World's largest wildlife crossing reaches critical milestone. Now what?
yahoo.com
yahoo.com
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.
While motorboats are permitted to operate in the marine environment, their presence can influence the wilderness setting.
https://101wildlifecrossing.org/crossing-faq/
https://www.agourahillscity.org/Home/Components/News/News/39...
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.
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.
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.
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.
Also that part about cost being cheaper ain't true - I have that half tariff. For going somewhere, anywhere, its the same cost (+ saving tons of time). Taking family of 4... you do the math.
There is reason why there are so many cars everywhere. Families with kids usually have 2. Basically everybody has at least 1. If what you said is true people wouldn't be buying and using them constantly.
That's a fair point, I didn't think of including it.
If it was 'prohibitively expensive' then why do so many people use and why is usage increasing?
Unless you buy individual tickets all the time its really not that expensive.
And depending on how you organize and finance it you can make it really cheap, see Belgium.
Its a hell of a lot cheaper then driving.
For a whole society, to primarly use trains, instead of primarily using cars is WAY, WAY CHEAPER!
> Case point Switzerland, the train country of this world.
This might be the case but Switzerland still spends decades and decades under investing in trains. The Bahn 2000 project was a huge success, but it was a success driven by minimal investment.
If a country like Switzerland had contentiously invested in high quality rail since WW2, we would be in a completely, competently different situation.
> 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.
And yet I have lived my whole live without a car and only rarely drive in the car with somebody else.
Yes, only trains as the only thing isn't a solution. That clear to anybody, but you can decently do a hell of a lot. And you can do much, much more then Switzerland is currently doing.
For example, we are 'the train country' but we don't even have a high speed rail line.
That somebody can say 'the train country' with a serious face about Switzerland only shows how utterly under-invested rail was since the 1930 in most countries.
Except they are the exact opposite of all of that. The just flat out suck. But its one of those easy traps to fall into.
The German company Cargolifter lost a nice chunk of money. And they aren't the only ones.
The technology hasn't really changed for a long time. And nobody has yet made it useful.
A few reason, they are INSANELY big for a pretty tiny amount of actual payload. That means infrastructure for them is really damn big. That means they hang in the wind like its nothing, you need massive energy just to stabilize them in one place. They are just generally really hard to control.
They are very expensive to design and build. And once you build it, unlike with a 737, you can't transport 100s of people multiple times a day, nonono these things are slow, and picking up cargo is slow, and picking up people is insanely slow. So you can operate this thing for like a day, and maybe do a few cargo lifts. Not exactly a great business. Ah and btw, you also need to design a quasi unique aircraft with lots of fun failure modes and issues that you get to discover and rediscover. They are the opposite of high capacity. And you better hope the weather is good because your not picking up people if it isn't.
And scaling the operation? Your never gone mass produce these things and each one needs its own massive infrastructure. See what the government paid for in Germany, its now a ski resort: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargolifter-Luftschiffhalle
So have fun building a new gigantic building for each new craft.
So lets just do what we know works and has worked for 200 years, trains and ships.
And a train track, is way better for wildlife. Even if you run high frequency, most of the time the track is occupied or empty for a while.
Case and point, we have trains going threw mountains and all across everywhere. And the amount of wildlife being hit is vanishingly small. Animals turn out not to be stupid. Many small animals might even survive if they are on the track.
A single train line, can replace many car lanes.
The most dangerous animals for crashes are (a) human suicide (b) cows.
> 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).
This is just lack of imagination. Let me guess you are American?
You can easily have train tracks (ie trams) that connect trash collection points. And people can bring their garbage to those points with a simple cart. Just like people go shopping. At worst what you need minor trash collection points that then get moved to the major ones with tiny electric trucks.
And since the volume of such traffic is low, you can easily run that on something like bike lanes or simply in mixed traffic. And you can mostly do that in the night. This is how it already works for areas that are car-free. Its really not magic.
> Passenger trains also cannot be blocked by freight loading/unloading which means you need a separate road system.
No all you need is separate cargo stations or breakout lines. And that exists, and has existed in the past.
If a rail track is so occupied with passenger trains, then clearly there is enough demand for another line.
Most rail lines are not that occupied and can handle an occasional cargo train, you just don't run crazy large trains like in the US.
And bonus, each new rail line increases capacity far more then equivalent car line.
> but they still need to be frequent and that is rarely the case again pushing people to cars
Your argument does not make sense, bus and trains are the same. You have a 'lane' the lane has a certain capacity. For both you can decide on frequency. And on both you can instead run trucks or cargo trains. If capacity of 1 lane can't handle demand, you need another lane.
And individual car transport on one of those lanes, is by far the least efficient overall solution.
A lot of your points are literally just lack of imagination and lack of investment.
[1] https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/natuurbrug-zanderij-crai...
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.
Animals keep to the surface and bacteria keeps to the underground... problem solved.
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.
It's significant.
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.
I think I've read a book about this. Or ten.
> 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).
https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2021/11/18/red-crab-migrati...
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.
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.
Do you see coyotes running around hunting children often?
June 2024 coyote tries to enter a California home and attack a cat.
It happens.
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.