'Green roads' are plowing ahead, buffering drought and floods | Hacker News Reader

'Green roads' are plowing ahead, buffering drought and floods

e360.yale.edu

101 pointsBrajeshwar53 comments

For more general design patterns for water management, see Brad Landcaster's book series, "Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond".

In the pictures in the article, the roads form berms, and the fields are basins. It doesn't just have to be roads -- walkways threading through a smaller scale can act as berms as well. The two volume book contains many other water harvesting structures.

As a note, Andrew Millison has a youtube video about a river system that was developed in India over the course of centuries -- deliberately engineering a delta, with flood channels. They basically did what beavers have been doing in North America (slowing down and spreading out water) for ... longer than we humans have been around.

These ideas are not new. They have been around for a long time. It's not that we found new ways to progress, but rather, rediscovering old methods that had been dropped in our rush for modernity.

I don't know where he got the idea, but I've also seen videos by Mark Shepard where he uses roads as spillways. Instead of running water retention parallel to access, he will run it perpendicular. I was never quite clear how he prevents the overflow from exiting the property at maximum speed.

If your water retention system reaches capacity, by definition you cannot hold onto it, but water flowing at speed is also an erosion risk. It can lead to earthworks failures, which are about as bad as landslides.

If he slowed down the water so that it has a chance to pecolate, it might help. But that only expands the capacity, and there may be days when that overflows.

I think Lancaster talks about the perpendicular flow, and also talks about ways to mitigate that with curves (as well as discussion about erosion patterns when water exits a structure too quickly, which in turn reshapes the terrain, sometimes going into degenerative erosion patterns). On-contour swales (or trenches) are good examples, especially when there are multiple tiers with overflow to increase the distance the water has to travel as it snakes back and forth across the contour and descends down a slope. There are multiple chances to slow down water and let it try to infiltrate.

In his latest edition, Landcaster talks about gambesons (retaining walls), which he used to advocate. But because of long-term erosion patterns, those can fail pretty quickly.

He's in Wisconsin. He's not thinking about dry season farming.

On the other hand, if you are thinking about dry season farming, the government is already 150 years ahead of you and may fine you for attempting to hold onto more water than what can safely percolate in a day or two.

That depends on the scale and the state. I doubt the government cared that much 150 years ago; it was more about claims on surface and ground water. These days, past a certain scale, you’d work with an engineer to plan it out and get the permits.

One phenomenon I heard about recently is that new developments plant smaller trees in order to reduce impacts on power lines. While this achieves the nominal objective, the smaller trees are generally ineffective for shade and general thermal management, provide limited support for squirrels and birds, and generally result in a much inferior aesthetic. According to some models (which are difficult to test), trees improve air quality; smaller trees probably have less effect. But the costs of trees accrue to the developer (who may be a city), while the benefits are diffuse and difficult to measure. Moral hazard, unintended consequences, call it what you will; you have to know about the problem to fix it.

In this article, we hear:

>“The biggest asset for [the county government] in this program is the reduction of maintenance costs,” Maluki says. “It’s a two-way benefit.”

What relates my first paragraph to this article is that I have read dozens of articles touting the benefits of trees in urban design and practically never see much attention paid to the forces in the decision process that keep trees out of cities. Yes, the emerald ash borer and [other story] played a role, but not all villains are so one-dimensionally bad.

This article reads like another puff piece. Insofar as it engages with differing perspectives, they contacted an ecologist who doesn't want to build any roads, and he got two paragraphs. They didn't bother contacting anyone who builds roads and who has doubts about the project, though; their concerns are limited to about half of a sentence:

>but road departments themselves have proved reluctant. “They don’t want the costs associated with designing and implementing [them],” he says.

A new subdivision went in across the major street from my neighborhood recently. The developer clear cut the forest, put in roads and cookie cutter houses, and then planted one small tree in front of each house. Many of the people who live there cross the busy main road to walk/jog/etc. in our older neighborhood, which has many more trees.

I walk my dog in a section of land that is slowly being converted from second (third?) growth forest to a neighborhood.

They are doing the same thing. Cut everything down, reshape the land, build houses, plant a ceremonial sappling.

Every time they expand the area that houses are built on, the amount of runoff increases massively. It's very clear that most of the water is coming only from the areas that have been "developed". The unmolested land is very capable of absorbing the amount of water that comes down. This year they had to completely redo their flood/runoff drainage area and ditch system after they cleared another bunch of land and filled it in with a bunch of sandy fill. Must have cost 6-7 figures. No idea why they can't selectively harvest, and work with the existing topsoil.

Why would a new development have power lines? In my country older suburbs have powerlines but everything is underground in new ones. Much more economical to do it in an area before any buildings or roads are built.

The newer ones are horrible for other reasons. They do tend to have smaller trees but over here that’s because everything is squeezed in to as little space as possible to maximise developer profit per square meter of land.

These sound like the sorts of techniques folks in the "permaculture" community talk about. My wife likes to watch/read stuff from that community.

I'm glad the article linked to this PDF that gets more into the implementation details, I wouldn't mind going a bit deeper: https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/1029516237428532...

