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Jonnty posted:To understand why our level crossings are the way they are you've got to understand that in the UK we've come from a situation where 19th century laws required all road crossings to look something like this: You British really are completely mad about "health & safety"! That said, I was really impressed when I heard about the safety record of the Japanese Shinkansen railways. No fatalities since they opened ... in 1964! All while transporting almost 7 billion passengers at high speeds. I guess they don't have any level crossings at all. (Disregarding a single fatality caused by doors closing on a passenger, according to the 'pedia.)
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Jan 25, 2013 00:19
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Hippie Hedgehog posted:That said, I was really impressed when I heard about the safety record of the Japanese Shinkansen railways. No fatalities since they opened ... in 1964! All while transporting almost 7 billion passengers at high speeds. I guess they don't have any level crossings at all.
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Jan 25, 2013 00:45
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I think the level crossing stuff in the UK stems off the legal requirement for all tracks to be completely fenced off from the public since the 19th century (so well before Health & Safety). This legal requirement was actually requested by the landowners whose land that the tracks went through, so that staff didn't trespass! It was also to ensure herds of farm animals didn't wander onto the tracks, and for railway companies to visualise the boundaries of their land. In the US the network was built most of network was where no one owned the land, and so then you get the open access to the tracks.
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Jan 25, 2013 00:55
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Wolfy posted:You might enjoy reading this document. The main difference I see, from a US perspective, is that the rail company gives a poo poo. quote:The pursuit of safety is ongoing, and we will continue to do our level best to attain "Ultimate Safety" Only in Japan could "Ultimate Safety" sound 
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Jan 25, 2013 02:34
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So I'm wondering what your thoughts would be on cleaning up this catastrophe of an intersection. As a consequence of the river, and abysmal urban planning, the southbound section of the road backs up, every day without fail, between the hours of 3:30 and 6:00. Northbound is also kind of a mess, but for partially different reasons, but I only really care about southbound traffic, because I'm a selfish jerk. Intersection looks as follows:  Google Maps Link An explanation on the area:
Now, to the relatively uneducated, it seems that most of the interchanges between Deerfoot/Anderson/Bow Bottom work pretty well. The issue seems to be the terrible weaving problem: many (most?) of the people coming from Blackfoot onto Deerfoot want to stay on Deerfoot and cross the river. That means they have to merge left across 2-3 lanes of traffic, theoretically moving at 100kph, in about 600m. Add in everyone currently on Deerfoot who needs to cross that traffic to get to Anderson/Bow Bottom, and you've got a complete mess. I'm not sure how you'd fix it without either closing the ramp from Southland to Deerfoot altogether, or adding some sort of flyover to take the Barlow-to-Deerfoot traffic over the majority of the intersection but I don't know where you'd put such a thing.
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Jan 25, 2013 22:51
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Gat posted:I think the level crossing stuff in the UK stems off the legal requirement for all tracks to be completely fenced off from the public since the 19th century (so well before Health & Safety). This legal requirement was actually requested by the landowners whose land that the tracks went through, so that staff didn't trespass! It was also to ensure herds of farm animals didn't wander onto the tracks, and for railway companies to visualise the boundaries of their land. In the US the network was built most of network was where no one owned the land, and so then you get the open access to the tracks. Oddly enough my town is full of unprotected crossings, including a somewhat busy freight line running right through campus. Either accidents are a huge rarity or somebody is doing a good job at covering them up.
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Jan 26, 2013 11:02
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Wolfy posted:Well basically when a lot of the track was built in the US there was gently caress all out there except Indians and Buffalo (and the railroad had no issue getting rid of both) so they weren't even thinking about crossings. Of course, now with cars and faster, some of those zero protection crossings are dangerous as hell. Motorists and pedestrians have generally been very well trained to avoid train collisions in the United States. You know, when I was in school, we got safety around railroads presentations twice each school year starting in kindergarten. Don't play on or near the tracks, never try to race a train at a crossing, all that. There's always idiots, but when you gently caress around with trains you tend to die, so there's very few repeat offenders, ya know?
