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Sorry to hear about your accident, Cichlidae, glad to hear there was no permanent damage to you or anyone else though.Derpes Simplex posted:Actually there's a good segway - what, exactly, drives street naming (outside of planned grids)? Is it pretty much arbitrary choices/political points? Are you really allowed to drive a segway on named streets? I thought they had to be driven on the sidewalk. But they are motorized... it's an interesting question. Seriously though, I'll bet it's all politics at this point. Inside a housing development (which itself will be named after the "[plant-related] + [geographic feature]" rule) every street will be named after a tree. Outside of that, around here on a local level they tend to get named after 'important' people, and on a larger (state) level, numbered stuff (like highways/freeways) have sections that are either named after some major destination ("San Diego Freeway") or named after some dead guy ("[Dead Cop] Memorial Highway"). Older street names are the best; it seems like people just called poo poo whatever they wanted until it stuck. We have a few interesting street names here: Salsipuedes ("Get out if you can!") Quarantina (there was a quarantine there... Okay, not too exciting, but why name the street after it?) Indio Muerto (Surveyor: "Dude, there's a dead Indian laying here." Dude: "Gross, I'll call Waste Management on my iTelegraph and have them pick it up. Where should I tell them to find us? This little strip doesn't have a name yet." Surveyor: "Well now that you mention it...."). Canon Perdido ("Lost Cannon" - in the 1840's some kids thought it would be funny to steal a cannon from the military and hide it... it was found rusting in a creek 11 years later.) So much better than "Fig" and "Walnut". Of course, even of the old-time street names, 80% are names of town VIPs. I suppose things haven't changed TOO much.
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Oct 27, 2010 02:09
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Cichlidae posted:Public roads can be named by the town council, chosen by a city planner or mayor, or chosen by fiat if the engineer uses a name on plans and nobody complains. The latter is how we get roads like Old Route 740 or, in a more extreme case, Old West High Street #4. 
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Oct 27, 2010 03:01
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Choadmaster posted:Sorry to hear about your accident, Cichlidae, glad to hear there was no permanent damage to you or anyone else though.  though.
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Oct 27, 2010 07:32
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Choadmaster posted:Outside of that, around here on a local level they tend to get named after 'important' people, and on a larger (state) level, numbered stuff (like highways/freeways) have sections that are either named after some major destination ("San Diego Freeway") or named after some dead guy ("[Dead Cop] Memorial Highway"). Some day, I will have a road named after myself  grover posted:So what you're saying is all it would take to name a street after me is for you to put "grover street" on a drawing? I'd offer you a bribe to do it, but I know you can't accept it, so I'd just offer my gratitude as that would be awesome Haha, I don't know if it would ever make it past my bosses, but I'll give it a shot if I ever get the chance. dexter posted:All the streets in my area are named after other beach cities, real creative guys. Nothing tops Bloody Dick Road in There have been a couple threads in GBS about bizarre street names. I've seen some pretty weird ones in my jobs, but thanks to staring at roads all say, it's hard to appreciate a good road name anymore. You can stick me at the corner of Johnson and Dickermann and I'll barely bat an eye.
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Oct 27, 2010 12:36
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New neighbourhoods will often have their street names centered around a theme here. Historical place/people names, professions, bird or tree names... New cities have lots of this. Here's one with (Dutch) comic characters in the north and south part, and comic authors in the middle: http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&hq=&ll=52.401516,5.323434&spn=0.01012,0.033023&z=16
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Oct 27, 2010 13:46
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Entropist posted:New neighbourhoods will often have their street names centered around a theme here. Historical place/people names, professions, bird or tree names... New cities have lots of this. This has been going for at least a century, there a neighbourhoods from the 1920's with their names centered around a theme (like "islands" or "poets")
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Oct 27, 2010 20:07
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Entropist posted:New neighbourhoods will often have their street names centered around a theme here. Historical place/people names, professions, bird or tree names... New cities have lots of this. Once, I found a neighborhood there named after chemical elements. Very awesome. Our streets here are less imaginative, like BMW Drive and Dix Road. Edit: VVV I found one that exists only on some online map services, but not in our official town road map, called "Don't Drive Here." Nice. VVV Cichlidae fucked around with this message at 04:00 on Oct 28, 2010 |
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Oct 27, 2010 23:09
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Downtown in the small town where I live there is a private street called Awesome Street. It's not on google maps though so I can't show you. I always wonder what the story is though every time I pass it. Even if you think that street isn't awesome, it's still Awesome.
