DOT Warns of Dystopian Future For Transportation 481
An anonymous reader writes The U.S. Department of Transportation has issued a 300-page PDF outlining the grim future of transportation infrastructure in North America over the next thirty years, and inviting debate on the issue. The report presents a vision of 2045 with LA-style traffic jams in Nebraska, trains too full to pick up any more passengers and airports underwater due to climate change — all in a climate of chronic under-investment, even at levels needed to maintain existing transport infrastructure. Among possible solutions outlined are self-driving cars using vehicle-to-vehicle (V2I) crash-avoidance technologies, such as those currently in development by Google — and in fact transportation secretary Anthony Foxx was joined by Google CEO Eric Schmidt at the launch of DOT's "Beyond Traffic" initiative.
Here's a great idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
Use the money you earn through infrastructure and transportation taxes to actually pay for maintaining the infrastructure.
Re:Here's a great idea... (Score:5, Funny)
Great idea! We'll form an exploratory committee put together a schedule for forming survey planning committee. We'll need funding through... say... 2018?
Re: (Score:3)
And while we're on that, we'll form another missing words committee to figure out why the heck I can't speak English today!
Re: (Score:2)
These government toads don't really even try to hide their mendacity anymore.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Don't forget. The EPA and several other agencies whose names elude me at the moment must do environmental, economic, racial, and metaphysical impact studies before anyone picks up a shovel.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Here's a great idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
No!
Must cut taxes to stimulate the economy by giving rich people more money so they can piss it down on us.
Re:Here's a great idea... (Score:4, Insightful)
California for example was only spending about 25% of what they collected on the roads when I lived there 8 years ago.
Re:Here's a great idea... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Here's a great idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Here's a great idea... (Score:5, Interesting)
More important than public schools?
Yes. Many times more important than public schools.
Without modern education systems, but with roads: the world might (worst reasonable case) devolve into a 1800's style agrarian/industrial economy where farm-folk trade with the industrial city-folk. Education would happen because books would be traded, and parents would teach their children as they had for millenia. It might not be quantum physics, but people would prosper and ideas would be exchanged.
Without roads (and bridges and tunnels), but with modern education systems: No one can reach schools unless a school is right nearby or they can chop through the woods, ford rivers, cross mountain ranges. Trading of goods and food would not happen except on small-scales. Most families would be like this one: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/... [smithsonianmag.com]
AC Rant (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, so here's part of the problem:
In Denver, CO the elevated portion of I-70 is falling down. Literally. If you ever looked at the underneath of the elevated portion of I-70, you would NEVER drive on it again. We're talking about basketball sized chunks of concrete falling out, exposed rebar, nightmare stuff. So let's fix it.
You can put a $50,000,000 band-aid on it to keep it from falling down for maybe 5 years, or you can pay $500,000,000 to fix it right. But that's for Today's traffic. To do it properly, you need to model traffic patterns out years in advance. To increase capacity and fix it properly, we easily get into $2,000,000,000.
Remember, C-470 was called "The Highway Colorado Doesn't Need" when it was first built, and now it has traffic jams on it on a daily basis (Seriously, I remember when County Line was a dirt road and Highlands Ranch was actually a Ranch).
*BUT* that's not the only problem. When you build roads and expand them, you need Right-of-Way. You have to buy people's houses to buy that ROW. People sometimes don't want to sell their houses and complain. One job we were expanding a backwater state highway (2 lane road) that was seeing a large increase in traffic into a 4 lane divided highway. Problem was, a neighborhood developed around the road. People complained, and sued the DOT, because they knew their 70-year-old houses existed before the road. The DOT pulled photos from the archives, engineers ($$$) went to court to show the houses were not only built after the road was there and paved, but that was why the houses were build (a road was there). That's the kind of crap that happens EVERY time you need to do a major build or upgrade.
Now on to the Odometer problem:
People drive in multiple states all the time. And your little commuter car isn't doing the major wear-and-tear on the roads anyway (Unless you drive a hummer, or another large truck that qualifies for the Heavy Equipment Tax by weighing more than a tank), that's commercial trucks, many of which are overloaded for road conditions (Truckers routinely ignore signs for height / weight restrictions).
Also, some states pull stupid crap and don't QA/QC their asphalt mix before putting it into production (MODOT, I'm looking at you), causing huge problems with roads that crumble too early.
The weather problem:
Some states in the U.S. have a horrible freeze-thaw cycle that demolishes roads. Water is bad for fiber (Internet Superhighway). Water is bad for concrete (Regular Superhighway). Water is bad for fire (Burning Superhighway). Water is good for fish (Not a Superhighway).
Look at the problems a state like Nebraska faces: 100 degree plus summers, -10 degree winters.
Then you go into the East Coast nightmare. The interstate highway system was formed in 1956 (June 29th, 1956). No biggie right? Well, a lot of these are now eligible for the National Register of Historic Places (or getting their quickly).
Don't even get me started on wetlands (irrigation ditches, you know, the places used to collect and store water. Yeah, they formed their own little ecosystems in 40 years and are now considered wetlands, gotta work around that).
