Download or read book Miles and Miles of Texas written by Carol Dawson and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2016-09-02 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the eve of its centennial, Carol Dawson and Roger Allen Polson present almost 100 years of history and never-before-seen photographs that track the development of the Texas Highway Department. An agency originally created “to get the farmer out of the mud,” it has gone on to build the vast network of roads that now connects every corner of the state. When the Texas Highway Department (now called the Texas Department of Transportation or TxDOT) was created in 1917, there were only about 200,000 cars in Texas traveling on fewer than a thousand miles of paved roads. Today, after 100 years of the Texas Highway Department, the state boasts over 80,000 miles of paved, state-maintained roads that accommodate more than 25 million vehicles. Sure to interest history enthusiasts and casual readers alike, decades of progress and turmoil, development and disaster, and politics and corruption come together once more in these pages, which tell the remarkable story of an infrastructure 100 years in the making.
Download or read book The Farmers Game written by David Vaught and published by Johns Hopkins University Press+ORM. This book was released on 2012-10-17 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A journey through the national pastime’s roots in America’s small towns and wide-open spaces: “An absorbing read.” —The Tampa Tribune In the film Field of Dreams, the lead character gives his struggling farming community a magical place where the smell of roasted peanuts gently wafts over the crowded grandstand on a warm summer evening, just as the star pitcher takes the mound. In The Farmers’ Game, David Vaught examines the history and character of baseball through a series of essay-vignettes—presenting the sport as essentially rural, reflecting the nature of farm and small-town life. Vaught does not deny or devalue the lively stickball games played in the streets of Brooklyn, but he sees the history of the game and the rural United States as related and mutually revealing. His subjects include nineteenth-century Cooperstown, the playing fields of Texas and Minnesota, the rural communities of California, the great farmer-pitcher Bob Feller, and the notorious Gaylord Perry. Although—contrary to legend—Abner Doubleday did not invent baseball in a cow pasture in upstate New York, many fans enjoy the game for its nostalgic qualities. Vaught’s deeply researched exploration of baseball’s rural roots helps explain its enduring popularity.
Download or read book Rethinking America s Highways written by Robert W. Poole and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-08-03 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A transportation expert makes a provocative case for changing the nation’s approach to highways, offering “bold, innovative thinking on infrastructure” (Rick Geddes, Cornell University). Americans spend hours every day sitting in traffic. And the roads they idle on are often rough and potholed, with exits, tunnels, guardrails, and bridges in terrible disrepair. According to transportation expert Robert Poole, this congestion and deterioration are outcomes of the way America manages its highways. Our twentieth-century model overly politicizes highway investment decisions, short-changing maintenance and often investing in projects whose costs exceed their benefits. In Rethinking America’s Highways, Poole examines how our current model of state-owned highways came about and why it is failing to satisfy its customers. He argues for a new model that treats highways themselves as public utilities—like electricity, telephones, and water supply. If highways were provided commercially, Poole argues, people would pay for highways based on how much they used, and the companies would issue revenue bonds to invest in facilities people were willing to pay for. Arguing for highway investments to be motivated by economic rather than political factors, this book makes a carefully-reasoned and well-documented case for a new approach to highways.
Download or read book Development of Levels of Service for the Interstate Highway System written by Dye Management Group, Inc and published by Transportation Research Board. This book was released on 2010 with total page 50 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Report 677: Development of Levels of Service for the Interstate Highway System examines a level-of-service-based approach to describing the performance of Interstate Highway System (IHS) assets. The report also includes a template and process that state departments of transportation (DOTs) may use to implement this approach for managing their IHS assets. The appendices to NCHRP Report 677 were published on a CD-ROM that is included with the report. Titles of the appendices are as follows: Appendix A: State-of-the-Practice Research; Appendix B: Development of Levels of Service for the IHS. The CD-ROM is also available for download from TRB's website as an ISO image.
Download or read book Reducing Litter on Roadsides written by Gerry John Forbes and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 79 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The report provides information concerning the prevention and removal of roadside litter, unfulfilled needs, knowledge gaps, and underperforming activities. It covers enforcement, education, awareness, and engineering methods for both litter prevention and collection. The synthesis focuses on state DOT personnel involved in roadside litter prevention and their contractors who conduct litter prevention and removal programs. Also, as roadside litter prevention appears to be a multiple stakeholder activity, policy makers and practitioners from other government agencies and environmental organizations, as well as groups and volunteers may be interested in this synthesis"--Pref.
Download or read book Real time Traveler Information Systems written by D. Deeter and published by Transportation Research Board. This book was released on 2009 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This synthesis reports on the state of the practice in real-time traveler information systems. Emphasis is placed on the needs and expectations of travelers, the current status of a variety of traveler information systems in the United States, available and emerging data sources, and business models for sustaining traveler information. This synthesis will benefit state DOT transportation managers and others that provide or seek to provide affordable, accurate, timely, and effective information in a format that travelers can use.
Download or read book Texas Takes Wing written by Barbara Ganson and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2014-01-06 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tracing the hundred-year history of aviation in Texas, aviator and historian Barbara Ganson brings to life the colorful personalities that shaped the phenomenally successful development of this industry in the state. Weaving stories and profiles of aviators, designers, manufacturers, and those in related services, Texas Takes Wing covers the major trends that propelled Texas to the forefront of the field. Covering institutions from San Antonio’s Randolph Air Force Base (the West Point of this branch of service) to Brownsville’s airport with its Pan American Airlines instrument flight school (which served as an international gateway to Latin America as early as the 1920s) to Houston’s Johnson Space Center, home of Mission Control for the U.S. space program, the book provides an exhilarating timeline and engaging history of dozens of unsung pioneers as well as their more widely celebrated peers. Drawn from personal interviews as well as major archives and the collections of several commercial airlines, including American, Southwest, Braniff, Pan American Airways, and Continental, this sweeping history captures the story of powered flight in Texas since 1910. With its generally favorable flying weather, flat terrain, and wide open spaces, Texas has more airports than any other state and is often considered one of America’s most aviation-friendly places. Texas Takes Wing also explores the men and women who made the region pivotal in military training, aircraft manufacturing during wartime, general aviation, and air servicing of the agricultural industry. The result is a soaring history that will delight aviators and passengers alike.