"A Good Road Lies Easy on the Land… : Water-harvesting from low standard rural roads" might be a helpful book for those interested in this: https://allaboutwatersheds.org/library/general-library-holdi...

we need to also think of the fact that the vast mojority of people move alone in a vehicle of 1500kg, this doesn't make sense for the environment, we need to go lighter and smaller

One of the first road advocacy organizations in the United States was started by a coalition of farmers and bicyclists, before the car became common:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Roads_Movement

>It started as a coalition between farmers' organizations groups and bicyclists' organizations, such as the League of American Wheelmen.

Also:

>the vast mojority of people move alone in a vehicle of 1500kg

The total number of cars in the world is estimated at around 1.5 billion. The population is around 8 billion. In fact, the vast majority of people do not own a car. This article focuses largely on road construction in less developed countries, such as Nepal.

He’s talking about the vast majority of people in the US, I assume. Not saying this is true either, but I doubt he simply forgot about the existence of heavily populated, undeveloped countries.

> we need to also think of the fact that the vast majority of people move alone in a vehicle of 1500kg

...safely, at sustainable speeds 10-15x faster than they would be otherwise capable while solving the last mile efficiencies at the same time.

Increasing the lifetime and repair/upgrade-ability of those vehicles would probably do more for the environment than anything else.

If the built environment didn’t make them unsafe to use, e-bikes use a fraction of the battery and weight and cover most use cases, because most people are not doing things like moving a couch most of the time.

The US has some of the most bonkers bike lanes I’ve ever seen; my favorite is a bike lane sandwiched between a main travel lane and a high-speed right-turn slip lane.

In large parts of the US, suburban distances and very bad biking weather make e-bikes cover relatively few use cases: When a shopping trip is a 15 minute car drive, and a typical commute to work is 40 minutes, the e-bike doesn't win at all. Perfect lanes don't cut bad distances, 100F summers or -10F winters. And often yes, what we see in US bike infrastructure is unsafe, leading to basically no cyclist using it.

Bikes are great when your development pattern is Netherlands-like: Not dense enough for serious public transport to the home, or to do everything on foot, yet not so light that many trips go past 10 miles. I bet there's a few large metro areas that could support this, but in a lot of the country, it's not about unsafe lanes.

I think there is more here than meets the eye.

The modern suburban arterial often has light cycles measured in a few minutes, which adds up if you're hitting a bunch of them.

Dedicated bike infrastructure, even at high volumes, does not require coming to a full stop, so while the top speed might be lower, the average is more competitive than it appears. And grade separating a bike lane is a lot easier than a whole suburban road.

Weather is not a major factor in ridership given good infrastructure.

On what planet? Finns ride bikes in very cold weather, but what do you do about New Orleans, where it's 75 F at 4 AM with 100% humidity? You absolutely need showers at work for anyone who is going to bike in because they will be covered in sweat.

A lot more people in this world live in the tropics than the frigid north.

Frigid north? What are you implying?

It’s cold close to the poles, right? Been that way every time I’ve gotten near.

Maybe it would not be that cold, if

If what?

those are bonkers and yet, when there is no bike lane, it's usually even worse

I’m not convinced it’s worse - I often bike on the road with a cycle lane next to me.

Bins, rubbish, man holes, street signs, uneven surfaces etc etc ruin bike lanes.

Safely?

Motor vehicles are the most dangerous things we interact with on a daily basis.

The US doesn't even factor in safety of non-occupants in safety requirements.

Modern cars are safer than older cars, but they are still very dangerous.

> Motor vehicles are the most dangerous things we interact with on a daily basis.

Hardly. Self-inflicted injury leading to death is the #3 leading cause of death in the US. Mostly, that's ladders and falls that kill you. Suicides are more common than car accident fatalities. _YOU_ are the most dangerous thing you interact with on a daily basis.

The flu is more common. Emphysema is more common. So is Alzheimer's.

Most car accidents are single vehicle accidents where the driver was drunk or impaired.

Again, _you_ are dangerous to yourself. Which makes sense, you have to be around yourself all the time, so you _would_ be the most likely cause of your own death.

> The US doesn't even factor in safety of non-occupants in safety requirements.

The vehicle can never be made safe for these circumstances. The road and pedestrian walkways _can_ be, though.

> The vehicle can never be made safe for these circumstances.

This is not true at all. Vehicles have been getting taller and heavier, which has led to worse outcomes for pedestrians and cyclists. We could be going the other direction, but instead we're continuing to make it worse without regulation.

[1] https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/vehicles-with-higher-more-v... [2] https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/new-study-suggests-todays-s... [3] https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/higher-point-of-impact-make...

Ironically, it's regulation that made them like this. Obama-era emissions rules stipulated that trucks had to get a certain fuel economy, unless they were heavy duty trucks, which did not have the same requirements. The option was to either make all trucks less capable to meet requirements, or to start selling almost every truck as a heavy duty truck. Nobody would want to buy a truck that cost just as much or more while delivering less, so everybody got jacked up mega trucks instead.