My $0.03 /We need another president like Eisenhower that will force people to invest in infrastructure //And NOT use the DOT to Force policies on states ///Federal Highway Funds are not provided to states that don't follow DUI laws, FYI.
Re:Here's a great idea... (Score:4, Interesting)
There is actually a serious problem here because the gas tax--by far one of the largest of these--is supposed to be a usage fee, and MPG is increasing. Raising the gas tax isn't a great solution, because people with low MPG are often those who can afford it least, and because raising taxes are always a political firestorm (imagine how much industry would push back too). Electric cars are a whole new issue entirely--don't know how widespread they'll be long term though.
No, transportation infrastructure needs to be fed from somewhere else. One of the current solutions is to stick a GPS tracker in every car, which is admirable on the basis of fair payment for public road usage, but utterly catastrophic in every other way. I think we just need to pay for transport infrastructure from a general fund instead.
Re:Here's a great idea... (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the current solutions is to stick a GPS tracker in every car, which is admirable on the basis of fair payment for public road usage, but utterly catastrophic in every other way. I think we just need to pay for transport infrastructure from a general fund instead.
That sounds like typical government waste. Force everybody to pay another $1,000 per vehicle so that the government can tax everybody per vehicle mile (which will probably end up being less than the cost of the GPS unit. I won't even get into the privacy issues.
Isn't there already something in every single car that records the number of miles driven?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
That sounds like typical government waste. Force everybody to pay another $1,000 per vehicle so that the government can tax everybody per vehicle mile (which will probably end up being less than the cost of the GPS unit.
$1,000 per vehicle is a gross exaggeration. GPS receivers have been in cell phones for years. The cost of the receiver doesn't add $1,000 to the phone.
I won't even get into the privacy issues.
Neither will I, except to say that I agree the privacy issues make the idea a non-starter.
Isn't there already something in every single car that records the number of miles driven?
You mean the odometer. It shows the number of miles drivern, but not where you drove them.
Re:Here's a great idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Here's a great idea... (Score:5, Funny)
This land is my land,
It isn't your land.
I've got a shotgun
and you don't got one
If you don't get off
I'll blow your head off
This land is private property.
Re:Here's a great idea... (Score:4, Informative)
Lots of driving on private property tends to mean it's becoming public property.
That's a ridiculous statement. Private roads are private infrastructure and are built and maintained with private funds. If Disneyland wants to gate its parking lots and prevent people from driving or parking on the lots, that's Disneyland's business. It's also Disneyland's business to pony up the money to repair potholes in its parking lots if it wants to. It could let the lots turn to gravel or mud pits if it wanted.
But getting back on subject: so few people drive only on private property with a vehicle registered to drive on public streets that it's not worth figuring out when you were on public or private. Every registration renewal, list the new odometer reading. 1/20 times, someone walks out to your car to double check it, so you can fudge if you like to gamble against a hefty fine. Vehicles that drive only on private property like farm trucks, tractors, and Disney trams are already non-registered.
Re: (Score:3)
Two metro areas in Florida. Jacksonville and Orlando.
Orlando had really awful traffic. There were only 3 major North-South roads for a metro area that runs primarily North-South and only one of them was a limited-access highway. The one nicknamed "the world's longest parking lot".
When people complained that the roads weren't appropriate the response was that you had 3 counties and innumerable townships, each of which was responsible for their own roads and none of which wanted to pay for any other county/to
Re:Here's a great idea... (Score:4, Interesting)
Isn't there already something in every single car that records the number of miles driven?
It doesn't track road miles (and people will claim they don't drive on roads, and demand exceptions!), or vehicle weight (see the ratio of road wear per vehicle weight and cringe).
Sorry, but the odometer won't be enough.
The mileage tax can have a weight multiplier to account for weight. Make the mileage tax a national tax, and it won't matter what state people drive in.
For those relative few that do significant driving off public roads, they can use a GPS tracker.
Re: (Score:2)
For those relative few that do significant driving off public roads, they can use a GPS tracker.
That is a very sensible solution (only people who want to prove they are not using the public roads would need to install one). Probably means it will never happen.
Re: (Score:3)
The mileage tax can have a weight multiplier to account for weight.
That'll work for vehicles that don't grossly change weight.
That's not going to describe the vehicles of the most concern.
Those are commercial vehicles and would be taxed differently as they are now -- commercial vehicles already pay more taxes based on the vehicle's gross weight capacity.
Make the mileage tax a national tax, and it won't matter what state people drive in.
It will when it comes to funding. Even apportionment by population is a bad idea.
People would still report their mileage to their own DMV, so the tax is divided among each state based on their resident's reported driving. It won't be 100% accurate, but pretty close.
For those relative few that do significant driving off public roads, they can use a GPS tracker.
That's just too sensible to work!
Re: (Score:2)
Were we just talking about personal vehicles?
Well I don't know -- who is "we"? You can't post as an Anonymous Coward and then complain that someone isn't following the chain of conversation, unless you are signed in, there is no chain of conversation to follow. But since the original post I replied to specifically said "cars", then no, I don't think "we" were talking about commercial trucks (cars, even commercial ones) don't tend to grossly change weight)
I wasn't limiting it to that since the original posted to which I replied didn't include the distinction.
