The science of road ecology, or how roadways affect plants and animal life
undark.org
undark.org
Unfortunately if we care about our ecosystems, communities divided by roads, and the constant noise and air pollution I think we only have harder solutions to negotiate: Speed limits, suburbs, and supporting useful public transit and bicycle infrastructure (to reduce road speed and the need to build road capacity linearly with rising incomes as the world develops)
Where towns in Europe would build a multi-story carpark to serve a shopping mall, municipalities in North America may simply cover acres upon acres of land around a mall with asphalt (take the Edmonton Mall in Alberta, Canada, or the Fairlane Town Center in Dearborn, MI), in the process creating an almost lifeless zone.
You wouldn't need that much space for parked cars if everyone arrived in a driverless Uber.
(Apparently, US parking lots cover an area of around 25,000 square miles, about twice the size of Switzerland:)
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/sep/27/cities-elimin...
Couldn't you solve this issue without self driving cars by just building multi-story carparks like Europe?
Or using the same space to build shopping streets with multiple stores and some onstreet parking? That way it's a bit more social and scenic as well.
First, determine how much you can eliminate car related infrastructure and implement infrastructure that are more efficient and are actually necessary.
Dollars that don't have to be spent on expensive and unnecessary infrastructure can be spent on making spaces more livable or increasing amenities.
I just thought that in America the car dependecy was partly cultural and partly due to zoning laws which push the broader philisophical shifts beyond the control of individual design companies and contractors. The solutions I put forward above were meant to be read within that context.
There is a small development on previously industrial land near me with a Best Buy and a Kohls, facing each other with some parking in the middle. Half surface lot, half there story parking garage. On a busy day, maybe 60% of the surface lot will be full. The garage is useless, but required for X amount of retail square footage. A monumental waste of money and resources.
We don’t need self driving cars, we need to pull our heads out of our asses and change the absurd, baseless rules we build our environment around.
Now, you have a different problem: more cars on the roads. And everyone tend to do the same thing at the same time.
Multistory parking and excessive parking lots are the really largely the result of poor urban planning, not technology.
There’s a big difference between internalizing something like this as a non obvious cost of something positive - and positive on the net despite the cost - vs reading this and deciding that roads should be removed or something like that.
Agreed.
Controversy sells, which is a shorter and more accurate way of saying "If it bleeds, it leads"
I've been looking at how much a quality PR firm costs (nothing less than $10k/m, all the way up to $100k/m for more exposure).
I've half a mind to cultivate an incredibly controversial position before launching my startup's product.
The media coverage of "lelanthran, founder and CEO or $COMPANY, producing $PRODUCT, had this to say about the round-earth conspiracy!" is bound to be worth a few $100k at least in publicity, at least.
We can't just print more habitat, so I don't see the point of giving other factors more weight.
Innovations are unpredictable and likely easier when discovering the lower hanging fruit. So if we are increasingly unlikely to invent our way out of mounting problems they are likely to get worse.
Based on current pollution and resource consumption alone we already know our time is running out. At best we've got a century or two before there is massive upheaval. And the resulting world is very likely to be a hellscape of microplastics, ubiquitius forever chemicals, depleted soils, and unexploded munitions.
Then again, it's far easier to stick ones head in the sand and carry on like nothing is wrong. Yet don't worry about such folks, they'll continue on until we all suffer or they're constrained.
I know we live in a very weird era where Operant Conditioning (if you don't know what that is look up B.F. Skinner and I strongly recommend reading his semi-fictional work "Walden 2") and behavioural psychology are being applied by parents upon their children to try to shape the world outside of due process and democracy.
It will be interesting to see if future generations value the things that are being done for their supposed sakes or if they look upon the delusions of recent history with revulsion.
I think we should listen to the canaries before we all suffocate.
We need more rail, more trolleys, more buses, lower speed limits, to close loopholes for polluting trucks, and mixed use roads built for pedestrians, bicycles, and smaller motorized vehicles.
SUVs and trucks should be taxed so much they're impractical to own, apart from a legit business need. Not encouraged to proliferate through outdated regulatory loopholes.
Roads should serve everyone, including those incapable of driving and those with respiratory challenges. They should not only serve the rich, deceived, and unimaginative who cannot stand the thought of any other solutions.
A more modest solution is wildlife tunnels and bridges [1]. These aren’t nearly as expensive as elevating a railroad for many miles, but they do allow wildlife to safely cross in some places. They help to reduce habitat fragmentation which is a huge challenge for migratory species and those with large territories.
They don’t much for pollution, however. Electric cars might help with that somewhat, but the local issue around roads is pollution from tire and road wear, salt/de-icing, debris, litter, and runoff. All of these local pollution sources won’t be alleviated and some (tire/road wear) are exacerbated by EVs due the dramatic weight increase.
Elevated rails would be amazing though. They could accommodate very high speed trains, allowing an even faster transportation network, while also cutting down on all of the issues listed above.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildlife_crossing?wprov=sfti1
Is this true ? I can already see things like working from home, e bikes and drone delivery significantly reducing the need for roads.
In Japan, for example, roads are abandoned due to lack of use. A trend that seems to be happening in other countries such as China and Korea.
Aside from this, I love this article and I feel it’s really important to consider his arguments.
From what I saw on my recent travels in Japan, I'd suggest it was more a case of government vanity projects, local government corruption/desire to spend budgets and other mismanagement that resulted in over-engineered roads being put in places where there was clearly a very low population density.
The same was true of lovely new concrete/granite boardwalks and cycle paths on some of the remote islands in Okinawa Prefecture that were overgrown with vegetation and were impenetrable by bicycle (and almost impassible on foot).
Similarly new roads are being built on some of those islands given that there is noticeable traffic congestion.
There just isn't the population to support it all.
It's not hard to imagine car ownership rising in developing nations. Usually leading to road networks being improved & extended.
And once a road is laid, chances are it'll stay for a looong time.
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason...
I live in a 60,000 population suburb in a top ten metro area, all the adjacent towns are similar poplulation, demography, and economic status. In other words more than half a million population in my county.
In my neighborhood alone, which was developed 70 years ago, the roads are maintained, our sewers are replaced, our electric still works (and how to you "overbuild" electric in the first place?)
Yes, we have periodic tax increases. Strongtown argument that cities are unsustainable because the citizens don't want to pay for maintenance aren't very convincing.