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will_colorado posted:If you look at the oldest areas of many cities in the western US that are on a grid based layout, those streets are lined up slightly off due N/S/E/W, so that horses and carriage drivers would not have blinding sunrises and sunsets directly in their line of sight. That's not the reason why, since that only happens a few days a year. They're off true directions mostly due to the fact it was hard to get your grid out precisely given the methods available at the time. It's easy to figure out close to true north (east/south/west), but getting it exactly is much harder. And of course over time as the city expands, the ability to get correct orientations happens and additional stuff is properly aligned and noone really minds the slight bends coming out of the older misaligned streets. Some of them even go back and properly align many streets in the old developed areas if they get a good chance.
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Apr 1, 2014 22:21
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What's the point of that? Just so it looks more perfect on a map?
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Apr 1, 2014 22:23
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Baronjutter posted:What's the point of that? Just so it looks more perfect on a map? You're saying that like it's not important 
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Apr 1, 2014 22:26
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dupersaurus posted:Not that it makes much difference since the position of the sun at rise and set varies over the course of the year by quite a few degrees above and below directly E/W. Unless your grid is 45 degrees off, there's going to be two points in the year the sun's going to be going straight down it. In case of Manhattan, this event is rather famous. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattanhenge 
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Apr 1, 2014 22:31
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Baronjutter posted:What's the point of that? Just so it looks more perfect on a map? You're divvying up parcels in almost entirely unsettled land, often before most of your buyers have even been out to it. A direction aligned grid makes it much easier to write the deed areas and all that. It's the simplest possible way.
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Apr 1, 2014 23:01
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Install Windows posted:You're divvying up parcels in almost entirely unsettled land, often before most of your buyers have even been out to it. A direction aligned grid makes it much easier to write the deed areas and all that. It's the simplest possible way. Ah I thought road nerds were going into built-up areas and using eminent domain or something turn roads a couple degrees. Speaking of hosed up surveying: The bend in Blanshard here is apparently from some hosed up surveying where they measured from the wrong corners or from an edge rather than the centre-line. http://goo.gl/maps/dO1to And this entire little narrow park is also from a surveying mistake http://goo.gl/maps/0A932 Also I have no idea why this exists but it's adorable. http://goo.gl/maps/dG6LB
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Apr 1, 2014 23:14
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Perfect grids are boring. I get lost everytime I go downtown
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Apr 1, 2014 23:23
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 Check out this WAY RAD stuff I'm making. I think I've found the most intuitive way to distinguish between through and local traffic.
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Apr 2, 2014 01:10
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Install Windows posted:That's not the reason why, It is actually because the magnetic pole is not stationary. When the city was laid out the roads were pointing N-S on the compass but over the past 200 years they are now off by a bunch of degrees. Here is Melbourne the grid was rotated to follow the river best, but the majority of roads outside of the CBD run N-S is 8 degrees clockwise off of true north. quote:The grid's longest axis is oriented 70 degrees clockwise from true north, to align better with the course of the Yarra River. The majority of Melbourne is oriented at 8 degrees clockwise from true north - noting that magnetic north was 8° 3' E in 1900, increasing to 11° 42' E in 2009.[1]
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Apr 2, 2014 02:53
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drunkill posted:It is actually because the magnetic pole is not stationary. When the city was laid out the roads were pointing N-S on the compass but over the past 200 years they are now off by a bunch of degrees. Most of the cities on that image intended to match the geographic north in the first place, and simply did not know the correct declination adjustments - but they're also nowhere near skewed enough to match what magnetic north would have been in the time they were laid out! Melbourne is somewhat special in knowingly planning along the lines of what they knew to be magnetic north at the time.
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Apr 2, 2014 03:01
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For Los Angeles at least, the oldest areas of the city were laid out at about 36 degrees clockwise of north based on old Spanish city planning ideals. The idea being that you wouldn't get huge gusts of wind blowing through the streets, because they thought at the time that wind only moved in cardinal directions.
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Apr 2, 2014 04:25
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How could they think that? It seems like something just looking at a flag or anything in the wind would very quickly disprove.
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Apr 2, 2014 05:44
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Install Windows posted:Most of the cities on that image intended to match the geographic north in the first place, and simply did not know the correct declination adjustments - but they're also nowhere near skewed enough to match what magnetic north would have been in the time they were laid out! Sydney and Brisbane look more chaotic, though, largely because of the geography around the waterways. I'd be very interested to see road alignment graphs for those cities as well as Canberra.
