The U.S. needs similar crossings for all the regions separated by the Interstate system, and somewhere near the center of each region so created, a large wilderness preserve which has roads removed:
While I agree with the sentiment --that couple's methods leave something to be desired.
The article makes it sound like they took a motor boat into a wilderness preserve? Motor vehicles are explicitly not allowed in those areas.
Also excluding dirt roads is a pretty bad criteria. A lot of GIS marked 'dirt roads' are natural animal trails or washes that have been around for hundreds/thousands of years.
This is a great initiative which I fully support. But why does it take 4-6 years (including several months of complete road closure) to build what is, in the grand scheme of things, a quite small bridge?
So the article says that Agoura Road (which is not the highway) will be closed, but the project FAQ still says that it won't be? And the government pre-notices don't seem to mention anticipating closing the road either...
Completely agreed. All the nonsense about getting just exactly the right soil composition, letting the soil "age", and what-not, seems bizarre and silly. If an animal needs to use the bridge, it'll learn to use the bridge. Spending so much extra money and time to get the vegetation just right is a waste of taxpayer dollars.
They can go hyperspeed if they want. See freeway building after northridge earthquake or when they replaced an entire bridge over the 405 in one night.
Believe it or not, the people that design and build these bridges have a lot more experience than you do. So if they're doing something that doesn't make sense to you, you should ask yourself what you're missing, and not question their basic competence.
The point isn't just to make a bridge, or they would use a simple concrete bridge.
The point is to make a bridge that is preferable to crossing the highway. And to do that they need to landscape it as if it were part of the landscape. That takes more time because the bridge needs to be stronger to handle the weight of the soil and plants, which means the design, permitting, and construction phases are longer.
They're closing the surrounding road for the soil movement part of the project because that part of the project entails risks of landslides, and it's safer to just close the road. However, the road won't be closed the entire time; it will only be closed for a few hours at a time. The months-long period is just the part of the project when the road will be subject to potential closure.
Because they aren’t building a cheap old bridge animals will probably learn to use. They are effectively regrading the mountainside and landscaping over this bridge to try and blend it in with the landscape. Imo its a waste of money. Crabs learn to use the dead simple ugly bridges. Crabs. A coyote or a mountain lion or deer (what you’d see using this thing in CA) all already use human style bridges to cross highways.
In an ideal train world you still end up with railroad tracks everywhere that interstates exist with the same wildlife downsides. Running trains at ground level is an order of magnitude cheaper to build than building it elevated so wildlife can go under. Running underground is another order of magnitude more expensive. The expense directly relates to how much we can build at any one time - we can build a lot more if we choose run on the ground.
In the ideal train world you still end up with roads everywhere because "last mile" freight needs to get places and trains don't work well for it (think your kitchen trash). Passenger trains always rely on the fact that people can walk a short distance to the train, but freight cannot walk. Passenger trains also cannot be blocked by freight loading/unloading which means you need a separate road system. Passenger trains need to run frequent, you might not go anywhere in the next half hour, but someone on your block will and if the trains are not frequent (every 5 minutes or less) cars are a great quality of life improvement: unlike cars passenger trains cannot mix with freight and be good in areas where things are not busy (A bus can mix with freight well in less busy areas, but they still need to be frequent and that is rarely the case again pushing people to cars and thus against what "you can't imagine"). This in turn means we have more places wildlife is blocked.
Airplanes are the only exception, but they don't cover all the needs and so even if we forced everyone to fly for longer trips (at significant climate costs) we still need all the roads in the middle of nowhere for the people (farmers) who live in those ares.
maybe this is why Brin and Allen were so obsessed with airships, not to speculate too much but they sound like they could be an ideal short-run, low-impact, high capacity transit system if done right
Hate to burst anyone's bubble but trains in its current form aren't solution to mass transit. They help, sure, under certain circumstances, but are very costly to run and in peak you need huge amount of them. 1 disruption and everything stops, you can't just take an exit and go through villages.
Case point Switzerland, the train country of this world. Efficiency, cleanness, reach, small country. Yet its prohibitively expensive here and highways are chock full of commuters just like anywhere else. For weekend trip ie to mountains they (+ post buses where trains don't go) are very restrictive which is understandable, but car becomes a must anyway.
If you’re a resident, there is a card that costs 160/year (180 the first year) and give you half price on all trains. Also works with any local public transit system (municipal buses, etc) across the country.
Train is quite affordable like that. For example St Gallen to Zurich is 90 minutes by train and costs 16.- with 1/2 fare card. You can even get a super saver (valid on this train only) for 21.20 or 11.20 1/2 fare. That’s for this Monday.
