Los Angeles spending $40K/mile painting city streets white to combat climate chg
foxnews.com
foxnews.com
$40k isn’t cheap but it’s a fraction of the cost of the roads. I can see the value of experimentation.
Just imagine if it reduced crime. A charge that puts someone in jail for a year costs society well over $40k. Heat definitely can lead to anger, riots etc.
Edit: also in Hokkaido, I never saw a single road as bad as around Boston.
American voters just have lower standards. This is true in a lot of other areas, especially education. If American politicians believed they would lose re-election because of bad infrastructure, the money and commitment necessary to fix the problem would suddenly, magically appear.
Both get plenty of snow and get humid in summers.
Also, in Hokkaido I never saw such bad roads, either.
The closing of the article is quite telling:
> "Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, who may make a run for president in 2020, has used the project as part of an overall plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the city by 45 percent below 1990 levels by 2025.
> "Climate change is a fact of life that people in Los Angeles and cities around the world live with every day. It is a grave threat to our health, our environment, and our economy — and it is not debatable or negotiable," he said in a statement last year after President Trump said he would walk away from the Paris Climate Agreement."
If you were to mix in something in sufficient proportion to lighten the color of the asphalt, it seems likely you'd change more properties than just its appearance, like its durability and water resistance.
Whenever I'm in Vegas, I do wonder why they don't use lighter paving material --you see the warped asphalt from the Summer heat.
When painted parts of the road become wet they're slick as ice.
Motorcyclists quickly learn to avoid a variety of operations on painted sections of the road, especially in the wet, because the grip is severely compromised.
If you look past the cost, it's not a bad idea. Parts of LA are asphalt jungles, and this might be one way to relatively easily reduce the temperature.
Depends how you feel about snow blindness.
The photos I found look like its more matte than new snow reflecting light into your eyes like a jj abrams movie.
Better photos here: https://www.demilked.com/white-streets-heat-climate-change-l...
https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/climate-weather/blogs/how-...
It's unfortunate they wrote balanced as I don't think it's about balance or bias. Just amount of information content.
I don't think the concept is a bad idea, but I would like to see a representative trial first before assuming it is a consequence-free benefit.
That's how sound walls along freeways came along. Nobody considered that the materials were not at all sound-absorbent and therefore would just displace noise a bit farther away from the freeway.
Fully agree that some representative trials would be sensible first. Far too much of what we do turns out to have unintended consequences.
Maybe they should explore possible glare from a white, coated, road surface. It'll be a poor scheme if it turns out to lead to an increase in auto accidents or pedestrians being run over because they're getting lost in heat haze.