>>1563195>Why are they beat to shit and always peppered with plates/shitty patch jobs/potholes?Well, because they're used? I'm new in the thread, and Danish - but that seems obvious. And if a country/state doesn't strictly prioritize renovations, then plates, shitty patch jobs and potholes happens pretty quickly. I've studied transport engineering here in Denmark, and i can confirm, that even in the US, along the rest of Europe, we all construct roads that are more durable than anything else ever constructed. Yes, even more than the Roman roads. You should not underestimate how insane the wear and tear is in our modern society, where we expect to have and hourly speed, equal to the maximum distance most people could hope to travel from home in their life, only 150 years ago, whilst having cargo truck that each can load more than most ships could until the industrialization begun.
>Infrastructure is more cost-effective in densely populated areas.>Source?Well, again, if you have a city with 100.000 in a square kilometre, you have a so much road you need, quiet wide probably, but much less per person, than if you spread them out, the same population, but on 10 square kilometres. And this rises exponentially. If we spread them out on 100 square kilometres, not only would we need more road per person, but we'd need to start constructing serious motorways and the like. If we do not in this scenario, start spending extra on much more expensive, much faster allowing infrastructure, the economy starts to suffer, as peoples mobility fall (i hope it's called mobility in the Anglo academics too, the possible movement assigned to the average person, often in time, as time is an indicator that can predict maximum commuting distance for a population, and represent the populations tolerance not just for time, but for fuel and tearing cost as well, because these factors applied, also can be measured in the maximum time)