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Just thought of another lovely M6 junction, the one where the A500 joins it using the world's smallest trumpet. This is on a junction that sees a lot of truck traffic (the truck yard in the bottom right is a bit of a clue here). Just look at that loving thing, then look at the trucks at the top of the image for an idea of scale it has a design speed (for trucks) of 20mph and signs indicating this. At least they've now lengthened the acceleration lane (though some truck and car drivers just pull out as soon as there is a gap) and gotten rid of the ridiculous 2 lanes into one merge that used to be at the end of the loop as previously you would get the left lane filling with slow moving trucks and then cars overtaking and cutting in front of the trucks, causing them to slow even more, causing more cars to try it on. There also used to be a fair bit of road rage when Granny McGee would overtake the trucks doing 25 mph imparing the progress of Wayne the salesman in his BMW 320d who would then drive 2 feet off her arse end and probably have an accident when Ms McGee inevitably panics upon realising she has to merge with a lane of nose to tail trucks and oh god is that a motorway! I've driven onto a motorway! what do I do! About the only good thing I can think of on this junction is that if it were ever quiet, it would be great to practice drifting on. E: This one is a piece of piss to fix too. Surely they could've thought of this themselves.  I can only guess that there was some restriction on how much forest they could cut down or something, but a slightly scaled down version of my design, perhaps with an SPUI could be moved west a little and just nick the edge of the forest, doing less damage than that trumpet did. There's one less bridge to maintain too, which is surely a bonus. Lum fucked around with this message at 16:05 on Mar 18, 2010 |
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Mar 18, 2010 15:33
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After reading this thread I am glad I didn't end up being a highways engineer.  worked for my sandwich year at Dorset Council Highways team. On the design team for what is now one of the most hated road schemes in england, woo!
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Mar 18, 2010 15:43
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Lum posted:M6 J15 Funny thing is, if they had built the M64 like they had planned then that junction wouldn't be as bad as it is today!
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Mar 18, 2010 16:19
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MyFaceBeHi posted:Funny thing is, if they had built the M64 like they had planned then that junction wouldn't be as bad as it is today! *reads that page* Oh god, the A50, that brings back all the horror. All that traffic crammed down the A500 through many roundabouts in order to reach the A50, heavy congestion and too many roundabouts all the way down the A50 to reach the M1, and then southbound on the M1. All this because despite it being so horrible, it was still quicker and more pleasant than staying on the M6 past Birmingham and past 3 of the other terrible junctions I mentioned at the top of the page. People moan about the M6 toll but it can be cheaper than the fuel you will burn idling on that bit of the M6. I remember once trying to get to Hilton Park services and some kind bloke in a distinctive looking car let me pull in front of him to get there. I then treated myself to a really long breakfast, used the internet terminals, played a few arcade games and generally wasted time in the hope that the queue would clear. Spent over half an hour in what is probably the worst services on the M6 and when I finally left, the same bloke in the same car let me back onto the M6.
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Mar 18, 2010 16:31
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OK, I'm going to try this. Since I started reading this thread, I've noticed things done wrong everywhere I drive. It's like the FedEx arrow, but due to incompetence rather than skilled design. Text should be "Right Lane Closed Ahead"  Warning sign used as a construction sign, warning and construction signs mounted on the same post  Text should be "Right Lane Closed Ahead"  Half-assed conversion of a warning sign into a construction sign or someone ran out of "Right Lane Closed Ahead" signs, shrugged, and put up a left lane one with some tape over it.  The hill warning sign should be permanent, not on a stand like it appears to be.  Either guide sign mounted on the same pole as the construction sign or wrong color on the Parsons Way to Montevideo Road sign. Also appears to be a warning sign on the same post as a street sign, but I can't read it.  No construction sign warning of lane closure? GWBBQ fucked around with this message at 17:17 on Mar 18, 2010 |
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Mar 18, 2010 17:15
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Lum posted:*reads that page* I live in Wolverhampton, which means it's hell for me to head east unless I like sitting in traffic jams. The best thing about the M6 is that it was never planned to go through Birmingham! Plans from the 40's (which you can find on the website I linked to upthread) show that it was supposed to follow a line similar to the M6 toll, but Birmingham lovely Council decided they wanted this cool new road so it's they're fault you get to look at the wonderful utopia of the West Midlands whilst you sit in the traffic jam! Anyway, I've shitted this thread up too much today. Back to your regularly scheduled traffic engineering poo poo!
