[geeks] electric cars

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

On Tue, 24 Oct 2006 11:46:51 -0500 (CDT)
Lionel Peterson <lionel4287 at verizon.net> wrote:

> >From: Charles Shannon Hendrix <shannon at widomaker.com>
> >Date: 2006/10/24 Tue AM 09:59:07 CDT
> >To: geeks at sunhelp.org
> >Subject: Re: [geeks] electric cars
> 
> <snip>
> 
> >One of the latest pork projects is the I81 route through the
> >mountains of Virginia.  We desperately need new rail lines there,
> >but there is a huge contract to build an 8-lane superhighway through
> >there.  It would be incredibly ugly, noisy, and ruin a lot of
> >scenery because of the generally stupid way we build highways.
> >
> >Meanwhile, a couple of rail lines is well known to carry about ten
> >times as much freight, which is the stated purpose of the 8-lane
> >highway.
> 
> 8 lanes of freight would be impressive "bandwidth" for freight, and
> would be hard to beat with rail service, even if it was 4 lanes in
> and 4 lanes out - 4 semi's wide and front to back is a lot of
> freight...

Yeah, that's a lot of trucks.  Of course, it never happens that way
and if it did happen, it would destroy the highway very quickly.

The general rule of thumb is that a single heavy freight truck is equal
to the road damage of 8700 passenger cars. That's the ratio used around
here to plan for road repairs.

The solution proposed by Halliburton/Star is to build a 12-lane wide
superhighway through the Shenendoah Valley and down through 325 miles
of Virginia.  It would feature a separate "truck superway" in the
middle lanes that would have truck stops also in the center.  It's a
really huge plan, $13 billion for initial funding I believe, and you
know that estimate will be low.

Keep in mind that Virginia already can't afford the highways it has.

The reason for this is because industry wants an east-coast bypass for
truck traffic.  Much of the traffic on I95 has been diverted to I81,
and now makes up 40% of I81 traffic, or about 30 thousand trucks per
day.

-- 
shannon "AT" widomaker.com -- [governorrhea: a contagious disease that
spreads from the governor of a state downward through other offices and
his corporate sponsors]