Trucks are easy - use a GPS tracker, you can even tie it to load sensors or require the driver t
Kind of.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Self driving cars are not a solution to the problem, and can't be the solution to the problem. If passenger trains are too full to carry people, then mass transit needs to be expanded. You know, the system we should have been investing in for half a century and ignored because it hurt someone's net worth.
Virtually zero US cities have a functional mass transit system. The most populated areas in the west are prime examples, and lets take San Francisco Bay as our example (since I live here and have first hand knowledge and experience). VTA handles "some" of the South Bay, but limited to North San Jose and Mountain View. Caltrain handles a single strip running North to south from North San Jose to South (not the city) San Francisco. Bart handles SF -> Oakland, and a straight line down to Fremont. These systems don't connect, use different payment systems, have different rates, and are _MORE_ expensive than driving. Example: I can take Caltrain from Mountain View to SF for 8.00 one way, so 16.00 round trip. Then I have to find another commute service to get from Caltrain to my destination, which is more money and time. Taking our "cheap" (said with a hearty chuckle) mass transit is extremely expensive and time consuming.
Lets not bullshit anyone, this is not our only problem. Industrial pollution is a much bigger problem. Generating electricity is a dirty task and a bigger problem. Plastic is a problem, and cheap "disposable" products are a problem. None of those get addressed by making "self driving cars" and some problems such as vehicle exhaust get worse.
Yet instead of addressing the problems with mass transit, California is dumping many billions into a train from Fresno to Sacramento. Go figure..
Re: (Score:2)
In our big cities, it seems like it's too late to add more mass transit. Where the hell would you put it? There's already skyscrapers there. All I can figure is that we need stringent state or federal guidelines for new city planning above a certain size that mandates effective mass transit in the design. You can add it to new growth, you can't shove it into old cities.
Re: (Score:3)
You do know that we have invented machines that dig tunnels at various depths, yes? That is just one solution. That one can be done with little bother to the traffic above even. It CAN be done but will take time and cost money. Those are two things the little people and the politicians hate.
Re: (Score:3)
They're building out a new subway line in NYC in Manhattan down 2nd ave. So you are right that it can be done. Not only that, but it IS being done.
Other cities claiming it's too late to add it are exaggerating. They can do it. That's not really a question. Is it worth the cost? In many cases, probably not... but that's a decision people are making, not some fact of life for old cities.
Re: (Score:3)
Hmm, are you suggesting that people in California put in subways? I think I can agree with this. It should be entertaining to watch the news when an earthquake hits.
Subways work in NYC because you are sitting on rock. Specifically the remnants of an ancient cooled caldera. Take places like Dallas where we are sitting on clay that shifts, expands, and contracts so bad that we don't even do basements, and a subway is doomed to failure.
Re: (Score:2)
In our big cities, it seems like it's too late to add more mass transit. Where the hell would you put it? There's already skyscrapers there. All I can figure is that we need stringent state or federal guidelines for new city planning above a certain size that mandates effective mass transit in the design. You can add it to new growth, you can't shove it into old cities.
There's still room underground in most cities, though it's expensive -- San Francisco Muni is building a new underground line, and there's a plan to build a tunnel to bring Caltrain downtown.
Roads are another source of transit capacity -- single passenger cars (even self driving cars) are not an efficient way to move large numbers of people, so car lanes can be converted to light rail or BRT.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Kind of.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Self-driving cars are mass transit. At some point, once you're no longer driving your car, it will occur to you that you don't really care if you own the car. That's when things will get interesting.
IMHO, most self-driving cars will be operated by a networked JohnnyCab-like service that will combine the efficiency of public transportation and the freedom of personally-owned vehicles. It will be a big social, political, and economic change, but almost everyone will end up better off.
Re:Kind of.. (Score:5, Informative)
Example: I can take Caltrain from Mountain View to SF for 8.00 one way, so 16.00 round trip.
Those fares are high - That 3 zone trip would cost $7.25 cash fare, or $6.75 if paid with a Clipper Card. But if you were a regular commuter, you'd buy the $179 monthly pass, which equates to around $4 each way. It's over 40 miles by car, you'd be hard pressed to pay all expenses for a car for 10 cents/mile.
The train takes around 45 minutes to make the trip. Driving with no traffic also takes around 45 minutes, but during commute hours, 60 - 90 minutes is more realistic. If you can live and work near the stations on both ends, the train makes much more sense than driving. The financial district in SF is just a 15 - 20 minute walk from Caltrain, so there are a lot of jobs within walking distance of the SF Caltrain station, and SOMA is becoming a bigger and bigger job center.
The problem with Caltrain isn't the expense -- it's quite reasonably priced with a monthly pass, the problem is the schedule... trains run infrequently, non-comute headways are 60 minutes, and many stations are served infrequently (or not at all) by express trains so even during commute hours, some stations have 60 minute headways, so staying at work a few extra minutes could mean getting home 90 minutes late. Plus, infrequent trains mean commute hour trains are often standing room only... and their train cars are not built for standing - there are few handholds and narrow isles can make it hard for passengers to get on/off trains.
