Texas Super Highway

What was the coolest or biggest road you were on?

http://channels.netscape.com/ns/autos/package.jsp?name=autos/supersized_highways1
I like roads, I like trips, I like looking out the window and I am fasinated by the engineering of it all. This is why I wanted to become an Architect in the first lace: to become a urban designer!!!

http://channels.netscape.com/ns/autos/package.jsp?name=autos/supersized_highways1
So I read this story about how Texas is building this big super highway that is almost a quarter mile wide... width people! that is how wide it is.

Persoanally, I hope they actually don't have a 10 lane highway for it will cause accident to have 10 lanes to switch from. 2 lane highways might be annoying but they actually are faster because there is only 2 ways to go, slow lane or fast lane. 3 lane highways is a berret function of 2 lane but the accidents go up a little and so does traffic jams. 3 is the best of all worlds thoru because you have your off ramp and the other 2 lanes are for the fast lanes.



Anybody use the NJ Turnpike? There is a part that is real wide, but they seperated it into parts. I think 3 lanes on the inner part and 5 on the outer. I think that is a good idea. you get the 3 lane goodies and the 5 lane works when you just really need to hold more traffic (but not so much for speed)

So this 10 lane highway will get a train line too. I would put that in the middle so all the car drivers can see the train passing them.

LOL

2,110 views 8 replies
Reply #1 Top
160 Billion Dollar BOONDOGGLE. Vestiages of then Gov. G.W.Bush and Perry! 50 miles go quite literally nowhere! Besides as a DOT friend said to me "One wreck center lane with all the pipelines running the length of it and you'll fry half of Texas". Money uselessly spent to appease the Rich half of Texas, and provide Vicente Fox of Mexico a handsome payoff! Please, don't get me started!!!
Reply #2 Top
People of texas should look at Bostons Big Dig project to see how the politicians milked millions of dollars out of it and put it in their pockets before allowing this highway to go through.
Reply #3 Top
Joe, I hope I can sway you before you enter into a career with a skewed perception.
Architects design buildings/structures - Civil Engineers design your world. We build roads, bridges, sewers, drainage systems, parking lots, airports, canals, reservoirs, rairoads, etc. Architects do building design after I tell them how much of a site they have available for their footprint. After I make sure they can flush toilets, turn on the water tap, get electricity and won't flood during the next rainstorm.

Don't get me wrong some of my best friends are Architects and this is an friendly jab at them. They tend to be more artisitic than we are and more concerned with appearance. We design sewage treatment facilities and couldn't care less about how it looks as long as it is cost effective. An architect wouldn't care if it's cost effective as long as it looks good. I have to pop bubbles daily for people who thought once they got a building designed they could just go and build it. It doesn't work that way.
Reply #4 Top
The hospital that I work at (in houskeeping) built a new facility in 2000. I sat in on a couple of the prebuild sessions. The room where we dispose of garbage wasn't going to have any heat in it, which is not good in Wisconsin. It took me 20 miutes to convince them that since there were hose bibs and steam lines in the room that the lines would freeze in winter without heat. The lines still froze.

They also put in a garage door (to take big stuff outside) but the door to the room is standard size. Now after 5 years they are going to take out the garage door, to help keep heat in. Seems that us peons dont know jack (in their view) so why listen to them. Lots of mistakes were made by the designers.

And of course the closets for the housekeeping staff will be "big enough", yeah right, way too small! It's usually a good to listen to the people that have to work with or in whatever is designed.

Jeff


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Reply #5 Top

An Architect is a person who knows  a little bit about a great deal...and goes on to know less and less about more and more until he knows practically nothing about everything.

An Engineer is a person who knows a lot about very little and goes on to know more and more about less and less until he knows practically everything about nothing.

A client is always right.

Reply #6 Top
Old Crab, you must have heard of this before!!! I sounded like you were going to explode while typing.

Night Train, yeah I heard about the big dig and as much as I thought it was a good idea, it would seem that making it actually work was secondary

Developer Lantec, yeah I think I went for Architecture because I did like the art part more than the numbers. But there is a school for urban design that I really wanted to get into. Buildings are cool and I will always make my drawing and imaginative sketches but I am soooo into urban design.

But then I went to technology.




anyway, I just wonder how exactly are the going to handle the design of it all. How are they going to connect it to other highways. 10 lanes all together or 3 - 3- 4?
Reply #7 Top
Dosen't the LA area have 8 lane highways? And they are almost always congested?
Reply #8 Top
Jafo,

The client is always right and the change order invoices usually reflect just how right.