What kind of water do you drink?

They do put the pipes deep enough that they won't freeze solid during the winter. The area above them freezes, and if there's a lot of ground water, it will expand and can break the pipe because of compression forces. The pipes that are over 100 years old are made of copper, and are much less resiliant to compression forces that what you see in modern contruction. It's the material that they are made of that is the bigger problem than how deep they are placed. And I don't know exactly how deep they place them, but from what I've seen in repairing them, the depth of the pipe appears to be about the height of a person (so less than 2.5m, but not a heck of a lot less).

I'm mostly going by when I tend to see water mains break. And the most common time of year is in the late fall or early winter. It defies belief that this is all due to coincidence. It's not that you NEVER see pipes breaking at other times of year, but it seems like this is when you see most of them. If they were due to construction, I'd also lose power, as those lines are underground as well, and the only time I lose power are during major storms.

Well that just sucks. And you're right it's moot as to why they did it that way, although it defies common sense that everyone in charge thought that it was fine and dandy to put them there. And of course no one breaks them on purpose, but the fine is the deterrant to make sure you go through all the proper channels to know where the heck the underground utilities are before you go digging.

 

Poor wording on my part. I was trying to say that if it was due to construction, sometimes I'd lose water, and sometimes electricity. I did not mean to say (although I can certainly understand why you thought so based on my wording) that I would expect them to happen simultaneously.

That's TV. Residential roads cannot possibly fit five cars across. Where I live there is parking on one side of the road, and that still allows cars to pass by in opposite directions, and my road is pretty standard. If someone illegally parks on the opposite side of the road, cars can only go by in one direction. So I'd say the standard road is about 3 car widths. (Which admittedly is a hell of a lot more than 1.)

 

My wife and I usually drink cold water from the tap that has been run through a pitcher that has a filter put in it. The tap water is just "off". When we are out we usually take water bottles that we fill with the pitcher with us. At restaurants we will either buy sodas or drink their water.

 

That road doesn't look particularly large. What does seem odd is that you'd build a road that large when (apparently) on-street parking isn't really all that necessary. It looks like everyone has a driveway. Like I said, in my neighborhood - and many others - there isn't enough room for two-way traffic if people are parked on both sides of the street. Now obviously, that's with residential communities. Larger cities often have roads with many lanes of traffic.

As a counter example, I went to Washington DC this weekend for the cherry blossom festival. DC is somewhat unusual in that the residential areas are pretty much right on top of the main tourist areas. (Seriously, walking a half mile away from pretty much any location in DC will put you in a residential area.) It's especially true in the area around the Washington zoo, which we also visited. The zoo entrance is on Connecticut Ave, and the street is filled with businesses and restuarants. But a block away, and you're in a residential area. Those roads ARE large. You can definitely have parked cars on both sides of the street and comfortably have two way traffic as well.

It may well depend on the city and the location in the country. I don't know where the photo you posted was taken, but if it was part of a development on the outskirts of a city, the amount of land they had to work with may not have been an issue. Making the roads capable of having parking on both sides and two way traffic - assuming it was designed that way - would add virtually nothing to the cost. The difference would likely be almost exclusively the cost of the extra black top. I think a lot would also depend on new construction too. You can't really do anything about making a road wider in the middle of NYC unless you want to start knocking down buildings. But building a new strip mall on undeveloped land? That sounds like it's pretty easy.

 

That looks like a standard residential road for the US to me. The image may be deceiving due to depth and field of view and whatnot, but, assuming it is my version of 'average,' it could technically sustain two way traffic along with parked vehicles on each side of the street, but it would actually be a low speed, tight fit. That's the way most residential roads I travel on are (and I see a lot of them), I assume due to building codes. The exceptions that I know of tend to be narrow streets in old neighborhoods, not wider ones.

It looks like a new sub to me, so there may not be many occupied houses. If it is, once it fills up there may be more street parking going on there.

 

That road is massive. I reckon you could fit 4 lanes of traffic in it at a squeeze.

It is true that everything is huge in America. Everything.

 

Again though, it all depends on where you're talking about. Yes, if you drive through my neighborhood one afternoon during the week you'll see virtually no cars parked on the street... because the owners of those vehicles are at work. Not every community is filled with homes that have garages and driveways. So those people, when they get home at night, necessarily have to park on the street. Drive down my street in the evening, and you'll see dozens of cars on the street.

Now is every possible street space occupied by a car? Of course not. But what else could you do? If you're building a street that's going to need on street parking, are you going to make some portions of the street wider to accomodate a certain number of cars? Probably not. You're just going to make the whole damn thing wider.

And I disagree about the costs. Yes, you do need twice as much asphalt to make a street twice as wide, but that doesn't mean you need twice as much oif everything. It doesn't take twice as many people to make the road twice as wide. It doesn't take twice as many engineers or land surveyors. It doesn't take twice as many tools, or twice as many construction vehicles. If you're building a road in a residential community, it's true that the extra footprint of land you need for each road is twice as big, but it's still small in proportion to the total amount of land you need for the housing. So you don't need twice as much land - you need maybe an extra 5%-10% developmental land for the whole development - the lots will still comprise the vast majority of the land area.

 

The road in that picture is definitely wide for where I live. Main residential roads might be that wide, but side streets are maybe 20’ wide.

Regarding costs, it is definitely more expensive to make a road wider. In addition to the cost of concrete or asphalt, you’ve got a rebar, a gravel base, and costs of excavation. And while extra people might not be required, the hours they need to put in would certainly increase, which increases the costs. ** Similarly, additional equipment might not be needed, but they’re needed for a longer period, and since construction jobs are typically charged for equipment based on how much the equipment is used, again the costs go up. Lastly, more land used for roads means less land available to be sold to buyers, so developers will need to increase the price of lots in order to achieve their overall desired profit margins. So the cost of making a road wider is not a minor consideration.

** And, in an attempt to get back on topic, they'll need to be provided wth more water to drink.

 

Probably the roads need to be wider in the States to accomodate for the big cars. Maybe it's different in other parts of the States, but from what I've seen in Washington state, California, Arizona, Nevada and Utah, streets are definitely significantly bigger there than in Europe. Or Asia or Australia for that matter. Not that it's necessarily a bad thing, mind.

If you find the time and opportunity to go to Europe, though, I fully invite you to look up some old towns and marvel at the narrow streets. Especially in the UK the old towns/cities tend to have very narrow streets. Probably elsewhere too, but the narrow streets of Canterbury somehow stuck to my memory.

Going back to the original topic, we went on a holiday to the US for a few weeks and I have to say that the water is generally quite drinkable in the places we stayed. Better than what I'm used to from Belgium, in most places, generally a little above the water in Germany. We did buy bottled water, but generally we refilled those with tap water to take with us during the day. The exceptions were Needles, CA, where the tap water was quite horrible. Los Angeles was not that great either.