But you're absolutely right that the Bay Area suffers from too many competing transit systems, with disparate and often confusing fare structures, they finally have a single regional payment card (Clipper Card), but the even that is clunky and works differently on different systems. BART gets the lions share of funding (both through a dedicated sales tax and grants for capitol projects), but is very expensive for users, not very reliable, and is running at capacity with very little that can be done to improve capacity without spending billions of dollars. Yet they keep expanding the system.
Re: (Score:3)
Book fair on the bullet train, which is 45-50 minutes is a dollar higher rate one way. The 3 zone trip you are referring to is the correct price (almost), but since you hit every stop it's a much longer commute (closer to drive time with traffic). Rates went up not too long ago, which you may not have known.
The bigger problem with mass transit is the lack of convenience. If I am at the train station at 7:01 and miss the bullet train, I have to wait an hour for another train. During prime time trains are
Re: (Score:3)
and lets take San Francisco Bay as our example (since I live here and have first hand knowledge and experience). VTA handles "some" of the South Bay, but limited to North San Jose and Mountain View.
VTA Buses go from Palo Alto to Fremont to South SJ to Gilroy. The light rail, from Mt. View down to Los Gatos and east San Jose to the Alameden valley area of SJ....in fact...just...here's the map: http://www.vta.org/getting-aro... [vta.org] (VTA focuses on SJ because it--SJ--has grown like a cancer or ambeoba, absorbing smaller communites, until it's most of the urban South Bay).
Caltrain handles a single strip running North to south from North San Jose to South (not the city) San Francisco.
Wrong. It goes from from SF (right next to AT&T Park) down to downtown
Re: (Score:2)
There is actually a serious problem here because the gas tax--by far one of the largest of these--is supposed to be a usage fee, and MPG is increasing. Raising the gas tax isn't a great solution, because people with low MPG are often those who can afford it least, and because raising taxes are always a political firestorm (imagine how much industry would push back too). Electric cars are a whole new issue entirely--don't know how widespread they'll be long term though.
No, transportation infrastructure needs to be fed from somewhere else. One of the current solutions is to stick a GPS tracker in every car, which is admirable on the basis of fair payment for public road usage, but utterly catastrophic in every other way. I think we just need to pay for transport infrastructure from a general fund instead.
No need for a GPS tracker, just track odometer readings, verified during annual inspections.
The problem with funding road infrastructure from the general fund is that if users don't pay more when they use the roads more, they have no incentive to reduce their use by living closer to work or taking transit. Roads aren't free to build or maintain, and they should not be free to use.
or use existing gas tax for roads, not interest pa (Score:2)
In many states, the overwhelming majority of the money collected from gas taxes goes to pay interest on debt. Very little of it it used for road construction and maintenance. If we stopped borrowing to build bridges to nowhere, we'd have plenty of money for maintenance and new roads as needed.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/st... [wsj.com]
Re: (Score:2)
>Raising the gas tax isn't a great solution, because people with low MPG are often those who can afford it least
Used vehicles 30mpg are plentiful:
http://www.autotrader.com/cars... [autotrader.com]
If you can't afford your low mpg vehicle, that's a message that you need to change.
I'd much rather live in a country that taxes its gasoline heavily than one that puts GPS trackers in all my vehicles and makes me pay per mile driven.
Re: (Score:2)
Or a tax on vehicle value each year. Something like...
(Blue Book Value - deductions) x Rate
Deductions would include, but not be limited to, a senior citizen deduction, low-income deduction, etc. I'm thinking something modest like $5k or something for low-income individuals. $7.5k for seniors. And only if the car has been driven at least 500 miles in a given year. But, this would have been done in conjunction with the local DMV.
California already does this -- they charge a Vehicle License Fee [ca.gov] that is 1.15% of the market value of the car.
In other words (Score:3, Informative)
They want more funding. As do most governmental departments that release these gloom and doom scenarios.
Re:In other words (Score:4, Informative)
It's pretty legit in this case. Not everybody who asks for funding is _only_ trying to enrich themselves. Hell, have you seen the state of our bridges lately? If I was in charge of them, I'd either want more funding, or to quit before I get blamed for them falling down.
Gimme FUD! (Score:2, Troll)
Re: (Score:2)
So I can grow by getting more of the tax pie. The bigger the budget, the bigger the boost.
Re:Gimme FUD! (Score:5, Insightful)
it's not FUD
American infrastructure is deteriorating: that's not controversial nor inaccurate
the FUD would be in denying that fact. like the kind of FUD some uninformed/ irresponsible people and congresscritters use to deny the funding we need to keep our highways, tracks, and airstrips from crumbling
Re:Gimme FUD! (Score:5, Informative)
thanks for your pointless sophistry
the simple fact is we do not fund american infrastructure enough, and this hurts our economy in relation to places that do
it's not complicated nor difficult to understand
here, educate yourself:
http://www.economist.com/news/... [economist.com]
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/fa... [cbsnews.com]
http://www.infrastructurerepor... [infrastruc...rtcard.org]
after you have some actual understanding of a topic, only then should you speak on the topic
Re: (Score:3)
we can very easily maintain our infrastructure, but we choose not to
it means we're stupider than our fathers and grandfathers, and don't deserve what they built for us
well, some of us
Or do something to eliminate journeys? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Or do something to eliminate journeys? (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, it does include that as part of the solution. Though at 300 pages it's still not all that in-depth.
