Worlds without Roads

[atpollard]

PREAMBLE:
I have been running a PbP game on the planet Biter in the Spinward Marches (Sword Worlds). One observation, and a topic worthy of brief discussion, is the fact that a world like Biter would have too much land and not enough people to afford to build roads. In my PbP game, I have played with some other options with a great deal of enjoyment. I thought I would share some of my quick and dirty numbers and invite others to join in on the conversation.

TRAVELLER has a LOT of low population worlds and a million people can only afford a small number of kilometers of roads.

So here are my numbers for your review and comment ...



REAL WORLD = $1,500,000 per mile of one lane dirt road and ROW plus $1,500,000 per lane-mile of pavement for new construction plus $750,000 per lane-mile of milling and resurfacing for maintenance (typically every 10 years).

1 Credit = $4-5 ... Use $4.50

TRAVELLER DIRT ROAD = Cr 208,333/km = use Cr 200,000/km
TRAVELLER NEW 2-LANE PAVED ROAD = Cr 625,000/km = use Cr 600,000/km
TRAVELLER NEW 4-LANE PAVED ROAD = Cr 1,042,000/km = use Cr 1,000,000/km
(Pop 100,000 minimum needed to support 4 lane roads.)

TRAVELLER MAINTENANCE OF 2 LANE ROAD = Cr 30,000/km/year

If we double the maintenance cost of the roads and charge Cr 60,000/year for each Kilometer of 2 lane road, then we can afford to finance the construction of the road over 20 years. This will simplify the later math. Remember that each kilometer of 2 lane road could support the transportation needs of up to 100,000 people so the per capita annual cost for roads could be as low as 0.6 credits, or 2.4 credits per year for a family of 4.

The Planet BITER (Spinward Marches 1526)
4800 km diameter and 40% water
Population 3,000,000

Surface Area of planet = 4 x 3.14 x 2400^2 = 72,400,000 sq.km.
Land Area of planet = 72,400,000 x 0.4 = 28,960,000 sq.km.
Land Area per Person = 28,960,000 / 3,000,000 = 9.65 sq.km. Per person

Assuming an average family of 4, the area around each homestead is 9.65 x 4 = 38.6 square kilometers. Therefore, the average distance between homesteads is Sqrt (38.6) = 6.2 kilometers. To connect every house to its neighbor would require an average of about 6 kilometers of road per household or 1.5 kilometers of road per person. To build and maintain two lane paved roads across Biter would require 1.5 x 60,000 = Cr 90,000 per person per year in Taxes or Cr 360,000 credits per year for a typical family of four.

Even building and maintaining single lane dirt roads would cost one third of that cost or about Cr 120,000 per year in taxes for a family of four.

Remember, these are not ALL the taxes, these are just the taxes to support the roads. Given these Economic Realities, Biter has two choices. Either all of the population is concentrated into a tiny fraction of the land area, or there are few to no roads.

If the population is concentrated, it leaves tracts open for colonization by others.

If there are no roads, then the typical vehicle on Biter will be designed for extreme roadless conditions.

 

[kilemall]

Why not mixed?

Roads for downports and major resource extraction/trading areas, grav/plane/ships for the rest.

Don't forget railroads, I think they work out to about half the road cost per mile.

http://www.acwr.com/economic-development/railroads-101/rail-siding-costs

 

[Condottiere]

Depends on the geography; likely expansion along the river systems and coastlines.

I recall that the Australians had light aircraft.

Roads and rails likely constructed to raw material sources, and connected them to industrial centres, settlements may mushroom along those routes.

 

[atpollard]

Let's assume that the 3 million people of Biter fall into three population groups.

1 million people live in one of ten urban areas of 100,000 people scattered around the globe at critical locations to take advantage of major Economic Sectors. The Downport, a Manufactiring center, a Food processing center in the northern grain belt, another in the southern grain belt (harvesting at different seasons), a cattle processing center, etc.

