IT MAY BE EASY GOING GREEN

摘要

Where it glides past a farm pond, a new toll road through rural Austria outside Vienna is flanked by a curb-like concrete barrier just higher than a frog can jump. The purpose is to keep frogs from hopping into harm's way on the toll road. Along the tollway there are wide, unpaved overpasses simulating a woodlands environment so deer can graze on the greener grass without being splattered on the grill of a semi. The mainline lanes are depressed below grade to allow the deer a gentle incline. One narrow overpass has no connecting roads; it simply allows an 85-year-old farmer to drive his father's 1937 Deutz tractor out to pasture. The otherwise bucolic views are peppered with futuristic windmills, their monolithic fan blades rotating at Ferris-wheel speed a hundred feet above the green pastures. This Austrian toll road is to greenfield projects what the Stradivarius is to violins.