|
Scott Oglesby, that's a familiar name. Hartford is pretty much doomed. The most needed bypasses are I-291 and I-491, and they'll never be built. You have to wonder what the environmental cost of the status quo is in Hartford compared to new freeway construction.
|
#
?
Mar 17, 2014 22:41
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 26, 2024 16:46 |
|
|
kefkafloyd posted:Scott Oglesby, that's a familiar name. Yeah. I have to describe why we need I-84 to stay a freeway, because there's a bit citizen's group that wants to turn it into a tree-lined avenue... with an ADT of 185,000. They say that most of the traffic will disappear. It's not going to disappear if it's got nowhere to go.
|
|
#
?
Mar 18, 2014 01:52
|
|
|
Cichlidae posted:Yeah. I have to describe why we need I-84 to stay a freeway, because there's a bit citizen's group that wants to turn it into a tree-lined avenue... with an ADT of 185,000. They say that most of the traffic will disappear. It's not going to disappear if it's got nowhere to go. It sounds like those people misconstrued the situation with Boston's Central Artery as if the current tree lined avenue in its former route was the only replacement, and not the tunneled portion of I-93!
|
|
#
?
Mar 18, 2014 01:59
|
|
|
Cichlidae posted:Yeah. I have to describe why we need I-84 to stay a freeway, because there's a bit citizen's group that wants to turn it into a tree-lined avenue... with an ADT of 185,000. They say that most of the traffic will disappear. It's not going to disappear if it's got nowhere to go. It seems like people see what happened with the San Francisco and Milwaukee freeway stub end teardowns and extend that onto major through routes. It doesn't help that John Norquist and the CNU do a good job of conflating the two.
|
|
#
?
Mar 18, 2014 02:09
|
|
|
Dominus Vobiscum posted:It seems like people see what happened with the San Francisco and Milwaukee freeway stub end teardowns and extend that onto major through routes. It doesn't help that John Norquist and the CNU do a good job of conflating the two. They complain an awful lot about how I-84 "divided the city", when it was really just built on top of the existing rail corridor and the industrial buildings that lined it. Every single road that crossed the Aetna Viaduct area before I-84 is still there now. I understand that it'd be nice to have some new connections, and that's easy enough to do, but I doubt people will want to move to an avenue that's jam-packed with congestion 10 hours a day. (And they keep calling it a Boulevard, which really pisses me off, but that's just a peeve of mine.)
|
|
#
?
Mar 18, 2014 02:27
|
|
|
Cichlidae posted:Screening report – potential bypass routes around Hartford[/b] OMG I-491 yes please. Could you give a rough estimate of how much time skipping Hartford would save (say I-384 WB to I-91 SB)?
|
|
#
?
Mar 18, 2014 02:27
|
|
|
SurgicalOntologist posted:OMG I-491 yes please. Could you give a rough estimate of how much time skipping Hartford would save (say I-384 WB to I-91 SB)?
|
|
#
?
Mar 18, 2014 02:54
|
|
|
How much would it cost to build an elevated expressway directly above the current highway? (Lots, I'm sure, which is why nobody has mentioned it. I was curious about how much more.)
|
|
#
?
Mar 18, 2014 04:55
|
|
|
Grundulum posted:How much would it cost to build an elevated expressway directly above the current highway? (Lots, I'm sure, which is why nobody has mentioned it. I was curious about how much more.) Why spend the money for another big overhead piece of concrete if you are rebuilding the entire stretch of highway? Would it be better to bury the highway through there instead? will_colorado fucked around with this message at 05:58 on Mar 18, 2014 |
|
#
?
Mar 18, 2014 05:54
|
|
|
Cichlidae posted:10 minutes in the am, 20 in the pm, give or take. But it's not just your travel times that'd be improved - it's everyone who uses the entire corridor. A couple hundred thousand people per day times ten minutes equals a lot of savings. Well that might actually make the New Haven-Storrs commute a reasonable option for grad students who don't have to be on campus every day. Although as long as we're fantasizing, please finish old 84/384/6 then I could move back to Providence.
|
|
#
?
Mar 18, 2014 05:56
|
|
|
Grundulum posted:How much would it cost to build an elevated expressway directly above the current highway? (Lots, I'm sure, which is why nobody has mentioned it. I was curious about how much more.) It was ruled out in the initial alternatives analysis. The biggest problem, aside from the cost, is that you'd have nowhere to put the ramps. By the way, a tunnel would cost about $4B.
|
|
#
?
