Sunday, January 4, 2009

Who Knew...

bricks were so much trouble? A lot of what I have seen in this area is concrete that is pressed to look like bricks. Is it also possible that there is a spray that could keep the friction coefficient higher on these bricks while also allowing them to look the same? Here are a few of my own pictures of good looking but perhaps troublesome brick streets.

Prague:

Prague_Paving Stones2

Prague_Paving Stones

Prague_Old Town Square5

Vienna Woonerf

Vienna_Wunurf4

Vienna_Wunerf8

Vienna_Wunerf7

Budapest Pavers

Budapest_Walk2

Budapest_OperaBudapest_Wear_Tear

Why does this matter for transit? Well transit users are pedestrians before and after they use the train. It's important to focus on the complete movement from place to place.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Bricks and pavers can be slippery, but they are attractive and also inexpensive to install/repair/replace. They have the side effect of making driving on them difficult.

crzwdjk said...

There's a huge difference between bricks and stone blocks. While the stone blocks are pretty expensive to install, they last pretty much forever. Bricks, especially modern bricks not explicitly designed for paving use, do not. Also, this has some direct effect on rail transit, at least of the street-running variety: rails embedded in asphalt tend to destory that asphalt quite quickly, while those in brick, concrete, and stone pavers do not.

BruceMcF said...

Concrete and stone pavers, if suitably textured on top, are not the sidewalks-skating material that bricks are.

Far better to have brick-colored, brick-textured concrete tile than actual bricks. Also, since the individual pieces are bigger, the problem with individual bricks shifting is substantially reduces, there is much less labor required to moving a piece of sidewalk / level crossing / cycleway to access utilities, and the replacement after the utility has been accessed is far more likely to fit into the surrounding.

Now all we have to do is to get sustainable power for the concrete kilns.