Road Quality and Increasingly Wider Tires

[TobinHatesYou]

Also ride in Kent and Surrey and the roads are pretty bad but not worse than that Youtube video. Pretty sure they wouldn't send a WorldTour race down roads like that.

I also ride on 25s on occasion but much prefer 28s or 32s (measured). I have some nice tubular wheels but I have to ride them harder than I would like to guard against rim damage; that or ride in a hyper-vigilant state and solo. Those tyres are spot-on 25mm measured.

When I started riding Michelin 25C tyres inflated to 27 or so even on Open Pros with a 13mm internal width and I loved the ride quality. So to an extent everything has changed and yet everything stays the same.

Any number of cobbled classics are worse, not to mention ones run after significant rainstorms... P-R was crashtastic this year.

I'll give you that there's a difference between averaging 40-45km/h at Paris-Roubaix and that bumpy descent at 65km/h, but there really aren't that many crashes at Copperopolis. Lots of mechanicals though!

[icyhotchaz]

32s are the new 28s. I'll never go back.

[wooger]

I have the same feeling, infrastructure in US is sometimes shit.

It's the amount of roads you build, vs the population density that funds them.

Cities subsidise the roads for the suburbs and rural areas as-is, but the cost of long term maintenance was never considered when they built them - entire cities have gone bankrupt due to this.

[AJS914]

This topic is exactly why I'm next considering a disc braked bike that will take 30-32mm tires.

And then I waiver and think about one more rim braked bike because I have a ton of parts and wheels.

[Beancouter]

A few pics froM my daily commute … the roads are getting worse; the council is broke and repairing minor roads is well down their to do list.

The bit the photos don’t show is quite how poor the surface is - the pot holes are one thing but the constant vibrations can be awful.

My riding buddy has been riding a Domane with 32mm all year - got back on his 25mm shod C60 and he just can’t live with it so now on the market.








Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[kode54]

Those road patches look better than the patches around my town where an intern must've done them. There needs to be a patch alongside of the bad patch...its that bad.

[Matt28NJ]

Certain NJ roads are no better, although there's been alot of new pavement in the last 3 months.

Central NJ here, north of Princeton.

Seen some new pavement which is nice, but the issue for NJ will be in the next few years funding continuing road works / maintenance. The issue is significant revenue drop for municipal and county tax collections during the pandemic.

Likely we'll see a serious drop in funding in a few years for road maintenance and other similar items.

[basilic]

Ah - that explains why people need ATVs to drive around suburbia.
I'm surprised that the patches are all across the pavement in the California video. Usually it's the outside lane where truck tires go.

[renoracing]

I've raced the race shown in that video, and it's pretty brutal, almost to the point of not being very compelling. Granted, I did it five years ago, on rim brakes, with 25mm tires, proabably at 100psi... On 30's at 50psi and I bet it wouldn't be that terrible??? After moving to the country last year, I esentially purged all my bikes and headed for bikes that cleared at least 28mm tires on wide rims. It has made riding much more enjoyable, and no slower.
The roads that they "let us" race on here in California are almost exculusively rural farm roads, and as such, certainly don't get their fair share of the tax dollars put into them. Another gem was the Paskenta road race, which featured a 4 mile stretch of gravel, that you actually looked forward to, after a 1 mile stretch of what they called pavement but amounted to years of pot hole patches laid side by side and on top of one another...

[TobinHatesYou]

The roads that they "let us" race on here in California are almost exculusively rural farm roads, and as such, certainly don't get their fair share of the tax dollars put into them. Another gem was the Paskenta road race, which featured a 4 mile stretch of gravel, that you actually looked forward to, after a 1 mile stretch of what they called pavement but amounted to years of pot hole patches laid side by side and on top of one another...

Lol yeah, we affectionately call the paved section the “minefield” but honestly it’s more like it’s been bombed out by planes doing target practice. It’s so much worse than any single part of Copperopolis, I should have linked a video of that too. When I did it in 2019, half of us just decided to dive onto the dirt on either side.

The RR for the Madera Stage Race also has some lovely sections… and Snelling too.

[PoorCyclist]

Try some 28mm tires with lower pressure first before buying a new bike to fit bigger tires.

[RyanH]

I guess it depends on what you mean by 28mm tires because I'm running Veloflex 28mm tubulars, which measure 28mm and are arguably the best riding tire available for the size. However, a 25mm GP4k tire usually measures wider so while I'm complaining about 28mm, most that are on 28mm clinchers are actually riding something in the 30mm range. But, I only have 2mm of clearance on the chainstays on my frame with 28mm actual tires, so larger tires aren't an option.

With that being said, I rode the Nosco route on Saturday (Westlake Village, Deer Creek, Yerba Buena, Mulholland and Latigo) and most of those roads have been recently repaved, which was pure bliss. Would have been happy on 23mm tires on those roads. I guess we're just too poor on the east side to maintain our roads...

[TobinHatesYou]

Yerba Buena was horrendous until very recently, so there is that.

[PoorCyclist]

My continental ultra III 28mm measured 26.5mm wide. Pretty cushy for me at 65 psi, no problems going over cracked pavement.

Today I apparently did a bad job with pumping the front tire I lost a big puff of air disconnecting the pump and didn't check the tire, must been around 30 psi. I didn't notice until I got home the front tire felt soft like an avacado.

[RyanH]

Yerba Buena was horrendous until very recently, so there is that.

Yeah, I remember doing this route two years ago on the Bianchi XR4 and in the morning before I left, I thought to myself, should I swap wheels from my 25mm Reynolds tubs to my 28mm tubs and thought, nah, I want aero.

Then I distinctly recall going up Deer Creek at a crawl pace and deliberately riding on the center yellow line because it was smoother. After that, the descent down Yerba brought flashbacks of Copperopolis, fingers felt like they were rattling off the bone.

@PoorCyclist I'm not sure how you're adding to the conversation when I'm trying to explain that the best 28mm tires aren't sufficient for the roads I ride on yet they are for you?