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Oct 28, 2010 03:08
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The roads to the south of my apartment are Park, Parkhaven and Parker. Before you ask, yes I live in a parkway.
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Oct 28, 2010 05:36
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These two houses had better be pretty dang awesome. 
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Oct 28, 2010 09:03
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Cichlidae posted:Once, I found a neighborhood there named after chemical elements. Very awesome. Our streets here are less imaginative, like BMW Drive and Dix Road. I think I've seen that in Groningen, and in Apeldoorn as well, although for every one of those we still get 10 tree/bird/historical figure name neighbourhoods. Here, have a space exploration one: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&hnear=&ll=53.14919,6.738085&spn=0.004974,0.016512&t=h&z=17 It's next to a constellations one and a planets neighbourhood. And then a trees one.
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Oct 28, 2010 16:39
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Cichlidae posted:Once, I found a neighborhood there named after chemical elements. Very awesome. Our streets here are less imaginative, like BMW Drive and Dix Road. We had Keepa Way in my hometown back in Maine So Cichlidae, looks like there are ringing endorsements for an at-grade I-84 through Hartford replacing the viaduct. I know it's years and years out, but how will traffic get through while construction takes place? A "local traffic only" type detour with everyone else going 91 to 9 or 691?
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Oct 28, 2010 20:12
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Vegas is the best for weird street names. Observe one example: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&sou...9,0.013797&z=16
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Oct 28, 2010 20:18
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Entropist posted:I think I've seen that in Groningen, and in Apeldoorn as well, although for every one of those we still get 10 tree/bird/historical figure name neighbourhoods. 'Ruimtevaart' would be Space Flight then, like the German 'Raumfahrt'? It got a giggle out of me when I pronounced it "room to fart." Lobstaman posted:So Cichlidae, looks like there are ringing endorsements for an at-grade I-84 through Hartford replacing the viaduct. I know it's years and years out, but how will traffic get through while construction takes place? A "local traffic only" type detour with everyone else going 91 to 9 or 691? I wish I'd gotten to go to the public info meeting last night; I had an appointment, though. Bringing the road down to grade is definitely the best idea, though from the Courant article, it seemed as if they'd be maintaining the existing 5 lanes in each direction. This is the heaviest volume road in the whole state. 5 lanes backs up for several hours a day. I understand that it's nigh-impossible to build a freeway that doesn't back up, especially when there are no good peripheral routes, but this area is a bottleneck and restricts the rest of I-84 in Hartford. A sixth lane, or even seventh, would go a long way. Of course, removing the left exits/entrances will help, as will smoothing out the road alignment. Don't expect anything fantastic, because the 84/91 interchange is still going to be a huge choke point. But at least the commute inbound from the West would be greatly improved by their plan. So, here are the flies in the ointment. First off, moving the Amtrak line north of the freeway would isolate Union Station. We'd need to build a new station up there, or build a stub across 84 to access the old station. The second problem is the Busway. Move 84, and you've got to demolish and rebuild the most expensive section of it. And then we need to talk about money and scheduling. They mentioned $1B, but considering the Waterbury 8/84 interchange is going to cost $3B, I'd say one billion is on the low end. We can't afford a billion for anything but the Busway or New Haven/Hartford/Springfield line at this point. Increasing the gas tax would go a long way, but I don't think many politicians support it. It could easily be 20 years before this projects gets through design and into construction, and how bad will the Viaduct be by then? We'll probably need at least one more $50M+ emergency repair project before then. Unfortunately, I haven't gotten to see the project at all yet, so I'm lacking a lot of details. For how traffic will be routed during construction... just drive through Hartford this Saturday night, and you'll get a pretty good idea of what we'll have to do. Mentally multiply the traffic by about a factor of five. Cichlidae fucked around with this message at 23:21 on Oct 28, 2010 |
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Oct 28, 2010 23:16
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Funny you should mentioned the Hartford/Springfield rail line. I was reading about that on the DEP press releases. I was bored, okay? They had a whole bunch because there was some announcement or other on Monday that announced receipt of more Federal money from that stimulus package thingy for mass transit, the one that CT got stiffed on in January. Anyway, the articles mention double tracking the Amtrak line between New Haven and Hartford, continuing the line up to Springfield, MA, with stops in Berlin, Bradley, etc. Isn't that the exact route the Busway is supposed to take? What gives?
