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Choadmaster posted:Funny, I've never noticed a line peel or chip. They just seem to wear away. It's not something I pay much attention to though, I'll have to keep my eyes open for that. The 6" preformed plastic pavement markings peel and chip, presumably when they weren't installed properly. You can see it on Route 2 in Connecticut around Colchester if you live around here. The flamethrower-fused markings are thermoplastic, and they're awesome. I haven't actually witnessed them being installed in person, unfortunately.
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Nov 9, 2009 18:12
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Speaking of lane markings, I was curious as to how those "turtle shell" markings are installed. I don't know what they're actually called; I encountered them a lot during a recent road trip around the pacific northwest; they're the kind that are just a raised half-shell in the middle of the road, usually installed a few at a time, and seemingly instead of actually painting a stripe on the road (like, they'd just have a row of 3 or 4 of these bump things in the middle of the road, and no other lane markings at all). This was particularly in Oregon, where they seem to have some really odd highway conventions (such as all the speed limit signs in the state saying "SPEED 40" instead of "SPEED LIMIT 40"; I've never seen that in any other state). While I'm on the subject of road trips, holy poo poo California. I don't think I've ever seen such insane highway design. "This highway's a super-2! Now it's a 4-lane! Whoops, now it's a rural two-lane with no shoulders! Now we're going to drop the speed limit to 40 because some developer started putting in a street grid but "lost his financing" halfway through! Ahahahahahaha!"
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Nov 9, 2009 18:36
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potato of destiny posted:Speaking of lane markings, I was curious as to how those "turtle shell" markings are installed. I don't know what they're actually called; I encountered them a lot during a recent road trip around the pacific northwest; they're the kind that are just a raised half-shell in the middle of the road, usually installed a few at a time, and seemingly instead of actually painting a stripe on the road (like, they'd just have a row of 3 or 4 of these bump things in the middle of the road, and no other lane markings at all). This was particularly in Oregon, where they seem to have some really odd highway conventions (such as all the speed limit signs in the state saying "SPEED 40" instead of "SPEED LIMIT 40"; I've never seen that in any other state). Those are the raised pavement markings I referred to, and I often hear them called turtles. We don't use any in Connecticut because of their cost and the ever-present specter of plowing mishaps. quote:While I'm on the subject of road trips, holy poo poo California. I don't think I've ever seen such insane highway design. "This highway's a super-2! Now it's a 4-lane! Whoops, now it's a rural two-lane with no shoulders! Now we're going to drop the speed limit to 40 because some developer started putting in a street grid but "lost his financing" halfway through! Ahahahahahaha!" We've had our share of failed developments here, as well. At one point, a developer planned to buy an old asylum and build a gigantic resort with 5 theme parks and a huge hotel. Along with the two casinos in that area, Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun, that would have been an absolute traffic nightmare. I'm a little relieved it didn't work out.
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Nov 9, 2009 23:01
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potato of destiny posted:While I'm on the subject of road trips, holy poo poo California. I don't think I've ever seen such insane highway design. "This highway's a super-2! Now it's a 4-lane! Whoops, now it's a rural two-lane with no shoulders! Now we're going to drop the speed limit to 40 because some developer started putting in a street grid but "lost his financing" halfway through! Ahahahahahaha!" LOL. At least we put so many emergency phones on them that you literally don't have to walk more than a half mile to call someone! (Once that comment might have been serious, but now... why do we maintain the damned things?) Where were you driving? I'm assuming you came from Oregon and took the 101. One of the problems is there's only one interstate that cuts north-south through California: I-5. For whatever reason there's no interstate along the coast, just highway 101, so you end up driving through what turns into a small, rural highway in less densely populated areas (since unlike an interstate, a regular highway isn't required to live up to freeway standards - I'm sure Cichlidae could explain that in detail - and it doesn't get as much funding, either.). So you end up transitioning from the 101 being a major freeway to having driveways and mailboxes and poo poo all over it. It's not really any different in any other states, you probably just stick to the interstates when going through rural areas there because more often than not, there's one going where you want to go. I've road-tripped through about 40 states and there's wacky poo poo going on everywhere. California just mysteriously left the 101 out of the interstate system (what would it be, Cichlidae? I-1? Do you have any idea why it isn't an interstate? Does California have any say in that anyway? How much extra funding to interstates get?).
