This happens CONSTANTLY in Atlanta. They'll spend a bunch of money fixing a road, then a month later Public Works digs a huge hole and leaves a steel plate on it for a year, then patch it with either concrete that is an inch or two below the rest of the surface, or they don't pack the earth they put back and in 3 months the patch has sunk into a new pothole in a brand new road. The city has been trying to force public works to go do those things BEFORE road projects, but it's an uphill battle.

It's kind of maddening how often blogs like this will make motions towards developing an educated opinion (citing multiple reports, researching stats from public datassets, etc.) but don't seem to have bothered to actually talk to any of the people who are invovled in the practice they describe in their post (in this case, building roads).

Rural roads are often unpaved. The local authority has to come by regularly with a grade to redo things or they become unusable quickly. Overall this is by far the cheapest way to have a road, but it doesn't scale to high use and city folks demand something that makes less dust. Rural roads also includes minimum maintance roads which demand 4wd (real 4wd, many SUVs will have trouble) when the weather is nice and a winch is a must when things get rainy or snowy.

Though given his definition of quality I expect he is actually ignoring all the real rural roads and only talking about major roads which while they get less traffic than urban roads are maintained to similar standards.

You're probably also going to have far fewer massive vehicles on those rural roads. More things like pickups yes, but probably considerably fewer semi-teicks and busses and fire trucks and cement mixers what not. Those big trucks passing through are going to stick to interstates far more often when going through rural areas.

That’s part of the reason. The other is that rural roads are mostly county or state funded (often through large Federal appropriations), and draw in a larger tax base and in-house professional engineering.

That’s why you can drive around rust belt areas of Upstate NY on nice roads - NYC Finance bonuses pay for that.

City roads are usually maintained by the city, which has much more limited access to capital. Because of that, in-house work is usually limited to mill and pave work and there’s not enough throughput for an appropriate staff of engineers. Big projects are usually task focus (safety, multi-modal) and are funded by Federal grants and use outside design and build contractors.

For the shared utility work, there is some coordination. My wife worked for a municipal water utility and ran the metering and infrastructure division. They received notice of paving or other jobs and prioritized proactive maintenance to happen while the road was under construction. The city would fine entities for digging up the street for non-emergency purposes for 6-12 months after the project completed. It helps, but broken mains or transformers necessitate the street cut.

Funny enough San Francisco Public Utilities coordinates with SF Streets to replace water/sewer lines prior to planned repaving work specifically to avoid this problem. They are clear that need and scheduling sometimes don't allow it but wherever possible they do.

Part of it is funding. Highways are for the most part federally funded, and the feds can print money at will. Urban roads have to be repaired from the city budget, and user fees (fuel taxes) are nowhere near enough to keep them maintained properly.

In New York, companies doing road work are required to leave a small plastic circle embedded in their patch that can be used to identify who did the work. They seem to most often be blue though I’m not sure the color is a requirement. Once you see it, you’ll notice them everywhere.

They put in new pavement in my neighborhood explicitly to fix some sewer issues. They ended up redoing several sections as the contractors paved over 3 access points (manhole covers). I'm not sure how you pave over a man-hole cover when it's sticking up 6 inches from the rest of the street.

Urban roads face a unique set of challenges beyond just higher traffic volumes

2 huge pipelines with big enough diameter to fit smaller ones. One for utilities in (gas, electricity, cables, warm water). One for waste (sewage, trash etc)

My favorite are the leaky man hole and other infrastructure covers which allow rain to wash the road bed into the pit. Then a void forms and a pothole forms. Then the muni fills the hole only for it to reappear as more road bed is washed away. Then repeat ad nauseam. I sometimes imagine a snake of asphalt all the way to the sewer plant.