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Gat posted:You can always have a mini-roundabout! (a uniquely british concept I think...) I think I saw one in Switzerland, and they've started putting in one lane roundabouts in the more upscale neighbourhoods here in Calgary.
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May 2, 2013 19:18
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Install Gentoo posted:Yeah the rule for a 4 way uncontrolled intersection in the US is to simply do exactly the same thing as a 4 way stop, without the everyone stops first part. Slow down approaching, yield to traffic on the left and traffic already turning in front of you. All traffic on the left? Not the right?
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May 2, 2013 19:43
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NFX posted:All traffic on the left? Not the right? Woops yeah I was still thinking about the UK too much with their backwards roads.
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May 2, 2013 20:13
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Install Gentoo posted:I've never really understood what problem those are meant to solve in low traffic areas. I think the roads departments probably just like to paint 'em. GWBBQ fucked around with this message at 06:53 on May 4, 2013 |
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May 2, 2013 20:14
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Install Gentoo posted:Woops yeah I was still thinking about the UK too much with their backwards roads. Although we yield to traffic on the right at roundabouts too.
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May 2, 2013 20:15
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Mini-roundabout are used in a few situations: 1) Quiet residential roads (like I linked earlier) - these have the exact same function as a 4-way stop in the US, but they probably result in less confusion as you don't have to come to a stand still but you do have to give way to the right. Used when you don't want to give a road a priority over the other and doesn't want to use lights. 2) When there isn't enough room for a normal roundabout - for example, this is the intersection of two main routes as they enter into the historic centre of the city of Winchester. This probably should be a normal roundabout, but you would never be able to demolish the buildings here as the traffic grew over the last century. The only other alternative would be a set of lights, but I don't see how that would be any better, traffic on all three streets is pretty equally distributed. 3) Sorting out a weird layout by using multiple mini-roundabouts - when there isn't enough room to level out the entire thing, such as here 4) Traffic calming - by littering them at every[/ur][url=http://goo.gl/maps/g4dF4]single intersection. While mini-roundabouts are most often used as a method of cleaning up a much older trouble spot, they are also used in new roads as well. They are cheap and the public doesn't question them, and I think they are pretty effective their calming capabilities, I guess because they seem to have a 'purpose' unlike an infuriating speed bump. They are also often seen in private developments as part of large car parks, I guess where the owner would prefer to have more parking spaces than have a full sized roundabout to help the flow of shoppers.
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May 2, 2013 20:35
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Install Gentoo posted:Yeah the rule for a 4 way uncontrolled intersection in the US is to simply do exactly the same thing as a 4 way stop, without the everyone stops first part. Slow down approaching, yield to traffic on the left and traffic already turning in front of you. Around here in CT, they tend to go with 4-way stops almost everywhere. Where I grew up in NJ, they preferred to always pick a dominant road and they got the clear shot and the the crossing roads got stops.
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May 2, 2013 20:49
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smackfu posted:I don't think I've ever seen a 4-way uncontrolled intersection in the US. This whole neighborhood: http://goo.gl/maps/kt4H7 The college students I was visiting didn't even slow down through these. It was a bit harrowing. E: some of them have mini-roundabouts like these: http://goo.gl/maps/ET1g3 but it didn't seem to help.
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May 2, 2013 21:01
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smackfu posted:I don't think I've ever seen a 4-way uncontrolled intersection in the US. I've seen it often enough in suburban areas where it's just two quiet roads crossing and little traffic expected. And also occasionally out in the countryside you'll come across an intersection of 2 minor roads and no signage. Of course, your typical suburban development will tend to avoid 4-way intersections in favor of multiple three way intersections, because those are even easier.
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May 2, 2013 21:02
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I keep reading that this is the worst intersection in Los Angeles. I can't imagine why. 
Crackpipe fucked around with this message at 22:08 on May 2, 2013 |
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May 2, 2013 22:06
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Mandalay posted:Wow, no weaving. Well done. Of course not; I'm a professional. GWBBQ posted:Why bother with painte markings? Just put something there to drive around and people will figure it out. http://goo.gl/maps/n2E5C That is an extremely dangerous spot, but we can't do anything about it, since it's historic. In some places (like Bristol), they'd build an island around it, but not Newtown! And certainly not on what was, until recently, the longest route in the country.
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May 3, 2013 00:37
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This site is just really neat: http://www.cbrd.co.uk/badjunctions/12-130-138/ I really wonder what the engineer responsible for this interchange design was thinking.
