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Car sewer is so apt, I love it. It really accurately depicts the engineering mentally (just flush as much of this crap through as fast as possible without clogs!) and how nice it is to walk or live near one.
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Aug 22, 2013 23:12
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Baronjutter posted:http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2010/11/22/confessions-of-a-recovering-engineer.html Isn't this a outdated view of planning and engineering? I mean, I know it still happens, but I thought the more progressive bits of the industry consider this stuff more these days. My old boss used to like designing Cul-de-sacs because they were safer for kids to play in. It's still relevant because there is a currently a tendency towards putting larger and larger houses onto tiny sections with hardly enough room to swing a cat.
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Aug 22, 2013 23:14
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Jonny Nox posted:Depends, if it's in America or Canada where the cult of the individual reigns supreme, they will just drive it anyways, and probably speed. Would you be looking at something like this, then? Gothenburg's suburb of Hjällbo, a shining example of 60's social democrat planned communities. Edit: Transport infrastructure starts at 16:30. My favorite quote is probably, at 17:25, with reference to the light rail, "What I like best is that it takes you just a short time to get into [the] city, to do something. You can't do anything out there." Says a lot about the problems built into these suburbs. BTW, those trams pictured are still running, albeit complemented by more modern ones with AC and such. Hippie Hedgehog fucked around with this message at 08:11 on Aug 23, 2013 |
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Aug 23, 2013 07:53
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It's not bad, but I'm thinking single family dwellings more than blocks of flats. If you are going to make apartment complexes, put them downtown where you can walk to everything. Also, my plan completely forgot about schools. Plus I don't think you could deal with the 2+ cars per family that seems to be the norm. Plus when you start putting blocks of this together, you end up with car hell in between each block again. Man, this urban engineering stuff is hard.
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Aug 23, 2013 17:10
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When it comes down to it, it's pretty much impossible to design an area where you can easily walk, bike, take transit, etc, yet still let everybody drive as much as they want and own as many cars as they want.
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Aug 23, 2013 17:23
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Hippie Hedgehog posted:Would you be looking at something like this, then? Yeah Swedish urban design is often classic Garden City, and only really works because the society has such a low gini coefficient, baked-in egalitarianism, and the tax base to build and maintain infrastructure. Unfortunately they never had a failure on the scale of the 50s and 60s era housing projects to convince them of the unworkability of high-density housing standing alone in a park in the middle of nowhere. For that matter, a lot of the newer Swedish development (at least what I saw in and around Gothenburg) is looking more and more like suburban, car-dependent America (albeit with lots of buses). It's quite depressing, really. The part in that video about excluding traffic from the city centre was a bit sad, too. When we arrived in Gothenburg by train, we found ourselves (as pedestrians) having to cross this: http://goo.gl/maps/RG4Vh That's about 100m from the central railway station. FISHMANPET posted:When it comes down to it, it's pretty much impossible to design an area where you can easily walk, bike, take transit, etc, yet still let everybody drive as much as they want and own as many cars as they want. While true, it is certainly possible to design an area where people can easily walk, bike, take transit, and own a single car for occasional use. The issue comes with values: when people consider it a fundamental right to be able to drive as much as they want and own as many cars as they want, no matter the consequences for society, the consequences for society are pretty dire.
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Aug 23, 2013 17:43
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grover posted:What's the legality of the red asphalt in parts of PA that's red because of the local red shale used for aggregate? They said that variation in the color of aggregate is fine. Around here, there are a lot of pink roads because of all the K-spar in the local granite. Lead out in cuffs posted:So does the FHWA policy mean that Portland, Oregon has to go and repaint all of its blue bike lanes green? Yup. But they should have expected it - the FHWA doesn't just decide this stuff spur-of-the-moment, and green is already common in continental Europe, where we get most of our new traffic ideas. And, to be fair, the FHWA's interpretation is that you can wait until the existing paint needs to be repainted before changing things; it doesn't need to be done all at once. If you've got stained concrete, it might well be fifty years before you get the chance to change it. Jonny Nox posted:New suburban concept (you heard it here first) I built plenty of those in SimCity, and the downtown areas of some old European cities resemble that design. Urban designers like LeCorbusier in the 30s and 40s planned entire buildings along the same lines. No design is perfect (if there were, we'd be using it everywhere); most people, at least at present, simply prefer driving to not driving. If the weather is bad, or they're too fat/old to move more than a couple feet per second, or they just bought a $50,000 car and want to show it off constantly, or they've got a lot of groceries to carry... you're going to have a tough time convincing people to walk. That's not to say these problems are insurmountable, but it's one hell of an obstacle.
