The U.S. needs similar crossings for all the regions separated by the Interstate system, and somewhere near the center of each region so created, a large wilderness preserve which has roads removed:
While I agree with the sentiment --that couple's methods leave something to be desired.
The article makes it sound like they took a motor boat into a wilderness preserve? Motor vehicles are explicitly not allowed in those areas.
Also excluding dirt roads is a pretty bad criteria. A lot of GIS marked 'dirt roads' are natural animal trails or washes that have been around for hundreds/thousands of years.
Well when the tyrrany of those with a voice in local politics has a say so of course. Not many people put a voice to 15 year olds who might want to walk to another 15 year olds house for once. Maybe that is why all the youth tend to move out of these sorts of places over time and average age marches up in the decades after the initial sell off of the then new tracts to new families.
This is a great initiative which I fully support. But why does it take 4-6 years (including several months of complete road closure) to build what is, in the grand scheme of things, a quite small bridge?
Believe it or not, the people that design and build these bridges have a lot more experience than you do. So if they're doing something that doesn't make sense to you, you should ask yourself what you're missing, and not question their basic competence.
The point isn't just to make a bridge, or they would use a simple concrete bridge.
The point is to make a bridge that is preferable to crossing the highway. And to do that they need to landscape it as if it were part of the landscape. That takes more time because the bridge needs to be stronger to handle the weight of the soil and plants, which means the design, permitting, and construction phases are longer.
They're closing the surrounding road for the soil movement part of the project because that part of the project entails risks of landslides, and it's safer to just close the road. However, the road won't be closed the entire time; it will only be closed for a few hours at a time. The months-long period is just the part of the project when the road will be subject to potential closure.
So the article says that Agoura Road (which is not the highway) will be closed, but the project FAQ still says that it won't be? And the government pre-notices don't seem to mention anticipating closing the road either...
Because they aren’t building a cheap old bridge animals will probably learn to use. They are effectively regrading the mountainside and landscaping over this bridge to try and blend it in with the landscape. Imo its a waste of money. Crabs learn to use the dead simple ugly bridges. Crabs. A coyote or a mountain lion or deer (what you’d see using this thing in CA) all already use human style bridges to cross highways.
Completely agreed. All the nonsense about getting just exactly the right soil composition, letting the soil "age", and what-not, seems bizarre and silly. If an animal needs to use the bridge, it'll learn to use the bridge. Spending so much extra money and time to get the vegetation just right is a waste of taxpayer dollars.
They can go hyperspeed if they want. See freeway building after northridge earthquake or when they replaced an entire bridge over the 405 in one night.
In an ideal train world you still end up with railroad tracks everywhere that interstates exist with the same wildlife downsides. Running trains at ground level is an order of magnitude cheaper to build than building it elevated so wildlife can go under. Running underground is another order of magnitude more expensive. The expense directly relates to how much we can build at any one time - we can build a lot more if we choose run on the ground.
In the ideal train world you still end up with roads everywhere because "last mile" freight needs to get places and trains don't work well for it (think your kitchen trash). Passenger trains always rely on the fact that people can walk a short distance to the train, but freight cannot walk. Passenger trains also cannot be blocked by freight loading/unloading which means you need a separate road system. Passenger trains need to run frequent, you might not go anywhere in the next half hour, but someone on your block will and if the trains are not frequent (every 5 minutes or less) cars are a great quality of life improvement: unlike cars passenger trains cannot mix with freight and be good in areas where things are not busy (A bus can mix with freight well in less busy areas, but they still need to be frequent and that is rarely the case again pushing people to cars and thus against what "you can't imagine"). This in turn means we have more places wildlife is blocked.
Airplanes are the only exception, but they don't cover all the needs and so even if we forced everyone to fly for longer trips (at significant climate costs) we still need all the roads in the middle of nowhere for the people (farmers) who live in those ares.
Hate to burst anyone's bubble but trains in its current form aren't solution to mass transit. They help, sure, under certain circumstances, but are very costly to run and in peak you need huge amount of them. 1 disruption and everything stops, you can't just take an exit and go through villages.
