The Future of Roads: No Driving, No Emissions, Nature Reconnected- This article discusses the potentials with the future technology and creating new, more environmentally sustainable and safer roads. The idea is to eliminate human drivers, everything is driven by computers and technology in a pod. By eliminating the human driver, roads would be a lot safer, considering that you no longer have to worry about what the other person will do, if they will fall asleep, etc. Also these new electric roads and pods would be powered by renewable resources such as wind and solar energy. These roads are intended for rural areas and connecting far cities, to prevent the CO2 emissions from driving. Also these roads are intended to help save rome for prime agricultural land and for natural environments for animals, to do this the roads will be above ground in a sort of a high line. Therefore no farm land is cut through, also this saves animals by not making them risk their lives by crossing roads, they can now travel safely beneath the road. There are many components to this design, such as an emergency road line running through the middle, also room for pedestrians, bike lanes, pods that are specific for different load sizes such as buses or semi trucks. Also people are able to rent them and some are made to be taken off the high line and onto the normal road with a battery power that is charged on the high line. This project is not intended for cities because it is very costly, however one day when humans choose to eliminate green house gas emissions all together they could make this the only transportation vehicle.1
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| 2) Example of what Pod cars could look like |
Roads and their major ecological effects- This article discusses the influences that roads have on our environment, from the biodiversity to hydrological effects. Roads act as barriers that tend to cut ecosystems in half, this causes severe problems for the biodiversity that surrounds them. The roads discourages animals from crossing them, this causes small communities of animals to form in sections that are separated by the road. This causes a loss of genetic diversity and can cause a bottle neck effect. These fragmented ecosystems start to diminish more when more roads are added. Also roads are now rated as the number one way that humans kill animals, through road kill. This rates even higher then hunting. The noise from roads also causes animals to stay away from them, which pushes animals even further then their original habitats. Roads also have impacts on the runoff water that drains from them into near by bodies of water. The salts and other chemicals on the roads eventually kill grass and many aquatic animals causes detrimental affects on the marine animals. The pollution of water kills whatever lives inside of it and if this water body is not connected to a stream of some sort the animals have no where to go and perish. To prevent these losses many cities are beginning to built under or over passes on roads to connect the surrounding landscapes and nature. Also some ideas are to close off minimally used roads and remove some to help connect ecosystems. Even temporarily closing roads during mating season for animals can help them spread their genes once more. Closing and eliminating some linkages would permit the reestablishment of a few large patches of natural rainforest," (Forman et al. 1998, 222).3
Seminar Discussion- What are some of the flaws of this proposed Net-way? Could there be possible restrictions?
-This system is probably very expensive and people are stingy as it is.
- The statement that there are no accidents seems to good to be true.. If there was a system fail then maybe the accidents are much worse then todays.
-Is this any different then a subway?
-Instead of focusing on the roads, the cars could be designed differently to be more efficient.
-The emissions released to create these roads and destroy old ones could have adverse affects on the environment
-Raising a road is no better because there is still problems with shade underneath, also the infrastructure needed to hold them up will disrupt the land.
Do you think the problems caused by roads will ever get so severe that a drastic change such as the Net-way system will need to be implemented?
-Roads are not the problem it is the renewable energy. Once the fossil fuels are gone there will need to be a new system in place to support travel and cars.
-Lifting the roads is to help save the biodiversity, biodiversity should be the first priority and we should be thinking about it no matter what, even before we have to because we have no choice.
-Instead of lifting the entire road, why not lift sections of land and create parks/ overpasses for the animals? It would be less costly and still get biodiversity.
-Noise is the biggest issue for animals to be near roads so creating quieter cars is also an option.
-Some animals can figure out migration paths of prey over Overpasses, they can use this as a hunting technique which also lowers biodiversity and creates more issues.
-Once main reason over passes are built is to protect humans form animal collisions, not directly for the animals, animals should not be an after thought.
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| 4) Over pass for animal crossing. |
Ist there a more realistic and practical solution to our road problems?
-You can avoid cutting through ecosystems to create new roads and simply place roads on polluted land and simply make people go more out of their way to get to a destination.
-You could layer the highways
-Create aircrafts powered by solar energy or create a jet pack. (no roads)
-Cities have created roads that are dug into deep trenches, studies show that animals avoid the deep trench, less road kill.
-You could create tunnels for travel only in areas where migration patterns happen
-Design cities that are more bike friendly and less car friendly, discouraging vehicle use. Give priority to pedestrians.
-London has created chair lifts as a way of transportation around the city, no roads.
What suggestions do you have for reconnecting the land to nature?
-Avoid tunnels, they are claustrophobic, scary, more prone to accidents and you see nothing.
-If the roads are too high you miss out on the nature around you, you feel disconnected.
-These systems could somehow move us backward because we feel more disconnected from nature and therefore do not do anything to help it.
-Need to integrate the nature and the roads together.
-Like in water parks, they have shark tunnels, create something like this over roads
Do you think the public would be accepting to this new proposed Net-way system?
-No, they already complain about taxes.
Personal Reflection- I believe that the Net-way system is a good idea proposal personally. The amount of infrastructure they say needed to support it is minimal because the system is very light weight. This therefore allows for whatever to move underneath it, and who says plants cannot grow in shade? There are plenty of plants that do not need light to grow. Also the idea of creating vehicles that no longer use fossil fuels and therefore do not release greenhouse gases is a much better approach then simply fixing the roads. The roads and cars are a problem together and both need to be made more environmentally friendly. The amount of noise from vehicles is also a huge problem to the surrounding biodiversity, therefore creating cars that do not make noise is huge. However once a car is made that no one can hear coming the amount of car and animal collisions will increase. If you lift the roads above the ground this helps to avoid these accidents. There are a few areas about the article that I am skeptical about however we have managed to create things that no one ever thought possible, who says we cant do it again.
"Kill all the insects in the world and everything living perishes, kill all the humans in the world and the rest of biodiversity flourishes." --Unknown.
1) Forman , Richard T., and Daniel Sperling. "The Future of Roads: No Driving, No Emissions, Nature Reconnected." Solutions . 2. no. 5 (2011): 10-23. http://www.thesolutionsjournal.com (accessed March 28, 2013).
2) Demerjian, Dave. Wired.com, "Personal Pod Transport Is Coming." Last modified 2008. Accessed March 28, 2013. http://www.wired.com/autopia/2008/10/personal-pod-1/.
3) Forman , Richard T., and Lauren E. Alexander. "Roads and their Major Ecological Effects ." Annual Reviews Ecological System . 29. (1998): 207-231. http://www.AnnualReviews.org (accessed March 28, 2013).
4) Gonano, Caity. Americanforests.org, "Safe Crossings for Wildlife." Last modified 2012. Accessed March 28, 2013. http://www.americanforests.org/blog/safe-crossings-for-wildlife/.
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