The science of road ecology, or how roadways affect plants and animal life

https://undark.org/2023/10/13/book-review-crossings/

by akolbe • 3 years ago

82 40 3 years ago

xyzelement5• 3 years ago

I appreciate novel and thought provoking critiques like this, and also can keep in mind that roads are amazing and make the world better in a million ways.

There’s a big difference between internalizing something like this as a non obvious cost of something positive - and positive on the net despite the cost - vs reading this and deciding that roads should be removed or something like that.

HPsquared• 3 years ago

Balanced discussions don't get at much engagement.

lelanthran• 3 years ago

Balanced discussions don't get at much engagement.

Agreed.

Controversy sells, which is a shorter and more accurate way of saying "If it bleeds, it leads"

I've been looking at how much a quality PR firm costs (nothing less than $10k/m, all the way up to $100k/m for more exposure).

I've half a mind to cultivate an incredibly controversial position before launching my startup's product.

The media coverage of "lelanthran, founder and CEO or $COMPANY, producing $PRODUCT, had this to say about the round-earth conspiracy!" is bound to be worth a few $100k at least in publicity, at least.

cowsandmilk• 3 years ago

As the article states, the book gives positive examples where roads are providing critical habitat to some species. Your comment assumes an imbalance to the book which may not be there.

xyzelement5• 3 years ago

I think my point is that evaluating roads primarily on their impact on species - even the positive impacts you mention - isn’t the main thing we should be doing

dmwilcox• 3 years ago

Love it. Except the whole driverless cars fantasy dream though which I would doubt they would help in any fashion.

Unfortunately if we care about our ecosystems, communities divided by roads, and the constant noise and air pollution I think we only have harder solutions to negotiate: Speed limits, suburbs, and supporting useful public transit and bicycle infrastructure (to reduce road speed and the need to build road capacity linearly with rising incomes as the world develops)

akolbe• 3 years ago

One way driverless cars might help is that they reduce the amount of land that has to be given over to carparks, especially in the US.

Where towns in Europe would build a multi-story carpark to serve a shopping mall, municipalities in North America may simply cover acres upon acres of land around a mall with asphalt (take the Edmonton Mall in Alberta, Canada, or the Fairlane Town Center in Dearborn, MI), in the process creating an almost lifeless zone.

You wouldn't need that much space for parked cars if everyone arrived in a driverless Uber.

(Apparently, US parking lots cover an area of around 25,000 square miles, about twice the size of Switzerland:)

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/sep/27/cities-elimin...

AlecSchueler4• 3 years ago

Where towns in Europe would build a multi-story carpark to serve a shopping mall, municipalities in North America may simply cover acres upon acres of land

Couldn't you solve this issue without self driving cars by just building multi-story carparks like Europe?

Or using the same space to build shopping streets with multiple stores and some onstreet parking? That way it's a bit more social and scenic as well.

wpm• 3 years ago

The US could also generally stop mandating such a ridiculous amount of parking. Parking minimums are scarcely different than soothsaying, “oh great book of zoning rules, tell us how much parking this bowling alley needs”. And the book is just made up, based on everyone else’s book which was ultimately based on a guess from 60 years ago.

There is a small development on previously industrial land near me with a Best Buy and a Kohls, facing each other with some parking in the middle. Half surface lot, half there story parking garage. On a busy day, maybe 60% of the surface lot will be full. The garage is useless, but required for X amount of retail square footage. A monumental waste of money and resources.

We don’t need self driving cars, we need to pull our heads out of our asses and change the absurd, baseless rules we build our environment around.

kiba2• 3 years ago

One way driverless cars might help is that they reduce the amount of land that has to be given over to carparks, especially in the US.

Now, you have a different problem: more cars on the roads. And everyone tend to do the same thing at the same time.

Multistory parking and excessive parking lots are the really largely the result of poor urban planning, not technology.

r2b2• 3 years ago

Autonomous electric cars make tunnels easier, which have smaller negative impact on the environment.

ChatGTP2• 3 years ago

“Goldfarb writes, and our collective future will bring many more cars and the need for even more roads.“

Is this true ? I can already see things like working from home, e bikes and drone delivery significantly reducing the need for roads.

In Japan, for example, roads are abandoned due to lack of use. A trend that seems to be happening in other countries such as China and Korea.

Aside from this, I love this article and I feel it’s really important to consider his arguments.

puchatek• 3 years ago

Depends on the country and the ruling powers. In Germany the current minister of transportation is in favor of building more roads.

manxman3• 3 years ago

More unrestricted autobahns I hope! ;)

manxman3• 3 years ago

In Japan, for example, roads are abandoned due to lack of use. A trend that seems to be happening in other countries such as China and Korea.

From what I saw on my recent travels in Japan, I'd suggest it was more a case of government vanity projects, local government corruption/desire to spend budgets and other mismanagement that resulted in over-engineered roads being put in places where there was clearly a very low population density.

The same was true of lovely new concrete/granite boardwalks and cycle paths on some of the remote islands in Okinawa Prefecture that were overgrown with vegetation and were impenetrable by bicycle (and almost impassible on foot).

Similarly new roads are being built on some of those islands given that there is noticeable traffic congestion.

ChatGTP2• 3 years ago

I'm literally talking about when people have been told to move away from villages as the roads will no longer be maintained year round. This includes snow clearing in winter.

There just isn't the population to support it all.

RetroTechie• 3 years ago

Is this true ? I can already see things like working from home, e bikes and drone delivery significantly reducing the need for roads.

It's not hard to imagine car ownership rising in developing nations. Usually leading to road networks being improved & extended.

And once a road is laid, chances are it'll stay for a looong time.

JackMorgan• 3 years ago

Here in the USA we're facing an infrastructure crisis. A lot of the roads, sewers, and electric were overbuilt. The expected maintenance is often not included in municipal budgets. Almost all cities and towns use cash basis accounting instead of accrual accounting, which means they all are facing unanticipated maintenance costs.

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason...

PopAlongKid• 3 years ago

That article is not very applicable to "here in the USA". Isn't Lafayette, LA the largest muncipality in its vicinity?

I live in a 60,000 population suburb in a top ten metro area, all the adjacent towns are similar poplulation, demography, and economic status. In other words more than half a million population in my county.

In my neighborhood alone, which was developed 70 years ago, the roads are maintained, our sewers are replaced, our electric still works (and how to you "overbuild" electric in the first place?)

Yes, we have periodic tax increases. Strongtown argument that cities are unsustainable because the citizens don't want to pay for maintenance aren't very convincing.

AnimalMuppet• 3 years ago

One thing I saw that really surprised me: In the desert, there are more flowers immediately beside the road. Water is the critical factor for plant life there. When it rains, the water that falls on the road flows off to the edge, so the plants there have more water.

WillAdams• 3 years ago

Depressing article noting how prevailing roads are in the U.S.:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42104894

porompompero• 3 years ago

We will never look enought ar what asphalt did to human health, too.

The science of road ecology, or how roadways affect plants and animal life

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