Comment Re:Idiots. IDIOTS! (Score 1) 193
We've too many roads going to too many places that don't justify the expense of dropping 40 million a mile. And it is about aging.
It's a rolling problem. We started out with town roads, then county roads, then state roads, then interstates. And we happily kept building more. But the roads fall apart on a steady schedule even as we merrily throw down more. What happens is you spend more every year just to keep up what your great-grandfather made, your grandfather made, your father made, and eventually the backlog of the rebuilding costs more than you can pay - and your infrastructure falls apart, slowly at first, then the process accelerates.
You can either let it die, or raise taxes, and of course lower costs by eliminating unions, using immigrant labor, removing health benefits from labor and taking advantage of new road-laying tech. But it's obvious by gross evidence that we can't keep up. We don't want to be taxed enough to maintain the backlog.
Question about this glass isn't about how much it costs - the first part of the cost accounting problem - but how much it saves over time. If the glass wears longer and as a grid produces three times more power than the entire nation requires, then it is worth more than the asphalt roads made of oil.
The road lasts longer. It self-lights. New energy grid. More power than we need, with over-production used to melt snow. Acts as a information highway, literally. Needs no new land. Could self-plow. Hell, it could power electric vehicles by induction. Remember, a stretch of highway can use more power than it produces because is part of a grid of all roads, some of which overproduce electricity.