There is a street in Jersey City called Baldwin Avenue.
If you drove down it today you would see nothing unusual. Asphalt. Cars. A fire hydrant. The usual negotiation between infrastructure and weather. But if you had been standing on that street in late September 2013, you would have seen something that has stayed with me for thirteen years. A road crew was rolling fresh asphalt over granite cobblestones. The cobblestones were a hundred and fifty years old. The asphalt would last about twenty.
I asked the man operating the road roller why they were burying them. He gave me a one-word answer. Tires.
Not cost. Not engineering. Not city planning. Tires. Cobblestones are rough on tires. Asphalt is smooth. The logic was complete.