"Congestion can also be managed through land use policies that help to reduce commuting distance.
Mixed-use developments, where homes are near jobs, mean that commutes are shorter, and often
make it possible for people to walk or bike to work. In general, development patterns that promote
denser land use rather than sprawl help to reduce total commuter travel demand.
Employers can be an important partner in managing congestion through travel demand, if they are
able to facilitate flex-time schedules and teleworking. This reduces the need for commuters to be
traveling during peak times. Employers may also provide benefits and amenities that encourage
employees to use public transit, or to bike or walk to work."
Re: (Score:3)
I absolutely agree that better city and development planning will be essential to deal with this problem. The trend of building huge residential-only developments where residents have to drive everywhere to do *anything* (work, shop, etc.) has surely created massive amounts of traffic.
However, I suspect that even if we are successful in promoting mixed-use developments so people can, in theory, live near their jobs, it will have much less impact on traffic than we would hope. For much of the 20th centur
Re:Or do something to eliminate journeys? (Score:4, Interesting)
In the longer term though, when it becomes normal to live right next to your workplace for everyone, you would be much more tied to not losing your job. Imagine how much commuting would suck!
Re: (Score:2)
they assume that journeys are always necessary, and increasingly so.
Since shipment by truck is a huge industry and will remain so pretty much forever, that's a pretty good assumption.
Re: (Score:2)
"I've been working on the railroad
all the live long day.
I've been working on the railroad,
since they took my truck away."
I want more of those slopeheads on the freeway singing that song.
Re: (Score:2)
+1000
And consider alternatives to high-rises. Higher density structures invariably lead to traffic jams as you have more and more people leaving and returning to the same location at the same time of day.
Re: (Score:2)
My next door neighbor can run a small business and have chickens on his property because his is zoned single family farm lot. Mine can have dual family housing, aka townhouses or split, but sadly no businesses or chickens because it is zoned multi-family.
Oh and the smallest lot any house can be on is 1/2 acre, so no tiny housing or trailer p
Re: (Score:2)
No, wait, you misunderstand, we're the Department of Transportation. If people use less transportation, our expertise isn't needed, and our jobs are on the line!
Simple (Score:3, Interesting)
1) Raise the Gas Tax $.25 / gal. On a 20 gal fill-up that's $5.
2) Get rid of the DOT as it exists now. It should be a coordinating organization and encourage investment, not making investments.
3) Return 90% of Gax Taxes collected to the States where they were collected for transportation infrastructure projects, ending the bait and switch tactics used to re-allocate funds based on unfunded mandates. If California wants to invest billions in High Speed Rail, here's the money. This would also stop using fuel taxes for funding other federal projects.
4) Privatize Amtrak, get rid of interstate rail services where it's not profitable.
5) Re-establish the rules whereby railroads were required to have passenger service. This was part of the deal in return for vast land grants and rights of way that all the major railroads benefit from today.
6) Stop federal subsidies for airports, this includes smaller run airports.
Re:Simple (Score:4, Insightful)
Simple solutions to complex problems are always simple, but never solutions.
Re:Simple (Score:5, Funny)
Hey, let's spot the libertarian with idealogical and impractical ideas!
Re: (Score:2)
Sure the actual Fed fuel tax is only $.18 a gallon, but you are forgetting State fuel tax along with the sales tax, corporate taxes at the local, state and federal level on the gas station, distributer, refiner, tankers, and the people that pull it out of the ground, along with royalties and other fees demanded by the Federal overlords.
They have plenty of money for infrastructure they are just pissing it away on other things.
Re: (Score:2)
Change #1 to "$0.25 / gallon, plus another quarter every decade", and apply an equivalent tax to other fossil fuels, and I'm right behind you. For #1-#3, at least: #4-#6 seem like distracting side issues.
Re:Simple (Score:4, Funny)
Meanwhile, the main privatised commuter line between Brighton and London, a journey of only 40-odd miles, failed to arrive on time ONCE in an ENTIRE YEAR. You can thank Southern Rail for that. Douchebags.
It was like christmas came late for the Metro. That was basically the best possible headline for them. I like how they had "NEVER" in capitals, bold and red.
We won't Need DOT in 2045. (Score:5, Funny)
Hopefully people will stop traveling so much so we won't need as much transportation infrastructure in 30 years. It has already dramatically decreased because of teleconferencing. Conventions have taken a huge hit because of this.
Hopefully products will stop traveling so much so we won't need as much transportation infrastructure in 30 years. We already have rudimentary 3D printing. In 30 years I hope we can print everything we need where its needed instead of wasting time, money, fuel, packaging and other resources moving stuff around. Then when you're done with that item you throw it in the de-constructor which recycles the parts. Need more raw materials? Shovel in a few scoops of dirt. Sure, occasionally you'll need to add some essential elements you might have but think of all those local landfills to be mined!