While it definitely contributed to it, the trend towards SUV/crossovers was already underway[1][2] far before with CAFE standards[3]. It's also just higher margins for the auto companies (mostly similarly priced components, but upcharge for size), so they've been pushing it everywhere. While not drastic as US, the same trend can be seen outside US even without the same laws[4].

[1] https://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2018/05/the-changing-mix-... [2] https://advocacy.consumerreports.org/research/the-rise-of-th... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_average_fuel_economy [4] https://www.forbes.com/sites/judeclemente/2019/10/23/suvs-a-...

>Hardly. Self-inflicted injury leading to death is the #3 leading cause of death in the US. Mostly, that's ladders and falls that kill you. Suicides are more common than car accident fatalities. _YOU_ are the most dangerous thing you interact with on a daily basis.

Isn’t that saying that if you combine all other accidental injuries it edges out cars. So cars are almost as dangerous as all the other things put together? Why are cars broken out into their own category from all the other things? Is it because they are incredibly dangerous?

> The vehicle can never be made safe for these circumstances. The road and pedestrian walkways _can_ be, though.

Pedestrian crash safety standards exist, in Europe, for example. As a result, some European cars offer active pedestrian safety systems that are stripped from North American equivalents. Cars certainly can be designed for passive and active pedestrian safety, and they are notably safer in areas where this is a requirement.

> Most car accidents are single vehicle accidents where the driver was drunk or impaired.

That seems unlikely to be true. Most fatal car accidents are single vehicle, but I doubt that most car accidents are single vehicle. It wasn’t immediately obvious how to search for reliable data there (since many single vehicle minor accidents would likely go unreported into a reliable/authoritative database).

Among fatal crashes, I found data to state that the majority of single car fatals involved excessive speed or alcohol, but not data to say that single car alcohol-related fatals were a majority of fatal crashes or of overall fatalities. The data I did find suggested that around 1/3 of car crash fatalities were alcohol-related (though some sources were as low as an 1/8th).

Bicycles are more dangerous, from what I can tell - about 10x the risk when travelling the same distance. (Due to the lack of safety equipment and the inability to keep up with the prevailing flow of traffic.)

What you're seeing there is the failure of traffic engineers to design safe systems for people outside of a motor vehicle, because they're myopically focused on maximum throughput.

Cars are the ones hitting bicycles, I'm not really sure what you're trying to say here about what the statistics show.

That's not true. According to:

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2011/05/20/1364622...

Most studies that look at it show that fault is about equal in bike/car collisions. Given that, it's worth looking to see what the outcome is - and for the same trip, you'll be safer in a car.

The other biker definitely isn't safer for it.

That's by virtue of being on the riskier vehicle - kind of my point. The choice to ride a bicycle has consequences.

Falls, in general, more commonly kill people than vehicles. It's not a perfect trade for safety. There's always factors that need to be actually measured.

No, they don't.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preventable_causes_of_death#...

I have significant issues with that chart. The source is the authors own work and it's not referenced or published anywhere else. The single reference is a 23 year old CDC report from which the author has extracted ICD codes from incomplete data charts that this report uses as a limited reference.

He also missed the fact that "Other and Non specified" categories include ICD codes that directly specify falls. Just falls from or to various circumstances that aren't covered by the basic W codes.

It's a bad chart, "They appear not to," would be more accurate, but I tend to think this chart was made with appearances as a priority over accuracy and understanding.

Alright, a different and more recent source shows it being significantly closer but still with motor vehicles leading: https://www.nsc.org/in-the-newsroom/nsc-statement-on-new-cdc...

Well, if you accept their notions of "preventable" and the categorizations that result. A vehicular death from DUI is still preventable in the vehicular category? Are we suggesting the vehicle was the primary cause or the alcohol? Are we trying to make vehicles safe enough for drunks to drive? If not, then this scheme is a little out of whack for what I was trying to get at. Or what anyone who doesn't have an prejudiced agenda against vehicles would want to know.

Those statistics also include pedestrians who got hit, and motorcyclists who met the end of their road. Those two together are 32% of the total. Again, is the vehicle at fault here, or risky behavior? Which are we trying to measure?

At face value, you are right, though; however, it's still pretty close and the rate of change suggests a crossing. In either case, I know which hazard I would consider more pertinent to avoid in my own daily life. You can drive defensively and just not drink, you can't exactly climb a ladder defensively no matter how sober you are.

I think interacting with the standard American diet is many multiples more dangerous to the average person than getting into car.

Modern cars are safer for the occupants, but more dangerous for everyone else, not only pedestrians and bicyclists, but also occupants of other vehicles.

Alcohol is far more dangerous.

Lack of exercise too

"safely" because other people also have heavy vehicles (if we put aside transportation vehicles, that can be regulated)

People do on average ver small distances, so speed isn't worth it

Not in the places that this particular discussion is about.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windbreak

After the destruction of the Marxist Derg regime in Ethiopia, this seems to finally offer some hope of restoring the ecology there.

https://www.britannica.com/place/Ethiopia/Socialist-Ethiopia...

Sounds like something California could make excellent use of. Of course, they won't.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com