It is indeed paved over. I'm sure there are reasons, but probably not good ones given potholes like this. Aside from initial cost, for large vehicles+higher speeds. IMO seems a bit like gluing carpet over wooden floorboards (which is another anger-inducing thing, especially if you've lived in a house with a carpeted bathroom).

Not Just Bikes has a video on brick roads in the Netherlands (the bricks being called Klinkers, video called Natural Handcrafted Artisanal ... Streets?!), how they allow easier maintenance/re-use, brick designs instead of painting the surface after, worn klinkers used in historic areas etc.

[–] Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 20 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Oh yeah, klinkers (if they're baked clay) or the much less inspired sounding betonstraatstenen (concrete street stones) definitely have their benefits, but that video really skips over what a literally backbreaking job it is to pave a street like that, or how slippery these stones get when wet (less so for concrete or textured baked clay).

It's mandatory to do anything over 2 hours of bricklaying by machine now, but that requires packaged stone. And packaging stone is even worse than relaying it from a pile, so you end up loading it into a truck, shipping it off for packaging and then moving it back.

You can design around that, most of the time, but we haven't been doing that, so lots of handwork remains, which is not great for your health.

Of course, running asphalt over a street like this gets you the worst of both worlds, and its begging for potholes since the two materials match up really poorly. You do occasionally see it in the Netherlands on old roads on top of dikes that were "modernized" in the 70s and 80s.

(Edit: it's actually more a synergy of shittyness, because you can't really reuse most of the asphalt, because you don't brickdust in it, and you can't reuse the bricks because there's asphalt on them)

Source: am dutch, took a year of civil engineering, ended up doing lots of safety and regulatory stuff for roadworks.

[–] drosophila@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Since you have expertise in this maybe you can answer this question for me.

Do brick or stone roads last longer than asphalt or concrete roads?

It seems to me like they should, given the higher hardness of the material and the presumably greater resistance to freeze/thaw cycles. I have also seen a few brick roads near me that I can only imagine have gone a very long time with no maintaince (as I think the government here would rather cover it in asphalt than try to work with the bricks). The ground underneath the bricks has shifted over time forming depressions in the path that car tires take, but it is still fine to drive over at low speeds, as the slopes are smooth unlike the holes that form in asphalt.

I've tried googling this before but haven't been able to find a straightforward answer as to how long a road like that can go between rounds of maintenance.

[–] Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 19 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Do brick or stone roads last longer than asphalt or concrete roads?

That's a solid "it depends". And in this case, it depends on the definition of "lasting" and the definition of "road".

Klinkers are near immortal, but they're laid on what we call a "street layer" of 3cm of compacted, specifically graded sand, on top of some 25cm of less expensive sand. That sand can shift, compress and ruin the stability of the bricks. That usually happens due to heavyweight transport, or external factors (settlement of the soil underneath, tree roots, etc). If you run just passenger cars in a suburban area on steady ground, it could last 50 years. If you supply your stores on a road like that, it's more like 10 years. But you can remove the brick, regrade/replace the sand and rebuild it from mostly the same bricks. Concrete bricks don't last as long, and they break more when removed/packaged/relaid, I don't really know the numbers.

Asphalt is different. Assuming we're talking about a road that could also be made in bricks, asphalt has a surface layer of some 3-5cm, then between 10 and 20 cm of underlayers in layers of around 5 or 6cm. Then some 20-30cm of gravel, and up to half a meter of sand. That top layer lasts something like 10 to 15 years, and it suffers most from frost/thaw, UV light, etc. You don't have to replace al of it at once though, you can patch it.

The underlayers generally fail due to traffic weight, but that can be 2, 3 or maybe even 4 cycles of surface layer replacement later. Generally, for busier (non high-way) roads, they replace the surface layer twice and the third time they do parts of the underlayers, or all of it, depending on damage. Asphalt can be 80 or 90% recycled though, but it takes quite a bit of heat (something like 3 to 6 cubic meters of gas for each ton of asphalt).

So, all in all, not all brick roads are equal, not all asphalt is equal. And "how it lasts" is a complex question too. It's also a tough comparison, because we generally don't build roads for the same purposes. If it's very busy, we usually don't use bricks.

[–] drosophila@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 6 hours ago

Thanks

[–] chocrates@piefed.world 3 points 1 day ago

We pave over brick in New Orleans too. Not sure why

[–] Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 4 points 1 day ago

Our driveway is made from the same kind of thing, rain never pools on it as it goes down the gaps

[–] Hubi@feddit.org 5 points 1 day ago

I’m sorry, is this asphalt over baked paving stones? And if so, why?

This is what happened in a lot of European cities, they just paved over the cobblestone. I've seen something similar in a especially deep pothole in my neighborhood. Felt like a glimpse into the past.

[–] Supervisor194@lemmy.world 10 points 1 day ago

It's a lovely street made of brick pavers that has been paved over with asphalt because it provides a smoother ride for vehicles and pleasant aesthetics are for losers.

[–] freebee@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 day ago

It was the cheapest way to improve noisy cobble or other stone roads with fancy newer asphalt technology. Until it got patchy, then it gets expensive after all...