An occasional update on items from Motordom – the world of auto dominance
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MESSING WITH TEXAS
Unable to find funding to repair roads damaged by the booming oil industry traffic, Texas will convert asphalt roads to gravel. …
The sharp increase in heavy traffic from a historic oil boom has damaged many farm-to-market roads in South and East Texas. The damage related to energy development has become so extensive that state and local authorities lack the funding to make all the repairs.
The state’s 20-cent gas tax, 40th lowest in nation, hasn’t been raised since 1991. As for applying extra fees to energy companies whose trucks appear to be the major source of the road damage, they have “failed to gain traction”, Floyd writes.
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QUOTE (via Taras Grescoe)
“It’s easy to say… ‘cars cause sprawl.’ Actually they don’t. Roads do. And roads are a public decision, not a private one.”
—Alex Marshall
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THE MOTORDOM MIND IN ACTION
There is a pedestrian island on Shelly Beach Rd in Herne Bay which many school children use to cross to get to Ponsonby Primary School. It is very skinny and if you get a couple of kids with bikes and a mum with a buggy there is very little space. There is a steel frame around the island and it is often crashed into since cars often don’t slow down to 50km/h coming off the Shelly Beach off-ramp. …
Is there a plan to install lights here?
No. A spokesman for Auckland Transport says that this crossing has previously been assessed for upgrading to either a zebra crossing or traffic signals. The assessment showed that there were insufficient numbers of pedestrians crossing at this point to meet the necessary requirements for these types of crossings.
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ON Texas returning asphalt roads to gravel-I have just returned from building a playground and public space in Dinsmore, Saskatchewan. There the town council has lifted all the asphalt up and reverted to gravel roads within the town. There is less maintenance, no heaving of asphalt in winter, and the road is more sustainable in dealing with water runoff.