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Mar 18, 2010 17:43
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Nibble posted:Hmmm let's see... GWBBQ posted:OK, I'm going to try this. Here are the answers, then! First sign's nonstandard and should specify which lane's closed. Second sign's not a construction sign, has a plaque that's way too small, and the arrow on it is for saying the whole road turns. Third sign is nonstandard and is already IN the closed lane, which is pretty pointless. Fourth sign is "fixed" with duct tape and no longer specifies the proper lane. Also, it's yellow and not orange. Fifth sign is knocked over and should be on a permanent support. Sixth sign includes another "Everybody turn right here or you'll crash into something oh god" arrow. Seventh one isn't a sign, but how can the cop just stand there and let the crane reach into a 40mph roadway like that?
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Mar 18, 2010 22:43
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Sgs-Cruz posted:The problem of GPS navigation is really interesting. Most users understand that they'll have to deal with a little congestion from day to day, as long as it's not widely variable. A 15-minute delay daily is much less disruptive than a 2-hour delay once a month. When looking at user-optimal versus system-optimal routing, hopefully people will understand that they might have to wait 5 minutes today, but only 3 for the next three days. Their overall delay is lower than it would be with user-optimal routing. All the same, though, road networks are immensely complex, and even developing a delay = f(volume) equation is tricky. When you move beyond two or three parallel roads, the complexity increases exponentially, until you get something akin to the traveling salesman problem. With increased computer power, this is theoretically possible, but I can't even imagine how it would be implemented in every car, let alone get every driver's compliance.
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Mar 18, 2010 22:52
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Lum posted:Doh! How often mistakes like that go through unnoticed until late in the design stage, or after building has started. All the time, every project, though not usually of that magnitude. Some problems we can fix easily, some require expensive change orders, and some need another project altogether. That signal that was just installed on my street is already in design for a relatively major revision... quote:Hows about this version? AAH AAH RAMPS EVERYWHERE quote:Actually, here's a better design. Ignore the yellow roads. I didn't keep the layers saved. Just the red and blue ones count. And now you've removed access to and from M6 northbound. quote:As an IT worker I can tell you that whoever told you to do that is an idiot. It's trivial to set up most mail servers to automatically copy and archive every email that passes through it. Expecting the end users to remember to do that every time is just retarded. We have some pretty awful IT policies here, because our IT guys are just engineers who knew how to use computers 15 years ago and got shoveled into the new IT division. Every computer is locked to a specific Ethernet port, and if you want to move the computer, you need to have someone drag the cables through the floor. The print server is so old that they lost all the install disks and no new computers or users can use the old printers. Their PC spec requires all systems to have a dedicated sound card in addition to the mobo sound, and if you plug the speakers into the onboard sound, it crashes the computer. Well, that's more of an OEM problem, but you get the idea.
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Mar 18, 2010 22:59
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Cichlidae posted:And now you've removed access to and from M6 northbound. Only because I forgot to colour in that little ramp that joins to the northbound onslip. quote:We have some pretty awful IT policies here ... quote:hopefully people will understand that they might have to wait 5 minutes today, but only 3 for the next three days. Their overall delay is lower than it would be with user-optimal routing. Can I borrow your glasses? All the rose tinting has fallen off my pair over the years.
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Mar 18, 2010 23:17
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Lum posted:Just look at that loving thing, then look at the trucks at the top of the image for an idea of scale it has a design speed (for trucks) of 20mph and signs indicating this. At least they've now lengthened the acceleration lane (though some truck and car drivers just pull out as soon as there is a gap) and gotten rid of the ridiculous 2 lanes into one merge that used to be at the end of the loop as previously you would get the left lane filling with slow moving trucks and then cars overtaking and cutting in front of the trucks, causing them to slow even more, causing more cars to try it on. There also used to be a fair bit of road rage when Granny McGee would overtake the trucks doing 25 mph imparing the progress of Wayne the salesman in his BMW 320d who would then drive 2 feet off her arse end and probably have an accident when Ms McGee inevitably panics upon realising she has to merge with a lane of nose to tail trucks and oh god is that a motorway! I've driven onto a motorway! what do I do! I can picture that perfectly quote:E: This one is a piece of piss to fix too. Surely they could've thought of this themselves. Looks simple enough! It's often impossible to tell why a design was used in the first place. I've found one of the most popular reasons to be, "rich/important person owns land nearby." Roblo posted:After reading this thread I am glad I didn't end up being a highways engineer. The secret is never to reveal yourself to the public! All the engineers here hide their badges when they go out in the field and tell people, "I don't know what they're doing here, I'm just surveying..."
