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I saved a couple articles that made me think of this thread! Here they are:quote:Warning on use of highway funds-By Paul Hughes/Republican American quote:Transportation commission chides state for pilfering funds-Staff Reports/Hartford Business.com Yes, you read that right: my state has money set aside specifically for maintaining infrastructure and other such very important things... or at least it would, if there were anything preventing the government from raiding it to balance the budget! Meanwhile our bridges are crumbling, literally crumbling, our highways are clogged, and our public transit is laughable.
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Feb 6, 2014 23:11
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Baronjutter posted:Honestly I think the whole idea of "community consultation" and poo poo in every decision "local government" tends to make is fairly useless. I think leaders should make decisions based on actual data and not the 7 angry seniors that came to the public hearing out of a district of 10,000 people. Even when we're allowed to make decisions based on data, our efforts are often overwritten when those same cranky folks go over our heads and complain loudly to their elected officials. I do my best to make my opinion heard on a local level, but it's not valued highly, since I rent and don't own a home. Silver Falcon posted:I saved a couple articles that made me think of this thread! Here they are: It's amazing that the media is picking up on this at all. Perhaps the tolling studies on I-84 and I-95 have reminded people that we don't NEED to put up tolls to keep our infrastructure viable. We've got a great revenue source already - we're just not able to use it. I've said it before, but it bears repeating: it will take a disaster to change the way things are done. A bridge collapse, a huge scandal, a chunk of I-95 washing away, all the signals in the state turning green at the same time... and maybe then I'll see my dream of the gas tax being raised, too.
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Feb 6, 2014 23:28
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Edit: never mind
Volmarias fucked around with this message at 02:37 on Feb 8, 2014 |
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Feb 8, 2014 02:20
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I have a question. This blog post I found recommends creating curb extensions and islands based on the parts of major thoroughfares most cars don't drive through, as evidenced by where slush piles up after snowfall. They claim that this would be a big benefit for pedestrians, while only serving as a minor inconvenience for car traffic. Overlooking the fact that there's still some tire tracks in the areas the author marks off as an ideal placement for an island, and that parking may be a tight fit in a couple of pictures, how would something like this work out in real life?
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Feb 8, 2014 07:53
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Hedera Helix posted:I have a question. This blog post I found recommends creating curb extensions and islands based on the parts of major thoroughfares most cars don't drive through, as evidenced by where slush piles up after snowfall. They claim that this would be a big benefit for pedestrians, while only serving as a minor inconvenience for car traffic. Maintenance would have a fit. As a coworker once said, Maintenance has never met an island they didn't hate. Those curbs get plowed up constantly in the Winter, as they're pretty much invisible beneath the snow. When you re-pave, they make temporary traffic control so much more difficult. Heavy trucks will run over them constantly. The stated benefit is true, though - they are better for pedestrians. We put in little islands like that in ped-heavy areas with heavy right turns, though it does tend to result in higher right-turn speeds, so it's not a perfect solution. They also make sign placement so much easier at an intersection. So long as your equipment is breakaway, you can stuff just about anything on a porkchop island.
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Feb 8, 2014 22:24
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So basically it would be great in a year-round warm-weather area without heavy truck traffic?
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Feb 9, 2014 00:36
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Most of those areas look like they would have pedestrian islands (either raised or painted on) in the UK, for whatever that's worth. We don't plow much over here though, it's all salt.
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Feb 9, 2014 01:43
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Mandalay posted:So basically it would be great in a year-round warm-weather area without heavy truck traffic? If there are a good number of peds, absolutely. Anything that tightens up intersections also cuts crossing distances. It'd be even safer for them if you just squared out the corners, as that would lower turning speeds as well.
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Feb 9, 2014 17:37
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My city added a bunch of bubbles at intersections a few years ago, along with glowing pillars at the corner. The pillars barely lasted a few months for obvious reasons, and drivers complained bitterly that it got rid of right-turn lanes, but the pedestrian experience is so much better and by eliminating 2 lanes from the intersection, crossing the street is quicker and safer (these were 4 lane roads with street parking that turned into right-turn lanes at intersections). Some suburban commuters that would vote for Ford if he was a candidate here still bitch about them (or anything on the road not geared towards pampering spoiled drivers such as bike lanes or cross walks or non-highway speed limits) but they've been very successful. They keep adding more when ever intersections are up for retrofitting, as well as getting rid of a few parking spots to add little extensions for mid-block crosswalks.