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Aug 23, 2013 22:20
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Lead out in cuffs posted:Yeah Swedish urban design is often classic Garden City, and only really works because the society has such a low gini coefficient, baked-in egalitarianism, and the tax base to build and maintain infrastructure. Unfortunately they never had a failure on the scale of the 50s and 60s era housing projects to convince them of the unworkability of high-density housing standing alone in a park in the middle of nowhere. Hey, who said it ever worked? =) Well, apart from that documentary... Right from the start, there was a huge problem with segregation, and those community centers they brag about in the video were mostly decommissioned by 1980. Nowadays, Hjällbo is populated mainly by low-income earners and immigrants, as the rents are fairly cheap (and it's all rental, more or less). I guess you could trace the early segregation to where those residents lived before - in the city slums, which were demolished, as shown in the same film. They went from having no running water and wood-fire heating in a tiny slum apartment, to a modern but slightly anonymous apartment block, where the rent was hugely subsidized by the state so they could afford modern standard. They were still pretty poor working-class people, though, and it's stayed that way even 50 years later. We don't really do it that way anymore, I think the last suburb to be fully planned like that was in the 1970s. The rest has mostly been "organic" growth. Lead out in cuffs posted:The part in that video about excluding traffic from the city centre was a bit sad, too. When we arrived in Gothenburg by train, we found ourselves (as pedestrians) having to cross this: Well, to be fair, there's a pedestrian tunnel + ground-level crosswalk 20m off in one direction (http://goo.gl/maps/6n52H), and a signalized crosswalk with generous-to-pedestrian timings 30m in the other direction (http://goo.gl/maps/alseu). If you did want to cross right there, that's fine with me, but you'd have to jump the fence, I guess. On the bright side, they just converted one more NW-bound lane into bus lane, and as part of replacing the bridge across the river, that street is no longer going to be a thoroughfare. (Within the next 10 years of so.) Other than that, I think the city center more or less works. There is some gradual narrowing of streets to make room for better bike lanes, and some new bus lanes being made, so drivers are complaining a bit, but with the recent congestion tax, I do think traffoc improved for the better. Lead out in cuffs posted:While true, it is certainly possible to design an area where people can easily walk, bike, take transit, and own a single car for occasional use. The issue comes with values: when people consider it a fundamental right to be able to drive as much as they want and own as many cars as they want, no matter the consequences for society, the consequences for society are pretty dire. So true. Having high fuel taxes seems to help a bit (over $8 per gallon makes you not drive so much), but that's all based on people accepting such a tax as not violating their basic freedoms. It all begins with values. Edit: Cichlidae posted:you're going to have a tough time convincing people to walk. It's not like that design is impossible, you just need a fine-grained system of public transport, or a huge uptake of biking. Though Tokyo certainly has the former, and people there do an awful lot of walking to/from the train/bus etc. Copenhagen/Amsterdam are good examples of the latter, why walk when you can roll? Hippie Hedgehog fucked around with this message at 22:53 on Aug 23, 2013 |
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Aug 23, 2013 22:45
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Cichlidae posted:green is already common in continental Europe, where we get most of our new traffic ideas. It's red wherever I've been! Certainly in the Netherlands it's the standard, but I even saw it in Bulgaria (though what passed for a bike lane there involved extensive curb hopping).
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Aug 24, 2013 00:03
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Entropist posted:It's red wherever I've been! Certainly in the Netherlands it's the standard, but I even saw it in Bulgaria (though what passed for a bike lane there involved extensive curb hopping). Pfft - it's green in Strasbourg, but red in Brussels. I guess we know what the REAL capitol of Europe is.