Case point Switzerland, the train country of this world. Efficiency, cleanness, reach, small country. Yet its prohibitively expensive here and highways are chock full of commuters just like anywhere else. For weekend trip ie to mountains they (+ post buses where trains don't go) are very restrictive which is understandable, but car becomes a must anyway.
If you’re a resident, there is a card that costs 160/year (180 the first year) and give you half price on all trains. Also works with any local public transit system (municipal buses, etc) across the country.
Train is quite affordable like that. For example St Gallen to Zurich is 90 minutes by train and costs 16.- with 1/2 fare card. You can even get a super saver (valid on this train only) for 21.20 or 11.20 1/2 fare. That’s for this Monday.
Swiss salaries are some of the highest in the world. The overwhelming majority of trains run on time, don’t strike, and are clean.
It’s cheaper than driving (gas and maintenance) + parking by a long margin.
You can go ski by train there. Haven’t owned a car in 5 years living there.
Sure if you build and restrict your life around no car, then its doable. Very restricted.
Also that part about cost being cheaper ain't true - I have that half tariff. For going somewhere, anywhere, its the same cost (+ saving tons of time). Taking family of 4... you do the math.
There is reason why there are so many cars everywhere. Families with kids usually have 2. Basically everybody has at least 1. If what you said is true people wouldn't be buying and using them constantly.
If it was 'prohibitively expensive' then why do so many people use and why is usage increasing?
Unless you buy individual tickets all the time its really not that expensive.
And depending on how you organize and finance it you can make it really cheap, see Belgium.
Its a hell of a lot cheaper then driving.
For a whole society, to primarly use trains, instead of primarily using cars is WAY, WAY CHEAPER!
> Case point Switzerland, the train country of this world.
This might be the case but Switzerland still spends decades and decades under investing in trains. The Bahn 2000 project was a huge success, but it was a success driven by minimal investment.
If a country like Switzerland had contentiously invested in high quality rail since WW2, we would be in a completely, competently different situation.
> For weekend trip ie to mountains they (+ post buses where trains don't go) are very restrictive which is understandable, but car becomes a must anyway.
And yet I have lived my whole live without a car and only rarely drive in the car with somebody else.
Yes, only trains as the only thing isn't a solution. That clear to anybody, but you can decently do a hell of a lot. And you can do much, much more then Switzerland is currently doing.
For example, we are 'the train country' but we don't even have a high speed rail line.
That somebody can say 'the train country' with a serious face about Switzerland only shows how utterly under-invested rail was since the 1930 in most countries.
The thing with trains is, you have to build them on elevated sometimes anyway, just because of geography, unless if you maybe live in a super flat pace.
And a train track, is way better for wildlife. Even if you run high frequency, most of the time the track is occupied or empty for a while.
Case and point, we have trains going threw mountains and all across everywhere. And the amount of wildlife being hit is vanishingly small. Animals turn out not to be stupid. Many small animals might even survive if they are on the track.
A single train line, can replace many car lanes.
The most dangerous animals for crashes are (a) human suicide (b) cows.
> In the ideal train world you still end up with roads everywhere because "last mile" freight needs to get places and trains don't work well for it (think your kitchen trash).
This is just lack of imagination. Let me guess you are American?
You can easily have train tracks (ie trams) that connect trash collection points. And people can bring their garbage to those points with a simple cart. Just like people go shopping. At worst what you need minor trash collection points that then get moved to the major ones with tiny electric trucks.
And since the volume of such traffic is low, you can easily run that on something like bike lanes or simply in mixed traffic. And you can mostly do that in the night. This is how it already works for areas that are car-free. Its really not magic.
> Passenger trains also cannot be blocked by freight loading/unloading which means you need a separate road system.
No all you need is separate cargo stations or breakout lines. And that exists, and has existed in the past.
If a rail track is so occupied with passenger trains, then clearly there is enough demand for another line.
Most rail lines are not that occupied and can handle an occasional cargo train, you just don't run crazy large trains like in the US.
And bonus, each new rail line increases capacity far more then equivalent car line.
> but they still need to be frequent and that is rarely the case again pushing people to cars
Your argument does not make sense, bus and trains are the same. You have a 'lane' the lane has a certain capacity. For both you can decide on frequency. And on both you can instead run trucks or cargo trains. If capacity of 1 lane can't handle demand, you need another lane.
