Spatula

missed this post, sorry I would guess it's a matter of marginal benefits. The EU already has major rail infrastructure, and with current technology high speed rail is nearly as fast as maglev. It might take additional advancements before maglev is strong enough to compete in areas with very well developed rail systems. In China, which is currently expanding its rail infrastructure at a colossal rate, maglev is being incorporated into the plan in several areas.

Seems like the only real alternative is to make the tracks completely subterranean. Otherwise they're too disruptive to the connectivity of downtown. (or completely elevated, whichever one is easier to engineer.) I'm of the opinion that Jones is the most important connection there, and I'd be willing to lose anything else in order to keep it. I'd also point out that one business will have to relocate because its entrance is directly over the tracks. This building happens to sit directly over a closed street (Lane st), which could be reopened as a bridge if the grade were lowered to protect Jones, or it could be connected to West underneath the tracks if we ditched Jones to protect West. Either way, it does appear we could gain a street connection because of this, so it's not entirely a bad thing that we have to separate the grades for all these streets.

The best part about Maglev is that while it costs more to build initially than high-speed rail, it costs less to operate. There's no wear and tear on the tracks, no moving parts on the train that wear out. So eventually it pays off.

Note that we have batteries that charge in 10 minutes, run 250 miles, and last 40 years. They just cost $70,000. It still won't go as far as a conventional car, but it's a small enough sacrifice in comfort that it won't matter. All we're waiting for now is a drop in price. Once these things are manufactured on a wide scale, that will happen. The electric car is an inevitability. The plane's future is more uncertain. You can have electric turboprop planes, but in order to get the speed of a commercial jet with a propeller, it has to spin very fast and very uncomfortably loud. Chemical propulsion will always be more convenient in that regard, so the best thing to do is find a formula that does no environmental damage. Hydrogen jets pretty much would require nuclear power plants near every airport. That may unfortunately be the price we have to pay to maintain a lifestyle with fast long-distance travel. Maglev could theoretically travel 600 km/h, which would put it ahead of most passenger planes. I'm up for that, but we would have to build it in the first place, which is a long way off.

http://www.businessgreen.com/business-gree...n-jet-designers The technology to replace the oil in jet engines exists. Hydrogen is not seen as a viable solution for cars because of the inefficiency of electrolysis. Planes are not about efficiency though. They're about paying a premium to go fast. So it could work. The main problem is the rest of the energy and transportation network. Unless those no longer consume fossil fuels as well, these could actually be worse if implemented into the current system. So a lot needs to happen at the same time.

What is the deal with the 3rd runway jutting perpendicularly into Umstead state park? Seems like if they had the rights to that, they could use that for takeoffs and the other two for landings.

We have 2-3 inches in Raleigh. Nobody's posting any photos though. Hopefully they'll get around to it.

It's interesting, as a current state student, trying to spot all the buildings that are missing. Bostian Clark Labs Fox Labs Talley Price Stewart Whitherspoon the Library Fountain Poe Kamphoefner Most of Carmichael Gym the Health Center I also think it's pretty funny that Caldwell was built after Thompkins and Winston, linking the two into a single giant building.

Cranes do naturally lean, but that one is leaning a lot more than normal. We've had several tower cranes of the same model as that one, and none of them were as lopsided. When it's unloaded, the boom tilts to compensate; the tower should not be tilting nearly that much. They need to replace it before it collapses.

In the last post you talked about ending the tax and not the incentives, I recall. Just so you know, you can have one without the other. They're not tied to each other. I'd point out again that our total tax burden is nothing spectacular. Contrary to what you might've said earlier, the incentives cancel out very little. Even with the taxes it's substantially cheaper to live and do business here than in a lot of states. So you could presumably reduce the incentives without changing taxes at all.

What really matters is the total amount of tax revenue the state gets, which is a combination of all taxes, and in that regard our taxes are not spectacular. Those corporate income taxes would have to be replaced with another tax for the state to continue balancing its budget.

http://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF8&oe...p;z=18&om=1 The corner between fairview and whitaker mill could really use some redevelopment. I like having some of the shops there, but the whole complex could've been built better. It's a blotch on the urbanity the rest of the area seems to evoke.

Is that an exponential curve or a linear one? I highly doubt we'll get a 30 floor, some 20s, and a lot of 10s, every few years when Raleigh's population is close to Charlotte's current population. By then we'll be catching bigger fish in larger numbers.

The capital boulevard area could use some gentrification. If some roads were redirected, and a good chunk of the strip leading out from 440 were replaced with upscale developments, this would be a very solid midtown project. Crabtree floods too much. There shouldn't be any commercial property relying on land in a floodplain. What would be the feasibility of sacrificing land to build a reservoir in the area? Yeah I know, another dumpy lake in North Raleigh, this could be constructed as more of a commercial corridor though. Something like the riverwalk in San Antonio, but a bit deeper.

Levelling Kidds Hill really pisses me off. It's the only thing in that area that isn't butt ugly. I try to just block north raleigh out of my mind. It's never going to have urban development that doesn't come off as a beige, sterile, new-urban gimmick.

Winston Salem: http://www.urbanplanet.org/forums/index.ph...st&p=759854 Greensboro: http://www.urbanplanet.org/forums/index.ph...st&p=752858 The Triad cities are larger than many people give them credit for. Greensboro -> Birmingham and Winston-Salem -> Louisville are pretty reasonable predictions, probably conservative to some extent. This is 25 freakin' years we're talking about.

Indeed. Mean says nothing except that the executives get to snort much higher quality cocaine off of much more attractive prostitutes' asses than your average business owner. Median is a much more useful statistic for practically everything involving money.

I loathe red states, and I think Charlotte's alright.

Doesn't lead to. Has to be planned with a two-level retail environment in mind for it to work. Denver is the only example I know of where this has been tried.

I think overhead walkways could be a boon to street level activity if they simply had stairs/elevators connecting to the sidewalks. It should be possible to design a 3-dimensional urban market. It should ultimately be the ideal design for buildings: modular floors up to a certain height, that can be outfitted with retail and connected to other floors/other buildings/the street. This would only successfully happen in areas with massive density though. Raleigh is lucky to even get retail on the first floor.

This looks good. I can definitely get behind this.

You can have two lane roundabouts. The right lane just becomes right only. My diagram was a 2-lane roundabout, both ways.

I think they're doing the roundabouts wrong. They're not real roundabouts, but really just moguls in the street almost. THIS is what a roundabout on Hillsborough should look like. This simplifies Watauga Club, Hillsborough, and Pullen into one intersection around the bell tower. This eliminates two irritating intersections, and makes a left turn from Pullen to Hillsborough possible. The size of the roundabout also allows for two-lane traffic either way. The turns are also large enough to allow firetrucks and other service vehicles through. I would be okay with something like this, combined with a 25 mph max speed limit, and keeping traffic signals on the other intersections. This seems like the area on Hillsborough that genuinely needs a circle, and has plenty room to provide it without encroaching on university or business buildings.

We should be using Franklin Street as a model. It's large; it carries a lot of traffic on five lanes, but the low speed limits and good sidewalk designs allow the pedestrians and drivers to coexist pretty well.

I'm fine with having a big park, but it has to be pretty special. This isn't just going to be trees and stuff. This would be Raleigh's flagship urban park. A ferris wheel and some retail establishments are practically mandated.