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Nov 10, 2009 02:25
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Cichlidae, At your job, have you ever shouted "YOU CAN'T CUT BACK ON FUNDING! YOU WILL REGRET THIS!" to anyone? (In all seriousness, this is a really, really cool thread.) Three-Phase fucked around with this message at 03:04 on Nov 10, 2009 |
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Nov 10, 2009 03:02
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Three-Phase posted:Cichlidae, I had this on the wall of my cubicle when I was working for a transportation engineering consulting firm and no one got it. 
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Nov 10, 2009 03:04
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Choadmaster posted:LOL. At least we put so many emergency phones on them that you literally don't have to walk more than a half mile to call someone! (Once that comment might have been serious, but now... why do we maintain the damned things?) Rhode Island took theirs out years ago, when cell phones became popular. The only legacy by the time I worked there was a little circle cut out of the raised flooring where the receiver used to be. A few months into my internship, it was plugged with plywood. RIP call boxes. quote:Where were you driving? I'm assuming you came from Oregon and took the 101. One of the problems is there's only one interstate that cuts north-south through California: I-5. For whatever reason there's no interstate along the coast, just highway 101, so you end up driving through what turns into a small, rural highway in less densely populated areas (since unlike an interstate, a regular highway isn't required to live up to freeway standards - I'm sure Cichlidae could explain that in detail - and it doesn't get as much funding, either.). So you end up transitioning from the 101 being a major freeway to having driveways and mailboxes and poo poo all over it. I'm not familiar with the history of Route 101, but given how you describe it, it was probably just cheaper to build a replacement inland and upgrade the rural parts as needed. The same thing happened with US 1 around here; I-95 was built as a bypass (after CT 15, CT 80, and CT 84 didn't quite do the trick), and US 1 is still a local road in many places. As to what gets to be an interstate, it's mostly political dick-waving. If your state has a powerful governor or senator, he/she can get a freeway added to the list, even if it's not up to standards. Some freeways (I-95, for example), are discontinuous. Some have stop lights, some have drawbridges, and pretty much all of them around here don't strictly meet interstate standards. As to funding, it's not so much an Interstate/non-Interstate distinction so much as NHS/non-NHS (National Highway System). How does a road get on the NHS? More political dick-waving, of course! Being on the NHS means you get more federal bucks for big projects like capacity improvements and reconstruction.
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Nov 10, 2009 03:06
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Three-Phase posted:Cichlidae, I did just this when the Governor announced layoffs and budget cuts. A whole office full of traffic engineers, and nobody else got it Dominus Vobiscum posted:I had this on the wall of my cubicle when I was working for a transportation engineering consulting firm and no one got it. Which firm, if you don't mind my asking? I spend about half my day reviewing consultant designs.
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Nov 10, 2009 03:09
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Cichlidae posted:Which firm, if you don't mind my asking? I spend about half my day reviewing consultant designs. Nobody you've ever heard of. Local firm, Florida-only.
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Nov 10, 2009 03:10
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Serious question - there's a massive GM plant here near Parma that is along a pretty important artery connectiong Brookpark Road to Parma. There are a ton of traffic lights on that road that essentially do nothing but slow people down - the plant is a shell of it's former past. Is there any legal way to get these lights removed or put in red/yellow flashing purgatory?
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Nov 10, 2009 03:22
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Whats your opinion on the signals where they put a strobe in the red element? Do they really help? Is there a standard on when they get used? I've only seen them in two places. One is on the NY Thruway (I-90) (It only gets used while the state fair is going on) I get that because you are going 75 on a controlled highway, then holy poo poo ped crossing! They do have a bunch of signs in advance and a state trooper or two but it still seems like a bridge or anything else would be better. The other is on a divided parkway on my university's campus for a ped crossing. Which brings me to my other question. In the winter, the ped buttons get filled with blown ice and snow that holds the button in and causes the ped phase to get called constantly. So late at night when I would cross there, very often the light would turn red right after I crossed and some driver who got caught by it would tell me to go gently caress myself because they thought I pressed the button. For my actual question: Is there some other kind of button that won't get filled with snow? The current ones have some kind of recess for the button that holds the snow. Also, doesn't the controller notice that the button has been held for a week and determine that there is a fault in the button? Or does it, and its just defaulting to a "safe" cycle?