Each center is thousands if kilometers from each of the other centers. Now you need to fund thousands of kilometers of rail to transport the grain to the Downport for export.

Building a 2000 km 2 lane road is a MCr 120 per year project, funded by 100,000 people is 1200 credits per year in Inter-Urban Highway tax PER PERSON or 4800 credits for a typical family of 4. Even if rail is half that cost, that's a heavy tax burden. They still have local roads in the city to pay for.

Another 1,000,000 people might live in 100 towns of 10,000 people that still need to get goods to and from those cities that can't afford the rails. They have almost as far to go and a smaller population to pay for it.

A final 1,000,000 people probably live on 1000 small isolated communities of 1000 people that directly support agriculture. They cannot afford long roads or rail to anywhere and the annual passenger/freight demand of 1000 people will make rail so underused that it will be need a complete government subsidy to operate.

I may be wrong, but the population density involved is orders of magnitude less than Alaska or North Dakota with no high population areas to subsidize them.

I could see roads within a city, but then no way to move goods between cities.
The next step then becomes figuring out the cheapest way to move freight without roads. Ships seem ideal, but only 40% of Biter is water. That leaves a lot of people with no port access.


Grav is expensive. Many TRAVELLER Worlds are below AirRaft TL. This is probably a fairly common problem in the OTU. Roads and rail are efficient, but only for large populations and large volumes or traffic. They have a high initial and ongoing capital investment.

 

[Condottiere]

You follow the path of least resistance.

First establish the economic reasons of these demographic concentrations.

Chances are a new downport would be established if the other is far too much out of the way.

 

[atpollard]

I guess the very practical question is this.

Joe Adventurer arrives at Biter Downport and would like to visit one of the cities in the interior plains to enjoy some Big Game Hunting. How should he reasonable expect to get there?

Take the Passenger Train with hourly service?

Rent a car and drive?

Charter a bush pilot?

Bring his own Air Raft?

Just take the shuttle back to the highport and get a shuttle going directly to the other city, because that's the easiest way?

 

[atpollard]

Chances are a new downport would be established if the other is far too much out of the way.

Have you thought about the cultural and political implications of this. Imagine if it was easier to travel from New York to London or Atlanta,Ga to London than it was to get from New York to Atlanta.

That is a fascinating concept for a world!

 

[Condottiere]

If you really want to go into detail, figure out first why the planet was colonized, and where the first settlements were placed, and the reason why those areas were chosen.

Then if any natural resources were discovered and exploited, and how much of that was exported to other systems.

Were any military installations established, and by whom.

And so on and so on.

 

[The Oz]

Have you thought about the cultural and political implications of this. Imagine if it was easier to travel from New York to London or Atlanta,Ga to London than it was to get from New York to Atlanta.

That is a fascinating concept for a world!

That's how it was on Earth until the mid-1800's when railroads came into common use. Until then, any long-distance (outside a major city) travel required organizing your own safari, or at least buying into someone else's safari (see the American wagon trains to the West coast, or the Boer treks into the veldt for examples). Almost all long-range travel (and all long-range shipping of bulk products) was done by water.

 

[atpollard]

I am not sure that I am communicating the magnitude.

When in history was the population of the entire EARTH 3 million people?
I suspect there were more than 3 million Neanderthal hunter gatherers.
There were between 1 and 15 million people at the START of the agricultural revolution (10,000 BCE).

So New Jersey is settled and the rest of the Earth is prehistoric, untouched wilderness?
Is that how you really view most TL 4+, POP 3-7 worlds in Traveller?

 

[flykiller]

When in history was the population of the entire EARTH 3 million people?

heh. genetic studies indicate that at one time the human population of earth was down to 1000 breeding pairs.

as for roads, the single biggest cost in road construction is energy - and fusion in traveller makes energy cheap. cheaper than gasoline in venezuela.

that said, the soviet union solved its land transportation problems using aircraft. the largest air carrier in the world is aeroflot. combine this with fusion power plants - a 1dton plant for an anatov - and there's all the land transportation you could ever need.