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Oct 29, 2010 00:59
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Silver Falcon posted:Funny you should mentioned the Hartford/Springfield rail line. I was reading about that on the DEP press releases. I was bored, okay? There's spare room alongside the Busway to double-track up in Hartford, but the high-speed project will likely require three tracks. Why's that? * Amtrak loves money. * High-speed trains require at least a double track all the way, regardless of other factors. * Freight runs on this line already, so they'll need sidings to ride on nice and slow and let the express trains pass, unless there's another route they could use. * There is another line that runs along the coast, but it is technically designated as a greenway and belongs to the DEP and we'd basically have to break federal law to use it for freight. * And even if we did, the track is rotten through since it hasn't been used regularly in ages, and has a ton of grade crossings. There's no way they're getting freight through that at a decent speed without some massive, expensive retrofits. * Besides, even if they did, there will still be low-speed passenger service between Hartford and Springfield, which will necessitate a third rail for the same reason. * Since Amtrak loves money, there's no way they'd turn down the chance to get free money to put in a third rail, even if it means ripping up the Busway (which will be built on their land, anyway).
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Oct 29, 2010 02:00
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Cichlidae posted:'Ruimtevaart' would be Space Flight then, like the German 'Raumfahrt'? It got a giggle out of me when I pronounced it "room to fart." Correct! See also Danish, Norwegian, Swedish 
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Oct 29, 2010 12:21
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Entropist posted:Correct! See also Danish, Norwegian, Swedish Rumfarts are the best farts.
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Oct 29, 2010 13:07
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Cichlidae posted:There's spare room alongside the Busway to double-track up in Hartford, but the high-speed project will likely require three tracks. Why's that? More significantly, you can't run high-speed rail on freight lines, because freight rail doesn't need to be laid and maintained to the same standards that high-speed rail does. If you try to do it, to save the expense of laying high-speed track, you wind up with something like Acela; the trainsets can reach 165mph, but the condition, construction, and layout of the tracks it runs on and the overhead catenary it sucks power from mean that its average speed is barely over 70mph. The only reason it gets you there faster than regular Amtrak is that it makes fewer stops. Track laid for real high-speed trains like the TGV have much larger radii in curves, the track is supported by deeper ballast and more ties per length, concrete or metal ties instead of wood, the track alignment has to be more precise, and the track segments are more upright and are continuously welded. Even the switches are different; in regular rail, there's a point during switching where the wheel passing through the switch is unsupported, doing that on a high-speed line would be nasty and cause of lot of vibration.
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Oct 29, 2010 14:51
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What is the point of something like the I-84 viaduct anyways? It seems like it just left useless space underneath it, and all the ramps have to be elevated too.
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Oct 29, 2010 16:56
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smackfu posted:What is the point of something like the I-84 viaduct anyways? It seems like it just left useless space underneath it, and all the ramps have to be elevated too. Freeways need to be grade separated from surface streets somehow. At the time, it was probably the easiest/cheapest route.
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Oct 29, 2010 18:56
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Phanatic posted:More significantly, you can't run high-speed rail on freight lines, because freight rail doesn't need to be laid and maintained to the same standards that high-speed rail does. If you try to do it, to save the expense of laying high-speed track, you wind up with something like Acela; the trainsets can reach 165mph, but the condition, construction, and layout of the tracks it runs on and the overhead catenary it sucks power from mean that its average speed is barely over 70mph. The only reason it gets you there faster than regular Amtrak is that it makes fewer stops. Not to mention the LGV are entirely grade-separated, have some really nice superelevation, and can take steeper slopes than conventional rail because of the more powerful engines. Very awesome. smackfu posted:What is the point of something like the I-84 viaduct anyways? It seems like it just left useless space underneath it, and all the ramps have to be elevated too. It maintained the existing street network, to an extent, and was probably meant to allow development of the land beneath. Compare to the huge empty area near the Capitol Ave ramp, where the freeway transitions from above-grade to below-grade. That's a few city blocks of space that can never be used. Also remember that, when I-84 was built, the Park River was right there, winding its way through downtown Hartford. The freeway crossed it at least twice. It was only later that the river was buried. Of course, the space under the Viaduct is only used for parking and train tracks, and if the designers had known that, as well as the tremendous maintenance and replacement costs, they probably would have gone with a different approach.