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Nov 10, 2009 03:35
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Three-Phase posted:Serious question - there's a massive GM plant here near Parma that is along a pretty important artery connectiong Brookpark Road to Parma. There are a ton of traffic lights on that road that essentially do nothing but slow people down - the plant is a shell of it's former past. Is there any legal way to get these lights removed or put in red/yellow flashing purgatory? Yep. Good engineering judgment dictates that signals be reviewed every few years to see if their timing should be revised and if they're still necessary. If you call up the town engineer, you should be able to either convince him to have a look at the signals or find out why they're not going to be removed. At the very least, he could direct you to someone who can help out.
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Nov 10, 2009 03:52
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Guy Axlerod posted:Whats your opinion on the signals where they put a strobe in the red element? Do they really help? Is there a standard on when they get used? We don't use any here, because there's a potential to cause seizures, and they are quite startling. In special cases, using them makes some sense, but I'd personally avoid it. The MUTCD doesn't say anything about strobes other than that they don't count as illumination and may be used on trucks in work zones. quote:The other is on a divided parkway on my university's campus for a ped crossing. Which brings me to my other question. In the winter, the ped buttons get filled with blown ice and snow that holds the button in and causes the ped phase to get called constantly. So late at night when I would cross there, very often the light would turn red right after I crossed and some driver who got caught by it would tell me to go gently caress myself because they thought I pressed the button. For my actual question: Is there some other kind of button that won't get filled with snow? The current ones have some kind of recess for the button that holds the snow. Also, doesn't the controller notice that the button has been held for a week and determine that there is a fault in the button? Or does it, and its just defaulting to a "safe" cycle? The best buttons I've used were the ones in France. They were round buttons on the underside of a box about 3" by 3" by 9" tall. I didn't see those getting gummed up by anything, and they even had little speakers on them for blind peds that announced the name of the street and when it was ok to walk. As to faults, normally a controller will put a phase on min recall when it realizes that the detector is broken. If you apply the same logic to the ped phase, it gets called every cycle, only there's really no "min" time, just the normal walk/FDW/don't walk time. With ped phases, the potential for a deadly accident is quite high if the ped thinks he's called the phase and really hasn't.
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Nov 10, 2009 04:05
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Cichlidae posted:Yep. Good engineering judgment dictates that signals be reviewed every few years to see if their timing should be revised and if they're still necessary. If you call up the town engineer, you should be able to either convince him to have a look at the signals or find out why they're not going to be removed. At the very least, he could direct you to someone who can help out. We just installed a "temporary signal" because of sight distance issues on a new stretch of road. I asked my boss if we were actually going to remove it once the sight distance issue is resolved (acquiring corner clips for the side street) and he basically told me "Good luck with that." Once that signal is in, the people that use it love it, and since it is actuated, doesn't really disturb the main street. It's sad, but the politicians just will not let it happen. You could remove the thing in a day, and be out the next putting it back up. There is such thing as engineering judgment, but there is also politician judgment. The two rarely see eye to eye.
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Nov 10, 2009 05:12
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Cichlidae posted:The best buttons I've used were the ones in France. They were round buttons on the underside of a box about 3" by 3" by 9" tall. I didn't see those getting gummed up by anything, and they even had little speakers on them for blind peds that announced the name of the street and when it was ok to walk. We installed some accessible ped pushbuttons by Polara that were pretty hardcore (well as hardcore as traffic engineering goes  ). They could beep / talk to you / vibrate / do all sorts of weird and expensive things. Of course the agency I used to work for did not put them in any sort of blind pedestrian area.
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Nov 10, 2009 05:20
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Guy Axlerod posted:For my actual question: Is there some other kind of button that won't get filled with snow? The current ones have some kind of recess for the button that holds the snow. Every few years they seem to come up with new buttons to install here (they only upgrade a few at a time so we have all different kinds now, yay). The really old style sound like what you're describing, and the button is relatively tiny and can be hard to push for certain people (old / handicapped / weak fingers / no fingers (!)).  Fifteen or so years ago they started using these, where the button is a gigantic protruding hemisphere. Way easier to push (bump it with your hip/elbow or whatever) and I can't imagine snow getting in there, but that's not a problem we deal with in Socal anyway.  The newest don't have mechanical buttons at all, they're touch-sensitive so you just have to contact them with the slightest pressure (I don't know if that works through gloves... never thought about it before). I dunno what's up with the weird little hole in the middle. In any case, should be snow-proof provided it'll work through gloves. 