 

[mike wightman]

The Roman empire managed to build roads all over Europe...

 

[GypsyComet]

So New Jersey is settled and the rest of the Earth is prehistoric, untouched wilderness?
Is that how you really view most TL 4+, POP 3-7 worlds in Traveller?

Despite the settlement patterns we see on Earth, generalizing too strongly to other worlds is probably a mistake. Native and pre-Long Night populations settle differently than recent stellar colonies, different Races and cultures will have different priorities and different thresholds for separate settlements, available TL vs. Native TL plays a role, and hydrographic coverage will have a huge effect in some cases and relatively little in others. That's just getting started.

the soviet union solved its land transportation problems using aircraft.

Russia is an interesting case study in road expense vs territory covered, if all those dash-cam videos on YouTube are any indication.

 

[kilemall]

Let's assume that the 3 million people of Biter fall into three population groups.

1 million people live in one of ten urban areas of 100,000 people scattered around the globe at critical locations to take advantage of major Economic Sectors. The Downport, a Manufactiring center, a Food processing center in the northern grain belt, another in the southern grain belt (harvesting at different seasons), a cattle processing center, etc.

Each center is thousands if kilometers from each of the other centers. Now you need to fund thousands of kilometers of rail to transport the grain to the Downport for export.

Building a 2000 km 2 lane road is a MCr 120 per year project, funded by 100,000 people is 1200 credits per year in Inter-Urban Highway tax PER PERSON or 4800 credits for a typical family of 4. Even if rail is half that cost, that's a heavy tax burden. They still have local roads in the city to pay for.

Another 1,000,000 people might live in 100 towns of 10,000 people that still need to get goods to and from those cities that can't afford the rails. They have almost as far to go and a smaller population to pay for it.

A final 1,000,000 people probably live on 1000 small isolated communities of 1000 people that directly support agriculture. They cannot afford long roads or rail to anywhere and the annual passenger/freight demand of 1000 people will make rail so underused that it will be need a complete government subsidy to operate.

I may be wrong, but the population density involved is orders of magnitude less than Alaska or North Dakota with no high population areas to subsidize them.

I could see roads within a city, but then no way to move goods between cities.
The next step then becomes figuring out the cheapest way to move freight without roads. Ships seem ideal, but only 40% of Biter is water. That leaves a lot of people with no port access.


Grav is expensive. Many TRAVELLER Worlds are below AirRaft TL. This is probably a fairly common problem in the OTU. Roads and rail are efficient, but only for large populations and large volumes or traffic. They have a high initial and ongoing capital investment.

Doesn't have to be 1000s of kilometers of road/rail linking towns directly- more like 50-500 km running to a seaport.

Like most of Canadian grain export.

Or 50-500 km to export downports, eliminating the planetary transport.

Likely most major cities would be seaports for internal economics.

And railroad financing WAS exactly like that for the US, raw open space with railroads built on little more then a dream and a prayer.

If that cannot be sustained fiscally, then those towns don't stay 100K for very long.

Fusion power should allow for fantastically cheap maglev.

 

[Timerover51]

The Planet BITER (Spinward Marches 1526)
4800 km diameter and 40% water
Population 3,000,000

Surface Area of planet = 4 x 3.14 x 2400^2 = 72,400,000 sq.km.
Land Area of planet = 72,400,000 x 0.4 = 28,960,000 sq.km.
Land Area per Person = 28,960,000 / 3,000,000 = 9.65 sq.km. Per person

Your math is off. If the planet is 40% water, then your land mass is 0.6, not 0.4, so your land area is increased by 50%, to 43,440,000 square kilometers.

Second, I live in Lake County, Illinois, population of approximately 500,000. There is no conceivable way that the transportation needs of the county could be covered by five 2-Lane roads. There are more than that number of 4-lane roads running both east-west and north-south in the county, and there are still major problems with traffic.