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Oct 29, 2010 22:01
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Did someone say "space exploration" street names? Mercury program!
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Oct 29, 2010 23:01
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This is a little old, but Missouri just unveiled it's third diverging diamond interchange. There are only four of these in the country with three of the four being in Missouri. My guess is there's some maniac in the dark heart of MODOT with a hard-on for DDIs. edit: fixed broken link Gobbeldygook fucked around with this message at 02:14 on Nov 1, 2010 |
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Oct 30, 2010 08:18
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Don't forget naming the road after the major employer in town. That particular freeway used to empty directly into the Boeing parking lot. That's right, most large companies get a custom street, Boeing has an entire state route!
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Oct 30, 2010 09:09
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Gobbeldygook posted:This is a little old, but Missouri just unveiled it's third diverging diamond interchange. There are only four of these in the country with three of the four being in Missouri. My guess is there's some maniac in the dark heart of MODOT with a hard-on for DDIs. "The URL contained a malformed video ID."
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Nov 1, 2010 01:53
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Millstone posted:"The URL contained a malformed video ID." I clipped the last letter of the video ID.  Fixed.
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Nov 1, 2010 02:15
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Gobbeldygook posted:This is a little old, but Missouri just unveiled it's third diverging diamond interchange. There are only four of these in the country with three of the four being in Missouri. My guess is there's some maniac in the dark heart of MODOT with a hard-on for DDIs. I started watching and thought about how that design looked really familiar. And then the traffic flow switched sides.
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Nov 1, 2010 02:33
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theflyingexecutive posted:I started watching and thought about how that design looked really familiar. And then the traffic flow switched sides. DDI are really really awesome. Channelize them a little bit more, and you can even eliminate the weaving area. They're one interchange the world definitely needs more of.
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Nov 1, 2010 03:06
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Cichlidae posted:Let me answer the last question first: costs are our biggest consideration after safety. I can design a perfect road that would solve congestion problems for 50 years, but if it costs 3X as much as one that will handle traffic for 10 years, we'll build the smaller road. I was talking to some friends about these costs and they wouldn't believe me, could you point me to some resources that support these numbers? AMAZING thread by the way.
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Nov 1, 2010 23:47
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how could a bike path cost 1 mill per mile? HOW?!
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Nov 1, 2010 23:52
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Baronjutter posted:how could a bike path cost 1 mill per mile? HOW?!
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Nov 2, 2010 00:23
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I imagine the $1mil accounts for all costs associated with the project, not just construction. Engineer's time to design it, environmental studies, purchasing land rights, red tape, etc.
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Nov 2, 2010 00:32
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Cichlidae, may I present to you, this fucker: Click for big http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=39.705701,-104.994299&spn=0.005085,0.011362&t=k&z=17 Interstate 25 runs from the southeast to the northwest along the river. US 85 joins from the south onto I-25. Alameda is the East-West arterial. Kalamath Street and Santa Fe Drive are the two one-way streets that run north from the interchange. (lets also build a massive Home Depot right on the on-ramp  )C-Dot is finally upgrading the drainage from Alameda north and the Alameda bridge. 25 is really substandard and dates from the 60's and earlier from here north to downtown. (the one lane ramp for US 85 to north I 25) It has been upgraded southeast of here (bless you T-Rex) but still backs up at this spot. How do you approach and what would you do for fixing something like this? Thanks for all the info in this thread. This is an awesome thread. will_colorado fucked around with this message at 01:47 on Nov 2, 2010 |
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Nov 2, 2010 01:03
