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Portable591 posted:Back to bikes: Are there any guidelines in the Green Book or any of the standard texts regarding bicycles? The MUTCD has a big section on pavement markings, signs, signals, and other special considerations for both mixed-use and dedicated bike paths. Check it out. States generally have their own policy guidelines, too, that specify more piddling things, like how many bollards to put at a road crossing. quote:You said you prefer separate infrastructure (trails) to bike lanes, is that to handle recreational cyclists or people trying to go places? Unfortunately I live in a rural area, so I don't even get access to bike trails, but I read a lot of complaints that they don't go anywhere useful so they are mostly left to the recreational crowd. It really depends on the job, and on the engineer in charge. Technically, we're required to consider it in every project, but I'm rather ashamed to say that many engineers don't give it a second thought. Our general design guidelines mostly treat bicyclists as pedestrians. I avoid some bicycle-unfriendly features, like slot drains, in projects in urban areas. Where I know there are lots of peds, and likely bicycles, I'll put up signs warning of them. The draft MUTCD has a sign that shows a bicycle and a ped, which should be pretty useful. quote:On my daily commute, I have no other option but to ride in the lane of a two-lane, 45 mph road, for at least two miles on the way to/from work. I get passed by a lot of cars, pickups, and dump trucks at 45 mph. While it still scares the poo poo out of me when a 40-ton trucks passes me with about a foot and a half of clearance at those speeds, I think making the right-most lanes several feet wider would make me feel safer (even if it might not actually be safer). You'd be much safer with wide shoulders and somewhat narrower lanes, as that will give you more room to maneuver and slow down vehicular traffic. You can probably get that to happen if you team up with a bicycle group and petition the jurisdiction to reduce speeds and increase safety. Bicycle safety might not merit much attention, certainly less than it should, but lowering speeds safely is something most politicians will get behind, for better or for worse. quote:Also, how much does it cost to retroactively place light rail and other train systems in U.S. cities? Is it going to happen in cities where it doesn't already exist? Many older cities in the US already had light rail, but tore it up around the middle of the century. Its cost depends on the city: if there is a wide road, it could go down the middle. If there are steep grades, they'll need to dig tunnels. If the planners were foresighted enough to provide wide medians in the freeways or wide right-of-way around them, all it would take is some new bridges (which cost, admittedly, several million dollars each.) I'd say, in a city of 100,000 people, you could build a tram line with a dozen stops for about a billion dollars. That's certainly cheaper than adding a lane of freeway in an urban area, and could conceivably carry more traffic.
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Aug 12, 2009 01:22
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potato of destiny posted:drat, I really like your design for that Wadsworth/6th ave. interchange. After hunting around on cdot's website, I managed to find the EIS they apparently did on that, and it looks like they want to go with a tight diamond with a loop in the upper left quadrant (from WB US6 -> SB Wadsworth). This, apparently, will involve a great deal of knocking down houses, so I suppose CDOT feels they haven't been picketed enough lately (it's mostly been RTD, our regional tranist authority, as they get ready to install about 120 miles of rail transit over the next 6-7 years). Sometimes you just gotta knock down some houses! v  vquote:As I was poking around, I found another thing that I wanted to ask about. There are a couple of heavily used bridges that form part of I-25, and there was mention of the "sufficiency rating" being 20.2 and 22.8, with 50 being considered "acceptable." I guess what I'm wondering is what the threshold is for "oh god, oh god, we're all going to die." Technically, the threshold is 0. It's not unusual to have some bridges in poor shape at any given time, but when they get down that low, there'd better be a replacement or major rehabilitation in the books. All it takes is one flaw that the inspector didn't catch, and down comes baby, so to speak. Most of our Interstate infrastructure was built in the 50s and 60s, and bridges just aren't built to last very long: 50 years or so back in the day, now their lifespans are even shorter. When you have thousands of bridges approaching the end of their service lives, some of them carrying a lot more traffic than they were designed for, and they're needed more than ever... what do you do? Either spend trillions (not kidding, the stimulus was just a fraction of what we need) to keep them in shape for the next generation, or let them collapse. My colleagues and I are all anxiously waiting for the next major bridge collapse, because the money we're getting just won't cover it. I know it's terrible, but cars crashing into rivers is the only thing that gets politician's attention. The ASCE took out full-page warning ads in major newspapers, and most of them didn't even blink an eye. This isn't a reason to stop driving. You have a much greater chance of dying because your tire pops unexpectedly on the freeway than driving off a collapsed bridge. Just know that we can't keep them safe forever with the limited funds we have.