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Aug 24, 2013 00:43
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They're green here in Vancouver as well.
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Aug 24, 2013 01:14
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Lead out in cuffs posted:So does the FHWA policy mean that Portland, Oregon has to go and repaint all of its blue bike lanes green? There are only a couple intersections that have blue paint; the only one that I can think of off the top of my head is the east end of the (heavily used by cyclists) Hawthorne bridge. Most of the painted sections are the standard green.
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Aug 24, 2013 01:39
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FISHMANPET posted:When it comes down to it, it's pretty much impossible to design an area where you can easily walk, bike, take transit, etc, yet still let everybody drive as much as they want and own as many cars as they want. New Jersey? I mean we have trains and transit, but we also have huge car culture, but New Jersey's urban density allows for that weird mix of transit culture AND car culture (commute to NYC, drive on weekends and sometimes the partner drives to work in the local cities). My home is a walk to a bus stop, a short drive to I-78 for example, (a semi long walk to a rail line), so it is possible.
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Aug 24, 2013 02:29
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less than three posted:They're green here in Vancouver as well. Except for the red bike box at Main and Union, but they need to redo that one anyway,
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Aug 24, 2013 06:33
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Cichlidae posted:Pfft - it's green in Strasbourg, but red in Brussels. I guess we know what the REAL capitol of Europe is. Britain wins, we don't bother with all that expensive paint or dedicated lanes and just make them cycle in the gutters where they belong. Except London, which has blue "cycle superhighways" which just piss everyone off. We also have shared use cycle/pedestrian footpaths which generally cause people to step in front of cyclists on purpose purely to be obstructive and shout "you should be using the road, drat cyclist". 
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Aug 25, 2013 13:50
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davestones posted:Britain wins, we don't bother with all that expensive paint or dedicated lanes and just make them cycle in the gutters where they belong. Except London, which has blue "cycle superhighways" which just piss everyone off. In the last few decades england has really been trying to out USA the USA on a lot of fronts, specially urban planning and bein' fat (it's almost like those two are some how connected). It's like someone in the 60's had a panic that the country had way too many pleasant walkable towns and cities and had a whoooole lot of car-centric disaster sprawl to catch up on. Milton Keynes everywhere!
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Aug 25, 2013 18:38
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Baronjutter posted:In the last few decades england has really been trying to out USA the USA on a lot of fronts, specially urban planning and bein' fat (it's almost like those two are some how connected). It's like someone in the 60's had a panic that the country had way too many pleasant walkable towns and cities and had a whoooole lot of car-centric disaster sprawl to catch up on. Milton Keynes everywhere!
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Aug 25, 2013 18:43
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grover posted:Milton Keynes was a horrible failure of an attempt to recreate an American-style urban area. It's definitely not representative of American urban planning. If nothing else, 90% of Americans would poo poo themselves at having to deal with that many roundabouts.
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Aug 25, 2013 22:53
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grover posted:Milton Keynes was a horrible failure of an attempt to recreate an American-style urban area. It's definitely not representative of American urban planning. Urban and suburban. At least part of the horrible failure aspect of Milton Keynes was the fairly accurate reproduction of the American freeway-bounded cul-de-sac neighbourhood.
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Aug 26, 2013 07:06
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Lead out in cuffs posted:Urban and suburban. At least part of the horrible failure aspect of Milton Keynes was the fairly accurate reproduction of the American freeway-bounded cul-de-sac neighbourhood. Of course, what was gotten out of that was roads that divided as much as a freeway, but don't allow for anything close to freeway speed or convenience. An all around suckfest.
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Aug 26, 2013 14:52
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What purpose does a blinking yellow left turn arrow on a stop light have? Isn't that exactly the same as a solid green light, aka you may turn but you must yield to oncoming traffic?
