streets, roads

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Busy city street

City streets

Human factors
Traffic signal lights need to warn as many people as possible. Many people, particularly men are color-blind – they don’t “see” green. Red, yellow and green are the conventional lights used at intersections. How can the visibility of these lights be enhanced? Are there some “greens” that are more easily distinguished than others? The color selected for the GO light is a color of green that is more likely to be “seen” as green than others. It is kind of a bluish-green. This color along with the standardized placement of signal lights improves the visibility of the GO signal.

Road with reflective markers

Cat’s Eye: Reflective Road Marker – The Cat’s Eye invented in 1933 features reflective glass spheres set inside a rubber and cast-iron housing. Each unit is complex and dynamic, its various materials engineered to serve a variety of clever functions. The metal part of the housing protects the device while creating an audible sound when a car passes over, like Botts’ Dots. Meanwhile, a fixed rubber wiper clears off the glass when it is pushed under the road. The Cat’s Eye is also retroflective, meaning: it redirects light back toward its source with minimum scattering, optimizing visibility for cars in motion.”

Streets paved with solar panels?
Sokar Roadways promotion (video 6:59), news report – Can replacing conventional roads and other paved surfaces with solar panels generate power and provide other benefits to make this economically and environmentally viable?

  • Ask – Solar Roadways – What is the expected use of this technology? How is this going to work? How will this be an improvement over regular pavement?
  • Imagine – online fundraising – $2,200,166USD raised of $1,000,000 goal (220% of target) – This campaign started on Apr 21 and closed on June 20, 2014.
  • Design, Build – rebuttal video – Can they take existing solar technology (which is borderline viable at best of times) and put it in the most hostile physical environment possible, least efficient environment possible, and most costly environment possible and make it viable?
  • Improve – Are there specific improvements that can be added in the future?

Engineering ideas

  • solar arrays

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