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Aug 12, 2009 01:34
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I feel bad saying it, but the month after the interstate bridge collapse last summer, traffic was great in Fairfield county on I95, presumably because so many people took the parkway to avoid the Saugatuck river bridge. I do Fairfield to Stamford daily. Any bridges I should be particularly concerned about on 15 or 95?
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Aug 12, 2009 02:58
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GWBBQ posted:I feel bad saying it, but the month after the interstate bridge collapse last summer, traffic was great in Fairfield county on I95, presumably because so many people took the parkway to avoid the Saugatuck river bridge. 15 is in great shape, because we keep the historical bridges up to a higher standard than the rest. 95, though... well, a part of the Civil Engineer's ethical code says I'm not allowed to do anything that could incite public unrest. I'll let you make your own judgment. - The Mianus River Bridge's design was a very common thing back in the day. Many of the bridges along 95, particularly in the SW corner of the state, aren't in great shape. - Page 12 of this booklet says there are nearly 500 bridges in Connecticut alone that are structurally deficient, meaning they're in poor or worse shape. - Our bridge maintainers have a growing backlog of bridges in need of work (page 16). They can't maintain them all quickly enough. As of last November, there were 1900 unanswered bridge maintenance memos. - I can't speak for road bridges, but the structures that carry our sign supports are generally inspected every 5 years.
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Aug 12, 2009 03:27
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How often have you been involved in a project you've considered pork barrel? I guess this doesn't happen as easily in more densely populated states such as CT or RI compared to say Alaska, but considering how much emotion traffic evokes in people surely some politician must have at least tried to pull one during your career?
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Aug 12, 2009 21:40
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Nesnej posted:How often have you been involved in a project you've considered pork barrel? I guess this doesn't happen as easily in more densely populated states such as CT or RI compared to say Alaska, but considering how much emotion traffic evokes in people surely some politician must have at least tried to pull one during your career? It's not so readily apparent as in some states, but we do get some. If you look at our project folders, you'll notice that certain towns see a 'boom' of projects. These booms have a strong correlation with the hometown of whatever senators, representatives, or governor is in power at the time. Some projects just ooze "political interests," though. They're usually streetscape projects: put up a big banner saying "WELCOME TO PORTLAND!" and stick some planters on the side of the road. We're using federal money to make an individual town look better, and that's not really the intent of federal funding. It could be worse, though. SOME cities *coughSTAMFORDcough* try to get us to put their names on everything. "Oh, people need to see how awesome namelesstown is! Please, put its name on every sign within 40 miles." Cities and towns aren't the only ones who do it, either. Our airport wanted its name everywhere. The difference there is that the airport is owned by the DOT, so it's inter-departmental pork.
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Aug 12, 2009 21:52
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What is your take on Motorcycle lane filtering/sharing in congestion? It saves me a bunch of time, and I feel alot safer not having to worry about getting rear ended. Keeping in mind I only do this when there isn't any weaving in the general vicinity or approaching, and traffic is moving under 20mph? Are there any considerations you have to take into account for motorcycle riders in your designs?
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Aug 13, 2009 01:42
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blugu64 posted:What is your take on Motorcycle lane filtering/sharing in congestion? It saves me a bunch of time, and I feel alot safer not having to worry about getting rear ended. Keeping in mind I only do this when there isn't any weaving in the general vicinity or approaching, and traffic is moving under 20mph? I'm sorry, I don't know what lane filtering is. Does that mean driving between lanes in congestion? If so, I don't have much of an opinion. Motorcycles naturally have a much higher fatality rate than other vehicles; I assume you're well aware of that and drive accordingly. I wouldn't think motorcycles would pose a major danger to cars, so I don't see why you shouldn't share lanes if you can do so safely. I don't know about its legality, though. quote:Are there any considerations you have to take into account for motorcycle riders in your designs? Nothing specifically, since motorcycles can out-turn most other vehicles, have a wider degree of visibility, fit into narrower spaces, and, I assume, can stop a little faster than a semitrailer. The only times we specifically worry about motorcyclists is when there's a soft shoulder or milled pavement, in which case we put up warning signs.