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Nov 10, 2009 06:20
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Choadmaster posted:Every few years they seem to come up with new buttons to install here (they only upgrade a few at a time so we have all different kinds now, yay). That first picture is pretty close to what they have right now. The ones at the intersection have a rubber membrane over the buttons. The others look promising, but I'm not sure how the touch ones would work with a coating of ice over them. This area is pretty exposed, usually as soon as they plow the sidewalk, the wind has drifted 2 inches of snow onto it. Not that any of this matters, they plan on re-doing the whole intersection and putting in a pedestrian bridge.
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Nov 10, 2009 06:40
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Nexis posted:We just installed a "temporary signal" because of sight distance issues on a new stretch of road. I asked my boss if we were actually going to remove it once the sight distance issue is resolved (acquiring corner clips for the side street) and he basically told me "Good luck with that." Unfortunately, an engineer's decision can never stand up to a politician's. About the only chance we have is citing safety issues, but it's rare to pull out such a trump card for something as minor as removing a signal. I have seen signals taken down, though. When I-95 through Bridgeport was reconstructed, at least a dozen signals were found to be no longer warranted (dubious grounds for removal, but I digress,) and were removed. Even with the safety issue, some politicians are hard to sway. The #1 most dangerous spot in our state is almost entirely the result of a town that doesn't know how to say "yes." Of course, I should mention that removing a signal can have safety issues of its own, but it's not as bad as taking a two-way stop and signalizing it. I've got to get to work, so that's a discussion for another time!
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Nov 10, 2009 13:20
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Cichlidae posted:Unfortunately, an engineer's decision can never stand up to a politician's. About the only chance we have is citing safety issues, but it's rare to pull out such a trump card for something as minor as removing a signal. I have seen signals taken down, though. When I-95 through Bridgeport was reconstructed, at least a dozen signals were found to be no longer warranted (dubious grounds for removal, but I digress,) and were removed. I am glad I am not the only traffic nerd checking the thread before work! I have to be at an intersection that is halfway to BFE by 7 am.
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Nov 10, 2009 13:23
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Cichlidae posted:The best buttons I've used were the ones in France. They were round buttons on the underside of a box about 3" by 3" by 9" tall. I didn't see those getting gummed up by anything, and they even had little speakers on them for blind peds that announced the name of the street and when it was ok to walk. In Sweden, there's pretty much one model that has cornered the market. I've literally never seen one of these broken: http://www.prismateknik.se/viewNavMenu.do?menuID=87 No mechanical button, just an old-school touch pad (I think it works on the same principle as those touch-activated lamps) covering most of the case. They last forever from what I've heard. However, there was a little scandal due to the fact that the company is run like a Jehovie commune, and the pointing hand on the case is actually "pointing towards God," now that there is no longer any specific button to push.
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Nov 10, 2009 17:35
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Cichlidae posted:Rhode Island took theirs out years ago, when cell phones became popular. California is or has removed a majority of theirs as well for the same reason. We still have them, just not as frequently. Question: Are there any guidelines for when it is appropriate to paint parking guides on streets? I am referring to those little painted marks on a street that designates where to park your car. The reason I ask is that parking is a bitch in most of Long Beach CA. On my street, the problem is exacerbated by the fact that people are idiots and will do stupid things like parking 4 feet away from a red zone instead of parking right against it to maximize usage, etc. So we end up with lots of wasted space on the street (oh, the pictures I could post!). It seems to me that if the parking spaces were marked on the street, it would help alleviate the situation some by providing some uniformity. Thoughts?
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Nov 10, 2009 18:23
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Nexis and Choadmaster posted:Ped Buttons Just for you, I grabbed a picture from our Photolog of one of my favorite ped buttons:  That's right, it's on a five-lane divided highway, behind an MBR, on an embankment, overgrown, with no crosswalk or ramp. Niiiiice.
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Nov 10, 2009 18:40
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Cichlidae posted:We don't use any here, because there's a potential to cause seizures, and they are quite startling. In special cases, using them makes some sense, but I'd personally avoid it. The MUTCD doesn't say anything about strobes other than that they don't count as illumination and may be used on trucks in work zones. They use a lot of them on the Eastern Short of Maryland where there's a LOT of fog almost every morning year-round. US 50 is a major artery through there and has signals in the middle of 55mph sections, so when the visibility is <100 feet (and people of course won't slow down) it's a lot easier to see a flashing light through the fog than the solid red which at any considerable distance is indistinguishable from tail/brake lights.
