Great idea.....we would love to institute a project like this here...

About the Greenhouses: The last thing I want on a Highway, ist stop, or other peuple stopping. About the road surface: Not inly on racetracks, but also on common Roads the cars loose rubber on the road surface everytime they drive. So the \"transparent and durable\" plastics won\'t be transparent for too long, unless they find a Way to clean it. Also I\'d be interested in the c_f values of those plastics, because especially on bridges side forces can get quite extreme due to wind. For the wind turbines: Good Idea, given that the increased area is taken into account when designing the bridge, so it won\'t lean over too far.

Great Idea. In fact I have been toying with the idea of putting small wind turbines to produce wind energy just like Exhaust fans so that batteries put on the pillars get charged and the lights on the bridge get power during nights. Similarly Solar Panels.

This will be a decentralised way of providing power locally.

Dr.A.Jagadeesh Nellore (AP), India

The concept should be a bit more realistic - the greenhouses are simply stupid, bridge is quite a bad place to stop a car and would you really want to buy some fruit on a bridge with heavy traffic, or relax there while cars are driving by?

As for the solar roadways - why not make solar roofs (designed is such way, that they would provide enough light for cars and their shape would be aerodynamic). First off - a roof could be maintained without stopping the traffic, rain, show etc wouldn\'t affect the surface of the road so driving should be safer. And also jumping off the bridge wouldn\'t be that easy..

As for the turbines - I\'m not an engineer, but imho those turbines would create additional strain to the construction, of course that can be taken info account, yet as it seems the bridge is already built, so U can\'t alter it that much. The turbines could be simply constructed under the bridge - wouldn\'t look that cool, but it wouldn\'t directly interfere with the bridge itself. Not to mention the construction costs.

The wind turbine idea has real potential, but as Richie suggests the forces generated shouldn\'t be underestimated. The roadway solar collector idea is idiotic. Cars and trucks wear down asphalt and concrete. How long do they expect plastic to last? And how slippery is it going to be when wet (or even dry, for that matter)?
Solar cells could be placed on parts of the bridge not exposed to traffic, but not on the roadway itself.

evacuating thermal heat due to natural day time heating of passive surfaces like the road, walls is not very fashionable but will provide \"base\" heat for large heat generation/transfer for grid sized genaration without any additional cost if it is incorporated at the design stage.
Current breakthroughs are in capturing, mutiplying the radiance/radiation of the sun.
But hardly any to use the heat already created on the surface of the planet due to sunshine.
BTW - trapping the energy of the sun (some of which would have bounced off/reflected back in space) may not actually help in stopping global warming - is it not?
Just asking.

Take part of the idea,wind-energy, and add to Mississippi River\'s bridges that are all READY for this!

Solar panels on roadways seems to defy logic. They wouldn\'t last very long. As for the wind turbines under the bridge, they would seem inherently less efficient than turbines placed where the wind is optimal, rather than where people primarily need to bridge a gap.
Good luck finding backers.

Actually, I think that the idea of having a place to stop on the bridge and enjoy the view is great. Fruit stands next to the dirt and grime of a high traffic road seem less great, but it is a nice enough thought.
All engineering aside, I feel like a huge structure of fan blades above a forest is an environmental disaster. With the clustered array of spinning blades, birds will face significantly higher danger than in normal wind turbine. situations.

To bring us all down to reality, both wind and PV systems just don\'t receive enough energy from wind or sunlight to generate reasonable power. There\'s not enough \'oomph\' there, folks - no matter how we wish it were otherwise.

The cost of wind and PV systems is orders of magnitude greater than the energy they return - even with the most cutting edge technology. Even though they are highly developed and efficient, you can only get so much blood out of a turnip.

For generations we have had the ideal power generating technology out there - but the Hippies have told us it\'s bad. We could all have had electric vehicles for the last 30 years, high-speed rail - except that we listened to complete idiots tell us that nuclear is somehow bad.