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Prviglupan posted:I was talking to some friends about these costs and they wouldn't believe me, could you point me to some resources that support these numbers? Have a look at our bids: http://www.ct.gov/dot/cwp/view.asp?a=2288&q=453990 2009 and 2010 are lower than normal by 30-50% because contractors are pretty desperate for work. Unfortunately, the lists there don't tell you much about the project, so I'll show you a few I'm familiar with myself. Keep in mind the bid prices include mobilization, labor, and traffic control, but do not include rights of way, preliminary engineering, incidentals, or contingencies. 171-337 - Painting a few towns' worth of stop bars, crosswalks, and lane arrows. Bids came in at $107K and $150K. 68-209 - Installation of a new traffic signal in Killingly, with some minor road realignment. Bids range from $518 to $838 thousand. 15-310 - Modernization of a 14 traffic signals in downtown Bridgeport. Bids range from $3.348 to 3.927 million, or $239-280 thousand each. 134-141 - Realignment of CT 319 in Stafford, smoothing out a couple curves in the woods and putting in a couple new culverts. Bids range from $1.198 to 1.483 million. 28-196 - Stopgap repairs on the Mill Hill Road bridge over the CT 2 freeway. Relatively simple work zone, low volumes, just needs some scraping and painting. Bids range from $1.848 to 2.930 million. 310-47 - Building a new parking lot for the Branford Shore Line East Station, adding a couple hundred spots. Bids range from $2.630 to 4.287 million (18 bidders, wow!). 170-2662 - Installing some new sign supports statewide. Some are overhead and some are side-mounted. Make sure to include the foundation cost as well. Bids range from $4.085 to $4.599 million. 63-622 - Emergency repair of three ramps on I-84 in Hartford. Patching the deck, fixing up the joints, re-painting. Bids range from $6.288 to 11.078 million. 92-531 - One part of the Q Bridge project, reconstruction of the I-91/I-95/CT 34 interchange. You'll note that a lot of it has already been done, including most of the geotech work and the flyover. This also doesn't include the Q Bridge itself. Bids range from $357 million to $3.812 billion. Surprising, yes? Unfortunately, I haven't had any bike path or freeway projects recently, so we'll have to go with the "pulled them out of my pimply white arse" answer. As for prevailing wage rates, they're included in the Supplemental Specifications supplied in each project. Edit: Because I love you guys: 92-532 - Building the new Q-bridge. Just the span itself; substructure and approaches are separate. One bidder. $519 million. This is an exceptionally large bridge, hence the exceptionally large cost. Cichlidae fucked around with this message at 02:04 on Nov 2, 2010 |
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Nov 2, 2010 01:06
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will_colorado posted:Cichlidae, may I present to you, this fucker: Oh drat, I know just how that is. Hartford's trying to push for turning one of our on-ramps two-way and building a huge commercial development on it. Progress! quote:C-Dot is finally upgrading the drainage from Alameda north and the Alameda bridge. 25 is really substandard and dates from the 60's and earlier from here north to downtown. (the one lane ramp for US 85 to north I 25) It has been upgraded southeast of here (bless you T-Rex) but still backs up at this spot. How do you approach something like this?  That took quite some time. I tried to preserve a good deal of the existing infrastructure, while removing the substandard sections. Existing one-way surface roads were made two-way, which businesses should love. quote:This is an awesome thread. Thanks! That's always good to hear
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Nov 2, 2010 01:44
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Nesnej posted:You don't build a bike path by just stripping off the grass and putting down asphalt on the dirt. If there are bridges involved, that can get complicated. On my local 10 mi rail trail, the bridges were just crossing roads so they tore them down and now you cross the road by a cross-walk. If the bridges cross rivers or streams, then you need to convert it from a probably unsafe rail bridge to a pedestrian bridge which isn't cheap. Edit: The standards that need to be met probably depends on whether it is ConnDOT doing the work or if it's a trails organization like the AMC. smackfu fucked around with this message at 20:17 on Nov 2, 2010 |
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Nov 2, 2010 20:11
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smackfu posted:Well, the cheap way is to just put cinders down. Our bike paths need to be able to carry emergency vehicles, so factor that into the design.
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Nov 2, 2010 22:11
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Cichlidae posted:Our bike paths need to be able to carry emergency vehicles, so factor that into the design.
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Nov 3, 2010 16:54
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I've been spending a lot of time in New Haven lately, and they have an interesting signal cycle on many of the downtown intersections: 1) Red one way, green the other, no walk signals. 2) Green one way, red the other, no walk signals. 3) All-way red, all-way walk. Additionally, all directions have "No Right on Red", presumably so you don't turn during the all-way walk. I haven't really seen this elsewhere, and it means that if you miss your light, you have to wait two long cycles for the next green (which seems to lead to rather egregious red-light running.) Is this like the nuclear option for unsafe pedestrian crossings?
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Nov 5, 2010 15:27
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