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Back to topic..........and all joking aside, as MC says, most of this problem is caused by builders and developers who are aided and abetted by municipal and county planning and zoning staffs, ALL OF WHOM SHOULD KNOW BETTER. But they do it consistently with RR lines, highways (think about all of the driveways they allow on what start out to be high speed thoroughfares), and airports--aah, Airports! Just what exactly do they think planes do when they take off and land?? And volume of traffic really shouldn't be a factor--those folks making the decisions are in the business of growth and they should understand that the economy doesn't move forward by shrinking. And I wasn't kidding about floodplains a few posts ago. It's exactly the same ridiculous mindset. And it happens all the time, particularly with "scenic" creekbeds, rivers and flood control reservoirs. A good example (at one time I was involved in some academic research on this one): All you north-of-the-Red-River types need to understand that the desert land you see in westerns which purports to be TX is actually in CA. We have some of that, but a lot of the state is very fertile and green, because we get rain. Central TX gets about 36-42" a year and we are very efficient about it--it all comes down in about 45 minutes leaving sunshine for the rest of the year! The Colorado River (ours, not theirs)in central TX is thus a genuinely wild river at times and so LBJ, FDR etc. funded a series of big hydroelectric dams in the 30's, one of which at Lake Travis was the largest continuous pour concrete structure in the world until Hoover Dam came along, and the lake behind it was created for flood control purposes, with a lake behind it that's over 200' deep at normal water elevation. Its upper flood control pool (that's the part reserved to take the edge off a "weather incident") involves about 33' of vertical elevation and a gazillion acres. So what's happened?? They built big houses in the upper flood pool behind the dam and cities downstream and now they can't fill the lake up as it was designed in an emergency or open more than a couple of flood gates at a time (hardly enough in some 100-year + floods) without doing billions of dollars in damage! So what do they do? They try and mitigate the damage and cough up the money that these yokels demand as compensation for their stupidity. This is false economy and places an exceptional burden on taxpayers. And every locale has a similar story (people in LA who build mansions on hills, beach resorts and condos in the FL keys and the Outer Banks, etc.) Apply the same logic to these folks that like to infringe on RRs, airports, highways, etc. Some of them (particularly the vocal ones) really honestly believe that "big rain" of traffic growth is never going to happen to them! And the cities let them get away with it. There's no "closed-form" solution to this, and it's going to proliferate and worsen as long as we have an "entitlement" and "not my responsibility" mind set. Whatever happened to common sense? Some of the best advice I ever got from a fine gentleman mentor when I first started teaching at the University level was (1) don't be afraid to say "I don't know, but I'll find out" and (2) live on the edge--admit you're wrong when you are and take responsibility--it's a whole lot easier to clean up the damage and a whole lot more people win, including yourself. I have found that advice to be priceless. If you buy a house by a RR line, it should be second nature that you ought to expect to have trains going by, and maybe more than went by today, come tomorrow. Final case in point regarding the last few posts between me and the ferocious feline of NE. For those of you who don't know what that exchange was about, check a couple of strings up and you'll find out EdBlysard accidentally shot a nail through his shoe (lousy shot, by the way, he missed and hit nothing but shoe-no marksmanship medal for him!). And know what, if you read the string you'll find out it wasn't the nail gun' s fault, or his wife's or his daughters', or the dog's, or Mookie's (although that's a tempting target--let's talk, Ed). My kind of guy. We need more of that attitude. And, I'm glad he missed! Life involves risks. Cope with it. Off my soapbox[soapbox]
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