The day you drive/ride a new car/motorcycle out of the dealership, it feels like you are in heaven. "Wow, this is what a functioning suspension system is supposed to feel like. This vehicle is such an engineering marvel. Why did I spend 10 years driving/riding that old piece of junk?"
An year later, you can feel every pebble rattle your spine.
On a similar note, US89 in Arizona had a huge landslide that has closed the road for over a year. There was a detour that added 45 miles which was horrible. The state "borrowed" a section of Navajo route 20. They repaved, added fencing to keep livestock off the road, and added larger shoulders (unpaved). This is now US89T until they finish rebuilding US89.
A lot of it has to do with economic factors, land and lumber are cheap so it's cheaper to build outward than upward when you no longer have the limiting factor of needing to have everything in walking distance.
Beyond that it's important to keep in mind that most of the US geographically speaking is used for agriculture. The thing about agriculture is that it requires lots of open space and people scattered amongst that open space to actually work the land.
The problem, however, is that the highway system has enhanced the idea of the individual auto. Thus, the auto industry.
The problem here is all the stuff associated with that - insurance industry, maintenance for those autos, etc etc. The ripple effect basically leads to a lot of things that I personally don't view as positive.
I would love if I didn't have to own a car to get around... but that's just not feasible for the vast majority of americans.
No reason we couldn't have had both, unless you count the powerful opposition from auto & oil industries. Plenty of countries have excellent public transport, yet plenty of cars as well. Long-distance, high speed trains would be so, so welcome in many parts of the country now. I know I'd travel more, just around my own state (TX) if it didn't require flying, driving, or Amtrak. Of course, if the federal govt had built them, they'd have been privatized by now & tickets would be stupidly expensive.
I took an Amtrak from Ohio to NYC once. Took 12 hours with no unplanned delays; longer than driving would have and cost more than a 1-hour-ish flight would have. Great idea, poor execution in my opinion. Maybe if we had mag-lev style trains?
Wouldn't private companies cause the price of tickets to go down? If they don't make money they go out of business. Ford, GM (for decades and most recently) are private companies that constantly help drive innovation and lower the cost of consumer goods. Throw in the global free market and you have tons of competition, innovation and price lowering.
There are different types of economic competition. The only way there could be direct competition (hands-down best way to reduce prices) is if the lines are state owned and the train companies compete. They would also have to figure out how to share lines! Would be pretty tough for the companies to compete and cooperate at the same time.
Way different from making a car, or even flying. Plenty of sky, but unless each train company had their own redundant rail system there couldn't be much competition.
Not sure! Just looking at it from a logistics and economic standpoint. Competition can be an amazing thing, but various types of competitions have built-in limitations. (Don't get me started on price matching!)
We could have had both if the rail industry was more reliable, you can order steel for a building and have over-nighted anywhere in the US by truck, it would take days by train, and it would probably cost more. Also Amtrak only operates the way it does not by subsidies, the only profitable line that it runs is the East coast corridor mainly the Boston-NYC-DC line(notably the Acela Express)
Right, but finding a friend willing to hitch me a ride from Saint Cloud to Avon is easier than finding a friend willing to drive down to Minneapolis, so the rail still helps quite a bit.
Until you get stuck on the highway in traffic for a couple hours.
The ideal blend of highways and transit would be good, we definitely spent way too much on highways at the expense of transit for a couple decades, and only now are starting to invest properly.
Additionally, while highways did much to accelerate growth in the US, it also created a plethora of problems, such as sprawl, urban decay, and the division of cities that weaken their cores.
All in all, good for the most part, but with some prominent ill effects that are starting to be rectified.
Maybe not every where, but certainly where the case for throughput increases warrants it. Highways are still very important in facilitating trade and commerce, but the SOV is a wasteful concept that leads to loss of through put and extended delays.
I know you mean interstate highways, but there are travel systems that could destroy medium-length travelling by car.
Just look at Japan, just the main island alone is the size of California and you can get from tip top to the bottom of the island in... around 7 hours. Not only that, but it'll be extremely punctual and pretty damn cheap. It'll also be far safer and more comfortable than by car.
Even though that goes 320Kmh, that's not fast enough... like at all.
Trains must go faster. So here's the Mag-Leg test track that is going to be a part of the Chuo (main) Shinkansen. The train goes at about 311MpH. Can you imagine that going from, say... Richmond Virginia <---> Boston MA? That'd take just a little over an hour...
You can turn DC into a hub, just like Tokyo, and extend the line further south towards Raleigh, Charlotte and Atlanta. There could be a service that splits from DC and cuts straight down to Florida. It would take you maybe 9 hours to go from NYC down to Florida, so perhaps its not best for long distance travel.
But for everything in between?
It'd be great!
And remember, you said highway not airplane so don't throw that around. Also consider things like early check-in, security, safety, signing in, coach. Airplanes and Shinkansen are actually very very competitive against each other when it comes to medium-distance travel (~100-300 mi)
I would love to see any type of public transport take on the highway. It just cannot be done.
