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Nintendo Kid
Aug 4, 2011

by Smythe

Baronjutter posted:

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.

This simply isn't true, all of the super sprawly areas have terrible traffic that never really gets better. The building carries on regardless.

You're right about needing regional planning, but what's actually needed is to have it, you know, be the law that you can't build in X, Y, and Z areas, because expecting traffic congestion to halt development just doesn't work.


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. 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)

Biking is kind of a red herring. The majority of the population will never bike unless they have to, because its so much easier and more comfortable to drive or ride public transit. This is because people are lazy and also because rain and such sucks rear end to deal with. Walking is also a bit of a red herring, as well as demanding street life, because a lot of people vastly prefer to go elsewhere to do things - most of the great cities of the world have very few residents in their core nightlife and employment areas compared to other areas of the same city!

And sure a lot of those areas aren't much now, but they easily have the potential to be built up again properly over the near future. Quite frankly a lot of areas simply can't support a dense city with their population at this current time!

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Mandalay
Mar 16, 2007

WoW Forums Refugee
I wish we had someone to make an Ask Me About Being a City Planner thread for urban planning, and this thread for implementation and, well, engineering.

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

While on the flip side you'll often see these adorable suburban municipalities spending a fortune adding sidewalks and greenery to areas humans have no intention of ever walking. Yeah I'm sure that nice sidewalk made out of stamped concrete and the trees are going to make people walk past these storage centres and the 200' back wall of a big-box store. Which really nails the point home that there's no magic bullet. You need the nice sidewalk so walking is actually nice, but you also need a reason to walk there like storefronts and pedestrian-oriented buildings, but to support those sorts of buildings you need a certain density in the area and street layouts that are conducive to walking (ie not a maze of dead ends), and you also need transit to bring people from beyond walking distance to your buildings.

If any part of that is missing it can all fall apart. I've seen places where they had the density, decent transit, decent streets, but the buildings and developments them selves were so car-centric they failed (in terms of urbanism). I've seen places where they built pretty good pedestrian-focused buildings, but still had to hide massive parking lots behind because the area just didn't have the transit or density to support a genuine pedestrian-focused business. Even when mayor, council, planning are all on board it can be VERY hard to pull off depending on how "far gone" the city is in terms of its sprawl and highway addiction.

I mean it really is like an addiction. The city builds some highways and it spurs a whole bunch of suburban development, suddenly houses are more affordable on cheap land outside the city and the highways allow them to have comfortable commutes, amazing!!! But then you want more, you build another ring of suburbs, but now you don't just need a longer highway for the new suburbs, you need to increase the capacity of the existing highways too since the 2nd ring suburbs need to drive through the first ring. Then you do it again, and it gets even more expensive, even bigger highways. Now some of the suburbs aren't so nice, there's new highways plowing through them, roads that were once quiet are now busy as people further out have to drive through. The solution? Well just move farther out! More highways! It's a vicious circle and the user keeps needing bigger and bigger highways to get the same high. Often the addict lies to its self "I totally left space for an LRT down the middle of this highway! I can build transit any time I want, I just don't want to right now!"

I'm not asking america to go highway cold-turkey, but it needs to admit it has a problem and start working on some treatment options.

And yeah I've been thinking of making a D&D urban planning thread for a while now since although very closely tied to traffic engineering this thread is more about the engineering and implementation rather than the higher level planning stuff. Been squirreling away articles and various publications to make a good OP. I wish I actually had some proper education or expertise on the subject beyond "reading a ton of urban planning blogs every day".

Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 22:16 on May 7, 2013

Amused to Death
Aug 10, 2009

google "The Night Witches", and prepare for :stare:

Install Gentoo posted:

Biking is kind of a red herring. The majority of the population will never bike unless they have to, because its so much easier and more comfortable to drive or ride public transit. This is because people are lazy and also because rain and such sucks rear end to deal with. Walking is also a bit of a red herring, as well as demanding street life, because a lot of people vastly prefer to go elsewhere to do things - most of the great cities of the world have very few residents in their core nightlife and employment areas compared to other areas of the same city!

And sure a lot of those areas aren't much now, but they easily have the potential to be built up again properly over the near future. Quite frankly a lot of areas simply can't support a dense city with their population at this current time!