Swiss salaries are some of the highest in the world. The overwhelming majority of trains run on time, don’t strike, and are clean.
It’s cheaper than driving (gas and maintenance) + parking by a long margin.
You can go ski by train there. Haven’t owned a car in 5 years living there.
According to the Dutch Wikipedia article, the Zanderij Crailoo bridge is a multi-purpose bridge that includes a hiking path, bike path, and horse trail, in addition to a wildlife crossing.
The Agoura Hills is just a wildlife crossing. So it would be most accurate to say that the Agoura Hills crossing is the single biggest dedicated wildlife crossing.
Put all human infrastructure under ground so that one is left with a beautiful mostly untouched planet. Addresses some aspects of global climate change no further need for HVAC. Reduces power load on the grid. Animals can have the surface of their planet back.
True but if some fake-front group can show we are mass killing bacteria they will hire protesters and start legal battles to shut it all down. "Think Of The Streptomyces!"
For all their ills lawyers basically never engage in that "clearly my experience transfers" type crap. Getting them to say anything about stuff they're not experts in is like pulling teeth.
I am sure that some people would still want to live on the surface of that beautiful, untouched planet. And I am sure this could be arranged, for the right price of course. And as the extra bonus, all those rich surface-dwellers would not need to see the common folks and other riff-raff, who would be be living under the ground. Hey, even under ground could use the same system: top levels for more well-off folks, and lower levels for poorer folks.
Much of the heat from a subway comes from the HVAC in the train. Add more venting to the trains that works with the trains movement and use forced air into the tunnels. Costs more but it can be done. Some of the heat comes from acceleration and braking. Make that more efficient with newer electric motors, better designed tracks, better regenerative braking. If that doesn't work require everyone to disrobe before leaving their underground home.
Another option would be to deprecate trains. Instead people travel through pressurized maglev modules in tubes at 800 mph / 1200 kph. Transcontinental tubes accelerate the modules to 8000 mph / 12,000 kph. Interplanetary offramps eject the module from earth at mach 50+ where it is caught by a sub-orbital robot ship that matches speed and takes the module to the interplanetary colony ship.
You've clearly never have been on the London Underground - none of the deep level lines currenlty have air conditioning and yet they are getting hotter every year.
When I see this sort of comment, I feel like saying: 'well, go on then - you lead the way. If it's really a viable and pleasant way to live, why don't you show us?'
I have been planning it out but only for my property. I can not afford to build the national, international or interplanetary bits. Getting a good team together at my location is my only obstacle. It's very hard to find a solid general contractor and team here that will build as designed in phases. They want to do it all in one shot but that introduces a lot of legal risk if they are doing it wrong.
I love being underground. It's cool and quiet. Those facilities also last a very long time. I found many "Kilroy was here" scribbles in tunnels in the military and some of them were dated back to WWII.
Because they’re trying to do it the right way. The rain we’ve experienced the last few years has been the biggest problem. The soil they’re piling on top of the crossing erodes away almost immediately without plant roots to stabilize it and those plants take a while to establish.
Oh, yeah I see it mentions that in the article. I didn't read the article before commenting because I had read another article about this project recently and didn't think there would be anymore information. I was wrong.
> If wildlife fencing and crossing structures are designed based on the requirements of the target species, and if they are implemented and maintained correctly, the measures can reduce large mammal–vehicle collisions by 80–97% (Clevenger et al., 2001, Gagnon et al., 2015, Sawyer et al., 2012).
Any type works. This one is stupid elaborate. Animals are smart. They don’t need a graded landscape to learn crossings. See what they use for crab migrations. Looks nothing like what is native in a crab environment and yet this is fine for the simple crab. Meanwhile coyote already is used to walking on our sidewalks in california.
vastly simpler to build the road up on pylons for a few miles.
1, build new road on pylons beside the old road for a few miles.
2 ,switch traffic to new road on pylons.
3 , rip up old road
4 , build some fences ,plant some grass and shrubs
5 ' repeat in each eco zone and local water shed and other areas where there are lots of critters....too chicken to cross the road
> Sugiarto found a favorable cost-benefit analysis. The study estimated each crossing structure could save society between $235,000 and $443,000 annually through collision reductions. The savings varied based on structure size, design and location.
The issues with homebuilding are entirely to do with regulation, zoning, etc. Developers will build homes if they're allowed to. Banks will give them the loans (homes don't require government money). The problem is them not being allowed to. Because you're not allowed to build multi-family homes in a neighborhood, you're not allowed to build tall apartment buildings, approvals take forever, etc.