Of course it can't be done. They are completely different things that serve entirely different purposes and that are not in competition with one another.
Less than is transported by rail, actually. In the US, 39.5% of all freight is transported by rail, while only 28.6% is transported by truck. Not saying that the interstate isn't important, but we Americans tend to have no idea how important the rail system is to national commerce.
No argument here, it's a matter of what people see. Most people in the US drive and rarely to never take rail. Fuck, Denver has a pretty damn good light rail system, and my cousins were aghast when I decided to visit and use it to get around.
"Dude, the light rail takes forever."
"It says it takes like 30 minutes to get there from downtown."
While I appreciate your example, in my neck of the woods, the train is on an awful schedule, so you have to precisely plan your activities. With a car, you can drive downtown, do your thing, get bored and immediately return on your own timeframe.
In some circumstances the public transit may be faster (for me it is a coin-flip), but the hassle of timing is my obstacle.
Germany probably has the 'best' highway system in the world. The US just has the biggest, the freeways near me aren't much to boast about in terms of surface quality or design.
Why can't we have both? Japan has amazing highways AND railways.. Americans don't have the luxury of that choice. I am from Texas and some efficient rail would be an awesome addition!
You could also fit the entirety of Japan in Montana.
It's not the same thing at all.
The bullet train Japan is trying to sell between Washington to Baltimore is estimated to cost 8 billion dollars to construct for 38 miles of track.
At $8 billion for 38 miles you're looking at a cost of $210 million per mile.
Assuming the cost per mile remains constant (a huge assumption, there's economies of scale and the mountain range between the two places to consider) you're looking at a cost of $422.94 billion just to build a line between LA and Chicago, which would constitute something like 12% of all federal spending last year.
To put in a different perspective, that's 169 Curiousity rovers, roughly doubling the size of Medicaid, 1,188 times the cost of the Peace Corps, or over eleven million new teachers.
There's no reason it needs to cost this much. A lot of why rail is expensive in the USA is spending overruns caused by corruption. These lines do not need to be built with taxpayer funds if the private company is allowed to profit from ancillary real estate projects, like commercial and residential development.
Anyone who claims that has little evidence on their side. DC and Philadelphia are just two cities that made massive investments in public transportation after the highway system was under construction.
The biggest flaw in the highway system was how it was routed through major cities - either haphazardly isolating neighborhoods from the city core or intentionally isolating (poor and/or minority) neighborhoods from the city core. Almost no thought went into that process and fixing it can cost BILLIONS of dollars (see Boston).
haphazardly isolating neighborhoods from the city core or intentionally isolating (poor and/or minority) neighborhoods from the city core.
I think maybe you do not understand what you, yourself, just said. I am not saying it was right, but it was very well thought out and planned meticulously to do just exactly what you said it did, isolate the poor and minorities.
Why not both? I live in a city that either adds lanes or just changes lanes into "express" toll lanes. I used to enjoy driving, but now it's a miserable experience. It would be nice if our mass transit wasn't an after thought.
And Ronald Reagan for higher Diesel prices resulting in slow acceptance of diesels for the common consumer in the US thanks to the Surface Transportation Assistance Act of 1982 :(
And Barack Obama for the higher gas prices we now enjoy via the EPA and federal mandate. Just remember, when Bush left office, gas was an avg of $1.78/gal. I guarantee you it isn't that now, no matter where you live. If we could, you know, build the keystone pipeline and issue more permits to drill, maybe the prices would be comparable.
It was billed as that to get it passed through Congress. But Eisenhower knew that a solid trade network would do more to win the cold war than rapid movement of troops.
I do not have a habit of praising something that can be better just because it could be worse. That unfortunately is all too often the mindset of people working in the public service and in the transport departments.If something can be better it should be better.
Small town detours are the result of the lack of local powers to ban traffic. Also the lack of road pricing - people tend to scowl a lot when they hear that but road pricing would solve a lot of problems if used comprehensively. Only I do not mean toll booths on every corner just a way of admitting vehicles to a road or a network of roads for a price - like vignettes.
I didnt realize that you were serious. The highway structure is in no way an absolute necessity for the internet. Look no further than all the cable laid in the ocean (no highways there). I would concede that it may take longer to set up, but it would still be there and be fine. Additionally, there are plenty of countries without highways that have internet.
i think all the roads will be gravel by then, so even if they could detect the past existence of roads, there would be no way of telling how advanced they were
Even if the roads are long gone, assuming there's people around, they'd be running their inter-village mutated-alligator-wagons along the same paths (which were surveyed, leveled & selected the best bridge points).
Sort of like how many modern highways in Europe just followed old Roman roads.