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Apr 2, 2014 05:54
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One thing I find amusing is that the two places you find rigid grid systems is ancient civilizations and places built post-1600 or so. From the Middle Ages up to the early modern era, cities and towns reverted to utterly ad-hoc crowded up systems. Even some place like boston was still relatively planned out, and its layout of core streets makes a lot sense when you remember: (Old Boston is the landmass that actually existed at settlement time, New Boston is all the land that was built by leveling hills to fill in the watery areas)
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Apr 2, 2014 06:04
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Downtown Portland is bisected on the east-west axis by Burnside street. Might be vaguely apocryphal, but to the south of Burnside, the north-south street axis is aligned to true north, and to the north, the north-south street axis is aligned to magnetic north. Results in some fun intersections.
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Apr 2, 2014 07:48
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Obviously the more intersection density the better, but a perfect grid can be pretty boring. You can still have a grid and introduce all sorts of little curves and angles. Although the key thing to a good road plan is just to have a lot of intersections and a lot of fairly equal routes between any two points. The worst of all worlds is a widely spaced perfect grid of arterials with a labyrinth of dead-end streets in the middle.
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Apr 2, 2014 15:49
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Grids are loving soulless and boring though  Although I guess they do make the inner cores easier to manage.
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Apr 2, 2014 18:18
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Install Windows posted:One thing I find amusing is that the two places you find rigid grid systems is ancient civilizations and places built post-1600 or so. From the Middle Ages up to the early modern era, cities and towns reverted to utterly ad-hoc crowded up systems. Even some place like boston was still relatively planned out, and its layout of core streets makes a lot sense when you remember: I want to say this has something to do with the development of walled cities throughout Europe during the transition from late-antiquity to the early-middle ages. At least for european civs, it stems from the change in Roman defensive postures in the 2nd through 4th centuries. And then European cities just didn't grow out as the western roman empire continued to give way but they'd still grow within the already established walls. But once centralized states start becoming a thing again in Europe post-1600s, you get urban growth beyond old medieval borders. [/history chat] Thwomp fucked around with this message at 18:35 on Apr 2, 2014 |
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Apr 2, 2014 18:33
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Cichlidae posted:
I'm curious why there's such a mismatch in size between inbound and outbound traffic. Is this for the entire day, or just a particular time of day?
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Apr 2, 2014 20:09
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The "AM peak" note makes me think that's morning rush hour.
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Apr 2, 2014 20:23
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Thwomp posted:I want to say this has something to do with the development of walled cities throughout Europe during the transition from late-antiquity to the early-middle ages.
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Apr 2, 2014 21:33
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I saw some of those road orientation graphs for some European cities and theyw ere basically a perfect circle.
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Apr 2, 2014 22:08
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Volmarias posted:I'm curious why there's such a mismatch in size between inbound and outbound traffic. Is this for the entire day, or just a particular time of day? Just the morning. The afternoon will likely reverse that trend. Of course, my boss wants me to split this into two separate diagrams, so then I'll need 8 instead of the 4 I was planning...
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Apr 2, 2014 22:22
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Phoenix's street grid oddity: When expanding northward, the city hired a surveyor from california, who forgot to adjust for the difference in magnetic north offset from where he was from, and by the time they realized it, it would have been too expensive to fix it. So they added a curve.
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Apr 3, 2014 00:16
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Calgary has something similar. The original downtown is skewed slightly, because it's aligned with the railroad. However 4th Street and 17th Avenue are a range road and township road respectively, so they're properly aligned with the grid even through downtown. The rest of the city - where the grid exists - is aligned properly with the cardinal directions.
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Apr 3, 2014 04:04
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Blue Moonlight posted:Downtown Portland is bisected on the east-west axis by Burnside street. Might be vaguely apocryphal, but to the south of Burnside, the north-south street axis is aligned to true north, and to the north, the north-south street axis is aligned to magnetic north. Downtown south of Burnside is based on the course of the Willamette, yo.
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Apr 3, 2014 06:45
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Cichlidae posted:Just the morning. The afternoon will likely reverse that trend. Of course, my boss wants me to split this into two separate diagrams, so then I'll need 8 instead of the 4 I was planning... Gatac posted:The "AM peak" note makes me think that's morning rush hour.   Yes, that's a good reason. Thanks.
