Steven L. Taylor is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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@gVOR10: It’s US-82, actually. But yes, there are similar examples on 231. I have taken some photos of those as well (see here, especially the more recent ones in the set).
@Steven L. Taylor:
Looking at the picture set, I am struck by the sheer number of aerial wires for power, phone, and cable in many of them. I live in Fort Collins, CO. In 1948 the city began burying the existing aerial plant, and forbid construction of any new. The only exceptions are the few high-voltage lines used by the power authority to connect to city substations, and areas around the city limit fringes where annexed areas have not been converted. I’ve gotten so used to it that large amounts of aerial wiring just looks odd to me.
In addition to appearance, there are many fewer service outages than any other place I’ve ever lived. During a recent wind “event” when there were gusts in excess of 80 mph, the city electric utility had zero service outages despite a fair number of downed trees and large limbs.
@Michael Cain: Yes, in general, to buried lines. Unfortunately, there’s a catch. When I lived in Williamsburg, VA, we had buried power lines and we would get power outages (at least in one area) due to flooding of said lines.
I expect flooding is not much of a thing in Fort Collins, though.
I expect flooding is not much of a thing in Fort Collins, though.
I should add that wires are buried, but transformers are not. I used to live somewhere with everything buried and big rain gave us problems. It was always water in the underground transformer boxes. Lots of the above-ground transformers here are gaily painted, and new people soon get to where they think of it as quirky, not ugly.
Every 15-20 years during monsoon season one or more of the river and creeks’ well-defined flood plains get hammered. For decades the city has refused to let anyone rebuild in those areas, so they’re pretty well cleaned out. Two floods back, in 1997, an old trailer park got destroyed. The last one was 2013 and parts of the city were isolated for a couple of days — some bridges closed out of an abundance of caution — but there wasn’t any “look at the flooded houses” stuff. The isolated areas still had power.
I started working in the landline telephone industry in 1973. Started as a telephone cable construction splicer. For the better part of 35 years I worked as a contractor, not an employee of a telephone company. The first jobs I worked were upgrading rural 8 and 10 party line service to 4 party and private lines. The old facilities that were being retired were a lot of open wire circuits up on poles. Much of the new plant that I built was direct buried telephone cable with terminals and splice points either on the ground or buried. There was a fair amount of new telephone cable that was placed on existing poles usually in cities and towns. It was always easier to work the buried plant since I didn’t have to set up on my ladder or use my hooks to climb the pole. I worked a lot of maintenance jobs and ran a lot of trouble tickets. It may be true that buried telephone cable is not subject to wind damage like lines up on poles. However when it comes to damage caused by mice and squirrels it doesn’t much matter if the telephone cable is up on poles or in a pedestal on the ground the varmints will find a way to chew on the wires and cause all kinds of trouble.
@Gregory Lawrence Brown: Just got underground fiber internet. Big selling point here in FL is hurricane resistance. Our cable company internet went out in any near miss, and was out for a week after Ian hit us hard. Without a storm, someone still had to come out and climb the pole to the cable junction every six months or so anyway, after much pleading. It occurs to me that fiber is probably sheathed so it doesn’t care if it floods underground. Then it occurred to me low voltage phone lines probably don’t much care either. True?
I would suspect corrosion is a problem for phone terminations, and fiber less so? As to squirrels, I wonder if the sheathing is any more or less tasty. Trivia – here in FL squirrels are skinny. Why would they not be.
I recognize this from places I have lived or visited. It’s a testimony to how land use has changed over time, and become more urban and centralized. I would love to see a countervailing trend of decentralization. I think it would help us in so many ways.
I love little mom and pop stores and restaurants, but they are hard to make work these days, and the price of land in areas where there is enough traffic is one reason for it.
@gVOR10:..
When the plastic or paper insulation on copper telephone conductors fails it doesn’t take much moisture to cause a short or a ground.
Subscriber carrier systems that can support 6 or 7 private lines on one physical cable pair would run on 300+ volts.
@Michael Cain: The wires are everywhere, and I notice them even more because they become relevant for photographic reasons. My friends, occasional co-blogger, and frequent photo safari partner (indeed, he was with me when I took the shot above), Michael Bailey, has long expressed his frustration with them.
@Jay L. Gischer: Given the age of the pumps (pre-digital), I am guessing that this place went out of business many decades ago over a set of environmental regulations about the underground tanks. I forget all the details, but a lot of gas stations in Alabama went out of business over 3o yeara ago because the cost of retrofitting the tanks was too high. Also: Union Springs is not exactly a hopping place, economically.
@Steven L. Taylor: Yeah, I think that still supports my thesis of centralization of land use. I recall reading about how hard it is to get medical care in Western Kansas, for instance.
Somehow, remote areas have become even more remote.
Is that on US-231? It looks kind of familiar. But one abandoned gas station canopy looks much like any other.