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Feb 9, 2014 23:19
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Do they still use the steel plates while they're doing road work in the winter? Feels like a plow's worst nightmare: Plow up steel plates, fall into a ditch.
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Feb 11, 2014 03:38
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mamosodiumku posted:Do they still use the steel plates while they're doing road work in the winter? Feels like a plow's worst nightmare: Plow up steel plates, fall into a ditch. We avoid them as much as possible in Connecticut for a few reasons, and that's principal among them.
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Feb 11, 2014 04:29
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Man we fuckin' love those huge metal plates here. Sometimes they're really uneven and shift when you drive over them and it makes a huge loud noise and it's a bit scary and I can't imagine living or working where one of those is banging like that every car. Sometimes they try to pack some poo poo around the edges but it's gone within hours and just sprayed all over the road and up in your wheel wells. We also get basically no snow here. Snow and freeze/thaw really adds such a massive pain in the rear end to traffic engineering. Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 05:18 on Feb 11, 2014 |
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Feb 11, 2014 05:06
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Cichlidae posted:We avoid them as much as possible in Connecticut for a few reasons, and that's principal among them. But then how do they cover those holes they cut in the road?
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Feb 12, 2014 04:07
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I live on a dead end (in CT), and for a few months last year they were building a sewer under the road. It was a big project for a little street, whenever you were coming/going they always had to move some big vehicles out of the way. And for a while they would have to scurry out and drag one of those plates over a big hole. It was in the summer though, so plows weren't an issue. Still, fun times being late for school waiting for someone to pull a dump truck over.
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Feb 12, 2014 06:37
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I'm an electrical engineer by trade so I know dick all about making bridges stand up. So obviously I'd like to model a semi-realistic bridge as a proof of concept for a side project I'm working on. Are there any books/resources civils can recommend me so I can design a quick and dirty bridge? I'd like to make it a single pier cable suspension. Some napkin specs: 150 metre span (or 75m/pier/75m) single reversible bus lane bike lanes and sidewalks I'm giving a liberal load estimate (not including self weight) of 175000kg. That's a crush loaded two-segment bus being rescued by a fire truck with bodies and bicycles strewn all over the bridge during the dead of winter with a foot of snow on it. I wanna know how remotely realistic single pier cable suspension would be and what a rough ballpark cost is.
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Feb 12, 2014 16:27
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Those little bridge building games are pretty good at teaching basic design actually.
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Feb 12, 2014 16:32
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Baronjutter posted:Those little bridge building games are pretty good at teaching basic design actually. I have a treasured memory of making toothpick bridges with a buddy back in middle school. Our teacher had us put together a design and price out materials before starting (i.e. You start with 1500 points, a toothpick costs 1 point, a thimble cup of glue costs 20 points, a length of string costs 5 points per inch, an extra pier costs so much, etc. I don't remember the exact prices.) Then each bridge would be built and they'd be compared by seeing which one could hold up the most weight. Very cool assignment actually. While most students made the mistake of trying to model complex suspension bridges or skeletal arch bridges, we made the conclusion that improving the material strength of the toothpicks was the key, and so we proceeded to beg, borrow and steal toothpicks and put together a flat concrete roadway of layered toothpicks smothered in glue, set atop three piers of solid vertical toothpicks. When we finally entered the competition, many of our more artfully designed competitors would struggle to hold up their own weight, whereas we ended up piling on every single textbook in the classroom and then finally jumping up and down on top of it before it broke. It was epic.
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Feb 12, 2014 17:11
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We had the same assignment in our first year Engineering Design class, but with lego. Since the cost of materials was low, we just overbuilt the hell out of it, Roman style. We had pictures of all of us standing on it.
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Feb 12, 2014 21:16
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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I did the bridge building competition for a couple years in the science olympiad in high school. Built it with a classmate of mine the first year- arched truss bridge built out of dowel rods and liquid nails holding it all together. Sucker was insanely strong; they couldn't get enough weight on the rig (5gal bucket full of sand) to break it. But since the scoring was strength:weight, some team won whose bridge was just a couple straight sticks of balsa and could barely even hold up the empty bucket. The engineers who did the geotech for the corvette museum apparently used unreinforced sticks of balsa, too. 