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Apr 3, 2014 23:15
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Thwomp posted:And then European cities just didn't grow out as the western roman empire continued to give way but they'd still grow within the already established walls. It depends on what country you're talking about. Here in the Netherlands fortifications centered on cities were mostly feature-complete by the end of the 17th century. Then, with our relative economic decline, demographic stability, and late industrialisation, large-scale urban expansion only kicked off in the late 19th century. \ I live in one of the first planned 'suburbs' outside Groningen's old star fortress setup:  These days, only the northwestern parts of those fortifications still remain (as a park): https://www.google.com/maps/place/Groningen/@53.2179664,6.5662111,15z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x47c83286b462cca7:0xcb4b5086f9a6c8dc Koesj fucked around with this message at 10:54 on Apr 5, 2014 |
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Apr 5, 2014 10:51
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The Washington Post's Wonkblog had an article this weekend about Chicago's transit system and the pie-in-the-sky plan to revamp it from the hub and spoke model to something more flexible. Here are the relevant maps. Chicago's current subway/'El' lines:  And the proposed extensions and crosslines:  To be combined with new bus lines with ROW, coordinated lights, and other bus improvements:  I guess if you are going to dream, might as well go big. As an area resident, it would be amazing to hop on one line and not have to go all the way downtown to transfer. But this is Chicago we're talking about. It'll take 5 times as long and twice the cost in bribes/kickbacks alone to make it happen. The article goes into a bit more about how it's possible for it to actually happen if circumstances fall into the right places.
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Apr 7, 2014 13:35
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Thwomp posted:But this is Chicago we're talking about. It'll take 5 times as long and twice the cost in bribes/kickbacks alone to make it happen. At least it's not Boston, where it'd take 10 times as long and 5 times the cost in bribes and kickbacks. 
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Apr 7, 2014 14:35
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Did someone already post the Norwegian Silly Walk crossing sign? I couldn't find it so here goes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=By95MlAGTjE At least the mayor approves! Hippie Hedgehog fucked around with this message at 14:05 on Apr 8, 2014 |
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Apr 7, 2014 16:49
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Thwomp posted:And the proposed extensions and crosslines: Nothing like taking the Blue Line all the way from Schaumburg to the Loop... Extending rapid transit lines out into the suburbs just makes travel longer for everyone. More advanced commuter rail (also connecting to the airport, which the Blue Line extension to Schaumburg covers) would be much better. If we're going for pie-in-the-sky, we might as well go all the way.
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Apr 7, 2014 18:51
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I think the idea is that people would be using the Blue Line to get to the airport, not to get to the Loop.
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Apr 7, 2014 18:53
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FISHMANPET posted:I think the idea is that people would be using the Blue Line to get to the airport, not to get to the Loop. Still not as good as a high-frequency suburban heavy rail service that stops at Schaumburg and O'Hare on the way to the Loop. I'm just thinking of fitness for purpose.
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Apr 7, 2014 20:33
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Having taken the Blue Line from O'hare to The Loop, I would have gladly paid two or three times as much as my CTA fare for a Metra trip to the loop rather than being cramped on a rush hour Blue Line train with luggage.
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Apr 7, 2014 20:47
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FISHMANPET posted:Having taken the Blue Line from O'hare to The Loop, I would have gladly paid two or three times as much as my CTA fare for a Metra trip to the loop rather than being cramped on a rush hour Blue Line train with luggage.
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Apr 7, 2014 21:08
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Kakairo posted:Extending rapid transit lines out into the suburbs just makes travel longer for everyone. I don't see how, unless we're also assuming no attempt will be made to purchase more rolling stock.
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Apr 7, 2014 21:32
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Install Windows posted:I don't see how, unless we're also assuming no attempt will be made to purchase more rolling stock. Unless there's a lot of short-turning you have trains stuck out in the boonies where they aren't needed while the interior portions of the line are underserved. The suburbs don't need the headway that the central core does - this is a problem in boston with the green line and a reason why it's so messed up
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Apr 8, 2014 01:11
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EtaBetaPi posted:Unless there's a lot of short-turning you have trains stuck out in the boonies where they aren't needed while the interior portions of the line are underserved. The suburbs don't need the headway that the central core does - this is a problem in boston with the green line and a reason why it's so messed up Most modern transit systems use shorter services on the same line supplementing long line services, this was solved in like 1915.
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Apr 8, 2014 01:20
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Thwomp posted:And the proposed extensions and crosslines: I suppose it should also be mentioned that the north-south planned blue line is underway, though as BRT and a bit to the right than shown on the map. Also want to say Im suprised that they didnt include the Circle line, that things been in the plans since what? The 60s? It would connect the northern corner of the Red line with the Pink line and continue down to the Orange line before returning downtown.
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Apr 8, 2014 01:45
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