I don't think any of these are red herrings at all. Other nations have shown people will bike in huge numbers if its possible to do so, and being walkable is arguably the most important factor in a good city that can support public transport. As for city cores, yes, most downtowns don't have many residents, they're filled with offices, bars, nightclubs, ect. However, a good city or suburb will also have places intertwined in residential communities that makes the place walkable. Even if you specifically have no where to go that's close, these businesses will bring about sidewalk traffic that will encourage other people to go outside. If I live in *insert some sprawling place*, it doesn't matter if the neighborhood is very dense if its near entirely single home residential for a 5 mile radius. No one will walk anywhere because there will be nowhere in the neighborhood for people to walk to, whether said people live there, or they took the bus there. If in most of the city they have no motivation to walk because they'll be the lone person out there walking, there's no reason for them to just not take their car to begin with. Human psychology is almost as important as structural design.

Cichlidae
Aug 12, 2005

ME LOVE
MAKE RED LIGHT


Dr. Infant, MD
Yeah, a dedicated thread would really be the best place to discuss this. My job is related, but I deal with the effects of congestion much more than the causes. I can tell you that volumes and fuel prices are indeed related - VMTs have been on a downward trend since 2008 or so, compared to the tremendous growth in the 90s and 80s. Correlation doesn't imply causation, and I imagine you could think of some other reasons for the trend. All that really matters for me is that we need to reduce volumes one way or another, because we sure as heck can't outpace them by building more infrastructure.



Nintendo Kid
Aug 4, 2011

by Smythe

Baronjutter posted:

I mean it really is like an addiction. The city builds some highways and it spurs a whole bunch of suburban development, suddenly houses are more affordable on cheap land outside the city and the highways allow them to have comfortable commutes, amazing!!! But then you want more, you build another ring of suburbs, but now you don't just need a longer highway for the new suburbs, you need to increase the capacity of the existing highways too since the 2nd ring suburbs need to drive through the first ring. Then you do it again, and it gets even more expensive, even bigger highways. Now some of the suburbs aren't so nice, there's new highways plowing through them, roads that were once quiet are now busy as people further out have to drive through. The solution? Well just move farther out! More highways! It's a vicious circle and the user keeps needing bigger and bigger highways to get the same high. Often the addict lies to its self "I totally left space for an LRT down the middle of this highway! I can build transit any time I want, I just don't want to right now!"

I'm not asking america to go highway cold-turkey, but it needs to admit it has a problem and start working on some treatment options.

The thing is all that stuff continues to happen if you don't build the new highways too. You can look anywhere in the country to see this in action really.

There's a lot of places where you had the first ring of suburbs built, and then new highways were put in to help them 40 years ago... and then the next ring comes in with only the most minimal improvements to the highways, and third ring develops beyond that without any highway improvements at all. "There'll be traffic, I'll just sit through it" becomes an accepted thing in all of the outer areas and it doesn't slow down development.

Amused to Death posted:

I don't think any of these are red herrings at all. Other nations have shown people will bike in huge numbers if its possible to do so, and being walkable is arguably the most important factor in a good city that can support public transport. As for city cores, yes, most downtowns don't have many residents, they're filled with offices, bars, nightclubs, ect. However, a good city or suburb will also have places intertwined in residential communities that makes the place walkable. Even if you specifically have no where to go that's close, these businesses will bring about sidewalk traffic that will encourage other people to go outside. If I live in *insert some sprawling place*, it doesn't matter if the neighborhood is very dense if its near entirely single home residential for a 5 mile radius. No one will walk anywhere because there will be nowhere in the neighborhood for people to walk to, whether said people live there, or they took the bus there. If in most of the city they have no motivation to walk because they'll be the lone person out there walking, there's no reason for them to just not take their car to begin with. Human psychology is almost as important as structural design.

I don't think you're quite getting the whole "a whole ton of people really just want to be in a residential area" thing. This is not by any means mutually exclusive with having transit though, or a requirement for having cars.

Sidewalk traffic isn't a universal good thing to have, and in a lot of cases it would simply be a pain in the rear end in comparison to transit.

FISHMANPET
Mar 3, 2007

Sweet 'N Sour
Can't
Melt
Steel Beams

Baronjutter posted:


And yeah I've been thinking of making a D&D urban planning thread for a while now since although very closely tied to traffic engineering this thread is more about the engineering and implementation rather than the higher level planning stuff. Been squirreling away articles and various publications to make a good OP. I wish I actually had some proper education or expertise on the subject beyond "reading a ton of urban planning blogs every day".

Please link if you do, I would like to post in that thread.

