Green Roadways in Rural and Suburban Areas
Rural and suburban areas both depend heavily upon the automobile, and trying to find a balance of meeting transportation demands while protecting natural resources and quality of life has proven to be difficult for many communities. As explained in chapte
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Green Roadways in Rural and Suburban Areas
Rural and suburban areas both depend heavily upon the automobile, and trying to find a balance of meeting transportation demands while protecting natural resources and quality of life has proven to be difficult for many communities. As explained in chapter 6, urban areas already have a strong network of roads but limited space for expansion or modification. In less densely inhabited communities, there is more open space for roads, and yet many miles of road may need to be built to serve only a small number of people. Accommodating the loss of efficiency of scale while increasing transportation access and balancing natural resource protection are the major issues of suburban and rural transportation.
Rural Transportation Rural areas near large urban areas often struggle to keep up with growth and traffic demands. Many are struggling to limit growth and do not encourage transportation projects because those often just encourage growth. It is difficult for these rural areas to maintain their visual and cultural character, and often they are incorporated into the neighboring city and quickly become suburbs. Other rural areas establish land use and zoning plans that actively control growth, so development areas grow slowly, existing natural
resources are protected, and green infrastructure is added in a more organized manner. Other rural areas have experienced declines in population as people have migrated to urban centers to seek employment. As a result, the rural population is becoming disproportionately elderly as younger people are moving to urban areas. Rural areas generally support fewer jobs than metropolitan areas, and thus, those workers who remain in their rural homes must drive increasingly longer distances to get to work. According to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), rural America makes up more than 80 percent of the nation’s land and includes more than 3.1 million miles of rural roads. Rural roads account for 40 percent of all vehicle miles traveled in this country. About 50 percent of rural roads are paved, and 90 percent of rural roads are one- or two-lane. There are 450,000 rural bridges. The rate of fatalities in rural areas is more than twice that of urban areas, mainly because the roads are narrower and people drive faster, resulting in more serious crashes. Rural roads were originally designed so that they would fit the land the best way possible. They followed the ridges and the valleys and avoided steep slopes, wetlands, and other natural features that would have made construction more difficult. For the most part, these roads were designed for slower
J.L. Sipes and M.L. Sipes, Creating Green Roadways: Integrating Cultural, Natural, and Visual Resources into Transportation, DOI 10.5822/978-1-59726-322-1_7, © 2013 James L. Sipes and Matthew L. Sipes
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Figure 7-1 The Big Sky Back Country Byway along Route 253 in Montana is in a rural area known for its sightseeing, wildlife-viewing, hiking, rock-hounding, b
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