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Aug 13, 2009 02:37
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Are traffic signal timings controlled from some central location, or do you have to send a workman out to change them manually somehow? Just got done watching Live Free or Die Hard and the whole EVERY LIGHT IS GREEN scene piqued my interest - in that it seems completely implasible traffic lights support tcp/ip, but then how DO you change the timings, since it would be terribly inefficient to change them on site.
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Aug 13, 2009 14:49
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Is there any way to unfuck the I91-I95 junction? Traffic going south on 91 backs up for miles every day.
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Aug 13, 2009 15:24
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Cichlidae posted:I'm sorry, I don't know what lane filtering is. Does that mean driving between lanes in congestion? If so, I don't have much of an opinion. Motorcycles naturally have a much higher fatality rate than other vehicles; I assume you're well aware of that and drive accordingly. I wouldn't think motorcycles would pose a major danger to cars, so I don't see why you shouldn't share lanes if you can do so safely. I don't know about its legality, though.
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Aug 13, 2009 15:28
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Portable591 posted:Back to bikes: Are there any guidelines in the Green Book or any of the standard texts regarding bicycles? AASHTO has a Guide to the Development of Bicycle Facilities from 1999. It is the "Green Book" for bicycle facility design.
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Aug 13, 2009 15:50
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blugu64 posted:That's pretty much it, it's really only legal in california, but when it hits 105 in Dallas it's hard to resist. Thanks for the response! I almost killed one of you the other day when he sneaked past me between my car and the concrete median on the tollway.
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Aug 13, 2009 17:21
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GregNorc posted:Are traffic signal timings controlled from some central location, or do you have to send a workman out to change them manually somehow? It depends on the signal. Most signals in relatively rural or small urban areas have on-site controllers. It's only the big cities that get centralized systems. The networked controllers have an Ethernet port, though I'm not sure what protocol they use. With those closed loop netowkrs, it'd be quite possible to change all the lights at once. Thing is, though, signals have a CMU (Conflict Monitoring Unit) that looks out for potentially conflicting signals and basically acts as a fail-safe. You'd have to go and physically disconnect it if you really wanted to gently caress with things. Speaking of going, yeah, we do have to field-inspect our signals. It's pretty efficient, though. You get a much better idea of what traffic is doing, how queues build, whether people are hitting the detectors, if things are wired properly... changing timings isn't a "fix it and go home" thing. It's a "tweak it for hours then come back at night and early in the morning to see if it still works" thing.
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Aug 13, 2009 17:26
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GWBBQ posted:Is there any way to unfuck the I91-I95 junction? Traffic going south on 91 backs up for miles every day. We're fixing it right now. Dual lanes onto 95 S from 91 S should really help, as well as adding another lane from 95 S onto 91 N. We're knocking out the left exits, smoothing out the curves, and plucking out all the bottlenecks we can afford. http://i95newhaven.com/
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Aug 13, 2009 17:28
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blugu64 posted:That's pretty much it, it's really only legal in california, but when it hits 105 in Dallas it's hard to resist. Thanks for the response! Stew Man Chew posted:I almost killed one of you the other day when he sneaked past me between my car and the concrete median on the tollway. Be careful out there! Motorcycle registrations have gone way down since the mid-90s, but fatalities have stayed relatively constant. Err, looking at the national figures, though, that's just in Connecticut. Fatality rates are decreasing nationwide for motorcycles. Still, there are under 7 million motorcyclists nationwide, and they make up 11.3% of all fatalities. Neutrino posted:AASHTO has a Guide to the Development of Bicycle Facilities from 1999. It is the "Green Book" for bicycle facility design. Wow, it's even free! I'd come to expect a pretty hefty price tag from AASHTO.
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Aug 13, 2009 17:34
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Cichlidae posted:It depends on the signal. Most signals in relatively rural or small urban areas have on-site controllers. In my town, some drunk lady took one out, and they literally said "welp, we don't have any money to replace it, so how about stop signs for now?" The traffic lights were still up and everything, just black. I guess the stop signs worked out well enough, because they eventually took down the signals and poles.
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Aug 13, 2009 19:17
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Cichlidae posted:
You'll notice it isn't from the AASHTO website...
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Aug 13, 2009 19:27
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smackfu posted:And if you really want to screw over a small town, run over one of their light control boxes. I gather they are pretty pricey. Yeah, a signal controller cabinet is not cheap! We're talking on the order of magnitude of $10,000. Anywhere a stop sign works, though, probably shouldn't have a signal. It's not unusual for us to take down unwarranted signals when we get the chance; they use up a few hundred Watts constantly, so why waste the electricity?