Mandalay
Mar 16, 2007

WoW Forums Refugee
Cichildae, how much did you say a bikeway costs per mile? This article implies that over $7mil will be spent on a 1.2 mile segment, which....seems high. http://www.kcet.org/socal/departures/lariver/confluence/river-notes/nbc-universal-puts-135-million-toward-la-river-bikeway.html

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

Cichildae's laid out costs for roads, bike lanes, paths, everything before and no matter how many times I read the numbers I still can't accept them. Like there's got to be some crazy corrupt supplier marking up concrete 500% or a dude bilking the state charging them hundreds of thousands to study the ecosystem of a curb to declare it environmentally safe to build.

I've worked in the construction and development industry and saw lots of numbers thrown around, specially when dealing with building things like concrete foundations and driveways and such and Cichildae's numbers still seem nuts.

Nintendo Kid
Aug 4, 2011

by Smythe

Mandalay posted:

Cichildae, how much did you say a bikeway costs per mile? This article implies that over $7mil will be spent on a 1.2 mile segment, which....seems high. http://www.kcet.org/socal/departures/lariver/confluence/river-notes/nbc-universal-puts-135-million-toward-la-river-bikeway.html

Part of that is that they want to make the bikeway really fancy!

Jaguars!
Jul 31, 2012


Baronjutter posted:


And yeah I've been thinking of making a D&D urban planning thread for a while now since although very closely tied to traffic engineering this thread is more about the engineering and implementation rather than the higher level planning stuff. Been squirreling away articles and various publications to make a good OP. I wish I actually had some proper education or expertise on the subject beyond "reading a ton of urban planning blogs every day".

You might be interested to know that this sort of playing Simcity in life represents the pinnacle of the planning profession. They learn that stuff in college, but AFAIK most planners graduate and get a job with a local authority approving/denying consents for local developments or rewriting the local rulebook.

smackfu
Jun 7, 2004

The funny thing is that you can build a pretty nice trail with volunteer labor, some rakes, and a pot of paint. I guess a rail trail is more complicated but it's already got a graded level surface so... I have no idea.

Cichlidae
Aug 12, 2005

ME LOVE
MAKE RED LIGHT


Dr. Infant, MD

Mandalay posted:

Cichildae, how much did you say a bikeway costs per mile? This article implies that over $7mil will be spent on a 1.2 mile segment, which....seems high. http://www.kcet.org/socal/departures/lariver/confluence/river-notes/nbc-universal-puts-135-million-toward-la-river-bikeway.html

A simple bike trail here runs about $2M/mile, but that's built atop an existing railbed with little grade modification or structural work. Once you have to break out the concrete mixer, you'd be looking at at least double that sum.

Jaguars! posted:

You might be interested to know that this sort of playing Simcity in life represents the pinnacle of the planning profession. They learn that stuff in college, but AFAIK most planners graduate and get a job with a local authority approving/denying consents for local developments or rewriting the local rulebook.

I'm really keen on moving into the state's Project Concepts unit. They get to do all the broad, pie-in-the-sky design work, like coming up with 10 different reconfigurations for a troublesome interchange. They don't get mired and details, and if only 1/100 of their designs end up getting built, so be it. The fun's all in the design, not the execution, anyway.

smackfu posted:

The funny thing is that you can build a pretty nice trail with volunteer labor, some rakes, and a pot of paint. I guess a rail trail is more complicated but it's already got a graded level surface so... I have no idea.

When we have state forces do our construction (like rebuilding a parking lot and retaining wall downstate), it comes out waaaaaay under budget and typically gets finished ahead of schedule. The entire contracting process just uses up a tremendous amount of money. Take our pavement markings, for example: a grooving truck and a paint truck would cost you half a million, and you can use them just about constantly, whereas a contractor's painting crew charges a million a year or more. That's with some competition, too, since we have 3 contractors bidding against each other - the margins were much higher before.

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

I've read before that infastructure costs so much more in the US compared to most of europe is the US's alleged obsession with getting the best price and no corruption. Except the long bidding processes and constantly having to use private contractors ends up driving up the costs, and the super transparent fair bidding process with so much private profit at stake ends up actually encouraging more corruption.

Why not just have the local authority or state or what ever have a fleet of what ever vehicles/equipment they need and dedicated full time workers doing road work. A single efficient unit that gains experience doing the same sort of work over and over while the state skips the entire middle man and all the red tape from "bidding" ??