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Mar 19, 2010 00:25
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Cichlidae posted:The secret is never to reveal yourself to the public! All the engineers here hide their badges when they go out in the field and tell people, "I don't know what they're doing here, I'm just surveying..." You know, the only other organisation I know of that does that is Northern Ireland Police, because NI is full of home grown terrorists (such as the IRA) who like to murder police officers. Their sites have checkpoints on entering to make sure you are displaying a valid ID badge, and checkpoints on leaving to make sure you are NOT displaying a valid ID badge. Do your old people have the same fear of freeways as ours have of motorways? There are still far too many about over who got their driving licence back in the days when it was just another way to tax people, no test involved. Is that also true over there, and do you also have to put up warning signs of "Freeway ahead" if there's any risk that someone might accidentally stray onto the motorway. To be fair, it's mainly a problem here when stretches of A road get upgraded to motorways on the cheap, ie the A1 becomes the A1(M) for a bit and you have to exit to get onto a different road that is now called the A1 even though it never used to be. I don't know if you guys are any better about that sort of thing. Personally I loathe junctions where you have to exit the carriageway to stay on the same numbered route. Do you do that much?
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Mar 19, 2010 00:44
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Lum posted:You know, the only other organisation I know of that does that is Northern Ireland Police, because NI is full of home grown terrorists (such as the IRA) who like to murder police officers. Their sites have checkpoints on entering to make sure you are displaying a valid ID badge, and checkpoints on leaving to make sure you are NOT displaying a valid ID badge. The public reaction isn't quite as violent here, but you will be bombarded with tremendously time-consuming requests otherwise. Every time a member of the public asks us something, we're required to go through the formal bureaucratic answering process. quote:Do your old people have the same fear of freeways as ours have of motorways? There are still far too many about over who got their driving licence back in the days when it was just another way to tax people, no test involved. Is that also true over there, and do you also have to put up warning signs of "Freeway ahead" if there's any risk that someone might accidentally stray onto the motorway. Not that I know of, but then again, I'm not old. My Dad tends to drive on secondary roads, but that's because he learned to drive in this area before the freeways were built, so he's used to the old roads. quote:To be fair, it's mainly a problem here when stretches of A road get upgraded to motorways on the cheap, ie the A1 becomes the A1(M) for a bit and you have to exit to get onto a different road that is now called the A1 even though it never used to be. I don't know if you guys are any better about that sort of thing. Personally I loathe junctions where you have to exit the carriageway to stay on the same numbered route. Do you do that much? This is EXTREMELY common. There are few routes in the state that don't go around corners, and let me make a quick list of a few you need to exit the freeway to stay on: US 1, CT 2, CT 3, US 5, US 6, US 7, CT 8, CT 15, CT 17, CT 20... ok, you get the picture.
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Mar 19, 2010 02:09
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Lum posted:Do your old people have the same fear of freeways as ours have of motorways? There are still far too many about over who got their driving licence back in the days when it was just another way to tax people, no test involved. Is that also true over there, and do you also have to put up warning signs of "Freeway ahead" if there's any risk that someone might accidentally stray onto the motorway. Back in Florida the old people had no fear of freeways, but they did have a paralyzing fear of driving faster than thirty-five miles an hour, which usually resulted in them puttering along in the fast lane going half the speed of surrounding traffic (and occasionally driving eastbound in the westbound lanes).
