The fallacy here is fixed costs. A capital project to repair just 584 ft. of road is insane. The author then projects these outsized fixed costs as the variable cost of fixing all roads in the town.
This kind of small job is either something you petition the state dept. of transit to do in a special division they have for these things, or you find some temporary workaround until a more comprehensive road repair plan is warranted. Yes, even in big well funded cities sometimes roads are just detoured for months if not longer.
The budgetary breakdown of the towns I've lived in simply do not support this thesis. The major cost is always schools and to a lesser but noticeable extent the police, specifically the labor and pensions. Not roads.
The argument is that the cost cities are paying for the roads is less than they need to. Underfund a school by 50% and there are immediate consequences - class sizes go up, more consumable supplies like photocopying, art or gym equipment run out. Student satisfaction goes way down, if they can't heat/AC the building as appropriate, they have less personal space in classrooms and less time with teachers.
Underfund a road by 50% and in the first year and nothing happens. Over a few years, you get potholes. With the standards these roads are being built to, in 30 years the road is unusable. But there's no money to rebuild it. It was built the first time with revenue from new developments, but there's no such revenue now. People aren't going to sell their houses and give a comparable amount to the city as it took the developer in building it to setup that infrastructure (i.e. probably a net loss for the home owner, even with property price inflation ahead of general inflation) just because the road needs replacing.
The NotJustBikes YouTube video series on Strong Towns addresses this. One thing to look at is the collective cost of state tax, federal tax, and private debt. What’s true of all Ponzi schemes: eventually, someone has to pay. You can move the money around to different budgets all you want but it doesn’t change the fundamentals.
This kind of small job is either something you petition the state dept. of transit to do in a special division they have for these things, or you find some temporary workaround until a more comprehensive road repair plan is warranted. Yes, even in big well funded cities sometimes roads are just detoured for months if not longer.
The budgetary breakdown of the towns I've lived in simply do not support this thesis. The major cost is always schools and to a lesser but noticeable extent the police, specifically the labor and pensions. Not roads.