I can't remember the exact numbers but they had some case study where they studied a tram/light rail project in the US and one in Europe. Despite similar labour costs the european one was almost half as expensive because they had very little red tape and most all the work was done by city crews with outside private help hired only where absolutely needed, and no bidding process, the city just picked who they knew would do the best job and had a good track record. Way fewer things like mandated enviro studies. You're putting tram tracks in a road or on existing right of way, what environment is to study? Water flow might change the fragile curb ecosystem?

Actually bit of an update. I'm a huge nerd and I watch youtubes of trams and transit systems all the times. Sometimes I even send messages to the uploaders asking questions. I actually sort of made friends with a Czech guy who has tons of friends within the "transit" community so he can ride-along on tons of trains and trams and made videos for me to enjoy. Anyways we were talking about this subject and he was telling me some interesting things about price/corruption. He too was absolutely shocked at how expensive US infrastructure is, specially anything rail/transit related. From what he knows they mostly use a dedicated government/city workforce who just does this poo poo all the time so they're good at it. On the corruption angle it was interesting though, he said the lack of a rigorous bidding process DOES result in a lot of corrupt and favourtism but these relationships end up serving the public rather than the private interest. For example you might need an outside company to install the signaling system for a new LRT line and as mayor you pull some strings to get your friend's company hired because you get some kickbacks but mostly because he's your friend he makes sure to do a really good job and come in under budget. Because of the relationship a lot of government authorities have with the various private contractors they end up building up a stable of preferred contractors and form good working relationships with them, which the contractors leverage to keep getting hired and the authority leverages to keep getting good prices/quality work done.

The idea of having some totally open bidding process where politicians or planners don't get to just pick who they want, but instead have to run a whole "fair" and objective contest-like process full of rules terrified him. He said something like "The process would involve so much paperwork its self, and you'd be stuck with who ever could lie about their prices or game the bidding system!"

I guess my TLDR opinion is that often "free market competition" doesn't bring prices down, it just creates inefficiency and expensive middle-men

Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 22:33 on May 10, 2013

Volmarias
Dec 31, 2002

EMAIL... THE INTERNET... SEARCH ENGINES...

Baronjutter posted:

Why not just have the local authority or state or what ever have a fleet of what ever vehicles/equipment they need and dedicated full time workers doing road work. A single efficient unit that gains experience doing the same sort of work over and over while the state skips the entire middle man and all the red tape from "bidding" ??

Because that would not favor kickbacks be socialism!!!

Bow TIE Fighter
Sep 16, 2007

Our cummerbunds can't repel firepower of that magnitude!
A gif led me to this video of how they stop overheight vehicles at the Sydney Harbour Tunnel. Nice warning system, but despite all the engineering in the world, sometimes you can't fix stupid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoTMC-uxJoo
The video also shows a truck knocking a bridge girder off its supports, can't imagine how expensive that was to fix...

Volmarias
Dec 31, 2002

EMAIL... THE INTERNET... SEARCH ENGINES...

Bow TIE Fighter posted:

A gif led me to this video of how they stop overheight vehicles at the Sydney Harbour Tunnel. Nice warning system, but despite all the engineering in the world, sometimes you can't fix stupid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoTMC-uxJoo
The video also shows a truck knocking a bridge girder off its supports, can't imagine how expensive that was to fix...

That water based sign is pretty awesome, but it seems like it would be better served further back from the entrance if possible. A low tech solution I've seen is a concrete clearance bar that you'll physically hit before you hit something else. Is there a reason that those couldn't be used here?

Cichlidae
Aug 12, 2005

ME LOVE
MAKE RED LIGHT


Dr. Infant, MD

Volmarias posted:

That water based sign is pretty awesome, but it seems like it would be better served further back from the entrance if possible. A low tech solution I've seen is a concrete clearance bar that you'll physically hit before you hit something else. Is there a reason that those couldn't be used here?

Because some people still won't stop. At one test location, we installed incredibly loud sirens that would go off when an overheight truck came through. Unfortunately, local residents complained, so we had to get rid of them.

That water screen looks awesome, by the way. I imagine it's paid for itself many times over.

Edit: I found out last week that AutoTrack (software we use to compute turning radii) has the B-2 bomber as one of its vehicles. I can totally park one.

Cichlidae fucked around with this message at 15:44 on May 11, 2013

SlothfulCobra
Mar 27, 2011

Google Maps doesn't have a current view of it, so here's a visual representation of my least favorite intersection:



There are roads that don't quite line up all over where I live, but this one's the worst.

