The audio above is Andres Duany at this last weeks CNU Transportation Networks Summit. Now I don't agree with everything Andres says. A lot of times he drives me nuts when it comes to transit modes like streetcars because he'll go into a city and say something completely crazy like limiting streetcar distance or density before transit which are things I haven't agreed with. But in this instance he makes a lot of sense.
I often wonder if we're over engineering our light rail and streetcar lines as to render them so expensive that the BRT folks swoop in and say cheaper is better. The first lines we built in this country were on shoestring budgets with off the shelf vehicles and know how from folks that operated streetcars that were discontinued. As we get further away from that knowledge base, we continue to gold plate systems using super heavy catenary that is aesthetically displeasing and have been perhaps over lawyer-ed. But the technology remains basically the same, just as the automobile and we've lost a lot of that knowledge.
What Andres talks about in losing knowledge of how to build roads is seen in our cities where cars go too fast and road diets are often the new buzz word. What the engineer knows comes from the engineering manuals. Yet there is years of knowledge out there and best examples in our cities and existing rail lines that we can learn from. The clip is about 4 minutes. I cut out the part I thought was interesting from the 30 minute talk. So enjoy. I hope to do more of these audio things now that I have a recorder.
I often wonder if we're over engineering our light rail and streetcar lines as to render them so expensive that the BRT folks swoop in and say cheaper is better. The first lines we built in this country were on shoestring budgets with off the shelf vehicles and know how from folks that operated streetcars that were discontinued. As we get further away from that knowledge base, we continue to gold plate systems using super heavy catenary that is aesthetically displeasing and have been perhaps over lawyer-ed. But the technology remains basically the same, just as the automobile and we've lost a lot of that knowledge.
What Andres talks about in losing knowledge of how to build roads is seen in our cities where cars go too fast and road diets are often the new buzz word. What the engineer knows comes from the engineering manuals. Yet there is years of knowledge out there and best examples in our cities and existing rail lines that we can learn from. The clip is about 4 minutes. I cut out the part I thought was interesting from the 30 minute talk. So enjoy. I hope to do more of these audio things now that I have a recorder.
