RE:
http://hnn.us/blogs/comments/41774.html#comment
Private Entities Have The Same Problems.
Well, the railroads are private entities, and they have
their share of assorted accidents and disasters. Of course, the
railroads mostly handle freight rather than
passengers, so most of their disasters are covered only in
the trade press. However, every now and then they have
a chemical spill, usually in a small town in North Carolina
or South Dakota, with as many as a dozen people killed. I suppose
the railroads' "perfect storm" would be if they were ever to have
a bad spill in Chicago. Chicago is the grand intersection of
the national railroad network, and a number of the through tracks
run through the densely populated area.
Private businessmen do not write off equipment or plant for
no better reason than that it is indefinitely hazardous. The
highway system is, broadly speaking, in at least as good
shape as the railroads. The usual railroader's complaint is
that the highwaymen have all this tax money to play with, and are
able to spend, spend, and spend. They build multi-lane
freeways across places like Montana, where there is
little traffic.
I don't know if you heard about the Sacramento Trestle
Fire back in March. Apparently, the wood trestle was
sufficiently heavily creosoted, as a result of years and years of
repainting, that it lit off more or less along its entire length
before the fire could be contained. At any rate, the Union Pacific
Railroad managed to put up a new concrete deck bridge in only two
weeks, and I don't imagine they did it by any extraordinary level
of efficiency. I suppose this means that the bridge
components have become sufficiently standardized that they could,
in effect, put up a kind of Bailey Bridge, out of components
diverted from some other project(s). Of course, this is for a
railroad bridge. Highway bridges would be a more difficult
proposition because you have a much wider range of grades,
curvatures, and load limits to account for.
http://www.kcra.com/news/11265140/detail.html
http://www.uprr.com/newsinfo/releases/community/2007/0403_thankyou.shtml
http://www.uprr.com/newsinfo/releases/graphics/2007/trestle_collagev2.jpg
I think the basic underlying problem is that large sectors of
ground transportation are in eclipse. No one is building new
improved routes, and tearing down the old ones because they are in
the way. In most cities, the outermost ring roads are
considerably newer than the downtown routes, but
in another ten years, _they_ will start to go critical.
Incidentally, an authentic roman road involved about the same
order of labor as building a railroad, which is why authentic
roman roads have managed to survive two thousand years. I am
pretty sure that the Placerville Road was not built to that
standard. Now, of course, Charles Dickens had some fun with
American commercial-civic boosterism in Martin
Chuzzlewit. In fact, based on surviving photographs and a
contemporary account, the Placerville Road seems to have
been little more than what we would call a dirt road.
http://home.pacbell.net/hywaymn/US-50_Introductory_Page.htm
Samuel Bowles, Across the Continent: A Summer's Journey to the
Rocky Mountains, the Mormons, and the Pacific..., 1865, Hurd
& Houghton. p. 267
http://books.google.com/books?id=-G7PwD3nFNAC&pg=PA267&lpg=PA267&dq=%22placerville+road%22+history+construction&source=web&ots=dDIhFQe6mJ&sig=ToqIco0VZmEU7wMiyWayXyKWpsc