Mar 18, 2014 12:09
|
|
|
This surfaced in my feed today. Seems like having a traffic light upside-down would be a HUGE legal liability to the city, in case any colorblind driver is ever T-boned in that intersection. Is this for real? http://gizmodo.com/the-story-behind-syracuses-upside-down-traffic-light-1545301615
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2014 17:06
|
|
|
Hippie Hedgehog posted:This surfaced in my feed today. Seems like having a traffic light upside-down would be a HUGE legal liability to the city, in case any colorblind driver is ever T-boned in that intersection. Is this for real? I don't think anyone's actually gotten into an accident for that reason there and it's been up for quite a few decades. If anything those horizontally aligned ones you see in some cities are more likely to cause problems.
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2014 17:10
|
|
|
Man that would gently caress me up, as a red/green colour blind person I generally do it by shade or position. The traffic lights with the lighter LED greens are great but older traffic lights can really throw me off at a distance.
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2014 17:39
|
|
|
I looked for any rule about the position of the different colours of lights, but Dutch traffic laws don't say anything about it (although there are probably standards in use by traffic authorities that deal with it). However, I did learn that the government has the power to temporarily lower the overall speed limit to 90km/h in case of a serious disruption of the oil supply. e: I was wrong, there's a completely separate law that lays out everything about traffic lights in excruciating detail, including the order of the coloured lights. SixFigureSandwich fucked around with this message at 18:53 on Mar 19, 2014 |
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2014 18:37
|
|
|
Install Windows posted:I don't think anyone's actually gotten into an accident for that reason there and it's been up for quite a few decades. If anything those horizontally aligned ones you see in some cities are more likely to cause problems. Why would horizontally aligned ones be a problem? That's apparently the standard installation here in western Canada and it works fine. Generally the only vertical alignment you see is on turning signals.
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2014 18:52
|
|
Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
|
John Dough posted:I looked for any rule about the position of the different colours of lights, but Dutch traffic laws don't say anything about it (although there are probably standards in use by traffic authorities that deal with it). However, I did learn that the government has the power to temporarily lower the overall speed limit to 90km/h in case of a serious disruption of the oil supply. Only 90??? Oh what a drastic measure. I don't think there's a single highway remotely near me that even goes above 90.
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2014 19:00
|
|
|
PittTheElder posted:Why would horizontally aligned ones be a problem? That's apparently the standard installation here in western Canada and it works fine. Generally the only vertical alignment you see is on turning signals. Horizontally aligned ones have a bad habit of being red-yellow-green aligned in some areas and green-yellow-red aligned in others. In some cases they even end up using both orientations within the same metro area. With vertical lights, the reversed stack is only used at that one residential neighborhood intersection in Syracuse and I think one other intersection elsewhere in the US, but horizontal lights aren't nearly as consistent.
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2014 19:08
|
|
|
PittTheElder posted:Why would horizontally aligned ones be a problem? That's apparently the standard installation here in western Canada and it works fine. Generally the only vertical alignment you see is on turning signals. I've never seen a single horizontal signal in western Canada, the first I've seen in my life was in Florida.
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2014 19:10
|
|
|
Baronjutter posted:Only 90??? Oh what a drastic measure. I don't think there's a single highway remotely near me that even goes above 90. The speed limit on US highways is usually higher than 90 (km/h) do you guys drive really slow or what?
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2014 19:54
|
|
|
No one keeps to 90 of course because why the gently caress should you go that slow on big highway, but I have no idea why the posted limit only go TO 90. It's often 80 in a lot of places. Most people do a reasonable 100-120 or so.
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2014 20:17
|
|
|
Install Windows posted:Horizontally aligned ones have a bad habit of being red-yellow-green aligned in some areas and green-yellow-red aligned in others. In some cases they even end up using both orientations within the same metro area. Well that's fair enough. Here in Alberta, I've only ever seen it go Red-Yellow-Green, with possible extras if there's advance greens involved. And since wikipedia has an image from Calgary, I'll even include a picture (of what is a terrible intersection really):  Baronjutter posted:I've never seen a single horizontal signal in western Canada, the first I've seen in my life was in Florida. They're everywhere in Alberta. I know the east does lots of verticals, but I've never really stopped to pay attention. Peanut President posted:The speed limit on US highways is usually higher than 90 (km/h) do you guys drive really slow or what? B.C. seems to set all of their highway speed limits lower than the rest of the country for some reason. The Trans-Canada is generally 110km/h, less when it runs through cities (it'll often be a city road, not like an interstate) and through national parks. 110km/h is the fastest it's legally possible to drive on any Canadian road I think, although people routinely drive like 120-130 on the bigger highways. Or much, much faster if they're trying to race back to town on what is locally referred to as The Highway of Death. Our oil rich province has been too damned cheap to twin the thing, leading to entirely predictable fatalities.
