Odd Road Surfaces Still In Existence

[empirestate]

In Flint, Michigan, Saginaw Street downtown is still paved with bricks.

Still–you mean, they haven't changed it since yesterday?

Saginaw St. in downtown Flint, MI is brick.

It's been that way for over 100 years.  And I hadn't seen that mentioned either.

That's the joke.

[bing101]

I wonder if there's any roads with a poo surface.

[TheHighwayMan3561]

WIS 11 in Elkhorn has a brick section near downtown.

Superior St in Duluth still has brick parking spaces and I believe still brick travel lanes east of Lake Avenue, but will all be replaced with conventional surface in its impending rebuild.

[kphoger]

I don't think of brick streets as being very uncommon.

[thenetwork]

And in nearby Akron, Ohio, there is a street in which there is a combination of regular red brick pavers and raised granite stones on Bates Street, in the shadows of Downtown Akron, affectionately known as Bates Hill or Cadillac Hill.  The "washboard effect" was used for traction on this super-steep hill.  One of the most bone-jarring hills you'll ever traverse!

Google Map View: http://g.co/maps/f7ktg

Info on Cadillac (Bates) Hill here: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.376451397046.163941.93203972046&l=eab2994f72

Sadly, over the past few years, the City of Akron closed Bates Hill due to a sewer(?) project at the bottom of the hill, but never reopened the hill after the project was finished.  Some of the more recent photos of the hill have the street being reclaimed by tall weeds.

Depending on who you ask in Akron nowadays, Bates Hill STILL might be in better condition than many of the major thoroughfares in the Rubber City.

[Flint1979]

Franklin Street in Saginaw, MI between Hayden and Hoyt is brick but some of it has been paved over and some of the bricks are still exposed. I rode on it yesterday and it's a very bumpy ride. Baum Street, the next street east of Franklin is the same way.

[WillWeaverRVA]

In Richmond, VA, Monument Avenue between VA 161 and Stuart Circle/Lombardy Street is paved with bricks, and there are several streets here and there that are still paved with cobblestones, including Cary Street between 12th and 14th Streets.

[Beltway]

In Richmond, VA, Monument Avenue between VA 161 and Stuart Circle/Lombardy Street is paved with bricks, and there are several streets here and there that are still paved with cobblestones, including Cary Street between 12th and 14th Streets.

Monument Avenue has asphalt bricks laid on a concrete base.

Not the type bricks used for building wall facades (rectangular units made of clay-bearing soil, sand, and lime, or concrete materials).

[CNGL-Leudimin]

I wonder if there's any roads with a poo surface.

I wouldn't like to drive such a road, as it would stink too much.

I wonder if there are any roads with a gold surface, given the cost of building some of them. And to top that, I wonder if there are any ʻaʻā roads, besides that parody thread NE2 created a few years ago.

[RobbieL2415]

MassHighway, back in the day, used to use cobblestone gore areas. Now they use concrete or pavement.

There is a section of US 6 in Westport, MA that appears to be untouched original concrete from when it was four-laned.

[jakeroot]

I had originally posted about this in another purpose-made thread, but it would appear that this road might be in a class of its own.

This particular stretch of North Carr Street in Tacoma is not a case of "still in existence", but is actually a case of "new-old" surface. It was paved with setts in the late 90s as part of an apparently one-off project along this steep stretch of Carr. No other urban design elements were included with the project. They literally just repaved the street and that was it. Very unusual compared to other repaving projects that I've seen (especially those that include bricks or setts).

[bwana39]

Wish I had pictures. There was a country store near me that had an "oil dirt" (asphalt) parking lot that was virtually covered with soda caps placed face up (sharp side down). It was probably a quarter acre of them.

After pull top bottles quit being the norm, he had it repaved and they are gone forever.