this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2024
839 points (96.9% liked)
memes
10301 readers
1980 users here now
Community rules
1. Be civil
No trolling, bigotry or other insulting / annoying behaviour
2. No politics
This is non-politics community. For political memes please go to [email protected]
3. No recent reposts
Check for reposts when posting a meme, you can only repost after 1 month
4. No bots
No bots without the express approval of the mods or the admins
5. No Spam/Ads
No advertisements or spam. This is an instance rule and the only way to live.
Sister communities
- [email protected] : Star Trek memes, chat and shitposts
- [email protected] : Lemmy Shitposts, anything and everything goes.
- [email protected] : Linux themed memes
- [email protected] : for those who love comic stories.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Underground works well for greenfields construction, where you can map everything out ahead of time and don't have to deal with existing underground services.
It's manageable on low-density streets where its really only three waters and maybe some telephone lines.
It's a nightmare to underground existing infrastructure in dense environments. Underground is already full of three generations of critical comms, corroding gas, water, HV lines that will fail if you look at them wrong, and if you're really unlucky, steam pipes too.
The municipality I lived in previously had a really interesting project where they were trying to improve the lifecycle of underground infrastructure.
Instead of digging up the ground, putting in/repairing something/whatever, and then covering it up, they were going to install a permanent 'infrastructure tunnel' which could have installations and repairs be done without digging up and covering.
If successful, this kind of seems like what the shipping container did to the shipping industry, an incredible efficiency play.
Plenty of cities have 'steam tunnels' used for far more than just steam pipes, and sometimes no steam in there at all. It's an awesome solution where you have reasonable density, and especially for within a facility/campus.
I don't think you're going to see it happen in surburban streets. It's the tyranny of the car.
Some forward thinking - which we all know is most definitely not a thing when it comes to suburban development patterns - would see these installed from the beginning to ultimately save money long term on maintenance and upgrades.
Since the suburbs are an unsustainable Ponzi scheme designed to cram as much money out as possible though, they will go for the cheapest up-front option, total lifetime cost be damned.
I expect structural life of the tunnels isn't much longer than the services within them, especially with roads above.
The EU has been burying their wires for a while, and new members are doing it too. Romania used to look like 2nd pic, not so much anymore. It works.
Have you ever been to a german city? Underground power cables are the norm here, especially in densly populated areas. Usually only railroad power cables and high voltage long distance lines are above ground.
Yeah, we have lots of underground services here in NZ. It's when you start getting to low population densities that you start having trouble doing it.