highways
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U.S. roads are built to break
Why do we have to pour so much of our transportation money into highway infrastructure? Well, because 50 years ago, the U.S. decided to structure roads in a way that was cheap to build but expensive and difficult to maintain. It's the infrastructure equivalent of buying a cheap crappy blender and then having to replace […]
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Noise pollution ruins the sex life of tits
Pickup artists among the great tits (a species of bird, ok?) know how to get chicks: They sing at low frequencies just before females of their species begin laying eggs. It's a great technique! Unless they happen to be hanging out near sources of noise pollution, like highways, which force the tits to change their tune to a higher pitch so that the girls can hear their song in the first place.
But that's when things start going wrong.
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Breaking free from the infrastructure cult of roads
A report from the American Society of Civil Engineers touts misguided and outdated strategies for infrastructure spending.
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Gas is greener? Smearing renewables over land use exposes ignorance of fossil fuel lovers
Oregon’s solar highway. Photo: Oregon Department of TransportationA recent column in the New York Times suggested that land use is the greatest environmental problem facing new renewable energy. While getting the facts terribly wrong, it opens a door to talk about the advantages of distributed generation rather than large, central-station power generation. A prime example […]
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'Solar highways' transform our crumbling infrastructure into something useful
Okay, we know YOU ride your bike everywhere. But the country’s 4 million miles of roads, and 50,000 miles of interstate highway, probably aren’t going anywhere any time soon. Isn’t there anything productive we can do with this giant car playground? Well, we can cover it with solar photovoltaic panels, so it’s at least providing some energy.