200 comments on DrumBeat: August 10, 2007
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
Show without comments | PDF version
200 comments on DrumBeat: August 10, 2007
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
Show without comments | PDF version
Search The Oil Drum with Google
Support The Oil Drum
Recently on TOD:World
TOD:Campfire
TOD:Europe
- Unique Times -- and the Future
- Peak Gold, Easier to Model than Peak Oil? - Part I
- Carbon Capture and Storage
TOD:Canada
- In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
- The Round-Up: October 24, 2008
- Compressed Air Energy Storage - How viable is it?
TOD:Australia/NZ
- The Bullroarer - Friday 27th November 2009
- International Energy Agency calls 'Peak' on OECD Oil Demand
- Australian Senate: Peak Oil motion defeated 31:6
TOD:Net Energy
Blogroll
Energy Sites
- The Coming Global Oil Crisis
- Die Off
- Dry Dipstick
- Energy Bulletin
- From the Wilderness
- Life After the Oil Crash
- Peak Oil Crisis
- Peak Oil News and Message Boards
- Powerswitch
- Rigzone
- Matthew Simmons
- Wolf at the Door
Environment & Sustainability Sites
- The Daily Green
- EcoGeek
- Eco Street
- Green Car Congress
- Green Options
- green.alltop.com
- Gristmill
- RealClimate
- Sustainablog
- Treehugger
- WorldChanging
Blogs
- Casaubon's Book
- Cleantech Blog
- Clusterf
k Nation (Jim Kunstler) - The Cost of Energy
- David Strahan
- Early Warning
- The Energy Blog
- European Tribune
- GraphOilology
- Health After Oil
- jeffvail.net
- Mobjectivist
- Peak Energy (Australia)
- Peak Energy (USA)
- R-Squared
- Resource Insights
Finance & Economics Blogs
- The Big Picture
- Calculated Risk
- The Crash Course
- Ecological Economics
- Econbrowser
- Environmental Economics
- Infectious Greed
- The Mess That Greenspan Made
- Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis
Organizations
Peak Oil Primers
Beware email scams!
Beware email scams claiming to be from this site. We do not have any job openings. If anyone contacts you about a job at The Oil Drum, do not reply to them, and definitely do not give them any personal information or send them money. Read more here.
“The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to a close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences…”
—Winston Churchill, November 1936
User login
Contact
- Content: editors at theoildrum dot com
- Tech support: support at theoildrum dot com
Personnel
- Editors: Nate Hagens, Gail the Actuary, Prof. Goose
- DrumBeat Editor: Leanan
- Contributors: ace, Engineer-Poet, Heading Out, jeffvail, JoulesBurn, Sam Foucher, Robert Rapier
- TOD:Campfire: Glenn, Jason Bradford
- TOD:Europe: Chris Vernon, Euan Mearns, Francois Cellier, Jerome a Paris, Luís de Sousa, Rembrandt, Rune Likvern, Ugo Bardi
- TOD:Canada: benk, Libelle
- TOD:ANZ: Big Gav, Phil Hart, aeldric
- Emeritus: Stuart Staniford
- Technician: Super G
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
GAIA Host Collective
Roads (and what goes on 'em) is a big part of what gets hashed over and over.
Here's a datum point (via http://www.urbansurvival.com/week.htm)
I was in the
highway construction industry(small business owner, subcontractor) since ****. My children took over the company in ****. They've got over $**mil in contracts, but the bank is forcing them out of business (cancelling line of credit, calling in the loan). So, obviously personally distressing circumstances; only one part of the picture though........The larger story just unfolded.
They informed me this afternoon (Thurs) that for the first time in the history of this company, there is no more work in about 6 weeks time. Not only for them, but the big general contractors (their customers) have been giving them "chatty" type phone calls---also a 'first'.They've been trying to find out if my offspring, or anyone else connected with the industry, has work coming up. The huge general contractors in highway construction have NO jobs starting this fall! This shocking news brought 'home' the state of the economy as nothing else did.FWIW...in the northern part of the country, almost nobody ever has any jobs in the fall. :)
If it's too cold, asphalt and concrete don't set right. So they close the asphalt plants for the winter. (On different dates, depending on the climate. Usually close in Nov. and open in April around here.) For big but contained projects, like pile driving, they sometimes set up heated tents and work in winter.
