Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Are roads the biggest driver of ecological destruction?

ryanblakeley.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 117 posts

Re: Are roads the biggest driver of ecological destruction?

#61

Post by defrost »

bluGill wrote: post #53
defrost wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes | No. The classic "road trueism" is If you build them, they will fill . Four lane highways with occassional gridlock when expanded become six lane highways with occassional gridlock. The connection corollary that follows is roads | train lines built to connect A and B will often be followed by small townsites along the way and the spread of "off the grid" living at blocks T junctioning dirt road access from the n…

There are plenty of rural roads and highways that disprove your point. We fill roads in cities because the population wants/needs to travel. If we would instead build trains those would fill instead. Trains are a lot more cost effective in cities, but no city (not even transit cities like Paris) builds enough of them to make trains a better alternative than cars. Note that by the time anyone realizes roads are full a…

It's not my point, it's a long standing observed principal of urban planning referred to as induced demand or induced traffic.

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

https://www.wired.com/2014/06/wuwt-traffic-induced-demand/

My point was that road access introduced through previously road vehicle inaccessable regions often (not always) leads to more human activity and dwelling in the vicinity of that road.

It's not always the case that people appearing from ships, airdrops, or walking in results in roads following them.

When my own family first settled in Australia it took 80+ years on the European side for roads to reach them (they used flat bottomed boats on tidal flats to transit goods and livestock), and some 70K years or so on the non European side.

Re: Are roads the biggest driver of ecological destruction?

#62

Post by aaron695 »

woodruffw wrote: post #7

On top of roadkill itself, there's a reasonable (IMO) argument to be made that car-centric development is a big source of our looming water problems: the US has drained or redeveloped astounding amounts of natural swamp, marsh, and wetlands to make space for car-dependent living patterns. That means less water percolating into already over-stressed aquifers. It's a trite thing to say, but our grandchildren are going…

[dead]

Re: Are roads the biggest driver of ecological destruction?

#63

Post by Terr_ »

tony_cannistra wrote: post #14
schiffern wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In fact, a whole field (stormwater engineering) exists to mitigate this. I haven't checked in lately. How are they doing getting over the age-old "Drain! Drain! Drain!! Faster! Faster! Faster!" mantra? This ethic of course only contributes to the problems of flash flooding, lack of buffer, lack of aquifer recharge, and (ultimately) alternating drought/flood cycles.

I don't really know. I live in Washington, though, and we sure have a lot of man-made storage ponds.

> I live in Washington, though, and we sure have a lot of man-made storage ponds.

I can think of some spots where four or five adjacent suburban developments will all have their own pond/catchment tucked away, although their appearance and attractiveness varies.

Re: Are roads the biggest driver of ecological destruction?

#64

Post by geraldwhen »

Tade0 wrote: post #34
TulliusCicero wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not so much cars themselves as it is car-centric development that causes many problems. In the US at least, this is pretty clear: when you design new areas and cities around cars as the primary or even only way to get around, this hurts the environment a lot more than denser, multi-modal style of developments. It results in more total space needed per person, and it results in higher energy expenditures. If you…

> It's not so much cars themselves as it is car-centric development that causes many problems. I wouldn't call it car centric, more like everyone-gets-to-have-a-lawn-and-2000-sq-ft-home centric. Herein lies the crux of the problem, not in the mode of transportation. Americans are used to such huge spaces per inhabitant that driving appears to be the only option. We have districts with detached houses where I live and…

Apartments are horrible. If you get a crying baby neighbor, or a dog, or neighbors who blast music at 3am, there’s nothing you can do about it.

Nothing. The police will not help you, as noise ordinance is not enforced. Your apartment manager won’t do anything because none of them do anything.

Other fun apartment specific happenings: constant clouds of marijuana smoke, curry spice smell seeping through the walls and sticking to everything, and constant thuds from anyone walking above you.

Without rigorous enforcement of rules, apartments suck. And there is no enforcement.

Re: Are roads the biggest driver of ecological destruction?

#65

Post by EnigmaFlare »

woodruffw wrote: post #7

On top of roadkill itself, there's a reasonable (IMO) argument to be made that car-centric development is a big source of our looming water problems: the US has drained or redeveloped astounding amounts of natural swamp, marsh, and wetlands to make space for car-dependent living patterns. That means less water percolating into already over-stressed aquifers. It's a trite thing to say, but our grandchildren are going…

There's a trade-off between preserving the environment and having human development. We already remember our grandparents for the contributions they made to human development. Our lives are vastly better now because of it. Future generations will also benefit from our contributions, including the things we did using roads. They might have less aquifer water or whatever, but that's not really essential. We can always get water from other places if we pay more, and we can afford to pay more because of all the technology we're gaining.

