China opens 11,000km of Motorway
Discussion
Art0ir said:
I believe, Netherlands also banned HGVs using the overtaking lanes on their motorways and that alone contributed to a significant reduction in congestion.
They do this in Germany too on certain sections of road.Plus,there is a very sensible, neat lane ,marking near junctions which 'advises' people not to cut back into lane 1 from lane 2 when passing the entry slip road, which seems a chepa but emminently sensible way of reducing accidents.
jbi said:
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2012-09/20/cont...
4 trucks loaded with lime and collectively weighing 480 metric tons on a single section of elevated highway tipped the whole structure on it's side.
another example, a truck loaded with 110 tons of sand collapsed another bridge
http://rt.com/news/china-truck-bridge-collapse-fin...
Ah yes, the bridge collapse in Harbin. Not an area I have been to so have to concede that there could well be trucks operating at that weight, but an accident I had heard about. 4 trucks loaded with lime and collectively weighing 480 metric tons on a single section of elevated highway tipped the whole structure on it's side.
another example, a truck loaded with 110 tons of sand collapsed another bridge
http://rt.com/news/china-truck-bridge-collapse-fin...
You link to an article from China Daily (or the Daily Lie as it is affectionately known) and unsurprisingly it presents events in a “nothing to see here” manner.
At fault were those that illegally modified the trucks, those that drove the illegally modified trucks and those at the toll booth that allowed the illegally modified trucks onto the road. The culprits (who, in case you missed it, were doing something “Illegal”) have been duly fined and that’s that. Case closed. Move along please. Your second article shows the same rigorous investigation process brilliantly, reporting that one driver of a 100+T truck has been fined $25 million for his misdemeanour. Case closed. Move along.
Naughty illegal people.
Yet, it seems perfectly OK for the Daily Lie to report that the bridge in question was tested by driving 7 x 30 tonne trucks over it (I would imagine therefore that 30T is the max legal weight for trucks in Harbin, but wouldn’t bet much on that!), therefore deeming it OK to be commissioned.
In a country where roads are populated by trucks that are routinely “overloaded”, not to mention the sheer volume of vehicles on the roads, is it really inconceivable that enough trucks to exceed a gross weight of more than 210T may be on that stretch of road at any time? Whilst I have never knowingly seen trucks that were carrying over 100T, I have often seen dozens of vehicles of far greater than 30T gross running nose to tail for mile upon mile, so who’s at fault there?
And all that is said assuming the bridges are built to spec in the first place. Even by China Daily std’s, managing to report on a bridge collapse without mentioning the words corruption or embezzlement is pretty impressive.
But it’s OK, because as they say, since 2007, only 37 bridges have collapsed killing a mere 180-odd people (so estimate it’s probably at least double that!) and I am sure that any reports of collapsed concrete supports that were either hollow or filled with scrap metal / wood / rubble are entirely false and furthermore there is no need whatsoever to either investigate thoroughly what went wrong, or change design specs of anything.
China is achieving amazing growth in it’s infrastructure (and is a fantastic country to spend time in), but it is doing so primarily because it is a physically enormous country with so much undeveloped land to cover and secondly because it is going through the same industrialisation process the West did many decades ago whilst working to very different standards of construction to our own. That makes these types of comparisons between UK and China irrelevant.
Better to compare the longevity of that same infrastructure in 50 years time IMO.
trashbat said:
"Mr. President, we must not allow a motorway gap!"
The UK has suffered from thirty odd years of anti-road government (the 'green' issues were IMHO, just a convenient excuse not to invest, but waste money elsewhere) and only now are (some) people beginning to realise that a.) not all journeys can, or ever will be made on public transport and b.) a growing economy and population requires onfrastructure investment.
It is generally only the institutionalised that believe all journeys are unifrom and planned months in advance. The rest of us in the real world know the randomness of transport requirements and that, in many cases, road vehicles are the only answer.
It's not just a shame that the motorways are so reuglarly grinding to a halt, wasting billions of the country's GDP, it's also ironic, given how horrendously inefficient shunting, crawling vehicles are, that this is partly a result of 'green' mania.
Digga said:
Roads in general, and motorways move goods, people and services, which is what keeps the economy growing.