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Mar 19, 2010 16:11
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dennyk posted:Back in Florida the old people had no fear of freeways, but they did have a paralyzing fear of driving faster than thirty-five miles an hour. All old people do that it seems. Their usual trick in the UK is to drive in lane N-1 where N is the total number of lanes on the motorway. While it's not specifically illegal to undertake here, it will usually get you pulled over if seen and they'll try to do you under some form of dangerous driving charge, so most people refuse to do it, instead funneling the entire non-truck motorway traffic into a single lane. They're usually referred to as MLMs, middle lane morons, on UK motoring forums and are so common that I made a site about them. It must be really frustrating as a traffic engineer to add extra lanes only to have the whole thing constantly screwed up by a bunch of MLMs. Do you also get the "40 everywhere" breed of old person, the type who do 40 through the 30mph villages and towns, and 40 through the 60mph single carriageways, slowing drastically for every corner but somehow making it impossible to overtake them. sorry for the derail. I guess you can't traffic engineer these people away, short of maybe building a bingo hall on every 60mph road.
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Mar 19, 2010 16:25
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Cichlidae posted:We have some pretty awful IT policies here, because our IT guys are just engineers who knew how to use computers 15 years ago and got shoveled into the new IT division. Every computer is locked to a specific Ethernet port, and if you want to move the computer, you need to have someone drag the cables through the floor. The print server is so old that they lost all the install disks and no new computers or users can use the old printers. Their PC spec requires all systems to have a dedicated sound card in addition to the mobo sound, and if you plug the speakers into the onboard sound, it crashes the computer. Well, that's more of an OEM problem, but you get the idea. GWBBQ fucked around with this message at 16:43 on Jul 16, 2011 |
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Mar 19, 2010 17:31
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Lum posted:All old people do that it seems. Their usual trick in the UK is to drive in lane N-1 where N is the total number of lanes on the motorway. "This site uses plain HTML, optimised for screen readers and braille terminals, ensuring that blind motorists can read it without problems" This site is brilliant! quote:It must be really frustrating as a traffic engineer to add extra lanes only to have the whole thing constantly screwed up by a bunch of MLMs. Americans, or at least New Englanders, will drive in any lane indiscriminately. I don't think anyone gets pulled over for passing on the right or traveling on the left, so any lane is fair game. When the road's at capacity, they use every lane, so lanes aren't really 'wasted.' As to "40 everywhere," I've been stuck behind plenty. Nothing like finally making it to your favorite 50mph road, looking forward to driving sixty-fiv...er, the speed limit, and getting stuck behind some codger who thinks he's driving a horse and buggy. GWBBQ posted:What kind of printers and computers are you using? I might have the install disks around in my pile of 15 year old stuff. I'm so glad UCONN has us on a 5 year replacement and I have a job that justifies upgrading myself pretty much yearly and passing on the old computer to someone who doesn't need top of the line. Océ plotters, mostly, and HP desktops. There's no way in hell, though, that the IT guys would let me install my own drivers. I'm not sure if they could, in fact. They couldn't manage to install Google Earth on a coworker's machine.
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Mar 19, 2010 21:52
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What are the point of Crescents in the form of roads? Dumb question but it's sorta on my mind. Is it like a cul-de sac?
Kill All Cops fucked around with this message at 05:28 on Mar 22, 2010 |
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Mar 22, 2010 05:25
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Lady Galaga posted:What are the point of Crescents in the form of roads?
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Mar 22, 2010 06:56
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Socket Ryanist posted:What is a "crescent in the form of roads"? Like a "crescent in the form of rolls" but far less delicious.
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Mar 22, 2010 07:08
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Lady Galaga posted:What are the point of Crescents in the form of roads? Dumb question but it's sorta on my mind. Is it like a cul-de sac? I'm not sure what you're talking about, but it could be a hammerhead. Hammerheads allow trucks and other heavy vehicles to execute a three-point turn. 
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Mar 22, 2010 12:29
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Well in the UK a crescent would be this: http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?clien...5,0.006968&z=18 A more traditional one is like this: http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&s...,302.01,,0,5.07 Basically any road that joins the a main road on both ends in some vague crescent shape can be called a crescent. I couldn't say that there is a "point" to them, they just are.
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Mar 22, 2010 12:37
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http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&s...010611&t=h&z=17 This is the area that interests me as it was planned and developed that way.