Yeah okay. How many dogs bit children in the same amount of time? How many people did cars kill in that same amount of time? How many fingers pinched by doors?
Opening an animal crossing next to a school in an area where there are many coyotes is a lot different than fingers pinched by doors. But if you’re making the argument that this animal crossing is so important than the occasional child being killed by animals is as trivial as fingers being pinched by doors, I know all I need to know about you.
The U.S. needs similar crossings for all the regions separated by the Interstate system, and somewhere near the center of each region so created, a large wilderness preserve which has roads removed:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42104894
While I agree with the sentiment --that couple's methods leave something to be desired.
The article makes it sound like they took a motor boat into a wilderness preserve? Motor vehicles are explicitly not allowed in those areas.
Also excluding dirt roads is a pretty bad criteria. A lot of GIS marked 'dirt roads' are natural animal trails or washes that have been around for hundreds/thousands of years.
The National Parks Service allows it:
While motorboats are permitted to operate in the marine environment, their presence can influence the wilderness setting.
https://www.nps.gov/ever/wilderness.htm
US doesn’t even have this for humans to cross at regular intervals on all freeways.
It has them wherever the local community decides that they are important enough to implement.
This is a great initiative which I fully support. But why does it take 4-6 years (including several months of complete road closure) to build what is, in the grand scheme of things, a quite small bridge?
So the article says that Agoura Road (which is not the highway) will be closed, but the project FAQ still says that it won't be? And the government pre-notices don't seem to mention anticipating closing the road either...
https://101wildlifecrossing.org/crossing-faq/
https://www.agourahillscity.org/Home/Components/News/News/39...
Completely agreed. All the nonsense about getting just exactly the right soil composition, letting the soil "age", and what-not, seems bizarre and silly. If an animal needs to use the bridge, it'll learn to use the bridge. Spending so much extra money and time to get the vegetation just right is a waste of taxpayer dollars.
This is lightning speed for California construction...
They can go hyperspeed if they want. See freeway building after northridge earthquake or when they replaced an entire bridge over the 405 in one night.
Believe it or not, the people that design and build these bridges have a lot more experience than you do. So if they're doing something that doesn't make sense to you, you should ask yourself what you're missing, and not question their basic competence.
The point isn't just to make a bridge, or they would use a simple concrete bridge.
The point is to make a bridge that is preferable to crossing the highway. And to do that they need to landscape it as if it were part of the landscape. That takes more time because the bridge needs to be stronger to handle the weight of the soil and plants, which means the design, permitting, and construction phases are longer.
They're closing the surrounding road for the soil movement part of the project because that part of the project entails risks of landslides, and it's safer to just close the road. However, the road won't be closed the entire time; it will only be closed for a few hours at a time. The months-long period is just the part of the project when the road will be subject to potential closure.
Because they aren’t building a cheap old bridge animals will probably learn to use. They are effectively regrading the mountainside and landscaping over this bridge to try and blend it in with the landscape. Imo its a waste of money. Crabs learn to use the dead simple ugly bridges. Crabs. A coyote or a mountain lion or deer (what you’d see using this thing in CA) all already use human style bridges to cross highways.
Roads are such an apocalyptic blight on the landscape that I'm all for burying as many of them as possible. 200 feet down, 200 billion feet to go.
Or you know, crazy idea, just have less roads, use something more efficient less impactful to nature. Can't imagine what that could be.
It doesn't matter, there are downsides.
In an ideal train world you still end up with railroad tracks everywhere that interstates exist with the same wildlife downsides. Running trains at ground level is an order of magnitude cheaper to build than building it elevated so wildlife can go under. Running underground is another order of magnitude more expensive. The expense directly relates to how much we can build at any one time - we can build a lot more if we choose run on the ground.
In the ideal train world you still end up with roads everywhere because "last mile" freight needs to get places and trains don't work well for it (think your kitchen trash). Passenger trains always rely on the fact that people can walk a short distance to the train, but freight cannot walk. Passenger trains also cannot be blocked by freight loading/unloading which means you need a separate road system. Passenger trains need to run frequent, you might not go anywhere in the next half hour, but someone on your block will and if the trains are not frequent (every 5 minutes or less) cars are a great quality of life improvement: unlike cars passenger trains cannot mix with freight and be good in areas where things are not busy (A bus can mix with freight well in less busy areas, but they still need to be frequent and that is rarely the case again pushing people to cars and thus against what "you can't imagine"). This in turn means we have more places wildlife is blocked.