Bow TIE Fighter posted:

A gif led me to this video of how they stop overheight vehicles at the Sydney Harbour Tunnel. Nice warning system, but despite all the engineering in the world, sometimes you can't fix stupid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoTMC-uxJoo
The video also shows a truck knocking a bridge girder off its supports, can't imagine how expensive that was to fix...

I can't believe people would be so careless. It is their job to drive that truck, it's all they do all day every day, you'd think they'd be more responsible about it.

MyFaceBeHi
Apr 9, 2008

I was popular, once.

Bow TIE Fighter posted:

A gif led me to this video of how they stop overheight vehicles at the Sydney Harbour Tunnel. Nice warning system, but despite all the engineering in the world, sometimes you can't fix stupid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoTMC-uxJoo
The video also shows a truck knocking a bridge girder off its supports, can't imagine how expensive that was to fix...

I like how some of the comments ask why the tunnel can't be made bigger. Surely enlarging the tunnel is orders of magnitude more expensive than fancy signs telling the truck driver to stop, that and the safety concerns with having a huge truck barrelling down a tunnel but I don't know much about engineering so what do I know! I know stuff about buildings but that's completely different of course!

I do admit the water screen does look awesome to me too! Could be useful for the Blackwell Tunnel in London which gets hit a few times a year by confused foreign truck drivers who haven't realised we also put metric heights on bridge/tunnel height warning signs.

Terminal Entropy
Dec 26, 2012

SlothfulCobra posted:

Google Maps doesn't have a current view of it, so here's a visual representation of my least favorite intersection:



There are roads that don't quite line up all over where I live, but this one's the worst.

There are normal 4 way intersections in Tucson that feel like that sometimes as the middle of the intersections can sometimes be slightly higher than the roads and the roads themselves will be curved.

GWBBQ
Jan 2, 2005


SlothfulCobra posted:

I can't believe people would be so careless. It is their job to drive that truck, it's all they do all day every day, you'd think they'd be more responsible about it.
A couple of years ago, there was a bridge rebuild on the Merritt Parkway that reduced clearance to 10'6" and came with miles of warning signs, sensors, alarms, and warning strobes. Over the 18 months or so that it took to rebuild the bridge, I think 5 or 6 trucks hit the bridge and got stuck.

One important thing that didn't change is that trucks have always been prohibited on the Parkway. People are loving stupid.

Nintendo Kid
Aug 4, 2011

by Smythe

MyFaceBeHi posted:

I like how some of the comments ask why the tunnel can't be made bigger. Surely enlarging the tunnel is orders of magnitude more expensive than fancy signs telling the truck driver to stop, that and the safety concerns with having a huge truck barrelling down a tunnel but I don't know much about engineering so what do I know! I know stuff about buildings but that's completely different of course!


There aren't any particular dangers or safety concerns of having a large truck going through a tunnel, though? You know, as long as the tunnel is actually big enough for it to fit through. It's not exactly unheard of to either cut a tunnel to have more clearance (although not possible in this case because its prefab immersed tubes) or to build bypass tunnels. It's expensive sure, but it does result in safer transport.

Though one has to wonder why a brand new major crossing built in 1992 was built to be less than 14'6" high in the first place...

Cichlidae
Aug 12, 2005

ME LOVE
MAKE RED LIGHT


Dr. Infant, MD

GWBBQ posted:

A couple of years ago, there was a bridge rebuild on the Merritt Parkway that reduced clearance to 10'6" and came with miles of warning signs, sensors, alarms, and warning strobes. Over the 18 months or so that it took to rebuild the bridge, I think 5 or 6 trucks hit the bridge and got stuck.

One important thing that didn't change is that trucks have always been prohibited on the Parkway. People are loving stupid.

The worst part is that the reason for the reduced clearance, in many cases, was scaffolding where the workers were boxed in, suspended below the road. Hitting it had a very good chance of killing a worker. The alarms were just as much for warning the workers to madly scramble to safety as to stop the offending trucks.

Koesj
Aug 3, 2003
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SzmA2uAPfw

We had some massive problems with oversized vehicles trying to enter the new Roertunnel the last couple of years, and while that water screen looks awesome, it still wouldn't prevent traffic jams from building up behind it.

Hedera Helix
Sep 2, 2011

The laws of the fiesta mean nothing!