Download or read book Guidelines for the Use of Pavement Warranties on Highway Construction Projects written by Sidney Scott and published by Transportation Research Board. This book was released on 2011 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Report 699: Guidelines for the Use of Pavement Warranties on Highway Construction Projects is designed to help guide state departments of transportation (DOTs) in establishing pavement warranty programs.
Download or read book Minerals Yearbook written by and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 1102 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Engineering Economic Analysis Practices for Highway Investment written by Michael J. Markow and published by Transportation Research Board. This book was released on 2012 with total page 127 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Synthesis 424: Engineering Economic Analysis Practices for Highway Investment explores how U.S. transportation agencies have applied engineering economics--benefit–cost analyses and similar procedures--to decisions on highway investments.
Download or read book Routledge Handbook of Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure written by Paolo Gardoni and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-12-17 with total page 1134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To best serve current and future generations, infrastructure needs to be resilient to the changing world while using limited resources in a sustainable manner. Research on and funding towards sustainability and resilience are growing rapidly, and significant research is being carried out at a number of institutions and centers worldwide. This handbook brings together current research on sustainable and resilient infrastructure and, in particular, stresses the fundamental nexus between sustainability and resilience. It aims to coalesce work from a large and diverse group of contributors across a wide range of disciplines including engineering, technology and informatics, urban planning, public policy, economics, and finance. Not only does it present a theoretical formulation of sustainability and resilience but it also demonstrates how these ideals can be realized in practice. This work will provide a reference text to students and scholars of a number of disciplines.
Download or read book Operational and Institutional Agreements that Facilitate Regional Traffic Signal Operations written by Kevin N. Balke and published by Transportation Research Board. This book was released on 2011 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Synthesis 420: Operational and Institutional Agreements That Facilitate Regional Traffic Signal Operations (RTSOPs) identifies and highlights critical attributes of successful RTSOPs across the United States. Regions can use RTSOPs to help improve traffic flow as it crosses from one jurisdiction to another. A central focus of these programs is the coordination of signal timing on multi-jurisdictional arterials; however, RTSOPs can also facilitate the consideration of other traffic operations measures to improve regional mobility. Many RTSOPs have been established through regional metropolitan planning organizations, and successful RTSOPs also have been established by other organizations, including state and local departments of transportation and government corporations.
Download or read book An Evaluation of Mexican Transportation Planning Finance Implementation and Construction Processes written by and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Cedar Choppers written by Ken Roberts and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-06 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the low-water bridge below Tom Miller Dam, west of downtown Austin, during the summer of his tenth or eleventh year, Ken Roberts had his first encounter with cedar choppers. On his way to the bridge for a leisurely afternoon of fishing, he suddenly found himself facing a group of boys who clearly came from a different place and culture than the middle-class, suburban community he was accustomed to. Rather, “. . . they looked hard—tanned, skinny, dirty. These were not kids you would see in Austin.” When Roberts’s fishing companion curtly refused the strangers’ offer to sell them a stringer of bluegills, the three boys went away, only to reappear moments later, one of them carrying a club. Roberts and his friend made a hasty retreat. This encounter provoked in the author the question, “Who are these people?” The Cedar Choppers: Life on the Edge of Nothing is his thoughtful, entertaining, and informative answer. Based on oral history interviews with several generations of cedar choppers and those who knew them, this book weaves together the lively, gritty story of these largely Scots-Irish migrants with roots in Appalachia who settled on the west side of the Balcones Fault during the mid-nineteenth century, subsisting mainly on hunting, trapping, moonshining, and, by the early twentieth century, cutting, transporting, and selling cedar fence posts and charcoal. The emergence of Austin as a major metropolitan area, especially after the 1950s, soon brought the cedar choppers and their hillbilly lifestyle into direct confrontation with the gentrified urban population east of the Balcones Fault. This clash of cultures, which provided the setting for Roberts’s encounter as a young boy, propels this first book-length treatment of the cedar choppers, their clans, their culture and mores, and their longing for a way of life that is rapidly disappearing.
Download or read book Impact of Shoulder Width and Median Width on Safety written by and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This report contains the findings of research performed to quantify the safety and operational impacts of design element trade-offs and their associated risks. The report details the research performed and includes specific recommended crash prediction models and Accident Modification Factors (AMFs) for shoulder width and median width on rural four-lane roads.
Download or read book Minerals Yearbook 2008 V 1 Metals and Minerals written by and published by Government Printing Office. This book was released on 2011-02-17 with total page 1112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Data are provided for more than 80 minerals and materials, along with a presentation of survey methods, summary statistics for domestic nonfuel minerals, and trends in mining and quarrying in the metals and industrial minerals industry in the United States.Virtually all metallic and industrial mineral commodities important to the U.S. economy are discussed. Background information enables analysis of the data, and covers production, consumption, prices, foreign trade, a world review, and an overall outlook.
Download or read book Development and Implementation of Range wide Mission and Major Capabilities at White Sands Missile Range New Mexico written by and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 966 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