No, in 2045 we should not need much of DOT. The world will change.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
This is true. More than 98 percent of the wear and tear on bridges and roads is from giant trailers and large trucks used for freight, not from cars or SUVs or trucks of lower GVW.
The large rigs are moving to electric and biodiesel (source: PACCAR, which manufactures them, and is here).
comment on Calif's high speed rail (Score:2)
Airports underwater? Maybe 3025... (Score:3, Insightful)
The current rate of sea water rise is around 0.12 inches per year since 1992 according to the most alarming estimates found to date (and those were adjusted because previous measurements we showing only 0.04 inches per year, which of course was not nearly scary enough to it's back to the data "correction" engine!)
Let's say the politically revised figures are correct. That means in 30 years (2045 being only 30 years away now) sea level rise will have been 3.6 *inches*.
Which airport is that going to put "underwater"? Please explain.
You warming alarmists are worse than the anti-vaccers in terms of just chucking reality out the window, even when you get to make up your own rules!
Re: (Score:3)
Thats not the projected rate.
The IPCC based on atmospheric and ocean science gives its best guess as 13 inches over the next 30 years assuming climate change isn't gotten under control. Worst case estimate goes as high as 6 foot by 2100, although thats probably unlikely and based on catastrophic run-away.
By 2045 (Score:5, Funny)
Paper is The Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894 (Score:4, Insightful)
In 1894, it was realized by 1945 the streets of London would be under NINE FEET of horse manure, and no solution was in sight. There was the very first international urban planning convention four years later in NYC, that had to give up as unsolvable problem of how and where to transport and put all that horse shit!
That way we live like maggots now in the big cities, burrowing through equine feces packed a hundred feet deep....oh wait, something changed everything.
Crony capitalism much? (Score:2)
Because, What's good for Google is good for the country! [freep.com].
Trains too full for people to get on (Score:2)
Fixed! (Score:2)
There, I've fixed that. Because DOT has no idea what transportation here in Canada will be like over the next 30 years!
Who uses cars anymore? (Score:2, Interesting)
No, seriously, I don't know what it's like in the empty states but in the growing GDP powerhouses that are the tech cities, people are just not using cars at all.
They might rent a car once in a while, but most of them use transit, bike, walk, take Bolt, take the High Speed train (if it exists), and maybe fly to a place that's far away.
People are already adapting. You're confused because the deadenders aren't adapting.
What's actually going to happen... (Score:3)
What's actually going to happen is automated roads. It's inevitable. You enter the road and your autopilot takes over, running all traffic without stop and go, bumper to bumper, at the highest speed practical for the response characterics and safety margins of the vehicles. Like a train. No autopilot, no drive on road (you can take the back roads). This will increase throughput under load by a multiple.
Unsustainable (Score:2)
Land and resources are finite. We will get nowhere until we abandon the fantasy that everyone is entitled to a car and a house in the suburbs.
Europe and China have already taken steps to acknowledge this reality.
DOT is important, DOT insists. (Score:2, Troll)
You ever attend a meeting at work where the presenter's entire point is "I do an important job so you shouldn't fire me"? Yeah this is one of those.
Driving I-80 though Nebrasa is like LA traffic now (Score:3)
Do they even math? (Score:4, Interesting)
Obviously, I haven't read a 300 page PDF before posting.
But self driving cars don't fundamentally change the traffic problem. And what is needed _today_ in dense urban areas is a fundamental change.
One of the easiest ways to think about this is the impact that cars _necessarily_ have on density. Christopher Alexander explained this simply by thinking about how many square meters of surface different transportation systems take up per person.
Walking is relatively efficient - a person walking only needs perhaps 1 square meter to walk as fast as they like; if they are careful and are going slower, multiple walkers need even less space.
Now consider the personal car. Standing completely still, an automobile needs several meters of ground space. If it is moving in a stream of other vehicles, there must be buffers in front and behind it. It is not unreasonble to think of the ground footprint needed for a moving car as 3 meters of width and 4 meters of length, plus multiples of 4 meters ahead and behind, as speed increases.
So a car - even standing still - takes an order of magnitude more surface space than a human who is walking.
This is the fundamental problem with the individual vehicle. For each person you add, you need 10x that many meters of available surface area to the sub-segments of your road network that that person's automobile will be using.
I very much love the automobile and the driving experience. I do my own vehicle maintenance and i have a dedicated trackday car for when I can get away for a weekend of lapping. I live on a farmstead and there are 6 road legal vehicles parked on my property.
However, cars completely destroy urban density, and it doesn't matter how clean you make them, how self-driving you make them, and, how much safety buffer space you strip away. They simply use space too inefficiently for there to be any meaningful density.
Dense urban areas should have pervasive rail coverage, and that rail coverage should largely be in ugly spaces - like underground, or along the perimeter of industrial districts. On average, someone should be able to get to a subway station after a couple blocks of walking.
In urban areas, the roads as we have them today should largely be repurposed for use by busses for trunk routes that are somehow not well served by rail, and for point to point trips in cabs/ubers/lyfts. Private, single vehicle use of the roadways should be exceptionally expensive, and thus, a rarity undertaken only when financially justifiable by the end user. Electric mini-trucks (as seen in Asia) should be responsible for delivery of larger-than-human cargoes, both personal and business related.