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Feb 12, 2014 22:19
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grover posted:I did the bridge building competition for a couple years in the science olympiad in high school. Built it with a classmate of mine the first year- arched truss bridge built out of dowel rods and liquid nails holding it all together. Sucker was insanely strong; they couldn't get enough weight on the rig (5gal bucket full of sand) to break it. But since the scoring was strength:weight, some team won whose bridge was just a couple straight sticks of balsa and could barely even hold up the empty bucket. Hah, that's awesome. Balsa wood's honeycombed structure gives it an amazing specific strength (better than titanium when compressed along the axis) so it'd be perfect for that sort of test.
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Feb 12, 2014 22:37
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mamosodiumku posted:But then how do they cover those holes they cut in the road? Staged construction. Do a bit of your trench at a time, and keep that portion of the road closed off with concrete barrier until it's filled back in. Telemarchitect posted:I'm an electrical engineer by trade so I know dick all about making bridges stand up. So obviously I'd like to model a semi-realistic bridge as a proof of concept for a side project I'm working on. Are there any books/resources civils can recommend me so I can design a quick and dirty bridge? I'd like to make it a single pier cable suspension. At least as important as the load itself is the location. Shear at the supports will be highest when the heaviest vehicle is right next to them, but moment is highest when your load's in the middle of a span. You should check out AASHTO's manual on the subject. Or not, because, like everything else AASHTO produces, you have to pay a few hundred bucks for the privilege. "To reduce the cost of this publication, a CD-ROM is no longer included, as it was in previous editions, and the price has been lowered to reflect this. Customers who do find having both print and electronic versions to be useful can receive an additional 20% off by ordering the print and download versions together." A bargain at $384! My gut feeling is that you wouldn't need a suspension bridge. A concrete arch would be beautiful if you don't need to worry about clearance below. A simple steel, concrete, or composite span could even do the trick. Heck, we've got 8-lane freeway bridges with even longer spans all over Connecticut without any arches, trusses, or cables. As for cost, I'd say you're looking at well over $50M, but that will all depend on local conditions. Substructure has a HUGE impact on a bridge's cost. grover posted:I did the bridge building competition for a couple years in the science olympiad in high school. Built it with a classmate of mine the first year- arched truss bridge built out of dowel rods and liquid nails holding it all together. Sucker was insanely strong; they couldn't get enough weight on the rig (5gal bucket full of sand) to break it. But since the scoring was strength:weight, some team won whose bridge was just a couple straight sticks of balsa and could barely even hold up the empty bucket. Good thing they're just Corvettes and not REAL cars  Everyone makes mistakes from time to time, but the factor of safety for geotech is typically upward of 3.0, so someone REALLY hosed up if your foundation fails. Baronjutter posted:Those little bridge building games are pretty good at teaching basic design actually. We had ours in eighth grade, and had to use spaghetti. It was some weird hollow kind that I've never seen since, and by filling those little tubes with wood glue, you could get some fantastic strength out of them. I did a simple through truss. Effective, though build quality was definitely an issue. If I could do it again, I swear, I'd make one hell of a bridge!
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Feb 13, 2014 04:37
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The actual class-activity type bridge games in school were rad, but I meant the actual like PC-game bridge-building game things. Also my "team" in school totes won our class bridge contest via hiding a metal ruler inside the bridge deck, and having a pretty good design on top of that.
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Feb 13, 2014 04:40
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Cichlidae posted:We had ours in eighth grade, and had to use spaghetti. It was some weird hollow kind that I've never seen since, and by filling those little tubes with wood glue, you could get some fantastic strength out of them. I did a simple through truss. Effective, though build quality was definitely an issue. If I could do it again, I swear, I'd make one hell of a bridge! I'm getting a Great SA Bridge Construction Contest 2014 vibe here
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Feb 13, 2014 04:41
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I also did one of those bridge contests in middle school, we had balsa about the thickness of wood matchsticks, rules said we couldn't laminate sticks together, and the test was putting a 2x2 inch plate on the center of the bridge with a braided steel wire hanging down from the center of the plate that we would hang weights from. I think the bridge had to hold 10 pounds for 10 seconds to get an A; we overbuilt the hell out of a basic truss bridge and it held 37 pounds with the next team managing 12. I would love to do an SA bridge construction contest if it happened.Kaal posted:Something that's kinda awesome is that the entire big island of Hawaii has minimal streetlights, and low-intensity streetlights at that, because there's a bunch of the world's most important observatories on top of the Mauna Kea mountain that is in the middle of the island. (this summer, you will be able to order a bag of seeds for glowing plants or a kit to genetically engineer your own http://www.glowingplant.com/) Cichlidae posted:Maintenance would have a fit. As a coworker once said, Maintenance has never met an island they didn't hate. Those curbs get plowed up constantly in the Winter, as they're pretty much invisible beneath the snow. When you re-pave, they make temporary traffic control so much more difficult. Heavy trucks will run over them constantly.  Cichlidae posted:We avoid them as much as possible in Connecticut for a few reasons, and that's principal among them.