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2014 21:23
|
|
|
PittTheElder posted:Well that's fair enough. Here in Alberta, I've only ever seen it go Red-Yellow-Green, with possible extras if there's advance greens involved. And since wikipedia has an image from Calgary, I'll even include a picture (of what is a terrible intersection really): Yeah my wife does insurance adjusting for albertan drivers and holy poo poo. It's all idiots in giant trucks doing 150 down a highway at 1am because they are racing to get back to town to get drunk after working the tar sands. That or your entire fleet of vehicles being destroyed by hail every year.
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2014 21:28
|
|
|
The MUTCD has really strict guidelines for both horizontal and vertical signals. If you get into an accident at an intersection and its noncompliance is possibly at fault, you're getting a big check from whoever designed it. It doesn't matter how long it's been wrong. The compliance dates for signal position are waaaaaay past due.
|
|
#
?
Mar 19, 2014 23:21
|
|
|
Install Windows posted:Horizontally aligned ones have a bad habit of being red-yellow-green aligned in some areas and green-yellow-red aligned in others. In some cases they even end up using both orientations within the same metro area. Quebec uses horizontal fixtures extensively, and addresses this problem in two ways: 1. All the signals use two red lights. If you see two bulbs lights, it's absolutely red. 2. Most of the signals use a diamond (45 degree square) for yellow, and a specific arrow for green (right, left or straight). Though they also standardize the order, it wouldn't actually matter much if it got reversed, as the signal orientation and color aren't the only two pieces of information about its state.
|
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2014 02:47
|
|
|
EoRaptor posted:Quebec uses horizontal fixtures extensively, and addresses this problem in two ways: I like it, no possible confusion due to the layout or for colour-blind people.
|
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2014 16:16
|
|
|
I wonder why 90. Last time a serious disruption of oil supply happened speed limits were introduced but they were introduced at 100kph. You would expect that 100 would do in the next emergency.
|
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2014 16:28
|
|
|
NihilismNow posted:I wonder why 90. Last time a serious disruption of oil supply happened speed limits were introduced but they were introduced at 100kph. 90 km/h is a bit over 55 mph and 55 mph was the kneejerk speed limit set in America during the oil crisis in the 70s to "save gas" (which it didn't do but still).
|
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2014 17:11
|
|
|
What percent of driving is ever even done at those speeds? Aren't most trips well under those speeds since they're in a city? Unless you're going on a trip to another city by car or live way out in the burbs when do you even get a chance to drive on a road that fast?
|
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2014 17:32
|
|
|
Baronjutter posted:What percent of driving is ever even done at those speeds? Aren't most trips well under those speeds since they're in a city? Unless you're going on a trip to another city by car or live way out in the burbs when do you even get a chance to drive on a road that fast? What? What do you think all the freeways and parkways are for? No, most trips are not entirely in a city by a long shot, and even within cities you usually can do quite a bit above 55 for part of your trip. Try checking this out right now, it has live traffic speeds throughout Philadelphia at this view: http://www.sigalert.com/Map.asp?region=Philadelphia#lat=39.95516&lon=-75.16769&z=0 At the moment I'm linking this, plenty of portions of the major routes through Philly have patches going as fast as 70, and a lot more that are at least over 55. Edit: not to mention, that of people actually living in cities a lot of them aren't driving period, so you combine that with the amount of people living in cities themselves only being about 40% of the population, most trips can't be fully on city streets. Nintendo Kid fucked around with this message at 19:16 on Mar 21, 2014 |
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2014 17:46
|
|
|
Meh. Holland has a more effective rule. They implemented it a few times in the past when there where oil crises. They simply banned all vehicles with a combustion engine (except emergency vehicles) from all roads for a few Sundays. Because that doesn't make people angry at all.  It was called a car-free Sunday. Nowadays that name is often used for voluntary events to make people think about sustainability. But the government still has the power to use this law when a new oil crisis happens.