Part of what keeps the economy growing.Digga said:
The UK has suffered from thirty odd years of anti-road government (the 'green' issues were IMHO, just a convenient excuse not to invest, but waste money elsewhere) and only now are (some) people beginning to realise that a.) not all journeys can, or ever will be made on public transport and b.) a growing economy and population requires onfrastructure investment.
It's legitimate to try and reduce the reliance on road transport, even if there is no cure-all. It's legitimate to try and reduce the destruction of the environment too. IMO it's also legitimate, although unpopular, to discourage unnecessary journeys by making road travel less palatable. Personally I'm glad that we stopped flattening swathes of the countryside and think that largely we still have the balance right.Length of motorway is not a measure of economic prowess or progress, and certainly not one to be proud of. It's no more a valid benchmark than horse and carriage count or reduction in number of highwaymen. If you could start infrastructure planning anew, Sim City god style, you would surely agree that there are better ways to complete or eliminate many of the journeys presently carried out by road.
trashbat said:
t's legitimate to try and reduce the reliance on road transport, even if there is no cure-all. It's legitimate to try and reduce the destruction of the environment too. IMO it's also legitimate, although unpopular, to discourage unnecessary journeys by making road travel less palatable. Personally I'm glad that we stopped flattening swathes of the countryside and think that largely we still have the balance right.
The dutch already tried that... it failed.They are now comprehensively increasing their motorway network, despite it being twice as dense as the UK's per head and even more per square km of land.
As a result, along with some other initiatives, congestion is now falling in the Netherlands as I previously pointed out.
We have some of the worst congestion in western Europe and one of the lowest motorway's densities... is that the right balance?
The UK has more or less halted motorway construction for quite some time, leaving the network largely disjointed and incomplete while dumping huge sums of money into public transport.
Has congestion in the UK gotten any better?
Edited by jbi on Thursday 3rd January 11:31
jbi said:
trashbat said:
t's legitimate to try and reduce the reliance on road transport, even if there is no cure-all. It's legitimate to try and reduce the destruction of the environment too. IMO it's also legitimate, although unpopular, to discourage unnecessary journeys by making road travel less palatable. Personally I'm glad that we stopped flattening swathes of the countryside and think that largely we still have the balance right.
The dutch already tried that... it failed.They are now comprehensively increasing their motorway network, despite it being twice as dense as the UK's per head and even more per square km of land.
As a result, along with some other initiatives, congestion is now falling in the Netherlands as I previously pointed out.
We have some of the worst congestion in western Europe and one of the lowest motorway's densities... is that the right balance?
The UK has more or less halted motorway construction for quite some time, leaving the network largely disjointed and incomplete while dumping huge sums of money into public transport.
Has congestion in the UK gotten any better?
Edited by jbi on Thursday 3rd January 11:31
JDRoest said:
That's not the point, it's not how we represent our motorways but how other countries represent their motorways. Italy happily classifies some real crap dual carriageways as motorways (that don't even have shoulders!). Switzerland has barely a barrier to seperate the two lanes motorway that I can think of, and Germany has built all its dual carriageways as Autobahns, that are barely any different to parts of the A303 (or the A9 in Scotland iirc).
Whilst I dont disagree large sections of French, Italian and Spanish motorways, in my experience, are little more than what we'd call a dual carriageway. You have to appreciate the underlying argument here is the adequacy of the network to support our country's needs.The A9 is woefully inadequate and costs the north of Scotland economically and costs the whole of Scotland in terms of lives lost. Properly dualling or motorway upgrading the road would save lives and stimulate business in the north.
Similarly, the "upgraded" M8, which is just a glorified dual carriageway in sections is frankly crap given the time it took to complete the work and cost involved.
The M80 extension is a nice piece of road, prior to that getting rid of the Auchenkilns roundabout solved a lot of problems around Cumbernauld. Now its as bad as ever though as piss poor planning took the new M80 upgrade, merged it with the M73 and didnt upgrade the section upstream.
I live in the west of Scotland and work in the east. I hear all the time, "I dont know how you can put up with that drive every day?" and "I'd never consider working in Glasgow, couldnt hack the M8 every day". Its pistonheads so I'm sure some clever dick will have an argument with me, but as I see it, the ability of businesses to staff themselves with the best people is stifled by this.