And individual car transport on one of those lanes, is by far the least efficient overall solution.
A lot of your points are literally just lack of imagination and lack of investment.
maybe this is why Brin and Allen were so obsessed with airships, not to speculate too much but they sound like they could be an ideal short-run, low-impact, high capacity transit system if done right
> not to speculate too much but they sound like they could be an ideal short-run, low-impact, high capacity transit system if done right
Except they are the exact opposite of all of that. The just flat out suck. But its one of those easy traps to fall into.
The German company Cargolifter lost a nice chunk of money. And they aren't the only ones.
The technology hasn't really changed for a long time. And nobody has yet made it useful.
A few reason, they are INSANELY big for a pretty tiny amount of actual payload. That means infrastructure for them is really damn big. That means they hang in the wind like its nothing, you need massive energy just to stabilize them in one place. They are just generally really hard to control.
They are very expensive to design and build. And once you build it, unlike with a 737, you can't transport 100s of people multiple times a day, nonono these things are slow, and picking up cargo is slow, and picking up people is insanely slow. So you can operate this thing for like a day, and maybe do a few cargo lifts. Not exactly a great business. Ah and btw, you also need to design a quasi unique aircraft with lots of fun failure modes and issues that you get to discover and rediscover. They are the opposite of high capacity. And you better hope the weather is good because your not picking up people if it isn't.
And scaling the operation? Your never gone mass produce these things and each one needs its own massive infrastructure. See what the government paid for in Germany, its now a ski resort: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargolifter-Luftschiffhalle
So have fun building a new gigantic building for each new craft.
So lets just do what we know works and has worked for 200 years, trains and ships.
According to the Dutch Wikipedia article, the Zanderij Crailoo bridge is a multi-purpose bridge that includes a hiking path, bike path, and horse trail, in addition to a wildlife crossing.
The Agoura Hills is just a wildlife crossing. So it would be most accurate to say that the Agoura Hills crossing is the single biggest dedicated wildlife crossing.
Put all human infrastructure under ground so that one is left with a beautiful mostly untouched planet. Addresses some aspects of global climate change no further need for HVAC. Reduces power load on the grid. Animals can have the surface of their planet back.
True but if some fake-front group can show we are mass killing bacteria they will hire protesters and start legal battles to shut it all down. "Think Of The Streptomyces!"
For all their ills lawyers basically never engage in that "clearly my experience transfers" type crap. Getting them to say anything about stuff they're not experts in is like pulling teeth.
When I see this sort of comment, I feel like saying: 'well, go on then - you lead the way. If it's really a viable and pleasant way to live, why don't you show us?'
I have been planning it out but only for my property. I can not afford to build the national, international or interplanetary bits. Getting a good team together at my location is my only obstacle. It's very hard to find a solid general contractor and team here that will build as designed in phases. They want to do it all in one shot but that introduces a lot of legal risk if they are doing it wrong.
I love being underground. It's cool and quiet. Those facilities also last a very long time. I found many "Kilroy was here" scribbles in tunnels in the military and some of them were dated back to WWII.
Much of the heat from a subway comes from the HVAC in the train. Add more venting to the trains that works with the trains movement and use forced air into the tunnels. Costs more but it can be done. Some of the heat comes from acceleration and braking. Make that more efficient with newer electric motors, better designed tracks, better regenerative braking. If that doesn't work require everyone to disrobe before leaving their underground home.
Another option would be to deprecate trains. Instead people travel through pressurized maglev modules in tubes at 800 mph / 1200 kph. Transcontinental tubes accelerate the modules to 8000 mph / 12,000 kph. Interplanetary offramps eject the module from earth at mach 50+ where it is caught by a sub-orbital robot ship that matches speed and takes the module to the interplanetary colony ship.
You've clearly never have been on the London Underground - none of the deep level lines currenlty have air conditioning and yet they are getting hotter every year.
I am sure that some people would still want to live on the surface of that beautiful, untouched planet. And I am sure this could be arranged, for the right price of course. And as the extra bonus, all those rich surface-dwellers would not need to see the common folks and other riff-raff, who would be be living under the ground. Hey, even under ground could use the same system: top levels for more well-off folks, and lower levels for poorer folks.