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Jan 26, 2013 15:30
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I've never really understood how people get hit by trains in the first place. They're huge, they make a ton of noise as they come towards you (even the rails), and they can only come from so many directions.
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Jan 26, 2013 20:29
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I really do have a sympathy blindspot when it comes to train deaths. There's 0 excuse for being hit by a train unless you're pushed off a platform or get your leg stuck under the rail or something crazy. Cars hit by trains are entirely the cars fault. Idiots hit by a train crossing the tracks are entirely their fault. I read these safety reports that blame the railway for not having good enough fencing, as if the people getting killed are just innocent wild animals with no concept of what a train is. But still at train stations I see idiots running across the tracks between platforms to sneak on the train for free, or so they don't have to wait 20 min for the next train. Jumping just seconds before other arriving trains. When I hear about some hopped up trucker being killed at a level crossing after losing a game of chicken with a train I think "good that he's off the road permanently now". I should feel horrible but I don't. People trying to dart in front of a train and getting hit... what the gently caress, can't you just wait or cross somewhere safer? Do you not SEE the train? I just feel sorry for the drivers who have to live with it, almost every train crew have killed people and although they know it's not their fault and usually get therapy that poo poo fucks you up. Of course just sitting there like a libertarian declaring everyone killed by a train to be 100% the fault of a rational actor obviously being too stupid to live doesn't help. People do stupid poo poo, people basically ARE wild animals that need to be corralled by fences otherwise they will throw them selves in front of a train.
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Jan 26, 2013 21:28
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Railroads are also making a pretty strong effort to close little used level crossings, and there's a lot of funding from governments to upgrade level crossings in towns to grade separated. I saw quite a few closed level crossings and brand new tunnels under the tracks in small towns on my train trip from Minneapolis to Portland. E: Pretend I posted this 10 hours ago right after Install Gentoo posted.
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Jan 27, 2013 01:10
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Install Gentoo posted:There's always idiots, but when you gently caress around with trains you tend to die, so there's very few repeat offenders, ya know? I grew up in Brisbane, Australia where the state rail authority has a policy of "Zero Harm". Every railway, crossing and easement has high fences and access control measures. I then moved to Melbourne, Australia where most railways border onto parks or reserves with very little fences anywhere. In my mind, I agreed with the Melbourne approach - why do you need fences? It's a train line - c'mon, you're going to come off second best. From the families I met down there they raised their children with the understanding that "Sure, this is a park you can ride your bike in, but you know Thomas the Tank Engine? That's his land over there and he can't stop quickly so you should do everything you can to keep away from there". Maybe it's a nascent support of Darwinism, but I really enjoyed the Victorian approach to railway safety.
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Jan 27, 2013 12:55
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exo posted:Maybe it's a nascent support of Darwinism, but I really enjoyed the Victorian approach to railway safety. The first proper British intercity railway line killed an MP on its first day and was still a roaring success within a month. So it wasn't all bad.
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Jan 27, 2013 16:25
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When a freight rail line in this state was about to be reactivated as an all-day light rail passenger service (it had previously been freight that only ran 4 times a day, with the bulk of the traffic being moved at night, and decades before that was a passenger and freight mainline dating to the 1830s) people protested it because their children liked to play on the tracks. Let that sink in, they let their children play on tracks that were in fact still active, but "only" had 4 heavy freights running on them every 24 hour period. They were upset because that'd be brought up to 2 longer freights done in the overnight hours as well as 30 minute or closer spacing passenger light rail service in each direction from 6 am to 10 pm and then their children couldn't "safely" play on the tracks anymore.
