THE HORSES ASS AND TRANSPORTATION DESIGN

The next time someone tells me "because we've always done it this way" (which happens a lot by the way) I am going to tell them this story. Does the statement " we've always done it that way" ring any bells?

The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails is 4 feet 8.5 inches. That's an exceeding odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England, and English expatriates built the US Railroads. Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they use.

Why did "they" use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

Okay! Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.

So...who built those old rutted roads? Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (and England) for their legions. The roads have been used ever since. And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.

THE UNITED STATES STANDARD RAILROAD GAUGE OF 4 feet 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. And bureaucracies live forever. So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse's ass came up with it, you may be exactly right because the Imperial Roman war chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses.

And now, the twist to the story-----

When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are You are now a master of shriek! two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRB's. The SRB's are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah. The engineers who designed the SRB,s would have preferred to make them a bit fatter but the SRB,s had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad like from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRB,s had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds.

SO, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass.

And you thought being a HORSE'S ASS wasn't important!”

Anonymous

To the unknown author of this article --thankyou. I have read a similar articles all with different twists. This is far more succint. Forgive me for using it again. It is a good reminder of never getting out of the incremental transportation improvements we attempt to make.

BY Graham Kaye-Eddie – Master Urban Designer.

Makabusi Inc. – Bakersfield – California

Email – makabusi@pacbell.net

The general public in Bakersfield know me by this nickname!

This is the best cartoon about a stablehand that I have ever seen! Hope you chuckled as much as I did.

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TEXAS-SIZED OPPORTUNITY?

The Texas governor is asking the state transportation department to lay out plans for a 4,000-mile road, rail and utility network across the state that would parallel major routes but loop around metropolitan areas. That's more miles than there are interstate miles throughout the state.

The 1,000 to 1,200-foot-wide corridors through rural lands would include six highway lanes along with six tracks to accommodate high-speed freight and passenger rail and regional freight and commuter rail. The highway lanes would have limited access and would lack frontage roads.

Constructing the $175 billion network would take 50 years and would rely heavily on private investment -- much of it would probably be tollways. It could shift some public funds to transportation as well as shift some funds away from other road projects, but the governor said it doesn't have to raise taxes.

Following are some stories and graphics.

From Houston Chronicle, includes MAP: http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/metropolitan/1229334

From San Antonio Express-News: http://news.mysanantonio.com/story.cfm?xla=saen&xlb=180&xlc=593322&xld=184 GRAPHIC: http://www.mysanantonio.com/expressnews/roads1.html DRAWING: http://www.mysanantonio.com/expressnews/roads3.html

TODAY IN HISTORY

On this day in 1886, the first successful gasoline-driven car patented by Karl Benz