On Fri, 12 Nov 2010 08:47:21 -0700, "Bob La Londe"
wrote:

"Ecnerwal" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Bob La Londe" wrote:

A crown makes for a pretty road, but it will also rut and wash away
faster.
I guess you get the choice between standing water when it rains or ruts
that
will break an axle when it comes to dirt road building.

I'm not sure where you're getting your ideas, but it's not from a few
hundred years collective experience with making dirt roads. Or 30 odd
with building and maintaining dirt driveways and roads (with a civil
engineer and former seebee to help transfer those few hundred years
experience...)

From pure observation of roads maintained or not maintained by various local
public works and county maintenance departments. The roads that are flat
seem to hold up better (especially when not maintained at all) than the ones
that are crowned. I grew up in a rural area with dirt roads, farm roads,
and desert trails as our primary highways. Now if you plan to drag every
month, grade every other month, and drive down the road doing patch work
every time it rains you might get better service out of your crowned roads,
but the simple fact is the roads I grew up with were lucky to even see a
grader go by once a year. Any road properly maintained on a regular
schedule will hold up better. I got the benefit of seeing roads that were
often not maintained at all. So I suppose I might have to agree with you if
you maintain it constantly. If you don't the crowned road will develop ruts
that will break axles. Maybe the dirt is inferior to the dirt where you
grew up, but I happen to like Arizona dirt in general.

Up untill a few years ago we had a LOT of gravel roads in the
Waterloo/Wellington/Huron areas, and VIRTUALLY ALL were crowned. Those
that were not, were a mess of washboard and potholes.
Those that were not maintained, either flat or crowned, became rough
twin-tracks in a short time, where low-slung cars would high-center
and belly-drag.
We still have a fair amount of gravel - but mostly lower than
"secondary" roads.
Have a fair bit of gravel shoulders too - which are maintained with
road graders and special shoulder maintainers (which are basically
smaller motor graders with 2 blades)