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Mar 22, 2010 13:05
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Lady Galaga posted:http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&s...010611&t=h&z=17 This is the area that interests me as it was planned and developed that way. Oh, as in Mornington Crescent. In the second one noblergt posted, the road seems to have originally gone straight. It was probably introduced to slow cars, inhibit through traffic, and give the buildings easier road access. Small crescents are popular here as driveways on high-volume, high-speed roads, because you don't need to turn around or back into the road when exiting the drive. Larger ones are used for the reasons I posted: low-speed, and deter through vehicles.
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Mar 22, 2010 17:18
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So, I was browsing the web and came across this monstrosity: I predict nausea, with a side of uneven tire wear.
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Mar 22, 2010 23:23
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EoRaptor posted:So, I was browsing the web and came across this monstrosity: I can only hope they would never build something like that here in America, because it'd devolve into NASCAR so fast. Can you imagine trying to merge out from the center of that thing while people racing around the circle are merging in? Sounds kind of fun, actually...
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Mar 22, 2010 23:56
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Calast posted:I can only hope they would never build something like that here in America, because it'd devolve into NASCAR so fast. Can you imagine trying to merge out from the center of that thing while people racing around the circle are merging in? I know I would Lots and lots of weaving conflicts, though. That interchange would never be feasible. Additionally, it only handles one input and output lane per leg.
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Mar 23, 2010 01:03
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I saw that, too, and my immediate thought was that it looks just as bad as a cloverleaf with weaving and single lanes wouldn't be enough for high volume roads, good to know I'm on the right track. Also, I found a problem with one of your signs.  Any estimate of how many you guys lost in last weekend's storm? The one for exit 21 on I95 southbound is also down, but with so many road crews out and the cone next to this one, I assume the damage has been reported.
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Mar 23, 2010 14:50
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Any Balfour Beattie or Parsons BrinckerHoff goons? I'm more involved in the rail network side of things, but yeah, anyone?
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Mar 23, 2010 15:16
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Cichlidae posted:I know I would If you follow the off-colored 'lane', you'll find it spirals out from the center, so people only ever have to merge out, not in. There shouldn't be any weaving. Taking jumps off the bridges into whatever is in the center is another story. And you could make it handle more incoming lanes, though it hugely increases the width of the circle, which has it's own problems. It would quickly become a parking lot, though it might actually work well as a distributing system for a stadium or something, so one at grade multilane entrance that lets people pick their exit for whatever way they are heading home. You could have multiple exists for more common directions (that could distribute the load onto multiple onramps, to smooth things out). Still cost a bunch, though, an any accident at all would stall the whole thing. Maybe a giant crane in the center....
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Mar 23, 2010 21:25
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If you want to exit off the first exit, then you have to cut across 4 lanes of traffic as soon as you enter.
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Mar 23, 2010 21:29
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GWBBQ posted:I saw that, too, and my immediate thought was that it looks just as bad as a cloverleaf with weaving and single lanes wouldn't be enough for high volume roads, good to know I'm on the right track. Luckily, that's Maintenance's job, not mine  The winds actually weren't bad at all here in Newington, but some parts of the state (North and West) really got slammed. An extruded sign like that would cost about $10k to replace. Your picture shows pretty well how a breakaway sign support works.ShineDog posted:Any Balfour Beattie or Parsons BrinckerHoff goons? PB's VISSIM simulations aren't very good. Last one I got from them (Q-bridge project in New Haven) looked pretty nice, but was not at all accurate. I have a secret hope that, thanks to all of the comments I sent them, they'd want to hire me. Doing VISSIM all day would be AWESOME.
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Mar 23, 2010 21:50
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For those of you wondering about Protected or Permissive left-turn phasing, I came across an excellent flowchart today that goes over a bit of the design process. Several people asked why a signal would ever be protected-only when protected-permissive would allow a higher throughput. According to this flowchart, pretty much anything can make a signal protected-only. (And yes, it should be "fewer," not "less.") Cichlidae fucked around with this message at 21:56 on Mar 23, 2010 |
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Mar 23, 2010 21:53
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Amazing thread, Cichlidae. You've brought up a couple times the cost of roads and repairs, but I never caught anything discussing those costs. What can we do to lower the cost of our highways? You've mentioned trucks as the primary problem; should they have a separate infrastructure, a 'truck tax' to pay for road repairs, or something else?