Because they’re trying to do it the right way. The rain we’ve experienced the last few years has been the biggest problem. The soil they’re piling on top of the crossing erodes away almost immediately without plant roots to stabilize it and those plants take a while to establish.
Oh, yeah I see it mentions that in the article. I didn't read the article before commenting because I had read another article about this project recently and didn't think there would be anymore information. I was wrong.
vastly simpler to build the road up on pylons for a few miles.
1, build new road on pylons beside the old road for a few miles.
2 ,switch traffic to new road on pylons.
3 , rip up old road
4 , build some fences ,plant some grass and shrubs
5 ' repeat in each eco zone and local water shed and other areas where there are lots of critters....too chicken to cross the road
> If wildlife fencing and crossing structures are designed based on the requirements of the target species, and if they are implemented and maintained correctly, the measures can reduce large mammal–vehicle collisions by 80–97% (Clevenger et al., 2001, Gagnon et al., 2015, Sawyer et al., 2012).
Any type works. This one is stupid elaborate. Animals are smart. They don’t need a graded landscape to learn crossings. See what they use for crab migrations. Looks nothing like what is native in a crab environment and yet this is fine for the simple crab. Meanwhile coyote already is used to walking on our sidewalks in california.
> Sugiarto found a favorable cost-benefit analysis. The study estimated each crossing structure could save society between $235,000 and $443,000 annually through collision reductions. The savings varied based on structure size, design and location.
The issues with homebuilding are entirely to do with regulation, zoning, etc. Developers will build homes if they're allowed to. Banks will give them the loans (homes don't require government money). The problem is them not being allowed to. Because you're not allowed to build multi-family homes in a neighborhood, you're not allowed to build tall apartment buildings, approvals take forever, etc.
Yeah okay. How many dogs bit children in the same amount of time? How many people did cars kill in that same amount of time? How many fingers pinched by doors?
Opening an animal crossing next to a school in an area where there are many coyotes is a lot different than fingers pinched by doors. But if you’re making the argument that this animal crossing is so important than the occasional child being killed by animals is as trivial as fingers being pinched by doors, I know all I need to know about you.
The U.S. needs similar crossings for all the regions separated by the Interstate system, and somewhere near the center of each region so created, a large wilderness preserve which has roads removed:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42104894
While I agree with the sentiment --that couple's methods leave something to be desired.
The article makes it sound like they took a motor boat into a wilderness preserve? Motor vehicles are explicitly not allowed in those areas.
Also excluding dirt roads is a pretty bad criteria. A lot of GIS marked 'dirt roads' are natural animal trails or washes that have been around for hundreds/thousands of years.
The National Parks Service allows it:
While motorboats are permitted to operate in the marine environment, their presence can influence the wilderness setting.
https://www.nps.gov/ever/wilderness.htm
That seems specific to the Everglades wilderness.
US doesn’t even have this for humans to cross at regular intervals on all freeways.
It has them wherever the local community decides that they are important enough to implement.
Well when the tyrrany of those with a voice in local politics has a say so of course. Not many people put a voice to 15 year olds who might want to walk to another 15 year olds house for once. Maybe that is why all the youth tend to move out of these sorts of places over time and average age marches up in the decades after the initial sell off of the then new tracts to new families.
I drive under one, and over another such walking access built specifically for children to reach schools during my daily commute (scarcely 10 miles).
This is a great initiative which I fully support. But why does it take 4-6 years (including several months of complete road closure) to build what is, in the grand scheme of things, a quite small bridge?
Believe it or not, the people that design and build these bridges have a lot more experience than you do. So if they're doing something that doesn't make sense to you, you should ask yourself what you're missing, and not question their basic competence.
The point isn't just to make a bridge, or they would use a simple concrete bridge.
The point is to make a bridge that is preferable to crossing the highway. And to do that they need to landscape it as if it were part of the landscape. That takes more time because the bridge needs to be stronger to handle the weight of the soil and plants, which means the design, permitting, and construction phases are longer.
They're closing the surrounding road for the soil movement part of the project because that part of the project entails risks of landslides, and it's safer to just close the road. However, the road won't be closed the entire time; it will only be closed for a few hours at a time. The months-long period is just the part of the project when the road will be subject to potential closure.