|
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2014 19:13
|
|
|
Carbon dioxide posted:Meh. Holland has a more effective rule. They implemented it a few times in the past when there where oil crises. I thought that research showed that rule was not effective at all and barely made a impact on oil use. But it sure made for spectacular photo's of abandoned streets and drove the "we have to conserve energy" point home. Install Windows posted:90 km/h is a bit over 55 mph and 55 mph was the kneejerk speed limit set in America during the oil crisis in the 70s to "save gas" (which it didn't do but still). Yeah but when the US introduced 55mph we went from unlimited to 100kph. Why would they lower it to 90 kph now? As for never driving motorway speeds, secondary roads in NL are bad/non existent. If i have to go to the other side of town (10km) i would take the motorway. If i have to go to the next town over i would take the motorway. I estimate about 95% of the distance i drive is on the motorway. NihilismNow fucked around with this message at 19:58 on Mar 21, 2014 |
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2014 19:55
|
|
|
Interesting, where I live there are only highways once you get out into the suburbs and they start small/slow with plenty of traffic lights and only become a proper highway after you get out of town (and they only go UP to 90kph). I'll only ever see a highway if I'm driving to another town or out to nature to hike or what ever. But for driving inside the city, there's no highways at all, it's all 30-50kph roads. Highways are pretty ugly gashes that tear apart the urban fabric of an area and I've always thought they have no business being inside of a city. That was my first shock coming to Seattle, seeing highways inside the city centre. It was nasty and seemed extremely out of place, but I guess seattle agrees since they're doing something about that. It seems a lot of cities that know what's what are ripping up their nasty urban highway and replacing them with more urban avenues. Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 20:06 on Mar 21, 2014 |
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2014 20:01
|
|
|
Vancouver is the extreme minority in that regard, almost every city has a freeway running right into the core.
|
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2014 20:09
|
|
|
FISHMANPET posted:Vancouver is the extreme minority in that regard, almost every city has a freeway running right into the core. That or at least cutting across a corner or two of core areas. Baronjutter posted:Interesting, where I live there are only highways once you get out into the suburbs and they start small/slow with plenty of traffic lights and only become a proper highway after you get out of town (and they only go UP to 90kph). I'll only ever see a highway if I'm driving to another town or out to nature to hike or what ever. But for driving inside the city, there's no highways at all, it's all 30-50kph roads. Highways are pretty ugly gashes that tear apart the urban fabric of an area and I've always thought they have no business being inside of a city. In principle it's nice to "not cut urban fabric". In practice there's no sense leaving yourself with giant clogged streets that cut areas off as much if not more than an actual freeway would. Most urban freeways took over the routes of existing major routes through cities, or did things like parallel the old routes to take traffic loads, often by going through areas that were already considered "wastes" like declining industrial land or recently obsoleted ports (at the time of construction that is). That's not even getting into how a lot of cities got their first freeways or proto-freeways in a very long time ago, often with a lot of the present day route going through empty land at the start. Often where you see a freeway "cutting off" neighborhoods today, there was none there when it was built, or the ones that were there had been completely different uses.
|
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2014 20:32
|
|
|
FISHMANPET posted:Vancouver is the extreme minority in that regard, almost every city has a freeway running right into the core. Most American cities do. Canadian cities largely do not from what I've seen.
|
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2014 20:37
|
|
|
I honestly didn't notice any in my travels in europe. Prague had a sort-of highway going from the north past the train station and quickly merging with the normal street grid, and that stretch of highway was extremely nasty and ruined their main railway station. Can't recall any in Berlin either. Some very big busy avenues but all still maintaining a pretty good pedestrian experience/street life. As long as you've got nice wide sidewalks, some trees or landscaping buffer, and plenty of crosswalks or even tunnels, big wide 4+ lane roads can be tolerable in an urban setting. It's poo poo like huge elevated highways (or worse, surface) that really destroy an area. Sunken highways are still nasty but at least you can cover them over eventually. Toronto has grappled with this for decades since they built what's the busiest highway in north america straight through downtown cutting off the core from the waterfront. Of course back then it was all warehouses and railyards so who cares, it's a condo forest now but for decades the highway its self served to block interest in developing the area.
|
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2014 21:53
|
|
|
I guess I should say it's common in the New World, particularity USA, but I'm guessing it's pretty rare in Europe.
|
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2014 22:16
|
|
|
I just remembered Belgium actually institutes a (almost) nationwide motorway speed limit of 90kph when there is severe smog. They actually did this last week. It was also very hazy here those days, but we kept on going at 130kph. This may also be one of the contributing factors to Belgium leading the traffic delay chart posted a few pages back.