Rail links are inadequate for people outside the city centre areas, as soon as you start trying to add connecting trains or busses things get ridiculous. Busses are moderately better but impacted by the problems car users face on the road network and far less convenient in their timetabling.
Thats me talking Glasgow to Edinburgh, the two largest cities, try Glasgow to Dunfermline by public transport.
0000 said:
If there are, I'm not aware of them. What did you have in mind?
Really? You can't imagine any better way to do anything, given a blank canvas and dominion over everything?Fine. Rail is a far more efficient way to transport bulk freight than the equivalent number of separate HGVs. The key problem is that you can't put rail to everywhere the freight needs to go, which is not one single place, so you need multi-modal local transport. There are efficient ways to do this, and they are easier if starting from scratch, but it doesn't mean they're not achievable now.
Even more obviously, some journeys could be eliminated by moving the start or end points; for freight, where a manufacturer is located, where it is imported/exported, or where it is consumed. Sometimes this is a case of the existing, flawed transport links being better suited, and would not remain the case if you did it better next time.
trashbat said:
Length of motorway is not a measure of economic prowess or progress...
To use your own petard, it is undeniably a measure.Let's just list a few of the journeys that are being made by road today and every day:
- maintenance/emergency breakdown engineers and technicians (inc. electricians & technicians)
- bankers meeting clients
- tax investigators swooping on businesses and individuals
- builders going to dig holes in the road or footings on building sites etc.
- business consultants
- sales reps
- insurance advisers
- couriers
So we need some more roads, pronto.
And I'd certainly agree that other mass and public transport is also needed and that improvements in that part of the infrastructure will help reudece demand for roads too, but I don;t think that's the debate the UK's been having over the last few decades.
0000 said:
Sounds like tweaking the existing model around the edges rather than anything that needs a blank canvas or precludes road journeys to me.
Which is what I said in the first place: no cure-all. You can't get rid of road travel for individual people or consignments of freight. You probably can't even get rid of anything more than a slice. You can certainly do things to reduce it though without building more roads.Digga said:
To use your own petard, it is undeniably a measure.
Not really. How many motorways does central London have? Is that a measure of its economic success, or is it wholly unrelated?Digga said:
Let's just list a few of the journeys that are being made by road today and every day:
About half of the items in your list used to exist without inherently long distance travel, because they were performed more locally. In part, the existence of a large and typically high quality road network has facilitated scenarios where many people commute hundreds of miles each day, which both in the past and elsewhere today would be thought of as madness.- maintenance/emergency breakdown engineers and technicians (inc. electricians & technicians)
- bankers meeting clients
- tax investigators swooping on businesses and individuals
- builders going to dig holes in the road or footings on building sites etc.
- business consultants
- sales reps
- insurance advisers
- couriers
trashbat said:
How many motorways does central London have? Is that a measure of its economic success, or is it wholly unrelated?
You've revealled yourself with that utterly ludicrous comment. There will always be extremes, but in general it is no more relevant than the very low level of economic success of the area immediately beneath the Gravelly Hill interchange.You'll be telling me to commute on the tube next. I'm not going to waste time debating with a flat-earther.
Edited by Digga on Thursday 3rd January 12:54
Digga said:
ou;ve revealled yourself with that utterly ludicrous comment. There will always be extremes, but in general it is no more relevant than the very low level of economic success of the area immediately beneath the Gravelly Hill interchange.
You'll be telling me to commute on the tube next. I'm not going to waste time debating with a flat-earther.
Yet countless millions of people living and working in metropolises all around the world go about their business without dependence on the car or motorway. Each one of them is a person not placing a demand for personal travel on the motorway network; ergo it is a means of significantly reducing motorway traffic, ergo it significantly reduces the need for motorways without affecting economic success.You'll be telling me to commute on the tube next. I'm not going to waste time debating with a flat-earther.
If you made more of people's needs local, you wouldn't need so many high capacity motorways. If everyone lived in very densely populated urban areas with high capacity transport, you wouldn't need any at all. There's nothing ludicrous about it. It would be a polar extreme, and is never going to happen, but it is possible to move towards such a thing.
To upset you again: how many transatlantic motorways are there?
Edited by trashbat on Thursday 3rd January 13:02
trashbat said:
0000 said:
Sounds like tweaking the existing model around the edges rather than anything that needs a blank canvas or precludes road journeys to me.
