decides that? Will it just be criminals that get limited this way, or will it eventually extend to certain insurance plans and then to soccer moms and then to everybody who isn't the ultra rich, a privilege you pay for? It would follow, considering existing corruption in our political system. If you can't use the toll roads without getting pulled over and arrested by Toll Cops, who may shoot you and seize your car, you are effectively trapped in your town. At which point the Enduro bike looks good again, as a literal escape vehicle.
Sounds very scifi, doesn't it? Yes, yes it does. But it wasn't long ago that you could decide you didn't need to pay for women's birth control exams because you were male and don't need them but now you must. And women didn't used to have to pay for prostate exams on their health insurance plan, but now you must. Our federal govt is completely screwed up. So "If you like your highway, you can keep your highway" is likely the next step. After all, "highway access" is a civil right, the same as access to affordable medical care, right? And govt won't screw that up, right?
Toll roads. It's coming. Watch.
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