Outside the box Pt. 1

I like to daydream.  It's healthy for the mind, I think.  Sometimes an idea will slip into my mind, and linger just below the surface for days on end.  I will slip in and out of thought on this topic, turning it over, and coming up with all kinds of conclusions.  Sometimes these ideas get away on me and get carried on to such extremes that their implementation or scope is simply beyond reason.  But there is always merit in them, even when the final product may seem outlandish, there are good and usable ideas, even if not taken to such extremes. I am going to share some of these 'daydreams' with you...

The first of these ideas I'm going to share is about paving.  It isn't a topic that crosses many people mind, aside from when they are cursing at the pothole they didn't see and spilled coffee on their pants.  But when you consider the amount of pavement in our lives (estimates range from 50% in small towns to over 90% in large urban centers) it is a huge part of our lives.  It also has a large effect on our environment and our infrastructure. Imagine the downpours that we experience.  All that water has to go somewhere, and that is either into a storm sewer system (which leads to places like the pump station in Boundary Bay and into the ocean, or into the river) or into a combined sewer system, joining the effluent we flush down the drain and processed though our sewage plants.  Urban runoff has been identified as a leading cause of water quality degradation.  There has to be a better way!

The first solution is to use permeable paving techniques.  The oldest example of this is the paving stone.  It allows water to pass between the bricks, and get absorbed into the ground and dissipate over a large area.  There is also permeable asphalt.  But the bricks have added benefit as well.  They look great.  They are reusable.  And those potholes that spill coffee on you, they don't exist either.  Not for long anyway, it is relatively cheap and easy to replace a dozen or so bricks.  Same with roadworks.  The bricks that are lifted when working under the road surface are replaced right back where they came from and blend perfectly, hiding any evidence of their removal.

The downsides are manageable.  There is increased noise associated with stone roads, but in town centers this problem shouldn't be a deal breaker.  The initial investment is higher, but over the life of the road it more than pays itself back.  Go to any old-world city, and you will walk and drive on stone roads that are a hundred years old.  What would our asphalt roads look like after that long!?

Another fantastic example of permeable paving is porous turf.  Take a look at this beautiful park in the picture below.

Wait! That's not a park.  That's a parking lot at a JC Penny in Connecticut. Porous turf is created with a structural base to support the weight of vehicles, and then planted with grass the grows between it.  It is ideally suited to parking lots.  Imagine dropping the kids off at the soccer or baseball game, and not seeing any pavement at all.  The parking lot would become part of the park (no playing around there though!)  Reports estimate that the costs between grass paving and asphalt to be even at five years, with a decided advantage to the turf paving after that.  How special would Delta be if all our public buildings had green parking lots like this?


As usual, I hope to get some feedback from you on these ideas or anything else on your mind!