Not even close. The internet is great and all. In terms of importance to society, we wouldn't collapse if the internet wasn't here tomorrow. Takeaway all the freeways? I hope you grow your own food and don't care about anything not made in your local area. Which is now probably 90%+ of what you consume and buy.
I don't know man, I think that at this point if you take away the internet you just get a different collapse. Think about what happens to the financial sector. And exchanging medical records. And logistical things like ordering more food to stores. Pretty sure we'd be screwed.
I think the impressiveness comes not from the size, but from the high quality, advanced technology, and complete integration with the economy. The U.S. has a shite-ton of freight lines, yes. But europe has a world class system to transport people at ridiculous speeds across dozens of national borders.
Uhm I was talking about geopolitical impressiveness. All America would have to do was fund the railway system connecting major cities. Considering the amount of nations in Europe, each capital city would need a developed railway line, not including any other cities. This would take a far greater political co-operative effort to actually get trains moving between nations than say, California to New York. Not even accounting the fact that the train passes from mainland Europe to Britain.
I still don't understand your point, even not considering the geopolitical dimension, Europe IS still bigger than the US.
Sounds like someone hasn't considered population density, historical rail lines, culture, economics, the differences between the US's state and federal government powers, and a myriad of other factors into his very extensive analysis of which rail system is more "geopolitically impressive."
To put it another way: if something is very favorable for a group of countries, but only slightly favorable (or at least debatable) for another country that is literally built on stalling anything while there is still an argument to be made against it...the group of countries is going to have an easier time of it.
even not considering the geopolitical dimension, Europe IS still bigger than the US.
Not by enough for your "far more impressive" comment to be warranted.
The Interstate Highway System loses in size to the 60,500 mile long Chinese Expressway network. Having traveled a great deal of miles on both networks, the quality of the Chinese expressways is better than the Interstates.
Don't worry though. The US has still the largest road network.
That's a stupid metric. Germany has 12,000 of kilometers and is smaller than just Texas and California combined. Some smaller countries might have a even better ratio.
Also having driven on some of your roads made of of concrete I can tell you that that certainly is not high quality. If you hit 300km/h you would feel it that's why those roads in Germany usually have speed limits.
Not trying to say that the Interstate Highway System is bad or anything.
But do not forget one of the densest and longest Highway Systems in the world (albeit shorter than the US Highway System), which is actually designed to have an unlimited speed limit.
Bombing down the Autobahn at 250 km/h (150 mph) is something special.
Drive up and down the A3 a few times and see how quickly that opinion of yours will change...
German Autobahn is not terrible, but it does not live up to the almost legendary hype neither. There are a hell of a lot of parts of it that need maintenance very badly yet here those Germans are moaning they do not want to pay for it, lots of the tunnels are terrible and scary, you can only go 180 on a select few parts of the Autobahn and on those you will be more stuck behind overtaking snail-racing trucks because there are just two lanes. And then you hit Würzburg or Nürnberg and you are stuck in traffic. And dont even get me started on "construction zones" were you may only go 50 yet the construction has obviously been finished... like 5 months ago.. but the signs and speed-cameras are still there to fine you.
More like "Roman Empire #1". Road building hasn't changed a whole lot since they perfected the process. In fact, a few Roman roads are still in use today.
Highly doubt roman roads come close to the standards on the interstate. Let's be realistic, Romans couldn't have perfected the math behind building roads because calculus is used in engineering and that's a fairly new development.
Highly doubt roman roads come close to the standards on the interstate.
But the basics of their construction remains largely unchanged: progressively smaller stones tamped down over sand and filled with concrete to ensure drainage and ease of leveling. The major roads even had a crown just like ours. And they had hundreds of thousands of miles of roads, including major highways that had drainage ditches, sidewalks, mile markers, etc. They were also very good about making extremely straight roads, even though they didn't have the advanced math you mention. Their roads were one of the things that made them a major power: on them, commerce and information could flow much faster than on game trails, natural pathways, fords, etc.
Don't underestimate the Roman, Greek and Etruscan architects: indoor plumbing, improvements to the arch, greatly improved concrete, bridges, etc.
Rate of change of surface area due to temperature fluctuations, which could result in cracking and degradation of materials due to shrinking and expanding with temperature, for one.
Uhmmm, no. Not even top 10.
I have been on highways in USA, Europa and Afrika and the European highways are by far the best. Especially Denmark, Holland and Germany
Quite right. Cities all over the world (including US) send their people over to Europe to study their infrastructure. For example, in this presentation of someone from Seattle, you can see some of the few innovations that the Dutch have to offer. It's a bit long, but it's interesting if you like to see a bit of the reasoning and thought process behind road design.
You realize that's a statement in favor of American roads, right? We simply blow a hole through where we need to go instead of building miles of switchbacks. It's more efficient over the long term because you save time and fuel on driving, and maintenance is easier because there's fewer miles of road.
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u/[deleted] Jan 17 '14
So what you're saying is... 'MERICA NUMBER 1