@gVOR10: It’s US-82, actually. But yes, there are similar examples on 231. I have taken some photos of those as well (see here, especially the more recent ones in the set).
The essence of desolation.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Looking at the picture set, I am struck by the sheer number of aerial wires for power, phone, and cable in many of them. I live in Fort Collins, CO. In 1948 the city began burying the existing aerial plant, and forbid construction of any new. The only exceptions are the few high-voltage lines used by the power authority to connect to city substations, and areas around the city limit fringes where annexed areas have not been converted. I’ve gotten so used to it that large amounts of aerial wiring just looks odd to me.
In addition to appearance, there are many fewer service outages than any other place I’ve ever lived. During a recent wind “event” when there were gusts in excess of 80 mph, the city electric utility had zero service outages despite a fair number of downed trees and large limbs.
@Michael Cain: Yes, in general, to buried lines. Unfortunately, there’s a catch. When I lived in Williamsburg, VA, we had buried power lines and we would get power outages (at least in one area) due to flooding of said lines.
I expect flooding is not much of a thing in Fort Collins, though.
@Jay L. Gischer:
I should add that wires are buried, but transformers are not. I used to live somewhere with everything buried and big rain gave us problems. It was always water in the underground transformer boxes. Lots of the above-ground transformers here are gaily painted, and new people soon get to where they think of it as quirky, not ugly.
Every 15-20 years during monsoon season one or more of the river and creeks’ well-defined flood plains get hammered. For decades the city has refused to let anyone rebuild in those areas, so they’re pretty well cleaned out. Two floods back, in 1997, an old trailer park got destroyed. The last one was 2013 and parts of the city were isolated for a couple of days — some bridges closed out of an abundance of caution — but there wasn’t any “look at the flooded houses” stuff. The isolated areas still had power.
I started working in the landline telephone industry in 1973. Started as a telephone cable construction splicer. For the better part of 35 years I worked as a contractor, not an employee of a telephone company. The first jobs I worked were upgrading rural 8 and 10 party line service to 4 party and private lines. The old facilities that were being retired were a lot of open wire circuits up on poles. Much of the new plant that I built was direct buried telephone cable with terminals and splice points either on the ground or buried. There was a fair amount of new telephone cable that was placed on existing poles usually in cities and towns. It was always easier to work the buried plant since I didn’t have to set up on my ladder or use my hooks to climb the pole. I worked a lot of maintenance jobs and ran a lot of trouble tickets. It may be true that buried telephone cable is not subject to wind damage like lines up on poles. However when it comes to damage caused by mice and squirrels it doesn’t much matter if the telephone cable is up on poles or in a pedestal on the ground the varmints will find a way to chew on the wires and cause all kinds of trouble.
@Gregory Lawrence Brown: Just got underground fiber internet. Big selling point here in FL is hurricane resistance. Our cable company internet went out in any near miss, and was out for a week after Ian hit us hard. Without a storm, someone still had to come out and climb the pole to the cable junction every six months or so anyway, after much pleading. It occurs to me that fiber is probably sheathed so it doesn’t care if it floods underground. Then it occurred to me low voltage phone lines probably don’t much care either. True?
I would suspect corrosion is a problem for phone terminations, and fiber less so? As to squirrels, I wonder if the sheathing is any more or less tasty. Trivia – here in FL squirrels are skinny. Why would they not be.
I recognize this from places I have lived or visited. It’s a testimony to how land use has changed over time, and become more urban and centralized. I would love to see a countervailing trend of decentralization. I think it would help us in so many ways.
I love little mom and pop stores and restaurants, but they are hard to make work these days, and the price of land in areas where there is enough traffic is one reason for it.
That has a bit of post-apocalypse feel to it.
No zombies?
@gVOR10:..
When the plastic or paper insulation on copper telephone conductors fails it doesn’t take much moisture to cause a short or a ground.
Subscriber carrier systems that can support 6 or 7 private lines on one physical cable pair would run on 300+ volts.
@Michael Cain: The wires are everywhere, and I notice them even more because they become relevant for photographic reasons. My friends, occasional co-blogger, and frequent photo safari partner (indeed, he was with me when I took the shot above), Michael Bailey, has long expressed his frustration with them.
@Jay L. Gischer: Given the age of the pumps (pre-digital), I am guessing that this place went out of business many decades ago over a set of environmental regulations about the underground tanks. I forget all the details, but a lot of gas stations in Alabama went out of business over 3o yeara ago because the cost of retrofitting the tanks was too high. Also: Union Springs is not exactly a hopping place, economically.
@JohnSF: Gotta admit, it was pretty creepy.
@Steven L. Taylor: Yeah, I think that still supports my thesis of centralization of land use. I recall reading about how hard it is to get medical care in Western Kansas, for instance.
Somehow, remote areas have become even more remote.