Category Archives: Roads

What can California do about sea level rise?

Posted on February 26, 2018 by

Projected sea level rise from one meter (dark red) to six meters (light orange) in California’s Bay Area. (Weiss and Overpeck 2011) Preface. Nearly all, if not all, possible solutions to rising sea levels along all the coasts in the … Continue reading →

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Climate change may corrode concrete even faster

Posted on May 2, 2017 by

[ I’ve paraphrased and shortened this article about how climate change will corrode concrete faster in the future from increasing carbon dioxide levels, and in coastal cities, from the chloride ions in sea spray. After that is the introduction section … Continue reading →

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Do taxes cover the cost to maintain your street?

Posted on February 15, 2017 by

From: http://mapstoryblog.thenittygritty.org/costofstreets/  Are Your Taxes Paying for the Cost of Your Street? Believe it or not, almost everywhere in the country, people are not paying for the cost of the street right in front of their own properties. I made a … Continue reading →

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Ecological cost of new roads in Africa

Posted on September 14, 2016 by

[ What follows are excerpts from the January 8 2014 issue of Newscientist’s “Africa’s road-building frenzy will transform continent” by Andy Coghlan.  ] China is funding most of the new roads to get the minerals they’ve mined, and transport food … Continue reading →

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Unpave low traffic roads to save energy and money

Posted on April 12, 2016 by

The U.S. has 4.1 million miles of roads (1.9 million paved, 2.2 million gravel). About 3 million miles of roads have less than 2,000 vehicles a day, less than 15% of all traffic. The paved portion of these low-volume roads … Continue reading →

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Cost overruns on roads from subsurface conditions

Posted on January 2, 2016 by

[ What follows are excerpts from the 91 page NRC document on cost overruns. As energy declines, future new roads aren’t likely to be built, and existing roads unpaved, so I didn’t excerpt much.  Alice Friedemann www.energyskeptic.com ] NRC. 2016. … Continue reading →

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Have superheavy trucks ruined your roads?

Posted on June 12, 2015 by

[ This 302 page document doesn’t discuss the extent to which superheavy trucks have ruined roads or what the costs were.  Since the federal level of government has to pay part of the money to fix road damage, to the … Continue reading →

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Biggest Waste of Wealth in All of history: America’s Interstate Highway system

Posted on June 9, 2014 by

A book review by Alice Friedemann of: Swift, Earl. 2012. The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways. Related articles $46 Trillion Infrastructure in USA, $6 Trillion is Transportation Expressways & … Continue reading →

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Expressways & Interstates are only designed to last for 20 years

Posted on May 28, 2014 by

Roads are Essential There are 4,016,741 miles of roads in the United States.  The most critical roads are the almost 47,000 miles long with 55,000 bridges and 4 or more lanes wide Interstate Highways, the largest single investment the American people … Continue reading →

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Book review of “Prime Movers of Globalization: the History & Impact of Diesel Engines & Gas Turbines”

Posted on February 26, 2014 by

Alice Friedemann’s book review of: Vaclav Smil. 2013. Prime Movers of Globalization. The History and Impact of Diesel Engines and Gas Turbines. MIT press. Smil makes the case that civilization is based on the billions of engines that make global … Continue reading →

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