Jackson School Road Project

Jackson School Road Visualization Video - October 2017
Our neighborhood is adjacent to Jackson School Road. This road is basically one and half miles of two lane asphalt with drainage ditches on either side. It was a typical rural road for motor vehicles, no allowances for pedestrians or bicycles. A few years ago they widened the asphalt by a couple of feet on each side to make room for people and or bikes or something. Now there're going burn $20 million to turn it into a suburban utopia. I suppose it's a good thing. There aren't many pedestrians, but the ones there are tend to make me nervous because of their proximity to the traffic lanes and because they are often women and children.

Right-of-Way Section

They say this road sees 7,000 cars a day. $20 million divided by (7,000 cars times 20 years) works out to about $140 for each car. Washington county just added a $60 license plate surcharge for road improvements. It's semi-annual, so it's only $30 a year, which is only about one fifth of what this road improvement project will cost.

I posted the video above not because it was particularly interesting, but because it shows what kinds of software tools are available to designers these days. A similar video could have been made 20 years ago, but it would have been a major engineering project. Now the software has been developed so it's just a matter of point and click. Okay, it's still a bunch of work, but it's a standard thing now, not some Computer-Aided-Fantasy.