Climate Change and Roads

[ysabetwordsmith]

Turns out it takes very little extra rain to knock out large portions of the road network -- and some areas can be completely cut off by it.  Yet another way in which we are fucked, but some people are enormously more fucked than others.  It's not enough to live on a hill, although that is advisable to minimize flood risks.  You'll still get stranded if all the roads around you flood.  That has actually happened to us a few times.

Comments

[erulisse]

Every time it rains heavily we get street flooding in some part of the city. Some neighborhoods, like the one we live in, are actually designed this way so the streets flood but the houses are okay and once the rain stops or slows significantly it doesn't take very long to drain. But in other places development has made it so that creeks can't handle the runoff and they fill a lot more quickly and then cut off roads. New building code requires a little more water retention infrastructure to mitigate this but it's almost certainly too little too late.

Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

The nearest city to us is Champaign-Urbana, which outgrew its sewer system decades ago. The underpasses have footmarkers on them because they flood out routinely, which makes travel difficult in more than a modest rain. And what are people doing?

Building skyscrapers. I shit you not. >_< I can only assume they either overlooked they waste-handling issue, or bribed someone to waive it.