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Aug 13, 2009 21:43
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Neutrino posted:You'll notice it isn't from the AASHTO website... Sneaky guy! I guess you highway engineers have your ways 
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Aug 13, 2009 21:44
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 Here's a jolly little spot outside of Danvers, MA, where I went to high school. Every single one of those off-ramps is a white-knuckle deathtrap, especially in the winter. Given that my school was right by there, guess where I had to learn to drive (in the winter, no less)? The off-ramps are downhill, bad camber, and iced over all the time during the winter, listed as 15 mph while everybody around you is doing at least 70, have no extra lane to slow down in (on a two lane major highway), and the sun is absolutely blinding (check it out on street-view some time). Also, no visibility due to the trees, and it's easy to miss the southwestern exit because you can't see the sign over the bridge, which humps as it crosses the road underneath. Oh, and traffic coming off Purchase St. which goes to the local mall really makes that intersection suck too. If you ever find out who designed this spot, and they're still alive, could you give them a kidney punch for me? Thanks. That spot's infuriated me more than anything else I've encountered on the road. But I do have something to add! I spent the last 4 months in Germany, and they have this awesome set-up with the lights in Europe, where just before the light turns green, the red and yellow lights go on at the same time, letting people know when to put their cars in gear, and letting people approaching the light know if they need to come to a full stop or not. It rocks. Why don't we do that here? EDIT: Here's a link to the street view: http://tinyurl.com/qclk4a Steak Flavored Gum fucked around with this message at 21:48 on Aug 13, 2009 |
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Aug 13, 2009 21:44
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Where in a city are distance guide signs directing you to? I see lots of signs that say something like "(city) 3" and then, less than a mile later, I see the city limits sign.
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Aug 13, 2009 21:55
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Steak Flavored Gum posted:
Unfortunately, I think anyone who designed 128 is probably 30 years dead at this point. But I can punch their headstones! If it's any consolation, it should be easy enough to turn that into a diamond, if you can get MassHighway off its rear end for once. quote:But I do have something to add! I explained before, and someone posted a nice link going into depth. Basically, people here drive like assholes and already gun it the instant the light turns green. If we gave them more warning, they'd start up even earlier, and we'd have to extend the all-red clearance accordingly, negating any benefit that an early red would grant. http://federalist.wordpress.com/2008/05/08/traffic-signals-yellow-before-green/ is the link 'problematique' posted earlier.
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Aug 13, 2009 22:01
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People should learn not to solely rely on the traffic signals to let them know when to go. There are plenty of drivers that will try to "make the light" even when it has already turned red. I learned from riding a motorcycle never to go until I made sure all the cars on the cross street were stopping or stopped.
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Aug 13, 2009 22:10
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THESE SOCKS? posted:Where in a city are distance guide signs directing you to? I see lots of signs that say something like "(city) 3" and then, less than a mile later, I see the city limits sign. Holy poo poo, I've actually never thought of that. I've always just replaced those without worrying whether they're accurate. Most likely, they are the distance to the "downtown" area or CBD. On freeways, it would be a distance to a major junction in that city. I'll ask my boss next week when he's back from vacation, see if he knows. In the meantime, to make up for not knowing, here's a nice series of pictures showing how our roads have changed over the last 75 years! Berlin Turnpike, Newington, CT  1934. The Turnpike was a narrow rural road at this point. Note the semicircular road to the right of the 'pike and the intersections with 5 or more legs.  1965. The DOT doubled the Turnpike's width in the 1950s as a temporary measure until a freeway could be built between New Haven and Hartford.  2009. Most of the original roads are still there, with suburbs built in between and the old complicated intersections realigned. Traces of the past, like the semicircular road mentioned before, have hardly changed at all. Bridgeport  1934. Bridgeport was a booming industrial city, and all the land was used up. Heavy development was focused around the railroad tracks.  1965. I-95 was being built through the middle of the city to reduce congestion on US 1. Many city blocks were bulldozed to make room for the interstate.  2009. CT 8 and 25, new freeways, now connect to I-95. Much of the land has been abandoned due to heavy industrial pollution, and Bridgeport is a den of crime. Many of the roads are unchanged, and their narrow footprints make them dangerous to motorists. New Haven  1934. Heavy traffic is already clogging US 1. This part of the city is a mix of parks, homes, and heavy industrial areas.  1965. I-95, CT 34, and I-91 are being constructed, effectively cutting the industrial areas off from the residential areas.  2009-ish. The interchange is being completely redone, but most of the picture is virtually unchanged. Same bridges, same buildings, same roads as over 40 years ago. Waterbury  1934. Waterbury is a hotbed of industry. US 6 crosses the city from west to east, highly visible here as a white band snaking down the hills toward the river.  1965. I-84 is already under construction, double-decked in this area for an interchange with CT 8. The railyards of yesteryear are already giving way to warehouses.  2009. The interchange operates at LOS F nearly every day. Waterbury's rails are quieter these days, and its state of urban decay is quite visible. Even the bible theme park has left the city behind. West Farms Mall, Farmington, CT  1934. US 6 is the busiest east-west route to Hartford, and ConnDOT is busily constructing a traffic circle here in the middle of farmland.  1965. I-84 is under construction here, as well. The traffic circle is long gone, replaced by a large intersection at what will soon become a shopping mall.  2009. Suburbs fill what was once farmland, the former US 6 now cut off by a large interchange to the west of the picture. Parking lots dominate the landscape.