|
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2014 22:29
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 26, 2024 16:46 |
|
|
NihilismNow posted:Yeah but when the US introduced 55mph we went from unlimited to 100kph. Why would they lower it to 90 kph now? Presumably they sent some guy to determine what it should be at some point after the crisis and 55/90 sounded good enough because look, the US did it! You know, even though there's never been real science to back up that there's any particular speed that's really the best for fuel usage across all vehicles. Baronjutter posted:I honestly didn't notice any in my travels in europe. Prague had a sort-of highway going from the north past the train station and quickly merging with the normal street grid, and that stretch of highway was extremely nasty and ruined their main railway station. Can't recall any in Berlin either. Some very big busy avenues but all still maintaining a pretty good pedestrian experience/street life. As long as you've got nice wide sidewalks, some trees or landscaping buffer, and plenty of crosswalks or even tunnels, big wide 4+ lane roads can be tolerable in an urban setting. It's poo poo like huge elevated highways (or worse, surface) that really destroy an area. Sunken highways are still nasty but at least you can cover them over eventually. Toronto has grappled with this for decades since they built what's the busiest highway in north america straight through downtown cutting off the core from the waterfront. Of course back then it was all warehouses and railyards so who cares, it's a condo forest now but for decades the highway its self served to block interest in developing the area. I think claiming that highways, especially elevated ones, destroy the area is just dumb pseudoaesthetics. Again, most of them were built through areas that were already considered "bad" plus already had very high traffic demand on the predecessor routes. No matter what happened, those areas were going to have a whole bunch of traffic and associated pollution, and definitely were already as "destroyed" as they could ever be. Sure, some of them morphed into attractive residential areas eventually, but a lot of them have either stayed the kind of grimy industrial areas they were initially, or have the highway act as a barrier to development that allows one side to lay undeveloped, and often end up suitable for large-scale development like parks or integrated building complexes that wouldn't be practical if it had been uninterrupted. Major train lines and the like are equally path blocking, and are equally necessary to function. Plus you're from like what, Vancouver? Vancouver is in an unusual situation for a North American city where most of the city is on the end of a peninsula, and with essentially nowhere no go in at least 2 major directions (not counting that weird only 3 lane bridge that connects to the few northern suburbs and the freeway bridge at the extreme east of the city), there's no logical need for major through routes the way you'd have in most other cities. Especially for the downtown core which is itself on a second smaller peninsula which even fewer valid through directions! And the city remained really quite small up til the 60s or so, so there hadn't been a sheer crush of traffic forcing through highway development in the city until the same time as anti-highway backlashes caught on across the continent. And European cities often don't have it for a number of reasons. Among the biggest is that most of them never had fast takeup of car usage before World War II, and also suffered from the effects of both world wars in people generally not having money and money needing to be prioritized towards repairing basic things. And even though many of them had vast swathes devastated in those wars, the remaining centuries old core areas often were regarded with much more respect than a North American city's Industrial Warehouse District Established 20 Years Ago. So you combine the previous lack of cars, and the ongoing costs and most of them couldn't have afforded to really expand or start a freeway system until well after most American cities had finished theirs And many of them once they started building, got hit with economic problems leading to spending cut backs in the 70s/80s, of which the systems in the UK particularly suffered. So lots of them muddle along dumping traffic on surface routes in vast quantities and taking advantage of the completely unplanned for fact that a lot of their development happened to be ok-ish with existing transit infrastructure and walking so at least a lot of people can avoid the horrible road network. But most of them really should have proper routes into and through/around the city center built eventually PittTheElder posted:Most American cities do. Canadian cities largely do not from what I've seen. A ton of Canadian cities have also only recently grown to sizes where all-surface-roads systems can't handle the traffic anymore at that, where comparable size American cities had reached that point decades and decades ago and done the building while building was cheap. Plus there isn't any continuous cross-Canada freeways , or even freeways at all in large swathes of populated Canada. With an overall dearth of long distance traffic, and not that much local area traffic, it's not surprising most Canadian cities don't have any sort of in-city freeways, while most American cities are either big enough that local traffic demands it on its own, or are along major long distance routes where freeways are needed to handle the combo of local and long distance - and unlike Europe they were already built while building was cheap. NihilismNow posted:I just remembered Belgium actually institutes a (almost) nationwide motorway speed limit of 90kph when there is severe smog. They actually did this last week. It was also very hazy here those days, but we kept on going at 130kph. You'd think they'd try better emissions control by now rather than relying on lowering speeds...
|
|
#
?
Mar 21, 2014 23:16
|
|