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Jan 27, 2013 17:28
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PittTheElder posted:So I'm wondering what your thoughts would be on cleaning up this catastrophe of an intersection. As a consequence of the river, and abysmal urban planning, the southbound section of the road backs up, every day without fail, between the hours of 3:30 and 6:00. Northbound is also kind of a mess, but for partially different reasons, but I only really care about southbound traffic, because I'm a selfish jerk. Man, that is a serious mess. That whole area is so built up, I don't think it'd even be possible to build things up to any reasonable standard without removing half of the exits. There's not much right-of-way available, which is too bad, because putting in a C/D roadway would take care of some of the weaving problems. The ramps themselves aren't too bad, but everything is so dense, there's no way you're going to avoid weaving. Edit: Regarding ped-rail fatalities, don't forget that a huge portion of them are suicides or intoxicated. It's not necessarily the case of someone not hearing the warning, or not looking before stepping on the tracks, but we do want to minimize those deaths as much as possible. Double edit: I have a ton of field photos saved up. Nothing particularly resembling a narrative, but if you'd like to see some construction site pics, let me know. Cichlidae fucked around with this message at 22:18 on Jan 27, 2013 |
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Jan 27, 2013 20:01
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Cichlidae posted:
I'd like to see those when you get a chance.
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Jan 27, 2013 23:15
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Cichlidae posted:Double edit: I have a ton of field photos saved up. Nothing particularly resembling a narrative, but if you'd like to see some construction site pics, let me know. We can skip the "Look! It is rebar half covered in concrete while I give a thumbs up!" pictures, but anything that would be really interesting for the layman would be received well I think.
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Jan 27, 2013 23:25
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Cichlidae posted:Man, that is a serious mess. That whole area is so built up, I don't think it'd even be possible to build things up to any reasonable standard without removing half of the exits. There's not much right-of-way available, which is too bad, because putting in a C/D roadway would take care of some of the weaving problems. Since it's already the Oil State up North why not use some of that money to go maximum Texas/Middle East and just add lanes lanes lanes and connections? You've already got the trappings of a grid-like network there, just expand it into oblivion and accept the fact that car culture has destroyed any hope of reclaiming the city to a more personable level.
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Jan 28, 2013 00:45
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Back in 2005, a freight truck traveling up Highway 6 in Utah didn't quite make it all the way to Happy Valley...  
grillster fucked around with this message at 18:35 on Jan 28, 2013 |
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Jan 28, 2013 01:04
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Is that a sinkhole or an explosion?
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Jan 28, 2013 05:24
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Volmarias posted:Is that a sinkhole or an explosion?
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Jan 28, 2013 07:18
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ARe those flaming pieces of wreckage in the surrounding hillside??? 
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Jan 28, 2013 07:21
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grillster posted:Back in 2006, a tanker traveling up Highway 6 in Utah didn't quite make it all the way to Happy Valley... Looked for some more info on this and I think you may have combined two separate crashes. The photos seem to be from a 2005 incident where a truck carrying 35,000 lbs of explosives flipped and exploded, then your description fits this one from 2006 where a tanker flipped and burned but didn't crater the road.