Bow TIE Fighter posted:

A gif led me to this video of how they stop overheight vehicles at the Sydney Harbour Tunnel. Nice warning system, but despite all the engineering in the world, sometimes you can't fix stupid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoTMC-uxJoo
The video also shows a truck knocking a bridge girder off its supports, can't imagine how expensive that was to fix...

That water screen is the greatest thing ever. They should be installed everywhere. :swoon:

Cichlidae
Aug 12, 2005

ME LOVE
MAKE RED LIGHT


Dr. Infant, MD

Hedera Helix posted:

That water screen is the greatest thing ever. They should be installed everywhere. :swoon:

Just wait until ClearChannel and Viacom figure out they can broadcast ads that way...

RCK-101
Feb 19, 2008

If a recruiter asks you to become a nuclear sailor.. you say no
What was that old website 11'5" where the trucks always hit the rail viaduct, because the thread is turning into that right now.

NightGyr
Mar 7, 2005
I � Unicode

Ryand-Smith posted:

What was that old website 11'5" where the trucks always hit the rail viaduct, because the thread is turning into that right now.

http://11foot8.com/

On a different note, did you hear about the I-81 fire? Have you dealt with any major truck fires on bridges?

Digital War
May 28, 2006

Ahhh, poetry.

Install Gentoo posted:

Though one has to wonder why a brand new major crossing built in 1992 was built to be less than 14'6" high in the first place...

Because it's a matter of cost. How big should a tunnel be? Large enough to accommodate over-height trucks, or maybe even a space shuttle. Obviously the benefit of building a tunnel big enough to accommodate the occasional outlier didn't outweigh the added cost of construction it would have entailed.
Vehicles over 14'1" are a restricted class and are limited to approved routes, trucks of that height should have been nowhere near the tunnel.

Nintendo Kid
Aug 4, 2011

by Smythe

Digital War posted:

Because it's a matter of cost. How big should a tunnel be? Large enough to accommodate over-height trucks, or maybe even a space shuttle. Obviously the benefit of building a tunnel big enough to accommodate the occasional outlier didn't outweigh the added cost of construction it would have entailed.
Vehicles over 14'1" are a restricted class and are limited to approved routes, trucks of that height should have been nowhere near the tunnel.

If you're building a tunnel in modern times in the heart of a modern city, I'd say 14 feet 6 inches is usually more than good enough, and has clearance to spare for most trucks in any country.

Cichlidae
Aug 12, 2005

ME LOVE
MAKE RED LIGHT


Dr. Infant, MD

NightGyr posted:

http://11foot8.com/

On a different note, did you hear about the I-81 fire? Have you dealt with any major truck fires on bridges?

Not directly, but I've been tangentially involved in a few. When I was in RI, there were a couple separate incidents when trucks caught on fire beneath bridges. One was filled with jet fuel, and the bridge basically melted. Another was just an oil tanker, so the flames weren't quite so bad. Here in Connecticut, we had a huge fire back in 2004 on I-95 in Bridgeport. Luckily, the freeway was being reconstructed at the same time, and there just happened to be a temporary bridge available. Traffic was really slow through there for a while, but it could've been a lot worse.

A general rule is that, if steel is exposed to fire, it needs to be replaced. Steel cannot maintain its strength even at mildly inflated temperatures; this was the main reason of the WTC collapses. If concrete is exposed to fire, there's some more flexibility. Blackened concrete is usually ok, but should be checked anyway. If it turns pink, then it needs to be replaced. Unlike steel, though, you can just chip out the pink bits and re-pour the rest. Concrete is a pretty good insulator, and so long as the rebar didn't get too hot, you're in good shape.

will_colorado
Jun 30, 2007

C-Dot is finally doing some construction for widening the tunnels near Idaho Springs, TO JUST ADD ONE LANE GOING EASTBOUND:

http://www.coloradodot.info/projects/i70twintunnels

It's a loving mess driving back from the mountains until it gets completed

This will likely wind up as a smaller version of what to do at the Eisenhower Tunnel, minus the "temporarily build around the mountain" part.

A rail line through clear creek canyon across/through the divide to Silverthorne and Vail is clearly a better option. They're just spending $$$ adding a single lane in one direction instead of getting a solution to the problem. :sigh:

will_colorado fucked around with this message at 00:41 on May 12, 2013

Cichlidae
Aug 12, 2005

ME LOVE
MAKE RED LIGHT


Dr. Infant, MD

will_colorado posted:

C-Dot is finally doing some construction for widening the tunnels near Idaho Springs, TO JUST ADD ONE LANE GOING EASTBOUND:

http://www.coloradodot.info/projects/i70twintunnels

It's a loving mess driving back from the mountains until it gets completed

This will likely wind up as a smaller version of what to do at the Eisenhower Tunnel, minus the "temporarily build around the mountain" part.