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May 3, 2013 01:11
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Crackpipe posted:I keep reading that this is the worst intersection in Los Angeles. I can't imagine why. There is a road that runs diagonally through a part of Phoenix like that. It makes me glad I don't live there all the more: http://goo.gl/maps/DMBjT
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May 3, 2013 05:08
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Crackpipe posted:I keep reading that this is the worst intersection in Los Angeles. I can't imagine why. The intersection of Burnside St, Sandy Blvd, and 12th Ave in Portland used to look like this, until they removed a two-block portion of Sandy. If you go into the 45° view, you can still see what it looked like before they changed it.
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May 3, 2013 05:41
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Gat posted:You can always have a mini-roundabout! (a uniquely british concept I think...) These would be perfect. A little paint, a few signs, and wide-scale education that people will ignore about how roundabouts work.
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May 3, 2013 06:32
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Install Gentoo posted:This site is just really neat: http://www.cbrd.co.uk/badjunctions/12-130-138/ I've pasted a link to this site very early on in this thread's history and you're right, it's brilliant. I recommend it for anyone here. The guy who runs it really is passionate about the subject. The in depth and history sections are particularly fascinating.
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May 3, 2013 14:06
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Install Gentoo posted:This site is just really neat: http://www.cbrd.co.uk/badjunctions/12-130-138/
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May 3, 2013 20:53
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I have concerns about a sign Fairfield is using. It's a standard one way arrow, except instead of a one way sign, it says DOGWOOD and is directing you to the location of the Dogwood festival, which is an annual event where you drive around wealthy neighborhoods and look at trees. Do I have the right as a concerned citizen to run around in a mask and cape with a wrench in hand and a copy of the MUTCD under my arm, removing improper signs in the name of public safety?
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May 4, 2013 16:27
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Presto posted:I love reading these, because every one reminds me of Eric Idle here. You need to go on the forums of SABRE then! Who needs a satnav when you could have road geeks with an unfortunate fondness for 1960s Britain and post-war new towns!
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May 4, 2013 20:56
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GWBBQ posted:I have concerns about a sign Fairfield is using. It's a standard one way arrow, except instead of a one way sign, it says DOGWOOD and is directing you to the location of the Dogwood festival, which is an annual event where you drive around wealthy neighborhoods and look at trees. Do I have the right as a concerned citizen to run around in a mask and cape with a wrench in hand and a copy of the MUTCD under my arm, removing improper signs in the name of public safety? Yup. We have a state statute that prevents anyone from putting up look-alike traffic signs. I think that only covers state roads, but the same principle should apply to local roads as well. And, of course, the MUTCD reserves black+white signs for regulatory. Guidance signs should be blue, green, or brown.
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May 4, 2013 22:49
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Crackpipe posted:I keep reading that this is the worst intersection in Los Angeles. I can't imagine why. You don't have to due to the brilliant timing of the satellite photo. Westbound traffic entering while both north and south are still in the intersection.
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May 5, 2013 19:48
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http://www.pps.org/reference/rightsizing/ Rightsizing! http://sustainablecitiescollective....%28all+posts%29 Mr. Traffic Engineer, tear down this highway!
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May 6, 2013 16:58
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Have any of you public transport spergs tried this German bus simulator? http://www.omnibussimulator.de/english.htm OMSI takes the player back to West-Berlin in the 1980s. The omnibus line 92 (today called M37) runs more than 11 kilometres through the Berlin district Spandau. The virtual bus driver will be provided with detailed models of the contemporary MAN doubledeckers SD200 and SD202 from different years of manufacture. Yeah who cares you-  
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May 6, 2013 19:58
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Baronjutter posted:http://www.pps.org/reference/rightsizing/ So they decided to re-use the euphemism for layoffs. Cool. As much as some people would like to ignore it, the vast majority of trips in the us are made via automobile. I know we're looking at a chicken-and-egg problem here; if we don't remove capacity, people won't give up their cars. All the same, the problem's much bigger. Until people sell their houses in the suburbs and move to cities, we're going to need roads, and we're going to need big, multilane roads with high speed and capacity. My ideal solution would be to pump gas taxes up to ~$5/gallon. People would move downtown really quick, and we'd have plenty of cash for new more-sustainable transportation infrastructure. Edit: I guess if you look at it from a socioeconomic perspective, the whole "rightsizing" / "complete streets" / "road diet" are really just a way to raise property values in gentrified neighborhoods while reducing the region's accessibility to those with lesser means. I'm sure someone in D&D could take this to its logical extreme, but this really isn't the place for such a discussion. Cichlidae fucked around with this message at 02:31 on May 7, 2013 |
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May 7, 2013 00:12
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grillster posted:You don't have to due to the brilliant timing of the satellite photo. Westbound traffic entering while both north and south are still in the intersection. And you can drop down to Street View and check out the totally awesome lack of turn signals.