So the article says that Agoura Road (which is not the highway) will be closed, but the project FAQ still says that it won't be? And the government pre-notices don't seem to mention anticipating closing the road either...
https://101wildlifecrossing.org/crossing-faq/
https://www.agourahillscity.org/Home/Components/News/News/39...
Because they aren’t building a cheap old bridge animals will probably learn to use. They are effectively regrading the mountainside and landscaping over this bridge to try and blend it in with the landscape. Imo its a waste of money. Crabs learn to use the dead simple ugly bridges. Crabs. A coyote or a mountain lion or deer (what you’d see using this thing in CA) all already use human style bridges to cross highways.
Not sure that it's a complete waste of money, but it's pretty obvious that animals will use any means of getting across that's convenient.
Completely agreed. All the nonsense about getting just exactly the right soil composition, letting the soil "age", and what-not, seems bizarre and silly. If an animal needs to use the bridge, it'll learn to use the bridge. Spending so much extra money and time to get the vegetation just right is a waste of taxpayer dollars.
This is lightning speed for California construction...
They can go hyperspeed if they want. See freeway building after northridge earthquake or when they replaced an entire bridge over the 405 in one night.
Roads are such an apocalyptic blight on the landscape that I'm all for burying as many of them as possible. 200 feet down, 200 billion feet to go.
Or you know, crazy idea, just have less roads, use something more efficient less impactful to nature. Can't imagine what that could be.
It doesn't matter, there are downsides.
In an ideal train world you still end up with railroad tracks everywhere that interstates exist with the same wildlife downsides. Running trains at ground level is an order of magnitude cheaper to build than building it elevated so wildlife can go under. Running underground is another order of magnitude more expensive. The expense directly relates to how much we can build at any one time - we can build a lot more if we choose run on the ground.
In the ideal train world you still end up with roads everywhere because "last mile" freight needs to get places and trains don't work well for it (think your kitchen trash). Passenger trains always rely on the fact that people can walk a short distance to the train, but freight cannot walk. Passenger trains also cannot be blocked by freight loading/unloading which means you need a separate road system. Passenger trains need to run frequent, you might not go anywhere in the next half hour, but someone on your block will and if the trains are not frequent (every 5 minutes or less) cars are a great quality of life improvement: unlike cars passenger trains cannot mix with freight and be good in areas where things are not busy (A bus can mix with freight well in less busy areas, but they still need to be frequent and that is rarely the case again pushing people to cars and thus against what "you can't imagine"). This in turn means we have more places wildlife is blocked.
Airplanes are the only exception, but they don't cover all the needs and so even if we forced everyone to fly for longer trips (at significant climate costs) we still need all the roads in the middle of nowhere for the people (farmers) who live in those ares.
Hate to burst anyone's bubble but trains in its current form aren't solution to mass transit. They help, sure, under certain circumstances, but are very costly to run and in peak you need huge amount of them. 1 disruption and everything stops, you can't just take an exit and go through villages.
Case point Switzerland, the train country of this world. Efficiency, cleanness, reach, small country. Yet its prohibitively expensive here and highways are chock full of commuters just like anywhere else. For weekend trip ie to mountains they (+ post buses where trains don't go) are very restrictive which is understandable, but car becomes a must anyway.
> expensive
Not so much. As a tourist yes, no question.
If you’re a resident, there is a card that costs 160/year (180 the first year) and give you half price on all trains. Also works with any local public transit system (municipal buses, etc) across the country.
Train is quite affordable like that. For example St Gallen to Zurich is 90 minutes by train and costs 16.- with 1/2 fare card. You can even get a super saver (valid on this train only) for 21.20 or 11.20 1/2 fare. That’s for this Monday.
Swiss salaries are some of the highest in the world. The overwhelming majority of trains run on time, don’t strike, and are clean.
It’s cheaper than driving (gas and maintenance) + parking by a long margin.
You can go ski by train there. Haven’t owned a car in 5 years living there.
Sure if you build and restrict your life around no car, then its doable. Very restricted.
Also that part about cost being cheaper ain't true - I have that half tariff. For going somewhere, anywhere, its the same cost (+ saving tons of time). Taking family of 4... you do the math.