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Nov 10, 2009 18:59
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All the strobes I've seen flash about once per second, which seems like it's far below the frequency needed to cause seizures
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Nov 10, 2009 19:11
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Groda posted:In Sweden, there's pretty much one model that has cornered the market. I've literally never seen one of these broken: I doubt it uses the same principle as touch lamps because I'm pretty sure you couldn't activate it with anything other than bare skin, which seems like a dumb idea. I hear it gets cold in Sweden.
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Nov 10, 2009 19:41
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Cichlidae posted:Just for you, I grabbed a picture from our Photolog of one of my favorite ped buttons: Good lord, that's in CT? Do you have idea what the rationale was behind putting it there? Is there some big hiking trail in the woods or something?
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Nov 10, 2009 19:42
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Groda posted:In Sweden, there's pretty much one model that has cornered the market. I've literally never seen one of these broken:
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Nov 10, 2009 21:10
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I know signals are coordinated for flow in certain directions, but is it possible to coordinate them so that if you fly through one intersection too fast, the next one will turn red to stop you from speeding/out of spite? I'm convinced that a few of our local signals do this, at one in particular I make it through the next light 1000' up the road fine if I'm doing 25-30, but if I'm doing 35 it turns red for long enough that I would have had to stop if I were doing 25. The second light is on sensors for the side road that crosses it (and there's no way there's enough traffic on the cross street to justify a light,) but only seems to change if I'm speeding. Are they really out to make speeding difficult or am I just drawing unjustified conclusions based on two completely uncoordinated signals? Cichlidae posted:Finally, we have the problem that these things are supposed to last 3-5 years, and we only replace them once a decade thanks to $$$.   You can't really tell, but the depressions from so many cars driving over the same spot are about 3" deep. My last car would scrape the mufflers and rear diff on it Cichlidae posted:Even with the safety issue, some politicians are hard to sway. The #1 most dangerous spot in our state is almost entirely the result of a town that doesn't know how to say "yes."
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Nov 10, 2009 22:45
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Wiggly posted:California is or has removed a majority of theirs as well for the same reason. We still have them, just not as frequently. Parking around here is entirely up to the municipality. There's no real national standard for parking, and everyone seems to do it differently. The Green Book offers some suggestions, and most states have design manuals that fill in the gaps somewhat. Here's another picture for you guys; this is what happens when the street's not wide enough to hold two lanes, but really needs them:  As usual, anyone who knows where that is gets mega bonus points.
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Nov 10, 2009 22:52
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Choadmaster posted:LOL. At least we put so many emergency phones on them that you literally don't have to walk more than a half mile to call someone! (Once that comment might have been serious, but now... why do we maintain the damned things?) I think the road that actually prompted that was SH-99 (was doing a big-rear end road trip involving a bunch of national parks). I've seen highways that will split from a 2-lane undivided to a 4-lane divided when theres, you know, some reason to do so (like a nearby population center). That thing was just changing back and forth every couple of miles for no apparent reason whatsoever. I think they may have planned it during the housing boom, cause there were a number of apparently abandoned housing developments in the area (just the start of a street grid and nothing else). And for the emergency phones, I've actually been seeing a bunch of newish ones; I think the current strategy is to put them in places where you have no hope of getting any sort of cell phone coverage (Colorado has a bunch of these scattered around in the mountains still).
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Nov 10, 2009 23:25
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Roflex posted:They use a lot of them on the Eastern Short of Maryland where there's a LOT of fog almost every morning year-round. US 50 is a major artery through there and has signals in the middle of 55mph sections, so when the visibility is <100 feet (and people of course won't slow down) it's a lot easier to see a flashing light through the fog than the solid red which at any considerable distance is indistinguishable from tail/brake lights. That makes sense; we have fog up here, too, but since we're so cheap, there's just a 20-foot-wide yellow sign saying "FOG AREA."  Socket Ryanist posted:All the strobes I've seen flash about once per second, which seems like it's far below the frequency needed to cause seizures The MUTCD recommends between 50 and 60 flashes per minute for most things, so it's probably in that range.