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Jan 28, 2013 17:22
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Cichlidae posted:Man, that is a serious mess. That whole area is so built up, I don't think it'd even be possible to build things up to any reasonable standard without removing half of the exits. There's not much right-of-way available, which is too bad, because putting in a C/D roadway would take care of some of the weaving problems. The ramps themselves aren't too bad, but everything is so dense, there's no way you're going to avoid weaving. Yeah, that's basically what I figured. Would it be any different with that gravel plant closed? I have zero idea what their plans are, but the quarry that was serving it is now transiting over to commercial/residential development, so the City might be able to cut some deal with them in the future. Koesj posted:Since it's already the Oil State up North why not use some of that money to go maximum Texas/Middle East and just add lanes lanes lanes and connections? You've already got the trappings of a grid-like network there, just expand it into oblivion and accept the fact that car culture has destroyed any hope of reclaiming the city to a more personable level. Well, the first reason would be that we actually don't have any money. Alberta has done an absolutely miserable job of running it. Royalty rates are next to zero, and what revenue they do get is used to keep personal and corporate taxes at a flat 10%. Budgets routinely implode since you can't predict the value the oil will sell at, which has us constantly eating into our Heritage Fund (think Norway's Sovereign Oil fund). Thanks to that, the fund currently sits around an abysmal $16B. Alternatively, the city could theoretically do work on it; while it's a provincial highway, I think the city and province share jurisdiction for the part where it runs though the city. But the city has no way to raise funds other than service fees and property taxes. It's been a campaign issue for the last few years to have the provincial authority allow the City to raise a 1% sales tax, or cut them in on a part of the income tax, or basically anything approaching steady funding. As for the grid, our arterial roads tend to work alright except in a handful of places. Most of the bottlenecks involve getting over the rivers. Incidentally, there's a sour gas processing plant some 20km SE of the city, and in case of a catastrophic failure, the evacuation zone covers a big chunk of SE residential land, hemmed in by the river and rail lines. As a lark, I once did a project for a university class on how you'd try and evacuate it. The gist of the it was that if anything happened during a time when people were all home from work, there would be a lot of dead people around. PittTheElder fucked around with this message at 18:00 on Jan 28, 2013 |
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Jan 28, 2013 17:57
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Cichlidae posted:Double edit: I have a ton of field photos saved up. Nothing particularly resembling a narrative, but if you'd like to see some construction site pics, let me know. When a long stretch of interstate is getting repaved or resurfaced one common method of redirecting traffic is to put both directions of travel on one side for a length, then a stretch of no construction, then both directions on the other side for a length. Why do they switch sides of the highway that carry the traffic? I understand the gap in the middle is to let people pass slow trucks, but it's very common to stay on my side of the highway for a stretch and then cross over to the other side for a stretch. Why is it not "Let's finish Eastbound completely and then work on Westbound"?
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Jan 28, 2013 18:01
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wolrah posted:Looked for some more info on this and I think you may have combined two separate crashes. You're right. Edited.
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Jan 28, 2013 18:31
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Wolfy posted:I'm going to go out on a limb here and say explosion. I was going to say, making the assumption that I did, that the truck was carrying fuel oil of some sort, there's no way it should have cratered like that, especially to the point of damaging the rail lines. But the articles linked above say the truck was carrying explosives, so I suppose that crater makes sense. Also, holy poo poo.
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Jan 28, 2013 18:42
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PittTheElder posted:I was going to say, making the assumption that I did, that the truck was carrying fuel oil of some sort, there's no way it should have cratered like that, especially to the point of damaging the rail lines.
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Jan 28, 2013 22:46
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PittTheElder posted:Yeah, that's basically what I figured. Would it be any different with that gravel plant closed? I have zero idea what their plans are, but the quarry that was serving it is now transiting over to commercial/residential development, so the City might be able to cut some deal with them in the future. With the quarry closed, you've got some room to breathe. Now you can plop a 2-lane collector/distributor beside the through lanes, extending it as far as you can afford in both directions. Up to Route 8 in the north if you can afford it, but it looks like you'd have to buy out a few car dealerships there, and those don't come cheap. You've already got a partial c/d southbound between 245-246, and you might be able to sandwich a few more lanes between the housing developments to the east. Honestly, though, is it worth it? Probably not. You're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars, so unless it backs up daily, you're probably not going to break a benefit:cost of 1. CannonFodder posted:Well if you're talking construction, I have a question that's been bugging me. For once, I'm stumped. It would make more sense to finish an entire side at once, wouldn't it? We hardly ever do median crossovers up here (everything's over capacity as it is, so we usually have to build a temporary roadway in that case), so I've got very little experience with them beyond what I've seen in other states and the MUTCD. PittTheElder posted:I was going to say, making the assumption that I did, that the truck was carrying fuel oil of some sort, there's no way it should have cratered like that, especially to the point of damaging the rail lines. It looks like the accident occurred along a cut slope, which means the ground is fundamentally unstable. Typically, its own cohesion keeps it in place, but the explosion on the road would've caused the soil to slump out and bury/displace the train tracks.