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Feb 13, 2014 05:52
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Telemarchitect posted:I'm an electrical engineer by trade so I know dick all about making bridges stand up. So obviously I'd like to model a semi-realistic bridge as a proof of concept for a side project I'm working on. Are there any books/resources civils can recommend me so I can design a quick and dirty bridge? I'd like to make it a single pier cable suspension. 75 meter spans are long, but probably doable with a conventional steel girder bridge. I don't think any agency would ever go to the trouble of building a modern bridge with only 1 travel lane today, so I'm changing your assumption to 2 travel lanes. So total width is 50': 10' shared use path 5' bike lane 12' travel lane 12' travel lane 5' bike lane 5' sidewalk 50' width x 500' length = 25,000 square feet Typical bridge cost is $200 - $250 per square foot So the cost for the bridge itself would be about $5 or 6 million. But there's a shitload of other stuff that goes into a bridge / roadway project, depending on how much of the approaches would need to be built.
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Feb 13, 2014 06:15
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Cichlidae posted:A bargain at $384!  I sorta figured that any engineering materials would cost lots of money. Here's the site in question:  My concept was to draw a gently curved steel span suspended by a pier in the middle that curves around it like a 'C', holding it up underneath and with cables that sprout from the tip. Of course, getting creative with the design will make it expensive. I have no idea what the terrain actually is but that's all creekbed in the middle. The original bridge was killed the first time because NIMBYs on one side didn't want all the traffic. So there's a 4 lane road that awkwardly ends in a cul de sac on the other. If only buses could traverse the bridge, then this wouldn't be a problem, and it would let transit run through the underserved area on the left. In that case there'd only need to be a single bidirectional lane since it doesn't have to carry any real traffic. Even though I'm completely unqualified to disagree with the $50M figure, I was ballparking somewhere around $15-20M; I was leaning more towards glorified footbridge. My elementary school popsicle stick bridges were never any good though. Telemarchitect fucked around with this message at 06:37 on Feb 13, 2014 |
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Feb 13, 2014 06:33
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Telemarchitect posted:Even though I'm completely unqualified to disagree with the $50M figure, I was ballparking somewhere around $15-20M; I was leaning more towards glorified footbridge. I absolutely love how everyone has a loving bridge story. It cracks me up! But yeah, I think that the issue with your plan is that there really isn't an affordable way of making a bridge with a single bus lane. Once you get vehicles involved, you're basically in for a penny, in for a pound. Maybe someone else will have an example of one though? And politically: I think that the NIMBY folks will have similar issues with buses going through their neighborhood (with THOSE people  ) as they would with simply continuing the road. You'd probably have better luck putting in a lightweight bicycle/pedestrian bridge. But it definitely looks like the area is crying out for a good transit corridor, so best of luck.
Kaal fucked around with this message at 06:46 on Feb 13, 2014 |
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Feb 13, 2014 06:43
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Kaal posted:I absolutely love how everyone has a loving bridge story. It cracks me up! Maybe they could build a light rail bridge. Rich people can take light rail, it's not just for poors and drunkards! Also, if that yellow line is the 500-foot you had given, the bridge would be a loooot shorter unless there are some serious environmental resources to protect. You've been describing some sort of signature bridge when in reality they would build up abutments as close to the river as possible in order to minimize the bridge length. You stay far enough back to not gently caress with wetlands / floodplain and you're golden.
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Feb 13, 2014 07:01
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Kaal posted:I absolutely love how everyone has a loving bridge story. It cracks me up! 