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Aug 26, 2013 20:22
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FISHMANPET posted:What purpose does a blinking yellow left turn arrow on a stop light have? Isn't that exactly the same as a solid green light, aka you may turn but you must yield to oncoming traffic? It's a permissive left, same as a solid green ball in a doghouse signal. Blinking yellow arrows were approved in the latest MUTCD and are popping up all over the place. I think it's because the meaning is more clear. Dominus Vobiscum fucked around with this message at 20:27 on Aug 26, 2013 |
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Aug 26, 2013 20:24
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Would I be correct in saying that a flashing yellow turn signal conveys no more information than a solid green ball? I'm getting in an internet slap fight about this on another forum and people keep making arguments about how they're cheaper (than what?) but nobody's even stated that they convey any more information than a solid green ball. And I guess I don't see the need for them at all, I assume people know they can make a left turn on green when there are no cars coming. Yet these signals exist, and also signs that say left turns must yield on green, which to me is like putting a sign below the octagon of a stop sign that says "This sign is where you should stop."
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Aug 26, 2013 23:28
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FISHMANPET posted:Would I be correct in saying that a flashing yellow turn signal conveys no more information than a solid green ball?
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Aug 26, 2013 23:46
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God I fucking love Diablo 3 gold, it even paid for this shitty title
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There's a fairly busy intersection right outside my apartment that goes from green bulb both east and west, red east west for a second, then green arrow from east to north and west to south. There's also a sign that says "Left turns yield on green." There's never a red turn arrow, because why would you need them? A sold green light means a left turn is permitted as long as you yield to oncoming traffic, why do I need a flashing yellow arrow during a green phase to tell me what I already need to know?
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Aug 26, 2013 23:50
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FISHMANPET posted:There's a fairly busy intersection right outside my apartment that goes from green bulb both east and west, red east west for a second, then green arrow from east to north and west to south. There's also a sign that says "Left turns yield on green." There's never a red turn arrow, because why would you need them? quote:A sold green light means a left turn is permitted as long as you yield to oncoming traffic, why do I need a flashing yellow arrow during a green phase to tell me what I already need to know?
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Aug 26, 2013 23:54
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Isn't there a risk that the implication that you need a special light to give you permission to turn left makes people worried that a green ball on its own doesn't actually do that on its own?
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Aug 26, 2013 23:57
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misguided rage posted:Have you never seen an intersection with a red left turn arrow indicating that permissive left turns are not allowed? Yeah, but are there intersections where sometimes you want no left turns, sometimes you only want left turns, and sometimes you want permissive left turns? I've either seen green arrow with solid red/solid green with no arrow or green arrow with solid red/red arrow with solid green.
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Aug 26, 2013 23:59
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FISHMANPET posted:Yeah, but are there intersections where sometimes you want no left turns, sometimes you only want left turns, and sometimes you want permissive left turns? I've either seen green arrow with solid red/solid green with no arrow or green arrow with solid red/red arrow with solid green. You could have a situation where there are different signal timings throughout the day. Having a separate signal for left turns with a flashing yellow arrow gives you the option of, say, only allowing protected left turns during peak hours while having protected and permissive left turns the rest of the time.
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Aug 27, 2013 00:16
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Well, it turns out the situation I forgot to include was when a signal head is dedicated to turn arrows. We've got a busy highway where the through lanes have 3 head signals and the turn lanes have 3 head signals, so currently permissive lefts aren't allowed because the turn arrows are either red or green, no flashing yellow.
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Aug 27, 2013 00:17
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FISHMANPET posted:Well, it turns out the situation I forgot to include was when a signal head is dedicated to turn arrows. We've got a busy highway where the through lanes have 3 head signals and the turn lanes have 3 head signals, so currently permissive lefts aren't allowed because the turn arrows are either red or green, no flashing yellow. Even forgetting that particular use case completely though, I don't see any harm in adding flashing yellow to intersections that already have a protected left phase. All it does is make things clearer.