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Jan 29, 2013 02:11
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CannonFodder posted:When a long stretch of interstate is getting repaved or resurfaced one common method of redirecting traffic is to put both directions of travel on one side for a length, then a stretch of no construction, then both directions on the other side for a length. It probably helps balance issues with interchange access. Doing the whole side at once might produce undesirable amounts of issues for access.
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Jan 29, 2013 02:25
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Ramps are going to have to cross over, regardless of which side's under construction, unless your ramp termini are really spread out. Or do you mean they'd just close the ramps for that one side? I suppose in that case, you'd want to keep the occasional exit open, but it'd be so much easier to cross an on- and off-ramp than flip-flopping work zones.
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Jan 29, 2013 03:23
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wolrah posted:Looked for some more info on this and I think you may have combined two separate crashes. According to the article, both incidents occurred at mile marker 191. Does that mean there might be something fundamentally flawed with the road design there?
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Jan 29, 2013 04:16
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Cichlidae posted:Ramps are going to have to cross over, regardless of which side's under construction, unless your ramp termini are really spread out. Or do you mean they'd just close the ramps for that one side? I suppose in that case, you'd want to keep the occasional exit open, but it'd be so much easier to cross an on- and off-ramp than flip-flopping work zones. Yeah but it might be that it works best for traffic if you're not crossing over the ramps on the same side for any two intersection pairs. Sometimes they also do completely close the ramp access for the diverted direction of travel for various lengths of time too, which influences it. There's also the likelihood of the two areas actually being completely separate projects that weren't really coordinated of course...
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Jan 29, 2013 04:26
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I live in a village in the UK, it's in a 30 limit but people often speed because the road looks ok to go fast on, but it's a slight downhill slope and gradual turn which leads towards a pedestrian crossing, a few times when I crossed the road approaching traffic screeched to a halt at the red light with smoking tires. I think some kinda of traffic calming as you enter the 30mph limit would be a good idea. Would you agree and what is the best ttype of traffic calming for a situation like this?
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Jan 29, 2013 20:36
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Cichlidae posted:With the quarry closed, you've got some room to breathe. Now you can plop a 2-lane collector/distributor beside the through lanes, extending it as far as you can afford in both directions. Up to Route 8 in the north if you can afford it, but it looks like you'd have to buy out a few car dealerships there, and those don't come cheap. You've already got a partial c/d southbound between 245-246, and you might be able to sandwich a few more lanes between the housing developments to the east. Well, it does back up each and every day, often taking 10-20 minutes to work from Highway 8 up there down to where the highway splits in two at Anderson. I guess we're hoping that the ring road that should finish this year will take some of the traffic off of Deerfoot, but I doubt it. I suspect if traffic gets any better, more people will just abandon the terrible transit in the area and drive instead.
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Jan 29, 2013 20:46
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Crankit posted:I live in a village in the UK, it's in a 30 limit but people often speed because the road looks ok to go fast on, but it's a slight downhill slope and gradual turn which leads towards a pedestrian crossing, a few times when I crossed the road approaching traffic screeched to a halt at the red light with smoking tires. I think some kinda of traffic calming as you enter the 30mph limit would be a good idea. Would you agree and what is the best ttype of traffic calming for a situation like this? You are in a village in the UK, surely there would be about a million speed cameras running the entire length of the village! 
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Jan 29, 2013 21:40
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PittTheElder posted:I guess we're hoping that the ring road that should finish this year will take some of the traffic off of Deerfoot, but I doubt it. I suspect if traffic gets any better, more people will just abandon the terrible transit in the area and drive instead. I really don't know how the modal shift (IE change proportion of users of cars/PT/other) works in North America but here in Holland there are comparatively very little people who have the opportunity to do a one to one substitution from one form of transport to the other. Drivers, passangers, cyclists or pedestrians are mostly segregated and self-selecting groups here, they have 'bought into' a mode of transport because of various economic, social and geographical reasons. Adding capacity, even in the form of new connections, for the largest part intensifies usage by leading to more or longer trips, but not new users. Even when there's a growing market of users, it often seems that, in choosing their mode of transportation, they break down to largely existing proportions. Their physical mobility is only a manifestation of underlying socioeconomic factors, which in the end, matter a whole lot more. In relatively a stable system, transportational choices have historically only changed by huge forces like introducing mass transit on a large scale, the democratization of motor vehicle use, or the increasing affordability of air travel. Welp, spergin' again.