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May 7, 2013 09:08
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Cichlidae posted:My ideal solution would be to pump gas taxes up to ~$5/gallon. People would move downtown really quick, and we'd have plenty of cash for new more-sustainable transportation infrastructure. Did you know that gas prizes in Europe are about $8.80/gallon, at least in my country? The prizes keep going up, but this doesn't seem to reduce car traffic a lot.
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May 7, 2013 17:03
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Carbon dioxide posted:Did you know that gas prizes in Europe are about $8.80/gallon, at least in my country? The prizes keep going up, but this doesn't seem to reduce car traffic a lot. I don't think you can make the same contention about $9/gal gas in the United States.
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May 7, 2013 17:46
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They need to stop building new highways and car-focused infrastructure that only serves to fuel more sprawl and more car-centric development that quickly fills up with more cars, implement strict urban containment boundaries, make denser projects easier to build (relax zoning, speed up approval/red tape, eliminate parking reqs), higher gas tax and congestion fees in urban centers with all the money going towards transit and various incentives for TOD's along them. Saying "well this highway has a traffic problem NOW and more sprawl keeps getting built so we gotta build this new interchange or widen this highway" is bullshit. The traffic problem is about the only force holding back even more sprawl. You build more capacity, it just enables more sprawl and you're back to square one. If traffic is truly hosed to the point that it can't handle existing traffic then sure, do some minor fixes to make it go from "totally broken" to "barely tolerable" but couple it with transit and pass laws to prevent any further sprawl via a containment boundary. Of course just saying "gently caress you cars!" and not providing good alternatives isn't going to help. Build the metro/suburban train first then "right size" the highway, and have an actual plan for future development. And don't let the good transit free up highway capacity to allow more sprawl, "right size" that poo poo before idiots fill it back up, because they absolutely will unless you have a containment boundary or other plans in place. Gas tax is often a bit of a red herring, it's a good way to help fund transit but at the end of the day it disproportionately effects the poor and people will generally always use what ever is the most convenient form of transport. Then again the "what about poors" is often a lovely red herring too, good transit benefits the working class most of all who can then save on transport costs. "But areas along good transit quickly gentrify!" this is because cities/districts with good transit is such a god drat novelty in america that people flock to them, when it becomes the norm you won't see that. And a good transit system should cover everywhere (except the worst sprawl which is nearly impossible to serve, so stop loving building more of that!) Even with a high gas tax, if there's good highways and parking near work, people will drive. Take away the parking, clog the highways, and provide a quick comfortable accessible metro, or suburban train, or bus with bus lanes and people will flock to it as it zips them past the traffic jams and plops them off a short walk from work. Keep building highways and developers will keep being able to build and sell sprawl to people who will clog up the highways and demand more highways.
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May 7, 2013 18:02
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Driving a car is super expensive here in perfidious Europe, zoning is very strict in the Netherlands, and public transportation works very well for a number of origin/destination categories BUT we still had to massively expand highway capacity during the last decade because the original 1970s style network just wasn't up to the task. What I'm trying to say is that a good transportation policy isn't a zero sum-either/or-proposition. Of course you need strict zoning and higher densities to make PT work but there's lots of people who'll still need to use a car besides the most extreme Hong Kong-esque cases. Sure there's been massive mistakes in the case of most US cities, and I hope you guys can solve them in equitable ways, but the transition is going to be very, very slow (bar a combination of massive demand shocks). Personal mobility, regardless of modes of transportation, will still enable economic and social mobility for the greater societal good if the negative externalities can be kept at bay.