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Nov 10, 2009 23:31
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Lucid Smog posted:Good lord, that's in CT? Do you have idea what the rationale was behind putting it there? Is there some big hiking trail in the woods or something? Our state policy, for better or for worse, used to be that a ped button was required for every new signal put in. This one, obviously, doesn't have any pedestrians, and it was probably a waste of $5000. It may look like it's in the woods, but it's really on the Berlin Turnpike, across from the Pascone Place shopping center. Of course, if we hadn't put in the button, I'm sure peds would show up by the dozen and we'd get the inevitable complaint.
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Nov 10, 2009 23:33
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GWBBQ posted:I know signals are coordinated for flow in certain directions, but is it possible to coordinate them so that if you fly through one intersection too fast, the next one will turn red to stop you from speeding/out of spite? I think it's perception bias. As I showed before, signals are generally coordinated by the end of the artery green, called the "Yield Point." When they turn green depends on how long the side street phases take, not whether a car is approaching, and certainly not depending on its speed. While waiting to eat breakfast at a diner in Newington, I saw a little flyer that said, "Remember! Signals that are coordinated for 30 mph are also coordinated for 70 mph!" That's actually not true. Signals coordinated for 30 will also work with 15 and 7.5 mph  quote:
That's called rutting, and it's caused by heavy loads and using an insufficiently rigid asphalt binder that deforms in hot weather. In Rhode Island, the rutting gets so bad that the loop detectors themselves are crumpled into postage-stamp shapes, with the rippled edges. quote:Is this exit 40 on the Parkway? It's illegal for me to tell you, unfortunately. Even with the Freedom of Information Act, the best I could do would be to send you a stack of papers covered in black censorship bars. This is about as much as I can do for you.  Edit: While driving through Cheshire (that big detour is my fault, sorry guys ), I saw this sign with an existential crisis: 
Cichlidae fucked around with this message at 23:50 on Nov 10, 2009 |
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Nov 10, 2009 23:40
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Wiggly posted:California is or has removed a majority of theirs as well for the same reason. We still have them, just not as frequently. Where are they doing that? I've never noticed any missing (not that I actively look for them though). They really are useless nowadays though. A few years ago some rear end in a top hat tossed a rock through my windshield while I was cruising down the freeway, and I immediately pulled over and called 911, only to have the dispatcher ask "You're in the [choadvehicle] on the side of the southbound 101? It's already been called in." Wiggly posted:The reason I ask is that parking is a bitch in most of Long Beach CA. On my street, the problem is exacerbated by the fact that people are idiots and will do stupid things like parking 4 feet away from a red zone instead of parking right against it to maximize usage, etc. So we end up with lots of wasted space on the street (oh, the pictures I could post!). It seems to me that if the parking spaces were marked on the street, it would help alleviate the situation some by providing some uniformity. Thoughts? gently caress the idiots in Long Beach. I've barely been there a few times in my life and the bullshittiest parking experience in my life occurred there. I was looking for a space on the street, and finally came to a spot with a gap that was at least 2.5 car lengths long. It was on the other side of the road and I couldn't pull a U-turn in middle of this little street, so I pull into the next side street and turn around there. Right then, this dude drives up and starts pulling into the spot. But like I said the space is more than big enough for two cars, so no problem, right? No, the motherfucker parks right smack in the middle of this gigantic space, leaving a gap of slightly less than a car length on either side. Normally I don't like marked parking areas because they're generally spaced so that huge suvs/trucks can fit, which wastes a lot of space when you've got a bunch of small sedans parked in a row. But at least in Long Beach the alternative seems to be worse. Cichlidae posted:Here's another picture for you guys; this is what happens when the street's not wide enough to hold two lanes, but really needs them: Couldn't they cut a few feet into the curb on the far side there? And that seems like an unusual spot for a barrier like that; I assume there's just a lot of people who fail to make that turn properly for some reason? Which reminds me, we had a curved freeway offramp with one of those barriers and it would get busted through literally every couple of months by idiots who didn't see the 5 different warning signs that were in place. So CalTrans, presumably fed up with having to repair it almost nonstop, did something I thought was crazy and built a huge concrete "you really don't want to gently caress with me" wall there instead. Maybe its bulk made it more visible, or maybe people put more of a last-ditch effort into avoiding it, but it's been a year or more without anyone hitting it at all. GWBBQ posted:You can't really tell, but the depressions from so many cars driving over the same spot are about 3" deep. My last car would scrape the mufflers and rear diff on it There's a dip on the northbound 101 a little way past Ventura where not only does my car hit bottom, it nearly catches air on the rebound. It's loving nuts, and given that everyone drives 85 on that stretch I don't know how it hasn't caused some terrible accident yet.