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Mar 23, 2010 22:24
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Kelson posted:Amazing thread, Cichlidae. You've brought up a couple times the cost of roads and repairs, but I never caught anything discussing those costs. What can we do to lower the cost of our highways? You've mentioned trucks as the primary problem; should they have a separate infrastructure, a 'truck tax' to pay for road repairs, or something else? A moderate increase in the gas tax could pay for quite a bit. Trucks do the vast majority of the damage, and they also use more gas than passenger vehicles, so they'd be contributing more in gas tax. I don't think the shipping industries would take too kindly to a gas specifically on trucks. Another option is to do as France does, which is to ban heavy vehicles from some freeways, but I think that would go over even worse here. Raising the gas tax by, say, $0.20/gallon would go a very long way. Connecticut's gas tax, for example, was 14 cents higher in the 1990s than it is now. It was raised to those levels in the late 1980s to offset the lost income from abolishing tolls. Well, the roads don't just stop breaking after 10 years. The gas tax also has the advantage of encouraging more fuel-efficient and smaller cars, which do less damage both to the pavement and to the environment. Additionally, we need to ensure that the gas tax actually gets spent on roads, not handed over to the state general fund. Rhode Island, especially, is notorious for this. The state legislature sees that gas tax money as an easy source of income to fill holes in the other departments' budgets. I guess they never played SimCity.
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Mar 23, 2010 22:40
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Cichlidae posted:A moderate increase in the gas tax could pay for quite a bit. Trucks do the vast majority of the damage, and they also use more gas than passenger vehicles, so they'd be contributing more in gas tax. I don't think the shipping industries would take too kindly to a gas specifically on trucks. Another option is to do as France does, which is to ban heavy vehicles from some freeways, but I think that would go over even worse here.
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Mar 24, 2010 06:27
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Cichlidae posted:PB's VISSIM simulations aren't very good. Last one I got from them (Q-bridge project in New Haven) looked pretty nice, but was not at all accurate. I have a secret hope that, thanks to all of the comments I sent them, they'd want to hire me. Doing VISSIM all day would be AWESOME. Which office did that work, do you know? I'm going to assume on the american side. Everything we do in the UK offices is grade A god drat awesome, you shut up.
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Mar 24, 2010 11:07
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Kelson posted:What about on the opposite side; reducing life cycle costs? Any suggestions to meaningfully accomplish that without significant impact to current usage? It depends on how much you're willing to impact ride quality. Concrete pavement lasts longer and needs less maintenance, but if the contractor messes up, those mistakes will stick around for 50 years. A more rigorous inspection schedule would lengthen the lifetimes of our bridges and sign structures. Thick, inlaid pavement markings last longer, but cost much more. Overdesigning our structures could also increase longevity, but at a heavy cost. ShineDog posted:Which office did that work, do you know? I'm going to assume on the american side. Everything we do in the UK offices is grade A god drat awesome, you shut up. It was the Boston office, so don't worry. If you'd seen the simulation, you'd definitely agree with me. It was the sort of sim you'd make after working with VISSIM for a week, with no experience modeling roundabouts. Doesn't help that there are only three people in our entire bureau who know how to use the program, of which I'm the only one with the latest version, yet we require VISSIM simulations for many projects. Yep, I end up reviewing them all.
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Mar 24, 2010 12:32
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My big question, being a rail only type of dude. Do you use the term Chainage?
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Mar 24, 2010 13:43
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Cichlidae posted:It depends on how much you're willing to impact ride quality. Concrete pavement lasts longer and needs less maintenance, but if the contractor messes up, those mistakes will stick around for 50 years. A more rigorous inspection schedule would lengthen the lifetimes of our bridges and sign structures. Thick, inlaid pavement markings last longer, but cost much more. Overdesigning our structures could also increase longevity, but at a heavy cost. Example (costs likely inaccurate) Asphalt costs $1m/mile to install (10 year life) and $150k/mile/year maintenance Concrete costs $5m/mile to install (50 year life) and $100k/mile/year maintenance SolarStreet costs $3m/mile to install (5 year life) and $500k/mile/year maintenance CriminalBones costs $100k/mile to install (1 year life) and $0/mile/year maintenance (assuming crime stays high) Asphalt cost per mile per year: $250K Concrete cost per mile per year: $200K SolarStreet cost per mile per year: $1.1M CriminalBones cost per mile per year: $100K
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Mar 24, 2010 15:01
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