Airplanes are the only exception, but they don't cover all the needs and so even if we forced everyone to fly for longer trips (at significant climate costs) we still need all the roads in the middle of nowhere for the people (farmers) who live in those ares.
maybe this is why Brin and Allen were so obsessed with airships, not to speculate too much but they sound like they could be an ideal short-run, low-impact, high capacity transit system if done right
Hate to burst anyone's bubble but trains in its current form aren't solution to mass transit. They help, sure, under certain circumstances, but are very costly to run and in peak you need huge amount of them. 1 disruption and everything stops, you can't just take an exit and go through villages.
Case point Switzerland, the train country of this world. Efficiency, cleanness, reach, small country. Yet its prohibitively expensive here and highways are chock full of commuters just like anywhere else. For weekend trip ie to mountains they (+ post buses where trains don't go) are very restrictive which is understandable, but car becomes a must anyway.
> expensive
Not so much. As a tourist yes, no question.
If you’re a resident, there is a card that costs 160/year (180 the first year) and give you half price on all trains. Also works with any local public transit system (municipal buses, etc) across the country.
Train is quite affordable like that. For example St Gallen to Zurich is 90 minutes by train and costs 16.- with 1/2 fare card. You can even get a super saver (valid on this train only) for 21.20 or 11.20 1/2 fare. That’s for this Monday.
Swiss salaries are some of the highest in the world. The overwhelming majority of trains run on time, don’t strike, and are clean.
It’s cheaper than driving (gas and maintenance) + parking by a long margin.
You can go ski by train there. Haven’t owned a car in 5 years living there.
Cars are even more expensive to run. However nobody counts that cost while they see the cost of a ticket.
Me neither. A bus? A train? A bicycle? What do you mean, don’t leave the room for interpretation.
The roads and the borders
Is it the biggest wildlife crossing? This one [1] is 50x150 meters. Granted, it's in flat land so it's not covered with such a thick layer of soil.
[1] https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/natuurbrug-zanderij-crai...
Yea, I find it hard to believe that is the largest.
The difference is in what's being measured.
According to the Dutch Wikipedia article, the Zanderij Crailoo bridge is a multi-purpose bridge that includes a hiking path, bike path, and horse trail, in addition to a wildlife crossing.
The Agoura Hills is just a wildlife crossing. So it would be most accurate to say that the Agoura Hills crossing is the single biggest dedicated wildlife crossing.
Put all human infrastructure under ground so that one is left with a beautiful mostly untouched planet. Addresses some aspects of global climate change no further need for HVAC. Reduces power load on the grid. Animals can have the surface of their planet back.
Zero animals live underground, this will totally work.
It would work because underground animals live in a 3D world, unlike surface animals.
Sorry what?? :)
Once you go deep enough this is true excluding bacteria because to hell with bacteria.
Bacteria are not animals.
I think I read in this book one time that humans are animals.
Animals keep to the surface and bacteria keeps to the underground... problem solved.
True but if some fake-front group can show we are mass killing bacteria they will hire protesters and start legal battles to shut it all down. "Think Of The Streptomyces!"
Maybe the PP just finished watching Silo....
But he’s a computer programmer so obviously his expertise extends into all other areas.
I don’t think this was a serious comment
Indeed, being a know-it-all is not exclusive to programmers :)
For all their ills lawyers basically never engage in that "clearly my experience transfers" type crap. Getting them to say anything about stuff they're not experts in is like pulling teeth.
To be fair, lawyers will hem and haw about everything. Getting them to give a straight direct answer is like pulling teeth.
Once one knows it all they obtain the title Principal Armchair Commander or PAC. One should strive to be a PAC, man.
I am sure that some people would still want to live on the surface of that beautiful, untouched planet. And I am sure this could be arranged, for the right price of course. And as the extra bonus, all those rich surface-dwellers would not need to see the common folks and other riff-raff, who would be be living under the ground. Hey, even under ground could use the same system: top levels for more well-off folks, and lower levels for poorer folks.
I think I've read a book about this. Or ten.
Dystopian are my favorites. I have this fantasy that there are still some people that would rise up to the challenge and level the playing field.
Underground subways heat up the rock so much they have to add cooling eventually.
Much of the heat from a subway comes from the HVAC in the train. Add more venting to the trains that works with the trains movement and use forced air into the tunnels. Costs more but it can be done. Some of the heat comes from acceleration and braking. Make that more efficient with newer electric motors, better designed tracks, better regenerative braking. If that doesn't work require everyone to disrobe before leaving their underground home.