Re: Are roads the biggest driver of ecological destruction?

#66

Post by pixl97 »

schiffern wrote: post #13
tony_cannistra wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is most definitely the case. It has also caused enormous problems for places where flooding was already a threat, by removing the natural buffering capabilities that places like wetlands have. In fact, a whole field (stormwater engineering) exists to mitigate this.

> In fact, a whole field (stormwater engineering) exists to mitigate this. I haven't checked in lately. How are they doing getting over the age-old "Drain! Drain! Drain!! Faster! Faster! Faster!" mantra? This ethic of course only contributes to the problems of flash flooding, lack of buffer, lack of aquifer recharge, and (ultimately) alternating drought/flood cycles.

So the answer to this is HOA's....

Um, what? you say.

So here in the hill country of Texas housing developments/cities need to build so many feet of storage retention ponds per house built and impermeable roadway laid. Depending on the size of the development these are decently sizes structures and an off the cuff guess on costs is between 500k and a few million (+lost land to build more houses on) so it's a sizeable expense of developing. Cities themselves don't want to pay for and maintain these structures so they instead farm it off to a MUD/PUD.

https://services.austintexas.gov/edims/document.cfm?id=22701...

The MUD wraps up the expense of the roads, things like this water settlement area, and pools and puts the expenses on an HOA.

Re: Are roads the biggest driver of ecological destruction?

#67

Post by Terr_ »

explaininjs wrote: post #9
woodruffw wrote: post #7

On top of roadkill itself, there's a reasonable (IMO) argument to be made that car-centric development is a big source of our looming water problems: the US has drained or redeveloped astounding amounts of natural swamp, marsh, and wetlands to make space for car-dependent living patterns. That means less water percolating into already over-stressed aquifers. It's a trite thing to say, but our grandchildren are going…

> much like we remember our grandparents for leaded gasoline and DDT What? I associate DDT and leaded gasoline with my grandparents not-at-all. Is anyone here really holding their grandparents feet to the fire over these?

I think it's supposed to be read as "the generation that contains readers' grandparents" without literally being the specific ancestors in a personal context.

Re: Are roads the biggest driver of ecological destruction?

#68

Post by [deleted] »

EnigmaFlare wrote: post #65
woodruffw wrote: post #7

On top of roadkill itself, there's a reasonable (IMO) argument to be made that car-centric development is a big source of our looming water problems: the US has drained or redeveloped astounding amounts of natural swamp, marsh, and wetlands to make space for car-dependent living patterns. That means less water percolating into already over-stressed aquifers. It's a trite thing to say, but our grandchildren are going…

There's a trade-off between preserving the environment and having human development. We already remember our grandparents for the contributions they made to human development. Our lives are vastly better now because of it. Future generations will also benefit from our contributions, including the things we did using roads. They might have less aquifer water or whatever, but that's not really essential. We can always…

[deleted]

Re: Are roads the biggest driver of ecological destruction?

#69

Post by [deleted] »

schiffern wrote: post #13
tony_cannistra wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is most definitely the case. It has also caused enormous problems for places where flooding was already a threat, by removing the natural buffering capabilities that places like wetlands have. In fact, a whole field (stormwater engineering) exists to mitigate this.

> In fact, a whole field (stormwater engineering) exists to mitigate this. I haven't checked in lately. How are they doing getting over the age-old "Drain! Drain! Drain!! Faster! Faster! Faster!" mantra? This ethic of course only contributes to the problems of flash flooding, lack of buffer, lack of aquifer recharge, and (ultimately) alternating drought/flood cycles.

[deleted]

Re: Are roads the biggest driver of ecological destruction?

#70

Post by woodruffw »

EnigmaFlare wrote: post #65
woodruffw wrote: post #7

On top of roadkill itself, there's a reasonable (IMO) argument to be made that car-centric development is a big source of our looming water problems: the US has drained or redeveloped astounding amounts of natural swamp, marsh, and wetlands to make space for car-dependent living patterns. That means less water percolating into already over-stressed aquifers. It's a trite thing to say, but our grandchildren are going…

There's a trade-off between preserving the environment and having human development. We already remember our grandparents for the contributions they made to human development. Our lives are vastly better now because of it. Future generations will also benefit from our contributions, including the things we did using roads. They might have less aquifer water or whatever, but that's not really essential. We can always…

> They might have less aquifer water or whatever, but that's not really essential.

I think most of the Great Plains disagrees[1].

I'm pro-technology and pro-development. But I don't think we should kid ourselves about what we have, and about the limits of our ability to geo-engineer ourselves into global homeostasis, versus out of it.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer

Post reply on HN