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Nov 11, 2009 00:23
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Cichlidae posted:Just for you, I grabbed a picture from our Photolog of one of my favorite ped buttons: And not pointed in the direction of the crossing...
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Nov 11, 2009 00:33
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GWBBQ posted:I know signals are coordinated for flow in certain directions, but is it possible to coordinate them so that if you fly through one intersection too fast, the next one will turn red to stop you from speeding/out of spite? You might be running ahead of the green band for the coordinated system because causing lights to go red like that does more harm than good. Usually a person hauling rear end is more inclined to blow the red and cream the person coming off the side street. This is why engineers (or skilled signal techs), and not cops, run traffic signals. If they could, they would do this as a lazy form of enforcement.
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Nov 11, 2009 00:43
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I've been meaning to toss this out there in the vein of idiotic Americans and their inability the navigate even the most basic thing as a circle in the road. Maryland (and in particular Howard County) has been getting a hard-on for traffic circles lately, and I like them. So I was out near MD-32 and Burntwoods Road, for those who may know the area. There's a series of traffic circles to get on and off several local roads from MD-32. They removed a bunch of lights. It was a good idea. Google Earth still has the old layout so I haven't bothered to link it. Anyway, I was driving around there and this guy in front of me _STOPS_ in the traffic circle, _REVERSES_ in the traffic circle, and _TAKES THE EXIT HE MISSED_. It's a loving circle! Go around it again if you missed it! I almost had an aneurysm right then and there.
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Nov 11, 2009 01:10
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Choadmaster posted:Couldn't they cut a few feet into the curb on the far side there? And that seems like an unusual spot for a barrier like that; I assume there's just a lot of people who fail to make that turn properly for some reason? Which reminds me, we had a curved freeway offramp with one of those barriers and it would get busted through literally every couple of months by idiots who didn't see the 5 different warning signs that were in place. So CalTrans, presumably fed up with having to repair it almost nonstop, did something I thought was crazy and built a huge concrete "you really don't want to gently caress with me" wall there instead. Maybe its bulk made it more visible, or maybe people put more of a last-ditch effort into avoiding it, but it's been a year or more without anyone hitting it at all. If they even touched property lines there, they'd have to fix the whole intersection, which is a total mess. Observe:  That orange line is Route 174, which takes two sharp turns. The turn lanes are on the left approach to the top intersection. ----Unrelated to Route 174---- As to barriers, I had a 2-hour-long meeting about that exact issue myself. It's super boring, so I won't get into the details, but it's at the exit from an industrial area and the beam rail gets taken down twice a year on average. We've tried several things to fix it, but nothing works. Putting in barrier curb wouldn't work, either, since that stretch of road is over a 70-year-old bridge with 10-foot lanes and no shoulder. We're pretty much stuck with what's out there. This is Route 66 over the Arrigoni Bridge, for anyone familiar. (Edited for clarity) Cichlidae fucked around with this message at 01:20 on Nov 11, 2009 |
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Nov 11, 2009 01:12
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Nexis posted:And not pointed in the direction of the crossing... Well, it's already useless, may as well make it extra visible so people can see how much money we waste, right? Lucid Smog posted:I've been meaning to toss this out there in the vein of idiotic Americans and their inability the navigate even the most basic thing as a circle in the road. Haha! I noticed that, when the FHWA made brochures for roundabouts, they made sure to point out, "If you miss your exit, keep going and take it on the next pass." I thought that was a little silly, but I learn yet again that it's impossible to overestimate human stupidity.
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Nov 11, 2009 01:19
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Cichlidae posted:Haha! I noticed that, when the FHWA made brochures for roundabouts, they made sure to point out, "If you miss your exit, keep going and take it on the next pass." I thought that was a little silly, but I learn yet again that it's impossible to overestimate human stupidity. We have one just down the street from our office and you constantly see side swipe accidents, people not obeying lane markings, people yielding to entering traffic, the list goes on and on. It really is a blond woman / cell phone user trap.
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Nov 11, 2009 01:26
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