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Are roads the biggest driver of ecological destruction?

ryanblakeley.net

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Re: Are roads the biggest driver of ecological destruction?

#81

Post by woah »

ants_everywhere wrote: post #47
woah wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's simply not possible for many families to live in the cramped environments of a city. How am I going to pick up 12 gallons of milk on my weekly grocery shopping trip without a pickup truck? That's about 125lb of milk. Not going to be able to get that onto a fixie in the city. How am I going to park the truck without a garage? The garage needs 3 spaces, one for the truck, one for the car, and one for my garage ref…

I think this may be a joke? https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/12-gallons-milk-mem... But anyway, we go through a lot of milk (significantly less than 12 gallons) and have it delivered. Same thing applies to anything large that I'd rather not rent a truck for.

yes

Re: Are roads the biggest driver of ecological destruction?

#82

Post by bamboozled »

beebeepka wrote: post #26

I have a couple of stories 1. Last Easter my wife and I were travelling across the country. We drive reasonably slow, mostly about 100km/h. I guess it was a special time of the year because we must've killed at least several thousand insects in the first two hours alone. It was non stop. One car out of thousands on the road. Made us feel pretty bad. 2. Second story is about four years old. Travelling on a brand new h…

The killing of insects thing is wild, one car seems to be able to create untold amounts of carnage to insect populations which would have some other function within the environment.

Where I live, there are frogs everywhere at certain times of the year after rain, people literally drive over hundreds of baby frogs per hour. I avoid driving after rain now.

But yeah, nice to hear from someone who has similar feelings about driving. I hate it for the damage it does. Tyre dust is another one.

I was recently doing a renovation and would only drive to the store unless absolutely necessary. I'd batch my shopping jobs. For me it's about emissions, I have a real problem with burning fossil fuels.

Re: Are roads the biggest driver of ecological destruction?

#83

Post by VintageCool »

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 love to bike around the city and listen to the frogs in the Stormwater Ponds.

Re: Are roads the biggest driver of ecological destruction?

#84

Post by dangus »

sandworm101 wrote: post #71
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…

Whether it is car, bus, train, Uber or hovercar, we will still need roads. Until personal jetpacks and flying school busses are a thing, the road issue is totally divorced from the type and environmental impact of vehicles driving upon the. Some form of road will be there regardless of the means, or even the amount of traffic, so long as a connection is needed.

The thing is that we choose the amount and type of traffic and therefore the physical size and area of our roads by planning choices that induce behavior.

“We will still need roads” is true, but the amount and size of those roads are important details. Not all roads are created equal - just ask your local bike path how many animals were killed in collisions.

Re: Are roads the biggest driver of ecological destruction?

#85

Post by TulliusCicero »

anamax wrote: post #49
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…

> If you look at vehicle miles traveled per capita, the US is around 2x that of major Western European countries, and nearly 4x that of Japan: You do know that the population density of the US is a fraction of that of the countries that you're comparing it to, right?

Yes, and I also know this means that the US can spread out within metro areas, not that it must spread out. Did you know that?

Re: Are roads the biggest driver of ecological destruction?

#86

Post by TulliusCicero »

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…

> I wouldn't call it car centric, more like everyone-gets-to-have-a-lawn-and-2000-sq-ft-home centric.

That's one and the same when it comes to the states.

Re: Are roads the biggest driver of ecological destruction?

#87

Post by shiroiuma »

roenxi wrote: post #59
jokethrowaway wrote: post #18

There's an argument which comes up often when talking about a society without a central government: "Who will build the roads?" Besides the simple idea of neighbours building and maintaining small roads, I argue that I wouldn't want the highway. Between the ecological damage, the noise, air pollution, increased reliance on shipping things from far away vs buying local - are we really sure building the massive road ne…

I'm not sure why you've been downvoted at the time of my commenting; but you've probably upset someone who deserves to be upset. The sheer amount of space that is killed off in many cities to support roads and car parking is insane . If there wasn't that much dead space, walking around would be more than feasible. Car-centric design sits in competition with pedestrian-centric design, and the bias towards road over-co…

You can't have a walkable city, or any kind of city really, without a central government of some kind.

Re: Are roads the biggest driver of ecological destruction?

#88

Post by k99x55 »

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…

"Traffication: How Cars Destroy Nature and What We Can Do About It" excellent book on ecological damage caused by traffication.

Some insights:

* traffic noise (soundscape pollution) is actually suspected to be the biggest ecological destructor affecting all levels of life from insects, to birds, to mammals.

* Traffic-related noise accounts for over 1 million healthy years of life lost annually to ill health, disability or early death in the western countries in the WHO European Region. (a)

a) https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/30-03-2011-new-evidence...

Re: Are roads the biggest driver of ecological destruction?

#89

Post by Log_out_ »

tony_cannistra wrote: post #8
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…

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.

It's In huge troubles as the old models do not hold up against new realities and all incentives are aligned against acknowledging that.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/13/floods-then-an...

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65632655

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/09/07/europe/greece-floods-stor...

https://www.climatechangepost.com/austria/river-floods/

The again, neither insurance nor building pricing wants to reflect the new reality. A whole generation has invested "safe" in buildings and companies along "virtual flash flood funels" and embracing truth is like accepting your life's saving burning away.

One wonders when the first realistic model based tax write off ahead of time goes to court and pokes a hole into that reality. As in "I pay no taxes for what is most likely destroyed over the next ten years and will repay if it doesn't happen"..

Re: Are roads the biggest driver of ecological destruction?

#90

Post by stby »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #18

There's an argument which comes up often when talking about a society without a central government: "Who will build the roads?" Besides the simple idea of neighbours building and maintaining small roads, I argue that I wouldn't want the highway. Between the ecological damage, the noise, air pollution, increased reliance on shipping things from far away vs buying local - are we really sure building the massive road ne…

About flying cars, I don't think they are a solution to almost anything.

First of all, they'd always need more energy because staying in the air doesn't come free. Lifting a whole car for the usual 1.2 people in it seems wasteful.

Secondly, the noise problem would be huge. I don't see how flying cars could ever be more quiet than road-using cars (again, more power needed to overcome the drag that's generated by the lift, and propellers, jet engines or whatever aren't exactly quiet on their own). They'd also produce their noise up in the air where it can spread over a much larger area compared to land-based transportation, where even a small line of greenery reduces noise levels quite nicely.

Finally, even perfectly self flying cars (and obviously, I wouldn't want to have the average car driver handle a 3 ton flying machine over my head) would need a big amount of space around them in all directions. I doubt that there's enough air space to handle the amount of car traffic that even smaller cities currently have.

There's a reason we only see helicopters used in a small niche, and I don't think flying cars or the currently worked on drones are ultimately that different from helicopters.

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