For the most part, though, not much construction of any kind goes on when it's cold. A lot of the construction workers work only 6-8 months of the year. During winter, they'll go to Florida and bartend or something.
Also there is hunting season, which kills some time in the fall. Even in my old PA firm, drafters took off for Buck Day, Doe Day, Bow Day, etc.
Contractors really like to line up "winter work," meaning renovation projects that can be done indoors.
Five bidders for the replacement of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis, this is considered a high number. A fast track hopes to have the bridge completed in 2008.
The idea of actually rebuilding this bridge - tells me there are none in the decision-machine who know of the impending possibility of peak-oil.
If this bridge had collapsed in say 2020, they wouldn’t even bothered to remove the rubble due to priority issues … and also because there are several bridges nearby serving the immediate purpose.
I'm hoping that they finish repaving everything on the same day the oil runs out. I'm tired of biking on the side of tiny roads ever dodging beer bottles being thrown at me from redneck pickups.
I'm sure they'll still throw stuff at us, but it's hard to get a real good throw out the side of a Think Smart Car.
Keep building those roads as long as they can!!!
WTF is it that makes people in cars/trucks decide to throw things at pedestrians and bikers? Is it because they know that they can't be caught up to?
~Durandal (http://www.wtdwtshtf.com/)
I hope this isn't a reason they do, but more a lack of a reason not to. They're total expletives for throwing things, but I'd really hate to believe they do it only because they can't be confronted about it. They may well believe (explicitly and consciously) that roads are intended only for motor vehicles so pedestrians and cyclists are tresspassing.
Note that dangerous ignorance occurs in cyclists as well: I once encountered a cyclist who firmly believed that he had "the same [rights] as a pedestrian" (if so I wonder why he signalled his turns) - he'd just nearly caused a collision by making a (signalled) turn across traffic while ignoring a stop sign(!) for his direction. Such negligence angers compentent users of the roads, and helps link "non-motorist road user" to "danger to self and others" in the eyes of the motorist.
These don't excuse the throwing of stuff, however I wanted to explore some potential reasons for a strong negative response to non-motorists - strong emotions cloud judgement, as in road rage.
When people tell me they need to commute in a truck for "intimidation value", I tell them I need to cycle carrying an RPG for intimidation value, but the government won't let me buy one.
And this is why I bought a decent knobby-tired mountain bike last year. After the roads and sidewalks crumble from neglect and trash accumulates, I can still navigate over the debris and off-road if necessary. Mountain bikes will also be better for heavier duty transport than a road bike.
You don't understand how corrupt the US is.
Here is a bridge that collapsed while under construction. The contractor had prior issues of this nature, and yet he is allowed to investigate himself.
Still wonder how many in government get paid off?
http://www.azcentral.com/community/mesa/articles/0809mr-collapse0810.html
In French speaking Switzerland (south-west) we are having a mini construction boom, for dwellings, public works, roads, etc. Why? Because the winter was so hot, construction never stopped. For the first time ever. Cos. just carried on, then went onto the next scheduled thing, etc. This hyper activity has woken up the pols. from their lethargy (they sat down and figured out some new rules or started to take action on points that should have been tackled long ago) and financiers, who see completed projects (etc.)., the public, who feels there is less hassle and shorter times, thus more financial security or predictability, etc.
Of course, all this churning is because it is ‘affordable.’ For the moment. Still the effect has been spectacular.
Yes, I can hardly wait for the massive 8.1-8.4 earthquakes to strike Indonesia, just as Mr. Urban Survival predicted with their predictive linguistic SQL models. *rolls eyes*. And people wonder why we are clumped in with the eccentric?
Lets see:
The other answers to the parent were actual observations about roads.
Yours was to make comments about the author.
Instead of being a 'partying guy' - please try actually rebutting the point about road building based on weather, or examples of building projects.
Which, of course, is why the Maine Turnpike Authority wants to spend at least $5B [close to the annual budget for entire state] to expand the turnpike through Portland. Like the O'Conner bridge in Augusta or the DiCenzo bridge in Calais, it's transferring money from the public into the private pockets or do they really think this is merely the "price of progress"? Are they thinking "get your projects in while you can any way you can" or have they reached the point where they figure rigging the political system is merely the standard means to ends? Maybe the industry doesn't connect to peak oil and diminishing returns, maybe they do, maybe looting is merely the best way to maximize return in the current paradigm.
Anything to keep the current paradigm going.
cfm in Gray, ME