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Aug 13, 2009 22:29
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Awesome thread by the way!Cichlidae posted:Basically, people here drive like assholes Heh, well given the requirements of the driver's test (I had to do a three point turn! WOW!) who's surprised about that?
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Aug 13, 2009 22:31
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Steak Flavored Gum posted:Awesome thread by the way! Tell me about it. I used to be an awful driver (I still am, by French standards), and I got a 100 on the Rhode Island driving test. We didn't even have to parallel park or drive on the freeway. The license itself was something like $15. If you ever wonder why there are so many idiots on the road, then the answer is pretty obvious
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Aug 13, 2009 22:43
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You've mentioned several times that you think that American driver education should be improved and the requirements should be raised. What are some of the new standards that you would implement if you had a chance? What kind of new tests and requirements would you see mandated?
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Aug 13, 2009 23:21
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Kaal posted:You've mentioned several times that you think that American driver education should be improved and the requirements should be raised. What are some of the new standards that you would implement if you had a chance? What kind of new tests and requirements would you see mandated? First off, I'd raise the minimum driving age to 18 nationwide. Young drivers have the highest accident rates. I'd mandate driving school, and establish a national standard for driving education to ensure it's all of the same quality. Driving school would teach more about defensive driving, familiarity with some of the more exotic road configurations (roundabouts count as exotic in the USA), and emphasize critical thinking more than rote memorization. We also need to expend a lot more effort explaining the dangers of drunk driving and racing, which are two of the biggest causes of fatal accidents, especially among young drivers. Drivers should learn how to react in stressful situations: what to do after a fender-bender on the freeway, how to cope with road rage, what to do if the car catches fire... I'd love to see the minimum passing score on driving tests bumped at least up to 90%, and change them from a multiple-choice to a more open-ended format. Instead of "are headphones illegal to wear while driving?", the question should be, "why are they illegal?" Unfortunately, that means that grading would be quite a bit more subjective, and brings up some legal difficulties. I think that driving simulations could go a long way toward teaching new drivers, without exposing them to actual danger. Finally, I would make getting insurance part of the licensing process, not just a requirement. If you can't afford insurance, you certainly can't afford the extended hospital visit when you have your first big crash. Some would consider these rules draconic, and they would certainly weed out a great number of drivers. Others might point out that driving is essential to most Americans, since effective mass transit doesn't exist in most of the country. My main concern, though, isn't convenience or equality; it's safety.
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Aug 13, 2009 23:38
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It amuses the hell out of me that you're amazed that you had to do a 3 point turn, Steak Flavoured Gum! It's a staple of British motoring, and one of the things that people most fail their test on. Hitting the kerb is a fault, major or minor depending on severity.