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May 7, 2013 19:10
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Mandalay posted:I don't think you can make the same contention about $9/gal gas in the United States. You actually can, because the primary thing that gets reduced by high gas prices is trips people don't need to make (road trips etc). If you just jack up the price without first providing for businesses and people to relocate, and first providing the transit, all you're going to get is a lot of people with less money because they don't have the ability to actually change their driving habits meaningfully. And hell, you can look at the UK, where they had the cheapest gasoline in Europe in the 80s and among the most expensive now due to intentional gas tax rising over about 10 years. What that's managed to achieve is to simply hold the line on how much people drive, and reduce discretionary trips while doing nothing to impact others. Currently 71% of the UK's working population commutes by car in comparison to 82% in Canada and 86% in the US. Baronjutter posted:Take away the parking, clog the highways, and provide a quick comfortable accessible metro, or suburban train, or bus with bus lanes and people will flock to it as it zips them past the traffic jams and plops them off a short walk from work. Keep building highways and developers will keep being able to build and sell sprawl to people who will clog up the highways and demand more highways. This just kinda glosses over the whole fact that you can't create the quick comfortable and frequent service transit just by snapping your fingers, it's something that requires literal decades of work and a lot of careful planning. And in the meantime having dangerously over capacity roads just racks up pollution and accidents. Nintendo Kid fucked around with this message at 19:38 on May 7, 2013 |
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May 7, 2013 19:20
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Install Gentoo posted:You actually can, because the primary thing that gets reduced by high gas prices is trips people don't need to make (road trips etc). If you just jack up the price without first providing for businesses and people to relocate, and first providing the transit, all you're going to get is a lot of people with less money because they don't have the ability to actually change their driving habits meaningfully. You're right that $9 gas tomorrow is economic ruin, but demand for gasoline is more elastic than you think if you are going to talk about "holding the line" as support for your argument.
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May 7, 2013 19:49
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Mandalay posted:You're right that $9 gas tomorrow is economic ruin, but demand for gasoline is more elastic than you think if you are going to talk about "holding the line" as support for your argument. It's so elastic in fact that it doesn't meaningfully change vehicle usage when you quadruple the price of gasoline in a country over 10 years...
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May 7, 2013 20:01
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Yep, so it actually has to be a long-term regional plan, which is something cities are seemingly designed to be unable to do. But ideally you'd set up a plan for the future of the region: where the various transit lines will go, what roads and highways will be changed, where and what form for future development. Then over decades you'd enact this plan while attempting to disrupt things as little as possible. Probably the very first thing to do would be to set up a sort of sprawl-moratorium via some sort of urban containment boundary, to make sure the existing situation doesn't get any worse, but at the same time make sure zoning and the development process is up to task for picking up the slack of all the housing that would have been built via sprawl, and to make sure they are economically comparable. You can't just block a 500 house sprawl project and "balance" that with 500 condos downtown, it's different markets. Depending on the neighbourhood and future transit plans start building up corridors at slightly higher density. Even a tiny increase over a big area can add tens of thousands of units. An area of junky little houses slowly getting replaced with duplex's, town houses, or just a denser spacing of housing can make a huge difference. Increase the connectivity of the local street grids too, get rid of dead-end roads or at least connect them for pedestrians/bikes. Allow local shops and services to neighborhoods so people don't have to go so far for basic shopping, doctors appointments and so on but keep the main employment centers in the core. Yeah everyone's still going to have a car but they can easily go days without NEEDING one. Tons of people will still drive, roads and highways will still be needed, but they will be needed to a lesser degree and a much higher percentage of people will use transit, or walk, or ride a bike. American cities are just hosed though. You can't have transit because the sprawl is just too low-density to support it. You can't increase density because the streets are so non-griddy and just tangled messes unadaptable dead-ends and the zoning and entire point of the developments are that they will never change. You can't stop the sprawl because there's no strong regional authority, but rather a large number of self-interested little suburban fiefdoms all competing with each other. And there's no money for anything because the extreme ratio of road/highway to tax payer can barely support the existing infrastructure and no one is willing to pay even a slight increase in property taxes or gas tax for transit because everyone lives in terrible sprawl that can't support it and have been living like that for so long they can't even imagine there's a better way. "I have to drive 40 min to work every day in terrible traffic, I can't afford more taxes to pay for transit! What I want is lower taxes and more highways so my commute is shorter!"
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May 7, 2013 20:04
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^^^ Planning (and Traffic Engineering) is a messy business and you gotta do what you can in an imperfect world. This isn't some god game.Install Gentoo posted:It's so elastic in fact that it doesn't meaningfully change vehicle usage when you quadruple the price of gasoline in a country over 10 years... Nearly all economists agree that gas is price elastic in the long term, if not the short term. The actual level is arguable but the basic contention is not. http://mises.org/daily/1936 http://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/0m94j50t http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/09/prices-and-gasoline-demand/
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May 7, 2013 20:13
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Baronjutter I don't think you're looking at actual development patterns or actual cities, you're just kinda talking about these strawman development styles. Currently 80% of the US population lives within just 2.5% of the land area, the areas that are red on this map:  These are the urbanized areas by definition of the Census bureau, and the characteristic is that you need a core area of at least 10,000 people with density over 1000 a mile connected by contiguous area of at least 500 per square mile. The overall density of the urbanized areas is about 2900 people per square mile. The people in the remaining "rural" part of the country, which is about 20%, we can frankly just ignore for transit. The hyper sparse development you're talking about tends to be much more representative of that area. It is entirely possible to retrofit and expand public transit within the existing red areas. Some of them for various reasons we won't ever do that in, but when you tackle the rest of them you're still dealing with the vast majority of the population. You don't have to worry about the people who work within the dense areas but still choose to live 50 miles out in some stupidly low density McMansion land, because frankly they were never going to go along and take transit in the first place. They're already paying a lot of money in order to do that, and sometimes they're even proud of that fact. It's best to just ignore them. They don't represent anywhere near a large amount of the populace.
