[ARCHIVED] SCS General Discussion Thread

[supersobes]

Mapillary is somewhat decent for street view pics from Germany: https://www.mapillary.com/app/

That's pretty cool! I found an example of the clear sound walls in Germany on there!

https://www.mapillary.com/app/?lat=51.4 ... 128&zoom=0

[Some newbie driver]

Some of the sound walls on the highways are actually transparent! Why is that?

You reduce the visual impact of the bridge if it has not 3m height concrete walls on its sides but transparent panels

Are they made of glass or plastic?

None of that, glass would be heavy and dangerous when breaking; regular transparent plastics would not long last. They use to be poly-methyl-methacrylate (PMMA) sometimes with slim twisted steel cables embedded inside to increase resistance and security avoiding pieces falling if broken on a crash. One former client of where I work manufacture those kind of panels.

I hope the Iberian DLC didn't feature the disgrace they made in some parts of Spain with them. Never know why, but all of a sudden they started to paint lots of vertical orange stripes on the glass panels.

https://www.google.es/maps/@42.0131659, ... 384!8i8192

It's like... what? Those signs on glass dors put there so nobody stomps against them? But nobody is going to walk through those walls on bridges by mistake! It was a weird change that nullified the reason why they are transparent instead of regular concrete sound-block walls. Somebody was plain stupid on that decision or has a good reward by purchasing remnants of orange paint.

Also, the norm is so freaking strict and stupid that they have to put the glass (now stripped) no matter how small would be the "bridge portion" of the whole wall. That sometimes leads us with weird examples like this:

https://www.google.es/maps/@41.8723861, ... 384!8i8192

Another option is that they put transparent sound barriers when they are very near to houses, as to put in front of their faces ugly concrete blocks would be very depressing. Bug guess why? YES! they painted with stripes too! And with the extra graffiti I'm sure people living on there are enjoying their sights on the landscape.

Really, somebody had a problem of stupidity somewhere in the road regulatory Spanish administration.

[gandalf7472000]

The opposite here. When street view became available, every one was like, Look this is my house

you will not find bird shapes on sound walls everywhere, In this case, is because of the forest nearby, there are many small birds flying around and the birds of pray shapes keep them away, Is for there safety.

maybe the orange stripes serve the same keep birds away?

[xXCARL1992Xx]

i know in a school i was the windows also had the bird stickers on them, i think the school itself was near a forest and this is why they did it but im not 100% sure anymore but still i saw moments where in the middle of class you just heard a *thunk* and a bird flew into the window

[supersobes]

@Some newbie driver The orange stripes are indeed odd. If there was a clear sound wall, I'd like to actually see the highway from the other side. Maybe it's not so for others though. Apparently there's a general consensus that highways are ugly, but I actually think they look pretty nice. They definitely looks better than a wall with paint and graffiti on it or a rusted out piece of garbage that probably doesn't even keep any noise out because there's so many holes in it.

[Bandit & The Snowman]

I did some research about measures against birds flying into our windows because sadly that has cost a number of birds their lives this summer. And bird shapes have no effect at all according to what I've found. The best method seems to be to use the aforementioned stripes because they break the (more or less clear) image of the room/space behind as well as any mirror effect. On windows they look ugly but on noise barriers they are acceptable.

[plykkegaard]

I have seen similar noise barriers in Denmark in residential areas
With four black preying birds on each screen, this might give the same effect as the stripes mentioned

[SuchManor]

@supersobes ACRYLITE is a company that does clear sound barrier installation in the US. There are examples of places around the US where they are installed at the bottom. https://www.acrylite.co/specialty-produ ... dstop.html

One of their installations are actually on 495 in Alexandria. https://www.google.com/maps/@38.7929484 ... 8192?hl=en

[plykkegaard]

Nice

[supersobes]

@SuchManor Oh, that's cool! I drove over Woodrow Wilson Bridge not too long ago, but I had never noticed the walls there.