A good friend of mine works in the county highway department, and they are having major problems improving the road network because of maintenance on existing roads competing for funding with new ones. Right now, the focus is on reducing traffic bottlenecks in various ways.

I am not sure that I am communicating the magnitude.

When in history was the population of the entire EARTH 3 million people?
I suspect there were more than 3 million Neanderthal hunter gatherers.
There were between 1 and 15 million people at the START of the agricultural revolution (10,000 BCE).

So New Jersey is settled and the rest of the Earth is prehistoric, untouched wilderness?
Is that how you really view most TL 4+, POP 3-7 worlds in Traveller?

Pretty much so.

Look at the settlement pattern for Australia, along with the road networks and rail networks. The first area settled will be food-production regions, and that will likely have the densest settlement. People are going to congregate, and the idea of spreading 10 population centers over the entire planet is extremely unlikely, unless force is used. When the American Revolution occurred, there were about 3 to 4 million people along the East Coast, virtually all east of the Appalachian Mountains, with the rest of North America largely unknown area.

Then there are the planet characteristics. Forty per cent water coverage, 60 per cent land, and a thin atmosphere. There are likely to be extensive deserts, and the thin atmosphere will concentrate settlers in the lower areas, as at elevations of say 7,000 to 8,000 feet, the atmosphere will be very thin, requiring respirators to operate, and there will not be a whole lot of vegetation to be had at those altitudes. The thin atmosphere is going to have limited ability to hold moisture, meaning a drier climate. Any mountain rain-shadow effect is going to be massive, with limited water coverage and thin atmosphere.

Basically, your population is going to be in the most favorable areas for living and food production, with other areas being of limited population. They are not going to be spread out over the entire planet. More like considerably less than 10% of the land area.

 

[tjoneslo]

PREAMBLE:
I have been running a PbP game on the planet Biter in the Spinward Marches (Sword Worlds). One observation, and a topic worthy of brief discussion, is the fact that a world like Biter would have too much land and not enough people to afford to build roads.
TRAVELLER MAINTENANCE OF 2 LANE ROAD = Cr 30,000/km/year

If we double the maintenance cost of the roads and charge Cr 60,000/year for each Kilometer of 2 lane road, then we can afford to finance the construction of the road over 20 years. This will simplify the later math. Remember that each kilometer of 2 lane road could support the transportation needs of up to 100,000 people so the per capita annual cost for roads could be as low as 0.6 credits, or 2.4 credits per year for a family of 4.

I am going to question this assumption as well. There are two reasons why roads need maintenance. Use and weather.

Using a road (i.e. driving on it) causes the road to shift and makes it less usable. Damage to road by use goes by the 4th order of weight. A vehicle weighing twice as much causes 16x damage to the road surface. So a road built to handle heavy truck traffic can handle any number of cars without significant damage. It also means if you assume the only traffic driving on the road is light passenger traffic you can both spend less on building the road (because it's not as heavy duty) and less on maintenance. There is a tipping point of course.

Weather causes it's own set of damages to the road. Freezing causes frost heaves, rain causes pot holes, sun degrades the surface, wind erodes the surface, etc. Depending upon the climatic zones on Biter, the roads may or may not be degraded by the weather at the same rate as Terran roads. The Thin atmosphere and lesser amounts of water implies less damaging kinds of weather.

Finally, the people of Biter could (could have) hired an outside road building consultant to both design the roads themselves and the network for efficiency. So instead of asphalt, the road surface is a local plant fiber reinforced fusion formed glass surface with a self healing resin. The cost for light traffic is more than a asphalt road (but the same as your road cost for traffic), but lasts 10x longer (requiring 1/10 the maintenance). And then simply neglected because everyone in outside of the cities pays the little extra for the off-road upgrades to their ground vehicles.

 

[atpollard]

I am going to question this assumption as well. There are two reasons why roads need maintenance. Use and weather.