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May 7, 2013 20:30
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Well if you'd like to talk about a specific city or region it would be easier, I'm of course making pretty broad generalizations about "typical" american cities. I'm thinking more about the worst places like Houston or Calgary that just turn the sprawl up to 11. Although I think my points generally apply to any city, from Portland to Phoenix. Our culture and our norms are also heavily influenced by our cities, if we want less of these transit-use write-offs we need less people growing up in environments with no or lovely transit, where transit use is looked down upon. I do understand the point about the write-offs. My city wants to spend a fortune building an LRT out to the worst middle-upper class burbs full of people who'd scoff at a gold plated train. They don't want it and won't use it. But at the same time don't keep building more overpasses and highways to let them keep building more sprawl. In many cases the highway capacity is the only control on the sprawl. If the roads are jammed people won't build or buy houses out there. But that's a lovely way to run a city because they absolutely will building housing out there until the traffic is totally blocked, they won't stop at some nice equilibrium where the traffic flows but they know they can't add anymore people because the highways will become jammed. This is where regional planning comes in. The region needs to say "Ok, no more development in this area because the highway can't safely handle more. We also don't WANT more sprawl, so we're not going to invest in more highways, instead more transit to allow the core area of the city to grow up rather than out." Want more suburbs? Make sure it's a "streetcar suburb" and demand developers help pay to expand the transit system to serve their new greenfield development. But of course that doesn't happen. Sprawl keeps sprawling, the highways get clogged and the region expands the highway, or replaces a traffic light with an overpass and so on and more sprawl is subsidized. Do it enough and it becomes the unquestionable norm, reality. Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 21:00 on May 7, 2013 |
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May 7, 2013 20:43
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I that map is misleading. Density isn't the only thing you need for public transport, you also need walkable places. If you're on a bus or a tram, inevitably, you're also going to be walking places(arguably its true on a bike too, no one wants to bike through 9 miles of endless suburbia even if it is dense). Many places on that map are the epitome of sprawl. Sure, they're dense suburban developments, but they're also essentially people desolate. There are no active parks, there are no active street life, there's nothing really to walk by except more houses or business parks you can't go to, in many places there's no real city even, there will be like a 4 bloc section of downtown just because they had to put the bars somewhere. Everything else will be strip malls. These aren't environments that induce people to get out of their car.(Specifically in my mind I'm thinking of Melborune in FL which is in the red area on that map, but it plays out across the nation)
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May 7, 2013 21:13
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Amused to Death posted:I that map is misleading. Density isn't the only thing you need for public transport, you also need walkable places. This is an important point. It's also pretty easy to encourage walking; just putting a grass strip with some small trees between the sidewalk and the road makes a tremendous difference.
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May 7, 2013 21:18
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PittTheElder posted:This is an important point. It's also pretty easy to encourage walking; just putting a grass strip with some small trees between the sidewalk and the road makes a tremendous difference. It's amazing what little greenery can do. A local news outlet here did a little story where they came across these pictures from around downtown from 1977, so they then put them side by side to what it looks like currently. On one of the streets there's basically nothing different beyond some store name changes, and to the topic at hand, trees now lining the sidewalk. The difference it makes is astounding, the street looks smaller, friendlier and more inviting.(and this was a picture from when the trees hadn't come back into bloom yet) vs the brutalism of just sidewalk cement from the 70's.
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May 7, 2013 21:23
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Amused to Death posted:It's amazing what little greenery can do. A local news outlet here did a little story where they came across these pictures from around downtown from 1977, so they then put them side by side to what it looks like currently. On one of the streets there's basically nothing different beyond some store name changes, and to the topic at hand, trees now lining the sidewalk. The difference it makes is astounding, the street looks smaller, friendlier and more inviting.(and this was a picture from when the trees hadn't come back into bloom yet) vs the brutalism of just sidewalk cement from the 70's. There are a few examples on this very page!
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May 7, 2013 21:26
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