At some point, intermodal containers that are human-scale make sense for moving goods within cities, e.g. imagine a standardized container that was about 1 meter cube; this could be loaded into a special cargo car on most current subway lines, and loading/unloading the containers from that car could be done rapidly and automatically... a half meter intermodal cube could be reasonably carried by a person, through door ways, up stairs, etc, and 8 of them could stack next to or on top of the 1 meter cube...
Many new yorkers already live without cars and take deliveries; bringing efficiencies of scale and uniformity to the delivery system would be a good idea. Democratizing it so that, for instance, at the airport you put your luggage into intermodal cubes (or, depending on where you travelled from, your luggage actually IS intermodal cubes...) and ship them off to your neighborhood, and this is largely done automatically, means that you are not carrying heavy things across a 45 minute subway ride, and you do not feel the need to take a cab ride, and yet you and your things still get to the destination at the same time..
Once cabs and cars are not gridlocking every inch of pavement, some roads should get turned into pedestrian areas; outdoor marketplaces, greenspaces, etc.
For anyone that hasn't had the pleasure of doing so, I really recommend spending some tourist time in the city of Munich. They have an exceptional rail system. You may not have any idea how nice urban life can be.
Bicycles (Score:4, Insightful)
Infrastructure for Bikes costs a lot less to construct than infrastructure for cars.
Instead of designing infrastructure that assumes cars — design for bicycles — then there is no more oil crisis, people live longer and happier.
I commuted in a car every day for over 7 years — and going 113km x 2 = 226km day — and three hours a day wasted sitting stuck in traffic.
Sold the car, bought a bike and moved in to town — ten years later — still one of the best decisions of ever made.
A 10 year cyclist in from Toronto.
Bicycles are the key to a sustainable future.
Re:Bicycles (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, as a cyclist myself I don't see bikes as a the solution. Part of the solution, sure. With substantial investment, I can certainly see bikes meeting the needs of a lot more people than most people think, but that's still a long way from meeting most peoples' needs, much less everyone's.
What I suspect is that we'll need many different modes of transport working together. It's a matter of diminishing marginal returns. At some point adding a dollar to a different mode of transport gets you a bigger bang for the buck than spending it on more auto infrastructure. The problem is that since most people drive still, they don't see the benefits of spending money on something they aren't going to use. For example in my city public transit carries almost 1.3 million commuters every work day, at a cost to the state and local municipalities of $900 milllion. That's a lot of money spent per rider per year, but it's still cheaper than trying to squeeze 13% more auto traffic onto roads that have horrific traffic already.
Re:Bicycles (Score:4, Interesting)
I moved out of the insanity completely 15 years ago.
I live in a small town. Canada is empty. I could walk five minutes to work, but I'm lazy, so I don't. There's no traffic here, I have 100mbps symmetric fiber internet, and my house (that I own) cost me 1/10th of similar housing in the GTA. I'm a 8 minute no traffic drive to an airport that can have me in YYZ in 3 hours gate to gate direct.
This magic internet thing is awesome!
North America is empty; the insanity that is large cities and million dollar tiny houres is just that.
People should wake up and realize _that_. ..best decision I ever made.
Perhaps not only bad? (Score:4, Interesting)
Road- and railway transport may become less important in the future, I think, at least in two areas, I imagine:
1. Commuting - what the Americans call tele-commuting could become much more widespread; perhaps in a hybrid form, where people go to work in an office facility shared with several other companies, and within walking or cycling distance from their homes.
2. Micromanufacturing, like eg. 3D printing, may replace manufacturing in large factories. If this trend continues, it is possible that all or most raw materials could be sourced locally as well, so that the only things that would need to be transported are the specifications for production.
This only leaves travel (as in going on holidays), and we may find better and easier ways of doing that, which don't need roads or the burning of large amounts of fuel. Airships, anyone? Not the fastest mode of transport, but it could be a lot faster than it is, if we worked on it. I'm only speculating, of course, but I don't think it needs to be all bad.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, there might be *some* airports underwater... I can think of a couple airports that are pretty much at water level. Just flew out of VCE a few months ago, for instance, and it's right on the water. Wikipedia says it's about 2 meters, that's not super high off the ground. Of course if you want to cheat, there's always Amsterdam (Europe's 4th busiest, according wikipedia!)
LA-style traffic jams in Nebraska's hard to swallow, though. What crowd of people would be crazy enough to be living in Nebraska to ca
Re:this is why people balk at climate change (Score:4, Funny)
"The report presents a vision of 2045 with LA-style traffic jams in Nebraska... Among possible solutions outlined are self-driving cars..."
what, so you can sleep through the traffic jams?
Re:this is why people balk at climate change (Score:4, Interesting)
LA-style traffic jams in Nebraska's hard to swallow, though. What crowd of people would be crazy enough to be living in Nebraska to cause them?
Maybe the crowds that leave the places with the underwater airports?
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, owners those airports are going to do nothing in the next 7 decades but sit on beach chairs pointing at the water going "OMG, it's coming, it's coming!"