There is reason why there are so many cars everywhere. Families with kids usually have 2. Basically everybody has at least 1. If what you said is true people wouldn't be buying and using them constantly.
> Taking family of 4... you do the math.
That's a fair point, I didn't think of including it.
Cars are even more expensive to run. However nobody counts that cost while they see the cost of a ticket.
> Yet its prohibitively expensive here
If it was 'prohibitively expensive' then why do so many people use and why is usage increasing?
Unless you buy individual tickets all the time its really not that expensive.
And depending on how you organize and finance it you can make it really cheap, see Belgium.
Its a hell of a lot cheaper then driving.
For a whole society, to primarly use trains, instead of primarily using cars is WAY, WAY CHEAPER!
> Case point Switzerland, the train country of this world.
This might be the case but Switzerland still spends decades and decades under investing in trains. The Bahn 2000 project was a huge success, but it was a success driven by minimal investment.
If a country like Switzerland had contentiously invested in high quality rail since WW2, we would be in a completely, competently different situation.
> For weekend trip ie to mountains they (+ post buses where trains don't go) are very restrictive which is understandable, but car becomes a must anyway.
And yet I have lived my whole live without a car and only rarely drive in the car with somebody else.
Yes, only trains as the only thing isn't a solution. That clear to anybody, but you can decently do a hell of a lot. And you can do much, much more then Switzerland is currently doing.
For example, we are 'the train country' but we don't even have a high speed rail line.
That somebody can say 'the train country' with a serious face about Switzerland only shows how utterly under-invested rail was since the 1930 in most countries.
The thing with trains is, you have to build them on elevated sometimes anyway, just because of geography, unless if you maybe live in a super flat pace.
And a train track, is way better for wildlife. Even if you run high frequency, most of the time the track is occupied or empty for a while.
Case and point, we have trains going threw mountains and all across everywhere. And the amount of wildlife being hit is vanishingly small. Animals turn out not to be stupid. Many small animals might even survive if they are on the track.
A single train line, can replace many car lanes.
The most dangerous animals for crashes are (a) human suicide (b) cows.
> In the ideal train world you still end up with roads everywhere because "last mile" freight needs to get places and trains don't work well for it (think your kitchen trash).
This is just lack of imagination. Let me guess you are American?
You can easily have train tracks (ie trams) that connect trash collection points. And people can bring their garbage to those points with a simple cart. Just like people go shopping. At worst what you need minor trash collection points that then get moved to the major ones with tiny electric trucks.
And since the volume of such traffic is low, you can easily run that on something like bike lanes or simply in mixed traffic. And you can mostly do that in the night. This is how it already works for areas that are car-free. Its really not magic.
> Passenger trains also cannot be blocked by freight loading/unloading which means you need a separate road system.
No all you need is separate cargo stations or breakout lines. And that exists, and has existed in the past.
If a rail track is so occupied with passenger trains, then clearly there is enough demand for another line.
Most rail lines are not that occupied and can handle an occasional cargo train, you just don't run crazy large trains like in the US.
And bonus, each new rail line increases capacity far more then equivalent car line.
> but they still need to be frequent and that is rarely the case again pushing people to cars
Your argument does not make sense, bus and trains are the same. You have a 'lane' the lane has a certain capacity. For both you can decide on frequency. And on both you can instead run trucks or cargo trains. If capacity of 1 lane can't handle demand, you need another lane.
And individual car transport on one of those lanes, is by far the least efficient overall solution.
A lot of your points are literally just lack of imagination and lack of investment.
maybe this is why Brin and Allen were so obsessed with airships, not to speculate too much but they sound like they could be an ideal short-run, low-impact, high capacity transit system if done right
> not to speculate too much but they sound like they could be an ideal short-run, low-impact, high capacity transit system if done right
Except they are the exact opposite of all of that. The just flat out suck. But its one of those easy traps to fall into.
The German company Cargolifter lost a nice chunk of money. And they aren't the only ones.
The technology hasn't really changed for a long time. And nobody has yet made it useful.
A few reason, they are INSANELY big for a pretty tiny amount of actual payload. That means infrastructure for them is really damn big. That means they hang in the wind like its nothing, you need massive energy just to stabilize them in one place. They are just generally really hard to control.