A rail line through clear creek canyon across/through the divide to Silverthorne and Vail is clearly a better option. They're just spending $$$ adding a single lane in one direction instead of getting a solution to the problem. :sigh:

Colorado's growth rate exceeds that of most third world countries. You guys need to get your birth control in order, or you're going to have more problems than just congestion in the decades to come.

I definitely agree, all the same. Why the heck would they go through all that effort for a single lane in a single direction?

will_colorado
Jun 30, 2007

Cichlidae posted:

Colorado's growth rate exceeds that of most third world countries. You guys need to get your birth control in order, or you're going to have more problems than just congestion in the decades to come.

I definitely agree, all the same. Why the heck would they go through all that effort for a single lane in a single direction?

Placating stupid people who believe suburbia should extend 40 miles west and up to an elevation of 9,000+ feet?

I thought you were exaggerating that growth number, but holy poo poo: http://www.indexmundi.com/facts/united-states/quick-facts/colorado/population-growth#map

Population % increase from 2000 to 2010



Douglas, Weld, Adams, Larimer, and Denver counties are all part of metro Denver. El Paso and Elbert counties are Colorado Springs. Garfield, Mesa, and Montrose are all around Grand Junction in the western part of the state.

Check out the time lapse growth: http://world.time.com/timelapse/ All of south metro Denver and north metro CO Springs is going to be just massive suburb.

I hope that idea is just part of the overall expansion of the highway and transit through there, but I'm not sure. If you want to build stuff, come out here. I hope people get off their asses here and at least get some type of region rail transit from Cheyenne to Pueblo. New Mexico did it, and there are wayyy more people in our area than what their rail runner covers.

will_colorado fucked around with this message at 04:45 on May 12, 2013

Digital War
May 28, 2006

Ahhh, poetry.

Install Gentoo posted:

If you're building a tunnel in modern times in the heart of a modern city, I'd say 14 feet 6 inches is usually more than good enough, and has clearance to spare for most trucks in any country.

The tunnel was built in the late eighties to add capacity to the existing Sydney Harbour Bridge. The bridge is not restricted and is what the large vehicles should be taking.

GWBBQ
Jan 2, 2005


Cichlidae posted:

The worst part is that the reason for the reduced clearance, in many cases, was scaffolding where the workers were boxed in, suspended below the road. Hitting it had a very good chance of killing a worker. The alarms were just as much for warning the workers to madly scramble to safety as to stop the offending trucks.
I did always assume the alarms were more for the workers. Fortunately for the people working on that bridge, the point of impact was the first of several huge I-beams supporting the concrete forms, and the two trucks I saw in person were in bad shape while the beam sat there not giving a gently caress. It had some scuffs and paint on it by the end, but from road level, it didn't look like the edge had bent at all.

smackfu
Jun 7, 2004

will_colorado posted:

C-Dot is finally doing some construction for widening the tunnels near Idaho Springs, TO JUST ADD ONE LANE GOING EASTBOUND:

http://www.coloradodot.info/projects/i70twintunnels
The Environmental Assessment does explain why they are only doing one direction now, on page 1-10. Eastbound has worse traffic and more accidents, and westbound is a lot harder to widen the non tunnel parts since it would require rock cuts. It's good reading in general.

Nintendo Kid
Aug 4, 2011

by Smythe
The FAQ has a great question in it: "Why don’t you completely remove the mountain and the tunnels that go through it?"

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Cichlidae
Aug 12, 2005

ME LOVE
MAKE RED LIGHT


Dr. Infant, MD

Install Gentoo posted:

The FAQ has a great question in it: "Why don’t you completely remove the mountain and the tunnels that go through it?"

I love it when FAQs give questions that were actually asked. All of ours are just "Who is the contractor?" "Where can I find out more about the project?" "What DBE percentage is used in this contract?"

Real questions are so much more interesting. "Can we detour traffic across the railroad bridge?" "Will I still be able to get to Dunkin Donuts?" "Why are MY TAXPAYER DOLLARS paying for a cop to stand around on the corner at all hours?"

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