You see the cities in America started where there was a river and small populations sprung up, then the railroad steam engines needed a place to fill up the water. Eventually the towns got larger and grew near the rail stations. Then as people moved outward and behind the downtown areas they grew without regards to modern day planning methods, making increased surface transportation rather difficult.
Today master planned communities and larger city planners design the outlining areas with ring roads. Yet even with all these modern theories you still get the terms; Spaghetti Bowl, Mixing Bowl, Cluster Muck, by those who have to navigate such areas where major roads all come together. One little fender bender and the entire system breaks down. When cities are built around bodies of water a ring road theory or design fails because ring road concept serves the center, but in the center is only those fish. It will help the Marine Industry, but hurts the flows of civilization.
If you look at large cities near bays, the successful ones with transportation flows have concentric rings around the outside of the lake or bay. The traffic flows in Bay Cities is often ill conceived and causes problems with growth and makes for deplorable traffic conditions. Some cities have meandered traffic flows to make sure that all roads lead to the regional mall, auto mall and of course City Hall, in order to collect revenue from the sales tax as consumers buy products in their city. This was the big push in city strategy between the 1980's and 1990's and for the most part it worked but caused local traffic to go around such roads and thus caused other streets traffic issues, but the cities had the money they needed to build parks and maintain high levels of city services. In the 1990's a new fad started the older cities and even newer projects worked to build a downtown with tilt up prefabs like the project in Columbus, Ohio at the Limited Co. mall. These projects go on today in many cities trying to revitalize downtown and for the cities which work to bring people back to downtown and the flow into those areas which have experienced urban flight to "the burbs" it has come with hard fought eventual success. The Smart Growth debate will continue until far into the future, what is of importance is to not lose sight of the flows, which go into the proper growth. Here is a very relevant article which makes this point quite well;
http://www.tripnet.org/smartgrowth.htm .
Just like the song; The foot bone is connected to the leg bone, the leg bone is collected to the hip bone, the hip bone is connected to the?. In other words all roads are connected in some way to all other roads even if a ferry is in-between. All roads are connected to all bus stations and all railways connect and intersect to all roads. And all airports are connected to one another and to the ground transportation.
Ring roads and proper surface street infrastructures separate the good transportation flows from the bad ones. Some cites have done better than others in this regard, but one only has to look at places like San Francisco and the Bay area to see the problems. If you look at 101 and 280 on the West side of the bay you can see attempts at a solution with connecting highways, but they are far and few between. Even down lower in San Jose the last minute expressways are hard to navigate and were put in too late. East Bay is a complete disaster and you can see why BART was necessary.
There are many good examples of ring roads which have been done correctly for instance Houston, but when you add people so fast, even a well done system can be overloaded. Most of our major cities are now over loaded with cars and the roads are not handling the flow. And we keep making them and buying them, which is our choice as consumers. The problems are that we are not utilizing our transportation systems correctly, We have peak periods where no one can get anywhere and times when the streets are literally empty. Sometimes we find as cities grow improperly to service the region, we have severe cogs in the flow of transportation. Think on this.
"Lance Winslow" - If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs
Visual limits of the human brain and the visual processing... Read More
Whenever there's a drought, someone will come up with the... Read More
Many articles have been written about the negative effects of... Read More
From Quantum Black Holes to Neuromorphic Microchips Scientific American Magazine... Read More
I believe their is a way to have an on... Read More
I rarely hear about the role of the Heart or... Read More
There is something about the Hawkins clan that I like.... Read More
Presently mini-blimps are being deployed in government leadership buildings as... Read More
Albert Einstein had just administered an examination to an advanced... Read More
What happens if the world is faced with a Pandemic,... Read More
In a defensive move to eliminate communication of an enemy,... Read More
Like a lot of kids, my folks gave me a... Read More
So often when we see huge Natural Disasters there are... Read More
Want to learn a new language? Would you like to... Read More
We can genetically modify a rat to be the same... Read More
When looking for life on Mars we should be thinking... Read More
Recently scientists have discovered the hydrogen sulfide gas caused mice... Read More
Those who study chimpanzees are often amazed completely with the... Read More
Soon scientists will have scaled down robotic insects. This is... Read More
The U. S. economy is feeling the brunt of skyrocketing... Read More
Dowsing is definitely an intuitive art and one of the... Read More
Can we hibernate humans using hydrogen sulfide gas for long-term... Read More
We need very much to study meteorites more, but we... Read More
ICE AGES: - The impact of the ice ages and... Read More
Creating a Hurricane using a Space based laser array to... Read More
We are in a Plague year 2004-2005 where the locusts... Read More
Complex control systems all make use of signals that can... Read More
During the speach, Dr. Reg McDaniel talked about first seeing... Read More
Thought of the day. I talked to an old guy... Read More
TROJAN WORLD WAR: - Homer said there were nineteen battles... Read More
Let's describe this idea as a Self Generating a Tsunami-Perpetual... Read More
High Tension Power lines and transmission line towers make noise,... Read More
Aerodynamics of a flying sphere. It has been said that... Read More
Scientists have discovered chemicals, which cause humans to go into... Read More
There is a secret zoo that runs encaged along the... Read More
There maybe a way to use acoustic transducers to pin-point... Read More
Many believe it is possible to build an anti-gravity machines... Read More
Robots are for every one. Tech TV now host Battle... Read More
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles should be shot down from the air... Read More
Since its discovery 20 years ago, the use of DNA... Read More
The ancient history of of man and bees has been... Read More
Many Shamans will go into a sweat house to get... Read More
We propose single man underwater vehicles (attack submarines), which have... Read More
ATHENS - GREECE, -- An individual person called Basil Dimitropoulos,... Read More
High Tension Power lines and transmission line towers make noise,... Read More
We sure have come along way since the horse and... Read More
Those who study chimpanzees are often amazed completely with the... Read More
Recently some NASA Scientists were able to fly a MAV;... Read More
1. Air dry your laundry.2. Ask your utility companies for... Read More
A new report claims Water in plastic bottles could pose... Read More
ICE AGES: - The impact of the ice ages and... Read More
As you read this book you will have to suspend... Read More
Binoculars and telescopes and other astronomy equipment and accessories are... Read More
Travertine is a compacted form of limestone that forms in... Read More
Light Bulb ScienceEver wonder how a light bulb works? I... Read More
I believe it is possible to design a pilot-less hydro-electric... Read More
We propose a Stealth Aircraft or non-stealth composite aircraft to... Read More
A set up of harnessed Lithium Polymer Cells can be... Read More
I rarely hear about the role of the Heart or... Read More
Tsunami is a Japanese term that describes a large seismically... Read More
Eco-terrorists assume some how they are helping the environment, by... Read More
I believe a program can be written to scan text... Read More
There are some who would like to discuss why they... Read More
HOBBITS AND LICE:In late 2004 the media was all agog... Read More
Research Method:Quantitative determination by contrasting HBV-DNA of cases before and... Read More
Animation of personified reality is intriguing, memorable and interesting as... Read More
Science Articles |