Using a road (i.e. driving on it) causes the road to shift and makes it less usable. Damage to road by use goes by the 4th order of weight. A vehicle weighing twice as much causes 16x damage to the road surface. So a road built to handle heavy truck traffic can handle any number of cars without significant damage. It also means if you assume the only traffic driving on the road is light passenger traffic you can both spend less on building the road (because it's not as heavy duty) and less on maintenance. There is a tipping point of course.

Weather causes it's own set of damages to the road. Freezing causes frost heaves, rain causes pot holes, sun degrades the surface, wind erodes the surface, etc. Depending upon the climatic zones on Biter, the roads may or may not be degraded by the weather at the same rate as Terran roads. The Thin atmosphere and lesser amounts of water implies less damaging kinds of weather.

Finally, the people of Biter could (could have) hired an outside road building consultant to both design the roads themselves and the network for efficiency. So instead of asphalt, the road surface is a local plant fiber reinforced fusion formed glass surface with a self healing resin. The cost for light traffic is more than a asphalt road (but the same as your road cost for traffic), but lasts 10x longer (requiring 1/10 the maintenance). And then simply neglected because everyone in outside of the cities pays the little extra for the off-road upgrades to their ground vehicles.

If you want to impress me, then offer an alternative number and support it.

Otherwise we just have handwaves that feed the flames of opinions. :rofl:
I welcome other views.

There are a lot of low population worlds in Traveller with breathable atmospheres and the assumption once you leave the starport is they look a lot like Earth ... especially Earth where the players live.

I am attempting to test that out with something as simple and basic as "Are there roads everywhere?"

My quick and dirty numbers suggest that the answer is 'Probably Not."
I think that makes a difference in the 'feel' of a visit to a world.

So how much does a road cost to build and maintain?
What is the annual per-capita cost on the population?
CAN THEY AFFORD TO BUILD ROADS?

(PS. Good point about reduced wear from low traffic. It would probably cut my per capita costs in half ... but they are still not affordable if the 3 million people are scattered around the globe. So there may be no roads or rails between cities and towns.)

[EDIT: At 1/10 the cost to build/maintain, the ROAD TAX on a family of 4 is still Cr 36,000 per year on Biter ... and that is without accounting for my underestimating the land area of Biter.]

 

[McPerth]

I'm amazed no onw has brought here another point: grav vehicles may have lent roads useless (or nearly so).

In a planet like Biter (UWP B354623-A) grav vehicles are likely to be quite common. Of course, heavy transport can be done by railroads, but only a few of them would be needed to link the main pop (or producing) centers, while the rest of traffic (inculiding what today is done by truck) can be grav vehicles.

Grav vehicles use to be depicted as very expensive in most Traveller versions, but, at least on MT (the only version I know enough as to design them) they can be designed quite cheap if needed, as it was discussed in this thread.

 

[atpollard]

I'm amazed no one has brought here another point: grav vehicles may have lent roads useless (or nearly so).

In a planet like Biter (UWP B354623-A) grav vehicles are likely to be quite common. Of course, heavy transport can be done by railroads, but only a few of them would be needed to link the main pop (or producing) centers, while the rest of traffic (including what today is done by truck) can be grav vehicles.

Grav vehicles use to be depicted as very expensive in most Traveller versions, but, at least on MT (the only version I know enough as to design them) they can be designed quite cheap if needed, as it was discussed in this thread.

I agree.
However, this is the obvious next point.
And what happens on TL 5-8 worlds with millions of people?

If there are roads everywhere, then cars and trucks (even in MT) are probably cheaper than grav. If roads cannot be built everywhere, then Grav becomes one of several possible technologies. Which are cheapest per ton of cargo?

Air Raft?
STOL Aircraft?
VTOL?
ACV?
Tracked Vehicles?

All those questions rest on first determining if POP 6 worlds have a grid of roads like our POP 9 Earth does. Roads make wheels cheaper. No roads make other options necessary.

 

[Condottiere]

Depending on how much time and effort you want to put in to it, you start off with the initial colonization, how much money and resources they had access to, what tech base can they maintain, and then let it organically grow.