They are very expensive to design and build. And once you build it, unlike with a 737, you can't transport 100s of people multiple times a day, nonono these things are slow, and picking up cargo is slow, and picking up people is insanely slow. So you can operate this thing for like a day, and maybe do a few cargo lifts. Not exactly a great business. Ah and btw, you also need to design a quasi unique aircraft with lots of fun failure modes and issues that you get to discover and rediscover. They are the opposite of high capacity. And you better hope the weather is good because your not picking up people if it isn't.
And scaling the operation? Your never gone mass produce these things and each one needs its own massive infrastructure. See what the government paid for in Germany, its now a ski resort: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargolifter-Luftschiffhalle
So have fun building a new gigantic building for each new craft.
So lets just do what we know works and has worked for 200 years, trains and ships.
Me neither. A bus? A train? A bicycle? What do you mean, don’t leave the room for interpretation.
The roads and the borders
Is it the biggest wildlife crossing? This one [1] is 50x150 meters. Granted, it's in flat land so it's not covered with such a thick layer of soil.
[1] https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/natuurbrug-zanderij-crai...
The difference is in what's being measured.
According to the Dutch Wikipedia article, the Zanderij Crailoo bridge is a multi-purpose bridge that includes a hiking path, bike path, and horse trail, in addition to a wildlife crossing.
The Agoura Hills is just a wildlife crossing. So it would be most accurate to say that the Agoura Hills crossing is the single biggest dedicated wildlife crossing.
Yea, I find it hard to believe that is the largest.
Put all human infrastructure under ground so that one is left with a beautiful mostly untouched planet. Addresses some aspects of global climate change no further need for HVAC. Reduces power load on the grid. Animals can have the surface of their planet back.
Zero animals live underground, this will totally work.
It would work because underground animals live in a 3D world, unlike surface animals.
Sorry what?? :)
Once you go deep enough this is true excluding bacteria because to hell with bacteria.
Bacteria are not animals.
I think I read in this book one time that humans are animals.
Animals keep to the surface and bacteria keeps to the underground... problem solved.
True but if some fake-front group can show we are mass killing bacteria they will hire protesters and start legal battles to shut it all down. "Think Of The Streptomyces!"
But he’s a computer programmer so obviously his expertise extends into all other areas.
I don’t think this was a serious comment
Indeed, being a know-it-all is not exclusive to programmers :)
For all their ills lawyers basically never engage in that "clearly my experience transfers" type crap. Getting them to say anything about stuff they're not experts in is like pulling teeth.
To be fair, lawyers will hem and haw about everything. Getting them to give a straight direct answer is like pulling teeth.
Once one knows it all they obtain the title Principal Armchair Commander or PAC. One should strive to be a PAC, man.
Maybe the PP just finished watching Silo....
When I see this sort of comment, I feel like saying: 'well, go on then - you lead the way. If it's really a viable and pleasant way to live, why don't you show us?'
I have been planning it out but only for my property. I can not afford to build the national, international or interplanetary bits. Getting a good team together at my location is my only obstacle. It's very hard to find a solid general contractor and team here that will build as designed in phases. They want to do it all in one shot but that introduces a lot of legal risk if they are doing it wrong.
I love being underground. It's cool and quiet. Those facilities also last a very long time. I found many "Kilroy was here" scribbles in tunnels in the military and some of them were dated back to WWII.
Underground subways heat up the rock so much they have to add cooling eventually.
Much of the heat from a subway comes from the HVAC in the train. Add more venting to the trains that works with the trains movement and use forced air into the tunnels. Costs more but it can be done. Some of the heat comes from acceleration and braking. Make that more efficient with newer electric motors, better designed tracks, better regenerative braking. If that doesn't work require everyone to disrobe before leaving their underground home.
Another option would be to deprecate trains. Instead people travel through pressurized maglev modules in tubes at 800 mph / 1200 kph. Transcontinental tubes accelerate the modules to 8000 mph / 12,000 kph. Interplanetary offramps eject the module from earth at mach 50+ where it is caught by a sub-orbital robot ship that matches speed and takes the module to the interplanetary colony ship.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground_cooling
It's significant.
I believe it. Let's not replicate what London got wrong.