Re: (Score:2)
Not even 200 years threatens airports (Score:2)
Current worst-case rate of sea level rise is 0.12 inches/year (according to NOAA), so for 200 years that's 24 inches (two feet, not quite 2/3 of a meter).
Even airports at sea level are built at two meters are more above sea level, it just means a little more barricading around them to protect against abnormally high tides or surges.
Perhaps around 500 years from now, we might have to actually re-work some airports to raise them a few feet. As you say, it may be tough to have "only" 500 years to combat the i
Re: (Score:3)
See pg.116-125 of the report, it's not as freakishly alarmist as the summary indicates (and the pages are big font and full of pictures). It points out that Louis Armstrong airport in New Orleans is almost two feet below sea level, focuses on the increasing frequency of storms and their hazards to low-lying transportation hubs (costs of storms increasing over time and higher for major ports in high risk areas), and has graphs of historic sea levels with sources cited...there's a few hundred miles of track
Doom (Score:2)
It points out that Louis Armstrong airport in New Orleans is almost two feet below sea level
Oh no! We've already lost one!
What's that? It's been under sea level since construction?
focuses on the increasing frequency of storms
Why would it focus on the opposite of what is occurring [forbes.com]? If you believe we are in fact warming over the last decade or so then you must also believe warming causes a reduction in the severity of storms.
How bad is Forbes reporting? (Score:3)
Similarly, Forbes relies on the Heartland [slashdot.org] Institute's [slashdot.org] James Taylor (also not a scientist) to report on climate change. How bad is the Forbes reporting? [theguardian.com] Well, in an August 2012 interview, I correctly stated that in a warming world, hurricane intensity can increase and these increases are being observed. Also, rainfall, storm surge, and storm size can be affected.
In response, Mr. Taylor attacked me and discussed the frequency of landfalling U.S. hurricanes, as if the two were the same. Obviously, he either mi
Re: (Score:2)
See pg.116-125 of the report, it's not as freakishly alarmist as the summary indicates (and the pages are big font and full of pictures). It points out that Louis Armstrong airport in New Orleans is almost two feet below sea level.
So what you're saying is that the airport is the higher than the city around it... Good! We can worry about the airport flooding a few decades after the city is hopelessly lost...
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
30 years and airports will be underwater? I'm willing to believe man has an effect on the climate, but alarmist crap like this doesn't help your cause. Did John Kerry start working for the dot?
RFA. The report clearly is talking about flooding due to more severe weather. Which is a claimed product of global warming. With the case in point being both JDK and Newark Liberty having closed as a result of - wait for it - flooding during Sandy.
Re: (Score:2)
Show me an airport that doesn't close during hurricanes then you can talk.
Re: (Score:2)
Show me an airport that doesn't close during hurricanes then you can talk.
Not just closed "during" the hurricane. >20K flights were cancelled over 6 days. Not just because of the hurricane proper but because of major damage from severe storm sruge flooding. I can show you lots of airports that don't get storm surge flooding.
The DOT's assertion is that these events will become more likely. I don't know the validity of the assertion, but that's the assertion.
Can we talk now?
http://i.huffpost.com/gen/8395... [huffpost.com]
Re: (Score:2)
With the case in point being both JDK and Newark Liberty having closed as a result of - wait for it - flooding during Sandy.
Closing due to a storm is not related to climate. Airports that are a thousand feet above sea level sometimes flood during storms. It helps to be built in a flood plain, but airplanes often are, because the land is cheap, and nobody wants an airport in their back yard, even if the airport was there first.
Re: (Score:2)
30 years and airports will be underwater? I'm willing to believe man has an effect on the climate, but alarmist crap like this doesn't help your cause. Did John Kerry start working for the dot?
I can see some airports being under water in 30 years if time suddenly fast-forwarded. Take SFO for example: the runway is just above sea level. YVR is another coastal airport in the same situation. If we fast-forwarded 30 years, the runways could end up under water during extreme high tides -- ASSUMING NO DIKES OR BACKFILLING IS DONE IN THE MEANTIME.
Considering the fact that most airports lay new tarmac in that amount of time, all they'd have to do is make it a bit thicker next time and this is no longer an issue.
So yeah; it's reasonable until you factor in the fact that other things change over time too.
SFO is at 4 meters [airnav.com]; YVR is at 4.3 meters [airnav.com]. Maximum tides at both locations are about 2.1 meters. Meaning in the next 30 years we'd need to see about 2 meters of sea-level rise. That would be about 6.6 meters per century. Given we're looking at about 3.3mm per year [wikipedia.org], it would take about 2000 years to put those airports below high tide levels. I think the 30 year estimate isn't quite there...
... because it's batshit crazy. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
We are going to overrun this planets capacity to sustain us. What then?
War. Sad but true. And it won't be the first time.
Re: (Score:2)
The United States does not have a particular population problem. We could fit everybody in Texas and give them a half acre of land for each individual, man, woman, boy and girl.
Most people who are capable of supporting children have relatively few children, most of them have 0.5 to 1 children per person. If we could get those who are too young or who don't have the means to support children to stop having children, we w