Which is what I said in the first place: no cure-all. You can't get rid of road travel for individual people or consignments of freight. You probably can't even get rid of anything more than a slice. You can certainly do things to reduce it though without building more roads.trashbat said:
If you could start infrastructure planning anew, Sim City god style, you would surely agree that there are better ways to complete or eliminate many of the journeys presently carried out by road.
I still don't see that you can.trashbat said:
eally? You can't imagine any better way to do anything, given a blank canvas and dominion over everything?
Fine. Rail is a far more efficient way to transport bulk freight than the equivalent number of separate HGVs. The key problem is that you can't put rail to everywhere the freight needs to go, which is not one single place, so you need multi-modal local transport. There are efficient ways to do this, and they are easier if starting from scratch, but it doesn't mean they're not achievable now.
Even more obviously, some journeys could be eliminated by moving the start or end points; for freight, where a manufacturer is located, where it is imported/exported, or where it is consumed. Sometimes this is a case of the existing, flawed transport links being better suited, and would not remain the case if you did it better next time.
I wondered when someone would mention freight. There are two flaws with the rail freight model, one is that, as said, you still need trucks to shift stuff from depots to where it's needed, bearing in mind that most of the goods carried by road are destined for shops or consumer delivery. The other is that taking trucks off the road will only have a minimal effect on congestion, due simply to the massive disparity in numbers of cars compared to trucks.Fine. Rail is a far more efficient way to transport bulk freight than the equivalent number of separate HGVs. The key problem is that you can't put rail to everywhere the freight needs to go, which is not one single place, so you need multi-modal local transport. There are efficient ways to do this, and they are easier if starting from scratch, but it doesn't mean they're not achievable now.
Even more obviously, some journeys could be eliminated by moving the start or end points; for freight, where a manufacturer is located, where it is imported/exported, or where it is consumed. Sometimes this is a case of the existing, flawed transport links being better suited, and would not remain the case if you did it better next time.
No, and this is my view not a fact, railways are better suited to passenger movement, if for no other reason than passengers can load and unload themselves pretty quickly, and a single train can carry hundreds, if not thousands of people, all of whom would probably be on their own in a car.
What would be worth looking into, and whenever this gets suggested it gets ignored, is to have a rail network (assuming we're either starting again, or making massive changes to the network) that can combine car journeys with rail. As in, your car can be driven into a carriage, Channel Tunnel style, carried by train between cities (or whatever destination you're heading to), then driven off at the other end.
This gives the user the flexibility of the car, but with the potential transiting speeds of a train and without the stress of driving (so you could do some work, read a book, sleep etc).
It'd also have a better effect on motorway congestion by removing a significant chunk of cars off the network, also considering that most cars have only a single occupant most of the time.
0000 said:
Well, you said
Why not? If you did rail properly rather than upgrading legacy 19th century infrastructure, a lot of HGVs would be gone or their journeys reduced to the sections that rail didn't reach (better ways to complete). Ditto public transport and non-car travel. If you then placed people near work and leisure and incentivised localism then the number (elimination) and total distance of journeys would again be reduced.trashbat said:
If you could start infrastructure planning anew, Sim City god style, you would surely agree that there are better ways to complete or eliminate many of the journeys presently carried out by road.
I still don't see that you can.Don't get me wrong: this is undoubtedly full on, deity-like meddling that doesn't have a literal application now that we are stuck as we are, but I do think it would do what I claimed.
Super Slo Mo said:
I wondered when someone would mention freight. There are two flaws with the rail freight model, one is that, as said, you still need trucks to shift stuff from depots to where it's needed, bearing in mind that most of the goods carried by road are destined for shops or consumer delivery. The other is that taking trucks off the road will only have a minimal effect on congestion, due simply to the massive disparity in numbers of cars compared to trucks.
Someone fairly recently (Tesco? or maybe Stobart?) experimented with moving their backbone from road to rail, using railheads and local transit via road. It didn't work for them and was abandoned, but the fact that it was ever considered viable suggests that it is achievable.I think the momentum of the existing road-oriented configuration is a deterrent for a start. If you standardised and modularised everything all along the chain then it might be a lot more attractive. Shipping containers already do this and work well until they get too local; in a different context, airborne baggage routing is another logistical problem that we are pretty good at. However the costs to get there would probably be enormous.
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