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Aug 27, 2013 00:23
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misguided rage posted:Yeah, that's the situation I was trying to describe. It's currently not really possible to have permissive lefts in that setup; leaving the light off and letting the green through light act as a 'permissive lefts are okay now' indicator like you would normally is ambiguous as hell. Having a standardized 'permissive lefts are allowed' signal could be helpful. What I've seen in this situation (and I think it's what the latest MUTCD says) is to have four elements instead of 3, with the extra one being the flashing yellow. The purpose of having four lights (  ) is so that you can have a protected left turn followed by a permissive left turn, and have a visual change in position between the solid yellow and flashing yellow phases. What they used to do is have that little "pyramid" formation, where you have a 5-element fixture, with green and yellow arrows on the left, green and yellow balls on the right, and a red ball centered above both. The problem with this is you have a phase where there's a red ball and a green arrow in the same lane, creating ambiguity.
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Aug 27, 2013 02:12
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FISHMANPET posted:There's a fairly busy intersection right outside my apartment that goes from green bulb both east and west, red east west for a second, then green arrow from east to north and west to south. There's also a sign that says "Left turns yield on green." There's never a red turn arrow, because why would you need them? Turn lanes where the opposing lane gets its green with dedicated turn and you came up on it too late to get your dedicated left phase. There are a couple intersections around Charlotte where that happens. A lot of the roads are asymmetrical across a major feeder; some don't have a dedicated left on one side of the road, so that straight-turn gets a flashing yellow arrow until its solid green. I gotta say, I like them. They are more clear in intent. I was confused the first time I saw one for about six seconds; now they're great.
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Aug 27, 2013 03:12
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FISHMANPET posted:There's a fairly busy intersection right outside my apartment that goes from green bulb both east and west, red east west for a second, then green arrow from east to north and west to south. There's also a sign that says "Left turns yield on green." There's never a red turn arrow, because why would you need them? My local municipality has been replacing doghouses with them in some intersections, and one of the things they do differently is that if one direction has all green, they give the opposing left turn lane the flashing yellow so they're not held back by a red if there's an opening. It's kind of an edge case, but it might let one or two more cars through than otherwise.
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Aug 27, 2013 03:28
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dupersaurus posted:My local municipality has been replacing doghouses with them in some intersections, and one of the things they do differently is that if one direction has all green, they give the opposing left turn lane the flashing yellow so they're not held back by a red if there's an opening. It's kind of an edge case, but it might let one or two more cars through than otherwise.
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Aug 27, 2013 04:10
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I guess I should post this again. We have to put in protected-only lefts in so many situations, regardless of the delay it entails.
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Aug 27, 2013 11:41
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Cichlidae posted:I guess I should post this again. We have to put in protected-only lefts in so many situations, regardless of the delay it entails. I know you've posted this before, but I just mentally made the connection between low-speed (relatively dense) urban areas and permissive lefts.
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Aug 27, 2013 18:17
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This photo doesn't show it best (as everything is red), but northbound traffic can only turn left with the arrow. It's a highway access road, all the lanes on one side go one way, and vice versa. That lane turns under a bridge. Any idea why they did this? It's incredibly frustrating when I'm on a delivery that takes me through those intersections. randomidiot fucked around with this message at 14:13 on Sep 2, 2013 |
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Sep 2, 2013 14:10
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I don't know what you mean by incredibly frustrating? I never really see anything else but these kinds of intersections and really hate it if there are no turning phases. Does it take too long to get through them or something?
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Sep 2, 2013 16:20
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some texas redneck posted:This photo doesn't show it best (as everything is red), but northbound traffic can only turn left with the arrow. It's a highway access road, all the lanes on one side go one way, and vice versa. That lane turns under a bridge. That is an unusual situation. My guess is that there's limited storage space under the bridge, and if it fills up, it'll gridlock the intersection. Controlling the number of left turns per cycle will keep things flowing. Koesj posted:I don't know what you mean by incredibly frustrating? I never really see anything else but these kinds of intersections and really hate it if there are no turning phases. Does it take too long to get through them or something? At a normal intersection, left turns would be allowed anytime that throughs are, because there's no oncoming traffic. In this case, lefts are only allowed for part of the cycle.
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Sep 2, 2013 16:22
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