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Comment by burfog | Hacker News Reader

With property lines being about 100 feet apart, that comes to 100 houses. It's just $15,000 per house. The road should last 50 years without heavy truck traffic, making it $3000 per year per house.

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$3000 per year per house

In other words completely out of reach of the kind of town we're talking about?

In other words, a complete change of the town council in the next election. :)

$300 per year per house, I believe.

Look at the math again, it's $300 and they made a typo. That's affordable.

If there are winters, a road with zero traffic won't last 10 years. The weather does more damage than traffic for roads in the suburbs of the midwest and northeast.

A properly built road should last much longer than that. My street in a small town in MA hasn't been paved in over 10 years and is still fine. (The town does periodically seal cracks but that's a pretty cheap maintenance item.)

You’re not discounting properly. It’s more like $500-600 per year because of the time value of money and inflation. Replacement costs are $300 this year, but initial construction is $500 this year because it’s on a bond. Maintenance isn’t included. The surface isn’t really going to last 50 years without looking like Fallout 2. So tack on another hundred.

All of this becomes expensive for single family homes to support. The revenue per area is just so low.

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