> The solution to this problem is utility tunnels. A tunnel network under road surface just for plumbing and cabling. Maintenance crews can just drive through in cars and do their jobs, without stopping traffic and digging out pipes. Many ultra-modern cities have one [empahsis mine].

That does not sound like a general solution to the problem, because it would be fantastically, unreasonably expensive to put one under every road. Seems like something that would only be reasonable in a 1) particularly expensive central business district of a 2) city being built from scratch.

IIRC, some of the biggest US cities don't have separate storm and sanitary sewers, because the cost of retrofitting an existing city would be prohibitively expensive. Installing utility tunnels everywhere would be even moreso.

You've got to be kidding. Utility tunnels are not even remotely a viable solution for Atlanta outside of maybe a few streets in the downtown area. The city (and wider metro area) is huge with thousands of miles of roads. They can't afford to dig utility tunnels.

Its also a difficult problem. They need the right digger and the right crew at the right time and possibly the right weather to get the job done. Many times there will be weeks of juggling around schedules and suddenly the digging started three weeks after the road was finished

Here, the gov gives time windows for utility owners to dig and do maintenance, after which it'll be repaved. If you want to do maintenance on your infra, you request a timeslot and the gov groups the maintenance (eg sewer and gas). You best not miss your window.

We were getting our roads redone in my town and the county commissioner ordered an asphalt miller to run on one singular road, when we needed it (and said for it to run) on all of them. It cost us the same to run it on one road or all of them, because most of the costs were transport of machinery. So I definitely lean towards ineptitude.

>>This happens in other countries too.

This is everyday life in India. A big budget is sanctioned to build a road. Road gets built, then a month or two later, some body forgets they didn't do the sanitary/sewage pipes well enough and manholes are now overflowing, they tear down the whole road and then just leave it as is.

The process restarts again in two years or so. Here is the rub- The guy who builds it at the first place knows all this so builds it as cheaply as they can get away with.

Its just how corruption works, and money flow from tax payers to politically well connected contractors(often the politicians themselves, as the contractors are just shell companies owned by contractors). Even if the company is black listed a new one can always be floated next time.

>>I suspect local governments are just inept at logistics.

No they are just corrupt. Its easy money. No audits, no accountability and no questions of any kind.

>inept

This is not a place where Hanlon's razor applies. Gov construction is rotten all the way through as matter of course and policy. High volume material industries are the easiest to commit fraud. Especially when the bureaucrat that signs the checks is never going to bother themselves by checking the real world shipments match to the bills. And that is just the easy part to check, checking for fudging numbers requires real work. Its been going on so long that the corruption is now part of the system. Its trivial to look at various costs and see the "$10,000" hammer all over the place. Or how instead of price going down at scale it goes up.

I probably will not convince you of this in a comment though, so do some research if you are interested.

Simply forcing the utilities people to properly repair roads after they have been dug up would be sufficient.

> Some people theorize that it's done because of internal rivalries between dependencies/political factions

Or maybe corruption ? All utility builders have to fix the road -> more work -> more profit.

I like the 7 years bedrock story. Doesn't Dallas have the equivalent of New York City 311 complaints hotline? Literally, you call it for anything annoying / loud / dangerous, and the operator will help you raise the issue to the correct department.

To me, the trick about allowing more construction in established neighborhoods: Make the noise rules incredibly strict. Tokyo has non-stop construction everywhere. And the noise rules are very strict. It works. In Japan, I assume, for cultural reasons, most construction corps follow the rules. In other places ("The West"), you probably need expensive fines along with manual/automatic on-site inspections.

If a society can't do construction without leaving nails in the road(!!!) there seem to be some more fundamental issues going on

How did a pile of Rick seven years ago lead to continuous dust even today?

It happens in Germany as well though, not even that infrequently. It’s particularly common with the recent push for FTTH connections.

At my parents place, they resurfaced to road a few years ago. Only for Deutsche Telekom to swoop in a year later and dig in their FTTC gear. Street was patched after, but reasonably well. At least we got faster internet back then