Why are there potholes? What causes them? Are they inevitable?
One pothole is created by any one or combination of the following…. mechanical, geological, meteorological….rain, subsidence, heavy traffic, road alignment, terrain, accident, extreme weather, poor engineering, poor materials, geological fault, earthquake or shifts, erosion…
In Nepal, these factors all bear to an exceptional degree on the roads, due to extreme climate, geology, fault lines, earth shifts and quakes, landslides, rough terrain, poor and inadequate materials, lack of engineering skill, poor labor control, congestion of heavy traffic, unscrupulous contractors, and lack of money.
The climate varies between freezing snow and hailstones to extremely hot, monsoon floods, high winds. The temperatures affect the road surface, causing cracks to expand and deepen, rain washes out the substrate and hailstones pummel the surface. Heavy traffic continuously putting pressure on the same spot, due to road alignment or constriction or obstruction, wears away the road surface. Soon potholes develop.
The pothole is fixed. It’s immovable. The next pothole may be caused by the consequences of the first, depending on the laws of mechanics, physics, the alignment of the road, and the building materials, but that’s not inevitable. The next could be caused by a completely different set of circumstances. But if the road is very poorly built, a rhythmic pattern in the potholes will emerge as you proceed along the road, caused directly by the first one or independently. What at first is a single bump or jolt soon becomes a regular movement caused by a haphazard distribution of holes.
One bump inevitably leads to the next and so on and so on…. lurching from one to another like being tossed around on a raging sea…
Potholes can occur in very well built roads, for the same reasons, and they can be even more dangerous and damaging to vehicles because the vehicle is traveling at much higher speeds than it would be on a poorly built road.
The result is an uncomfortable, very bumpy, and time -consuming ride. Philosophically one has to accept this. Philosophically one realizes that the reason for the potholes, fundamentally, is the lack of money, to build the road properly, or to maintain, service, and repair it. If money was no object, there would be no potholes…or would there still be? This is a theoretical point to be argued. In practice, it is impossible to build a road completely immune to potholes and their detrimental effects.
Nepal could usefully learn lessons from Scottish engineer John Macadam and the history of road building. The principles. Engineering, materials, labor, and equipment. Even Macadam acknowledged that money was needed to maintain a well-built road into the future.
There may be an analogy to the “road of life” here.