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Feb 13, 2014 12:02
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Devor posted:Maybe they could build a light rail bridge. Rich people can take light rail, it's not just for poors and drunkards! This is a representative example of the terrain where the bridge would be built. This is the underside of a nearby bridge @ Burnhamthorpe Rd, which was rebuilt not too long ago. Varance fucked around with this message at 14:01 on Feb 13, 2014 |
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Feb 13, 2014 13:56
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"Devor" posted:Also, if that yellow line is the 500-foot you had given, the bridge would be a loooot shorter unless there are some serious environmental resources to protect. You've been describing some sort of signature bridge when in reality they would build up abutments as close to the river as possible in order to minimize the bridge length. You stay far enough back to not gently caress with wetlands / floodplain and you're golden. The full yellow line is just the path of the road. It would be butted against the creek walls of course! I wanted to add that the current routes for people who want to cross by bike are to a) go down a steep path into the creek, cross the footbridge up there, then lug it up stairs; b) go down a kilometer to an insanely busy and fast thoroughfare and hope you don't get taken out in the stretch you have to ride on it, then cut through a park; or c) go north via a long winding road that goes around a golf course, hang a left on an interstate of a road, and then survive a few km before having to turn a left from it, one of several more.  Shame that its penny-for-pound because $50M+ is a total dealbreaker
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Feb 13, 2014 15:22
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What about a bikes-only bridge? That must be relatively cheap, right? Obviously you'd need enough volume of cyclists to justify it, but one can dream... My favorite bike/ped bridge: http://www.barlettaco.com/projects/BridgeProjects/Northbankbridge/northbankbridge.html (and yeah, that one was pretty expensive)
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Feb 13, 2014 16:29
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Cichlidae posted:Good thing they're just Corvettes and not REAL cars Seems like it was a sinkhole in the earth under a poured slab. I don't think they engineer for that.
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Feb 13, 2014 16:41
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Echo 3 posted:What about a bikes-only bridge? That must be relatively cheap, right? Obviously you'd need enough volume of cyclists to justify it, but one can dream... Oh hey, I remember that bridge.
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Feb 13, 2014 16:48
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Echo 3 posted:What about a bikes-only bridge? That must be relatively cheap, right? Obviously you'd need enough volume of cyclists to justify it, but one can dream... True. I was trying to knock out several birds with one stone.
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Feb 13, 2014 17:32
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Telemarchitect posted:True. I was trying to knock out several birds with one stone. One thing that I often see in project proposals is multiple options along a single theme. So perhaps put together your restricted access bus/emergency vehicle lane option, along with a more conservative bus/pedestrian crossing, and/or a full multi-lane road extension. An array of options allows you to get better political traction and to assemble a group of like-minded people without alienating anyone who would accept a bridge but might have specific objections to the bridge design.
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Feb 13, 2014 17:47
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Telemarchitect posted:Shame that its penny-for-pound because $50M+ is a total dealbreaker I'm sure construction costs are cheaper where you are. Here's what I have to compare to: The new Sakonnet River Bridge in Portsmouth, RI, built last year, cost $163.7M. To paint 2x 200-meter spans of the Arrigoni Bridge, 20 years ago, cost $30M (unadjusted for inflation). Replacing the deck on the same bridge last year cost $20M. Replacing a small railroad bridge over US 1 in Branford costs $35M, but was originally estimated at $70M. Your typical culvert replacement is a million or two for a prefab concrete unit dropped into place. If your bridge were bike-only, you MIGHT be able to build it here for $10M. Anywhere else in the country, it'd be half that cost, and Canada's cheaper still. But you have to take into account the substructure (building on bedrock is a lot cheaper than drilling down 100m to find good stone), the structure type (multiple small spans can be cheaper, but require more maintenance), and maintenance and protection of traffic, which is minimal in your case.
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Feb 13, 2014 19:14
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The multi proposition is such a smart idea. Its like how brands have wide product lineups so you're fighting in between their products instead of anyone elses.Cichlidae posted:But you have to take into account the substructure (building on bedrock is a lot cheaper than drilling down 100m to find good stone) I looked up the terrain on the city's GIS and on one side there's sandy silt till and on the other, a patch of shallow water deposits and more sand. Welp. 
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Feb 13, 2014 21:20
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Floating bridge clearly.
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Feb 13, 2014 22:09
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Telemarchitect posted:I looked up the terrain on the city's GIS and on one side there's sandy silt till and on the other, a patch of shallow water deposits and more sand. Welp.
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Feb 14, 2014 00:04
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