The main tank, brimful with ideas. Enjoy them, discuss them, take them. - Of course, this is also the #1 place for new submissions!
By ratnakar
#2842
Potholes and patches are a nuisance to commuters, they damage cars and cost the government lots of money to repair. Repair works is also time consuming. My idea is for covering these potholes and bad roads with temporary substitutes such as a matting made of skid proof hard rubber which can be made up of small units for the various sizes and attached like peices of Lego. They can be square or hexagonal and easily attachable/detached. They make surfaces even for small patches. Less manpower and costs. Better for commuters. Rubber can also take the shape of the road. Other benefits are to cover drains or any openings. Let me know what you people think of this idea. It's raining heavily here and the potholes and traffic drives me absolutely mad. The civic authorities haven't repaired the roads in the last 10 months. Does it really take that long???

Reward: safer driving and no more traffic jams
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By FlatTop808
#3014
That sounds like a winner to me.
In my neck of the woods, the department of transportation likes to use big, inch thick steel plates to cover holes in the road caused by construction or sewer maintenance. In the rain, these things feel like teflon. And sometimes they move, uncovering a gap big enough to swallow my motorcycle's front tire. Anything to keep it in place and provide traction would be most welcome.
By Nicki
#3083
The solution to this problem is for scientists to create a material that is nearly indestructable to pave roads with. Where I live, Illinois, U.S., it gets hot in the summer and cold with snow in the winter. This past year was very mild however. Back to the point, snow plows are our major cause of destruction and then dealing with all the road construction in the summer, it seems like it's all over town but really it doesn't help much, we seem to have some roads that never get fixed. However, the rich and powerful seem to have control over what scientists work on these days, and anything to help the working man/woman doesn't seem to be a priority. I guess weapons of mass destruction are on the top of the list. I don't think much work is going in to finding cures for recently developed diseases either, such as West Nile Virus, which has been a major concern in my area. West Nile is contracted from mosquitos, I'm afraid to even go outside or let my daughter go outside and play. If this disease does not take your life, you end up in a wheelchair and on a respirator, I think I'd rather be dead.
In the end, I think the rich and powerful's route to the office and home are paved very nicely, take it from somebody who knows, an ex-cab driver, I've seen every nook and cranny of this town.
By Jim10
#3089
Good idea...or to save time and precious city labor costs, just take a can of insta-patch, spray into hole, watch it foam and fill to the road brim, harden to create a drivonable surface...and there you have it! (research pending on the contents of "insta-pot hole patch!)
By Jim10
#3091
Good idea...or to save time and precious city labor costs, just take a can of insta-patch, spray into hole, watch it foam and fill to the road brim, harden to create a drivonable surface...and there ya go. Now of course the research on the "insta pot hole patch" is still ongoing...
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By Steve
#3108
Nicki wrote:However, the rich and powerful seem to have control over what scientists work on these days, and anything to help the working man/woman doesn't seem to be a priority.
Not sure about that one. Where I live, the roads look just as awful after winter, and there's a whole trade of working men making a living on it: road construction workers. More or less indestructible roads can be made as well, but they are much more expensive and the total amount of money going to the "rich and powerful" is considerably higher (as always when human labor is replaced by superior materials).
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By Michael D. Grissom
#3629
Many are trying really hard to find a way to efficiently use ground up used tires to make road surface material. The one that succeeds will probably be able to pay Bill Gates to carry his/her bags at the airport. ;-D
#3706
A tad off the subject but very interesting.

 Subject: Fw: Traditions

 Does the statement, "We've always done it that way" ring any bells?

 The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England, and English Expatriates built the US Railroads.

Why did the English build them like that?
Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.

Why did "they" use that gauge then?
Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

Okay! Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing?
Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.

So who built those old rutted roads?
Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (and England) for their legions. The roads have been used ever since.

And the ruts in the roads?
Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.

The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. And bureaucracies live forever.

So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse's ass came up with it, you may be exactly right, because the Imperial Roman war chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses.

Now the twist to the story...When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are twoBig booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds.

So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass ....

 and you thought being a HORSE'S A*S*S wasn't important!

:-P
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