We didn't! Chicago built their subway IN THE AIR!
London underground deep level trains have no HVAC and most definitely have overheating tunnel problems.
Ahhh Delta-V by Daniel Suarez! Great book. The human-controlled robots were really interesting imo
You've clearly never have been on the London Underground - none of the deep level lines currenlty have air conditioning and yet they are getting hotter every year.
I am sure that some people would still want to live on the surface of that beautiful, untouched planet. And I am sure this could be arranged, for the right price of course. And as the extra bonus, all those rich surface-dwellers would not need to see the common folks and other riff-raff, who would be be living under the ground. Hey, even under ground could use the same system: top levels for more well-off folks, and lower levels for poorer folks.
I think I've read a book about this. Or ten.
Dystopian are my favorites. I have this fantasy that there are still some people that would rise up to the challenge and level the playing field.
Why is this taking so long to complete?
Because they’re trying to do it the right way. The rain we’ve experienced the last few years has been the biggest problem. The soil they’re piling on top of the crossing erodes away almost immediately without plant roots to stabilize it and those plants take a while to establish.
Oh, yeah I see it mentions that in the article. I didn't read the article before commenting because I had read another article about this project recently and didn't think there would be anymore information. I was wrong.
One wonders about why they didn’t choose a tunnel, leaving that ultra special soul fully intact…
vastly simpler to build the road up on pylons for a few miles. 1, build new road on pylons beside the old road for a few miles. 2 ,switch traffic to new road on pylons. 3 , rip up old road 4 , build some fences ,plant some grass and shrubs 5 ' repeat in each eco zone and local water shed and other areas where there are lots of critters....too chicken to cross the road
Why is there no wildlife? I expected this to be about the Maasai Mara/Serengeti wildebeest crossing :)
Does this type of wildlife crossing actually work?
Yes. 80-97% reduction in vehicle-animal collisions, per: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00063...
> If wildlife fencing and crossing structures are designed based on the requirements of the target species, and if they are implemented and maintained correctly, the measures can reduce large mammal–vehicle collisions by 80–97% (Clevenger et al., 2001, Gagnon et al., 2015, Sawyer et al., 2012).
Any type works. This one is stupid elaborate. Animals are smart. They don’t need a graded landscape to learn crossings. See what they use for crab migrations. Looks nothing like what is native in a crab environment and yet this is fine for the simple crab. Meanwhile coyote already is used to walking on our sidewalks in california.
I had to look up the crab migration bridges.
https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2021/11/18/red-crab-migrati...
Clickbait title.
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Yes! Let's build this stuff instead of homes.
Don't give in to zero sum thinking.
https://www.opb.org/article/2022/08/31/animal-crossings-over...
> Sugiarto found a favorable cost-benefit analysis. The study estimated each crossing structure could save society between $235,000 and $443,000 annually through collision reductions. The savings varied based on structure size, design and location.
The two have nothing to do with each other.
We've got plenty of money to do both.
The issues with homebuilding are entirely to do with regulation, zoning, etc. Developers will build homes if they're allowed to. Banks will give them the loans (homes don't require government money). The problem is them not being allowed to. Because you're not allowed to build multi-family homes in a neighborhood, you're not allowed to build tall apartment buildings, approvals take forever, etc.
An animal crossing built right next to a school. I wonder if the coyotes that will cross will be a threat to the children.
Is this a troll comment I don’t understand?
Do you see coyotes running around hunting children often?
No it’s not. I live there and my kids go to school there. I do see many coyotes in our area. Some tagged. Some not. It’s definitely a worry of mine.
Edit: I have friends whose dogs were torn apart by packs of coyotes. It’s common in our area. I really do fear that this will cause incidents.
California child attack via Coyote 2022.
June 2024 coyote tries to enter a California home and attack a cat.
It happens.
Yeah okay. How many dogs bit children in the same amount of time? How many people did cars kill in that same amount of time? How many fingers pinched by doors?
Opening an animal crossing next to a school in an area where there are many coyotes is a lot different than fingers pinched by doors. But if you’re making the argument that this animal crossing is so important than the occasional child being killed by animals is as trivial as fingers being pinched by doors, I know all I need to know about you.
Only during open season.
Only when there are no roadrunners to be found.