Another option would be to deprecate trains. Instead people travel through pressurized maglev modules in tubes at 800 mph / 1200 kph. Transcontinental tubes accelerate the modules to 8000 mph / 12,000 kph. Interplanetary offramps eject the module from earth at mach 50+ where it is caught by a sub-orbital robot ship that matches speed and takes the module to the interplanetary colony ship.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground_cooling
It's significant.
I believe it. Let's not replicate what London got wrong.
We didn't! Chicago built their subway IN THE AIR!
Ahhh Delta-V by Daniel Suarez! Great book. The human-controlled robots were really interesting imo
London underground deep level trains have no HVAC and most definitely have overheating tunnel problems.
You've clearly never have been on the London Underground - none of the deep level lines currenlty have air conditioning and yet they are getting hotter every year.
When I see this sort of comment, I feel like saying: 'well, go on then - you lead the way. If it's really a viable and pleasant way to live, why don't you show us?'
I have been planning it out but only for my property. I can not afford to build the national, international or interplanetary bits. Getting a good team together at my location is my only obstacle. It's very hard to find a solid general contractor and team here that will build as designed in phases. They want to do it all in one shot but that introduces a lot of legal risk if they are doing it wrong.
I love being underground. It's cool and quiet. Those facilities also last a very long time. I found many "Kilroy was here" scribbles in tunnels in the military and some of them were dated back to WWII.
One wonders about why they didn’t choose a tunnel, leaving that ultra special soul fully intact…
Why is there no wildlife? I expected this to be about the Maasai Mara/Serengeti wildebeest crossing :)
Why is this taking so long to complete?
Because they’re trying to do it the right way. The rain we’ve experienced the last few years has been the biggest problem. The soil they’re piling on top of the crossing erodes away almost immediately without plant roots to stabilize it and those plants take a while to establish.
Oh, yeah I see it mentions that in the article. I didn't read the article before commenting because I had read another article about this project recently and didn't think there would be anymore information. I was wrong.
Does this type of wildlife crossing actually work?
Yes. 80-97% reduction in vehicle-animal collisions, per: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00063...
> If wildlife fencing and crossing structures are designed based on the requirements of the target species, and if they are implemented and maintained correctly, the measures can reduce large mammal–vehicle collisions by 80–97% (Clevenger et al., 2001, Gagnon et al., 2015, Sawyer et al., 2012).
Any type works. This one is stupid elaborate. Animals are smart. They don’t need a graded landscape to learn crossings. See what they use for crab migrations. Looks nothing like what is native in a crab environment and yet this is fine for the simple crab. Meanwhile coyote already is used to walking on our sidewalks in california.
Clickbait title.
vastly simpler to build the road up on pylons for a few miles. 1, build new road on pylons beside the old road for a few miles. 2 ,switch traffic to new road on pylons. 3 , rip up old road 4 , build some fences ,plant some grass and shrubs 5 ' repeat in each eco zone and local water shed and other areas where there are lots of critters....too chicken to cross the road
[dead]
Yes! Let's build this stuff instead of homes.
Don't give in to zero sum thinking.
https://www.opb.org/article/2022/08/31/animal-crossings-over...
> Sugiarto found a favorable cost-benefit analysis. The study estimated each crossing structure could save society between $235,000 and $443,000 annually through collision reductions. The savings varied based on structure size, design and location.
The two have nothing to do with each other.
We've got plenty of money to do both.
The issues with homebuilding are entirely to do with regulation, zoning, etc. Developers will build homes if they're allowed to. Banks will give them the loans (homes don't require government money). The problem is them not being allowed to. Because you're not allowed to build multi-family homes in a neighborhood, you're not allowed to build tall apartment buildings, approvals take forever, etc.
An animal crossing built right next to a school. I wonder if the coyotes that will cross will be a threat to the children.
Is this a troll comment I don’t understand?
Do you see coyotes running around hunting children often?
No it’s not. I live there and my kids go to school there. I do see many coyotes in our area. Some tagged. Some not. It’s definitely a worry of mine.
Edit: I have friends whose dogs were torn apart by packs of coyotes. It’s common in our area. I really do fear that this will cause incidents.
Only during open season.
Only when there are no roadrunners to be found.
California child attack via Coyote 2022.
June 2024 coyote tries to enter a California home and attack a cat.
It happens.
Yeah okay. How many dogs bit children in the same amount of time? How many people did cars kill in that same amount of time? How many fingers pinched by doors?
Opening an animal crossing next to a school in an area where there are many coyotes is a lot different than fingers pinched by doors. But if you’re making the argument that this animal crossing is so important than the occasional child being killed by animals is as trivial as fingers being pinched by doors, I know all I need to know about you.