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Aug 14, 2009 12:53
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This is a great thread. Thanks a lot! Would you be able to tell me if you think this is designed extremely poorly or not? My dad and I talk about this spot regularly and how awful it is. http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=44.744897,-63.656008&spn=0.00213,0.004823&t=k&z=18  Problem A: Ok, this one really busts my balls. Leading up to the ramp heading to the airport, there's a large sign indicating that the left lane is for Sackville, and the right lane is to the airport. Now, if you look closely, you can see a solid white line in the middle of the road. Why, WHY end it in the MIDDLE of the road? There's also no merge sign. Therefore, people in the right lane have no real obligation to take the ramp as the sign indicated earlier, so quite often people end up getting cut off because there's two cars side by side, with no true merge. Also, there's oncoming traffic. Recipe for disaster in my opinion. Problem B: Continuing along in the same path as problem A, we have another situation where people outbound from Halifax heading to Sackville are coming off the ramp, and simply come into their own lane (more or less - there's a yield sign, but it's not a true yield situation in my opinion). The problem is, in most situations people heading from Bedford are looking to get onto the ramp that goes to Halifax, which requires them to be in that same lane the cars coming off the highway are in! It's an absolute cluster gently caress on the best of days. Problem C: A similar situation as problem B, except higher speeds. You've got people from problem B heading to Halifax, looking to merge on the highway after going around a relatively sharp turned ramp (people go much slower than they need to, I'm going 80 KM/H by the time I'm about to merge on, which still isn't great), all the while cars are both trying to get off the highway, while going downhill, into the same lane others are merging. To top it all off, the exit ramp turns into an extremely sharp turn very shortly after exiting the highway. Problem D: Same situation as problem C, except you have even less time to merge / exit, but not quite as quick of a turn when exiting as in C. So, there we have it. Maybe I'm blowing it all out of proportion, but it just seems like a mess to me. Unfortunately only problem A could be solved easily. Rick Rickshaw fucked around with this message at 14:07 on Aug 14, 2009 |
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Aug 14, 2009 13:56
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In the "Ask me about being a Hyper-Traffic Engineer" thread ca. 2060, what elements of your current designs or other 2010 contemporary techniques do you think that future traffic engineers will curse the most? Likewise, do you think engineers in the 1960s had an idea that 50 years down the road their successors would be cursing the beautifully symmetrical cloverleafs they just built?
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Aug 14, 2009 16:16
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Cichlidae posted:Holy poo poo, I've actually never thought of that. I've always just replaced those without worrying whether they're accurate. Most likely, they are the distance to the "downtown" area or CBD. On freeways, it would be a distance to a major junction in that city. I'll ask my boss next week when he's back from vacation, see if he knows. I'd guess that it's the distance to the approximate center of the city or to the "downtown" area. In Atlanta, the distance numbers correspond roughly to mile marker 249 on 75/85, at the border of Midtown and Downtown. I don't know where the exact city limits are, but that point is about ten miles inside the 285 perimeter from almost every approach (except the south leg of 85, which is slightly longer since it curves around the airport).
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Aug 14, 2009 16:20
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ibpooks posted:In the "Ask me about being a Hyper-Traffic Engineer" thread ca. 2060, what elements of your current designs or other 2010 contemporary techniques do you think that future traffic engineers will curse the most? Likewise, do you think engineers in the 1960s had an idea that 50 years down the road their successors would be cursing the beautifully symmetrical cloverleafs they just built?
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Aug 14, 2009 17:12
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Rick Rickshaw posted:This is a great thread. Thanks a lot! Would you be able to tell me if you think this is designed extremely poorly or not? My dad and I talk about this spot regularly and how awful it is. Yep, that's a cloverleaf, and problems B, C, and D are all weaving areas. They somehow managed to stick a fifth weaving area in there, too, on the westernmost ramp. Weaving's an inherent problem with any cloverleaf and, you're right, it's not super easy to fix without either spending a lot of money for more bridges or creating at-grade intersections. This is why we don't build them anymore! As to problem A, it could be solved by making the right lane exit-only, but that's also become something of a taboo in highway design. Ideally, due to the principles of lane balance I mentioned a couple pages ago, there would be two through lanes all the way through the interchange; there's certainly room for them. Basically, make it symmetrical with the other side. If they're going to even touch this interchange, though, they may as well revamp the whole thing and get rid of the weaving.
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Aug 14, 2009 17:21
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thehustler posted:It amuses the hell out of me that you're amazed that you had to do a 3 point turn, Steak Flavoured Gum! In driving school, I was taught that to pass the test, we should focus on three things: three-point turns, backing up in a straight line, and parallel parking. I was only tested on the first two (although they didn't let me use the brake on the backing up, which I think is absurd since any sensible person would), and I still can't parallel park to save my life. On the other hand, I can't fathom why most British drivers would fail on a three point turn unless the road they're tested on is incredibly narrow, because it's basically the easiest driving maneuver.