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Jan 29, 2013 22:09
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But surely if we just got rid of helmet laws wouldn't everyone start riding bikes leading to roads so choked with bikes no car would dare to injure a cyclist? I've got a question, this might be getting closer to industrial design though, but how are streets and parking lots and general districts designed when the primary use is industry? You're dealing with huge trucks so that has to change some things. Wider turns, special intersection design? Also how much space does a big-rig truck need to turn around, or to manoeuvre to park at a loading dock? Are there any best practises for designing areas that will be full of big truck-fed industries and how should those buildings be situated in terms of parking, access, setbacks and such? Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 22:19 on Jan 29, 2013 |
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Jan 29, 2013 22:14
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Koesj posted:I really don't know how the modal shift (IE change proportion of users of cars/PT/other) works in North America but here in Holland there are comparatively very little people who have the opportunity to do a one to one substitution from one form of transport to the other. Drivers, passangers, cyclists or pedestrians are mostly segregated and self-selecting groups here, they have 'bought into' a mode of transport because of various economic, social and geographical reasons. Adding capacity, even in the form of new connections, for the largest part intensifies usage by leading to more or longer trips, but not new users. In the real big cities, I'd expect that to hold, but I suspect North American suburban cities really are pretty different. Here in Calgary, a lot of people use transit only to go to downtown and come home, in the morning and afternoon rush. Probably a large majority of transit traffic. Meanwhile, these same folks all own cars as well, since living in the suburbs means you need one to get around; trying to take transit somewhere other than to downtown takes you an hour or more, one way. For reference, for me to get to work (admittedly, 33km away by road) in the morning would take an hour and 45 minutes (that's one way). Driving takes about 20-30 minutes each way, under regular traffic conditions.
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Jan 30, 2013 01:31
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Crankit posted:I live in a village in the UK, it's in a 30 limit but people often speed because the road looks ok to go fast on, but it's a slight downhill slope and gradual turn which leads towards a pedestrian crossing, a few times when I crossed the road approaching traffic screeched to a halt at the red light with smoking tires. I think some kinda of traffic calming as you enter the 30mph limit would be a good idea. Would you agree and what is the best ttype of traffic calming for a situation like this? Do you have a maps link for the area in question? It's a lot easier to make an informed decision when you can see the context. Baronjutter posted:I've got a question, this might be getting closer to industrial design though, but how are streets and parking lots and general districts designed when the primary use is industry? You're dealing with huge trucks so that has to change some things. Wider turns, special intersection design? Also how much space does a big-rig truck need to turn around, or to manoeuvre to park at a loading dock? You're quite right about this. Our geometric design depends on a design vehicle, which can be anything from a pedestrian to a gigantic military transport. For some facilities, bicycles, wheelchairs, or even rickshaws are the main design vehicle. For most of our roads, it's a WB-67, which is a pretty large truck. The AASHTO Green Book goes over all the different geometric standards for different design vehicles, but you can't get it for free, sadly. When we do our designs, we either use old acetate turning templates or a CAD program that does the same thing.
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Jan 30, 2013 01:43
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PittTheElder posted:In the real big cities, I'd expect that to hold, but I suspect North American suburban cities really are pretty different. Here in Calgary, a lot of people use transit only to go to downtown and come home, in the morning and afternoon rush. Probably a large majority of transit traffic. Meanwhile, these same folks all own cars as well, since living in the suburbs means you need one to get around; trying to take transit somewhere other than to downtown takes you an hour or more, one way.
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Jan 30, 2013 01:44
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