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On a positive note, yesterday's election results showed that democracy is not completely dead in the US and that the electoral system works despite huge sums of money being spent and plenty of vicious politicking. That's encouraging. Even so, a lot of the vote was a widespread vote against Trump rather than a vote for the Democrats, even by the democrats themselves. But at least now there's an opportunity to stop the ship from sinking totally. It's going to be a hard road to get things back on track and sort out the many problems, so I hope the new Congress and Senate can show a bit of leadership. They've got three months to get themselves organised, set a sensible and balanced agenda and then implement it. Hopefully the cooler heads can keep things on track and the hotheads under control. There's plenty of potential for it all to come unstuck, but at least they're off to a good start.

He kept saying "Imagine I'm on the ballot." America did, and said "Up yours."

Trump can VETO everything and probably will. What a silly system they have there. Republicans will ARC up too. There's too much Power to a President. SCARY. Nev

Live a lot better, obviously. WAR is MADNESS. Nev

My opinioon, from my experience, but not in road construction, is that it is the geology that makes constructing roads for heavy weights the problem. Over nearly all of the continent, the ground is sedimentary material. Very few places have the surface close to bedrock. That results in great difficulty building a sound base layer upon whihc to build a road. Also, the way we seal the surface of our roads is a compromise between cost and results. That's why we have our roads sealed with bitumen sprayed over gravel. Where the roads are made opf concrete, the failure rate os a lot less, but the cost per kilometre is much more.

Lame duck l'orange.

Jerry, don't forget to take into account that it doesn't matter how big, long or how much weight a truck carries, it's the axle weights that mainly impact the roads, ie: the ground pressure. A tandem axle grouping on a B-Double carries no more weight than the tandem axle grouping on a heavy rigid class truck like the bogey drive tip trucks we see everywhere.

They upped the Max Weight of them some years ago, and I blame that for a lot of the Problems. Nev

Amazing! This thread was started on 10th November 2024 and today should reach 190 pages of comments. That's a lot. There are still two years of Trump to go. Those two years will be very, very interesting. Following the Democrat tsunami, I think that Trump will moderate his bullying. He's in a situation now similar to the Leader of the Pack looking over his shoulder to see his Pack slinking away, leaving him standing alone, face to face with the Good Guy. The Democrats are also facing a hard battle. They really can't reverse Trump's Executive Orders until they get the Presidency themselves. Even then, the next presidential term will have to accept some of Trump's glorifying acts. The East Wing reconstruction will have to go on. Most likely the above-ground part will be modified to suit the architectural scale of the rest of the building. The below ground bit is probably a good idea, but one hopes that its uses can be mothballed under a less aggressive government.

According to Google, at the moment, from public records, the government is currently committed to around $2bn in spend under AUKUS. Of course, this is from what information is available publicly. But, these contracts will have escape clauses just like that of the French - especially since the US and the UK are under no obligation to deliver anything.. So, yes, it is likely we will lose some as we did with cancelling the French contract.. some $3.5bn in the end.. But even if we are on the hooks for say $10bn, it is still < 3% of the total budget of the program, so I would be happy t cut that cheque to be rid of it. And yes, I still pay tax in Australia.. The last guy setting it up excuses the cost of abandoning it; it doesn't excuse the continual accrual of a white elephant of a project to Australia committing that much money to it. Remember c. $5bn is allocated to uplift US shipbuilding capacity

When I go into Melbourne the Large Number of Giant trucks is what I notice most. Upping the Allowed weight of them wouldn't help road surfaces, particularly when there is a Lot of rain. Once water gets under a road it's stuffed. Nev