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Aug 14, 2009 17:22
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Cichlidae posted:Tell me about it. I used to be an awful driver (I still am, by French standards), and I got a 100 on the Rhode Island driving test. We didn't even have to parallel park or drive on the freeway. The license itself was something like $15. If you ever wonder why there are so many idiots on the road, then the answer is pretty obvious When I took the CT test in the 90's I did have to parallel park and I did spend a little time on 395. Not very much though. Most of it was actually spent in a Walmart parking lot.
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Aug 14, 2009 17:36
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ibpooks posted:In the "Ask me about being a Hyper-Traffic Engineer" thread ca. 2060, what elements of your current designs or other 2010 contemporary techniques do you think that future traffic engineers will curse the most? Likewise, do you think engineers in the 1960s had an idea that 50 years down the road their successors would be cursing the beautifully symmetrical cloverleafs they just built? nesnej posted:That's really anyone's guess, but my hunch would be the lack of rail capacity, street plans that are ill-suited for human-powered transport and over-signage. My assumption here is that driving a car is going to become much more expensive and teenagers will have to figure out some other way to move around once the age limit is bumped up to 18 years. I'll go ahead and take a shot in the dark, at least. I think road standards in the future will have to be adapted to fit future vehicles. Perhaps they'll be little single-passenger pods, designed to drive automatically at high speeds in little packs to save energy. If that's the case, then things like signalized intersections will be the way of the past. The speed of change would be more limited by car manufacturers and people refusing to get rid of their "dumb" cars than by highway design. Unfortunately, some of those 50-year-old mistakes are probably still going to be around; I just hope the next generation knows it's not our fault. A big reason that road design has changed between the 1940s/50s/60s and today is an increased emphasis on safety. Many of the designs from back then (high-type channelized intersections, four-lane arterials with no turn lanes, left exits and entrances) were built for speed, and can actually carry more traffic at higher speeds than the modern equivalents. As cars themselves began to become safer, so too did the roads on which they drove. I'm sure many engineers didn't like the new standards back then, wondering why we were sacrificing capacity to save a few lives. Did they realize what they were building wasn't perfectly safe? Sometimes the answer was no; a lot of studies have been done since then regarding driver expectancy and habits. But usually, it was assumed (and still is) that they couldn't build perfectly safe roads, so a compromise was made between safety and efficiency. The balance has just shifted, that's the big difference between engineers now and then. So, assuming that the pendulum continues to swing toward safety, we'll see a lot more roundabouts. Future engineers will wonder why we put up an expensive and dangerous signal, when a simple roundabout could carry nearly as much traffic and cut accidents in half. They'll curse us for not leaving more right-of-way beside our roads for future expansion, probably things like adding bike lanes, trams, or heavy rail alongside freeways. They'll scratch their heads and ponder why we didn't build more freeways or railroads before the countryside was filled in by suburbs. Really, I can't blame them. I'll just nod my head slowly and imitate the old-timers who built these freeways in the first place: "Things were different back then."
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Aug 14, 2009 17:40
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Tool Maker posted:In driving school, I was taught that to pass the test, we should focus on three things: three-point turns, backing up in a straight line, and parallel parking. I really wish I'd learned to parallel park. Since it wasn't on the test, my driving school didn't bother to teach it. Such a useful thing, too, in cramped New England cities! Three point turns, though... those are incredibly easy, though maybe that's just because I do them so often in computer games. You never have to parallel park in GRID or Grand Theft Auto.
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Aug 14, 2009 17:44
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Thomamelas posted:When I took the CT test in the 90's I did have to parallel park and I did spend a little time on 395. Not very much though. Most of it was actually spent in a Walmart parking lot. I actually first learned to drive in Connecticut, by reading my grandma's driving test prep booklet. One thing I didn't address about drivers' education is the elderly. I think by now it's no secret what I think of elderly drivers! Many states already mandate driving tests for the elderly. They're another high-risk group, second only to young drivers when it comes to accident rates. With stricter driver guidelines, it's probable that a majority of elderly drivers would no longer be able to pass the test, and that can be a pretty big problem. Providing more flexible transit for the elderly could help them to regain mobility, but it seems a little demeaning to take Granny McGee off the road, even if she is a hazard to herself and every Girl Scout and orphan in a three-mile radius. Ah well, safety first.
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Aug 14, 2009 17:50
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