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virtual256 posted:What's your take on dual purpose managed lanes, carpool access at all times, tolled access with changing prices depending on load and potentially being restricted to carpool only in peak load situations? Well, there are two tricky problems here. The first is human nature: these managed lanes are run by corporations, and they have no incentive to disallow potential customers. They'd just jack the tolls up to something unreasonable like $100 during peak congestion and hope to catch a few suckers or folks on the way to the hospital. The second issue is enforcement, and this is a problem with HOT lanes in general. You can have automated camera-based enforcement to detect whether or not someone has a passenger, but the best way to handle it is with a cop - and you're not going to have cops pulling people over in stop-and-go traffic.
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May 15, 2014 12:22
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Managed lanes/highways means something completely different here in the UK. We are essentially going full tilt into the dutch way of doing things and installing infrastructure on existing motorways so the hard shoulder can be used as a live traffic lane when the road is congested. Whilst it does work and can slightly improve journey times and volume the original stretches only allowed so called "hard shoulder running" between junctions and not through them, creating a sort of bottleneck where 4 lanes merge into 3 for 1/3 miles. Of course the government are expanding it because it's a few million cheaper than actually widening the road or, I dunno, building a proper parallel road to at least provide redundancy for when the main motorway is blocked for whatever reason! Of course you could just improve public transport but, unless it's London, no one gives a poo poo about that! No, I'm not angry about roads! 
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May 16, 2014 12:12
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Dutch Engineer posted:So what you're saying is that they can't cut back on funding, and they will regret this? Thank you, Ted. 
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May 17, 2014 02:35
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What's the big deal about managed lanes? They say 70% of managed lane users are wealthy? Then that means the wealthy are paying their fair share of those lanes/roads. Not all toll road users are wealthy either, I'm only middle income and I use them quite often. I also live in North Texas, commuting to an area where not only is every highway tolled, but we're adding managed lanes to literally everything. The thing to understand though, is TxDOT is broke, the feds constantly shaft Texas on funding, and without tolls, the extra lanes simply would not get built. Plus if the wealthy are using the toll lanes, they are OFF the existing free lanes, freeing up more space there at no cost to the "poor" who don't use the tolled lanes. When you increase gas taxes, the poor pay that too, so toll lanes are almost like the rich subsidizing the poor on their free lanes. I use the toll roads around here and find that I save money in the long run. The extra gas and time costs of not using them begin to really add up, and I also find the freeways are loaded with illegals without insurance, and much worse drivers in general. For example, try going from Irving or Dallas to points southwest, both using the George Bush, and Loop 12, and tell me which one scares you to death. Or even more dramatic, compare 35E to DNT, George Bush, or SRT. Where I'm from, Kansas, they took the opposite approach, and spiked taxes through the roof to build mega-interchanges and stuff. Traffic is actually WORSE in some places in part because Missouri drivers are epic terrible, and because the interchanges are so large and crazy that they overwhelm people. For example, KS redid the 35 and 69 merge, which was five lanes down to three, but one lane goes to 75th, so really a simple 4 to 3 merge. They replaced it with a tunnel and 2 mile long ramp to 75th, and have 6 lanes merging down to 3. Traffic is now worse because KC people are incredibly afraid of merging (zipper merging doesn't exist) and so the three left lanes back up much further at all times of the day. Similarly on 35, they added four new lanes between 119th interchange and 435 in order to fix the 35 North to 435 East and vice versa, but it just moved the slowdown from the three main lanes to the two right lanes. They even extended the ramp lane on 435 to the next interchange, but people still stop at the same point where it used to just be a zipper merge anyway. Sorry to rant, but the point is, hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars that had basically no good effect on traffic. Do you think private toll roads would allow for that nonsense?
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May 17, 2014 20:49
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jason87x posted:I also find the freeways are loaded with illegals without insurance, and much worse drivers in general. Wait, how can you tell that they're illegal migrants with no vehicle insurance as you pass them on the freeway?
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May 17, 2014 23:31
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jason87x posted:the feds constantly shaft Texas on funding Not really. Texas received about 8.9% of NHPP and STP funding, the two types of federal highway funding that could go to expanding non-HOV capacity, and Texas has about 9% of total federal-aid lane miles in the US. By pure dollar amount, Texas got more NHPP and STP funding than California did in FY 2014. If you really want people to pay their fair share of road usage, we should be using congestion pricing and taxing vehicles by VMT combined with weight to the fourth power, anyway, plus everything Baronjutter said about having better land use and actual options for moving people around.
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May 18, 2014 00:17
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quote:Plus if the wealthy are using the toll lanes, they are OFF the existing free lanes, freeing up more space there at no cost to the "poor" who don't use the tolled lanes. Of course, if the toll lanes were free, the "poor" would also be able to use them, further reducing congestion? Maybe marking certain lanes off limits to the "poor" actually reduces overall capacity? Volmarias fucked around with this message at 05:37 on May 18, 2014 |
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May 18, 2014 05:33
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Volmarias posted:Of course, if the toll lanes were free, the "poor" would also be able to use them, further reducing congestion? Maybe marking certain lanes off limits to the "poor" actually reduces overall capacity? Ideally what you are saying makes perfect sense, but typically though there isn't enough money for DoTs to build that extra capacity. Private company (in a good market scenario anyway) comes in, sees things congested, build toll road that wouldn't otherwise be there, rich people go to that instead of the old freeway. Of course you could argue about gas tax too, and vehicle weight pricing (don't many toll roads already do this though?) makes sense because I would think heavy trucks place much more burden (in a greater than linear type fashion, you said to the 4th power?). jason87x fucked around with this message at 18:42 on May 18, 2014 |
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May 18, 2014 18:38
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exo posted:Wait, how can you tell that they're illegal migrants with no vehicle insurance as you pass them on the freeway? Of course I'm stereotyping here, but typically old beat up car, old Latina-looking lady behind the wheel doing 40 mph with no traffic in front of her while 3/4ths of us are doing 70-80. Plus the other crazy shenanigans with slow drivers and people who wander into your lane that's typical of many Dallas freeways.
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May 18, 2014 18:40
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Best thing about the Salt Lake City area toll lanes was that I didn't have to pay to use them the one time I was out there because it didn't take ez pass and apparently their enforcement thing couldn't handle out-of-state plates.
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May 18, 2014 18:42
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jason87x posted:Ideally what you are saying makes perfect sense, but typically though there isn't enough money for DoTs to build that extra capacity. Private company (in a good market scenario anyway) comes in, sees things congested, build toll road that wouldn't otherwise be there, rich people go to that instead of the old freeway. Of course you could argue about gas tax too, and vehicle weight pricing (don't many toll roads already do this though?) makes sense because I would think heavy trucks place much more burden (in a greater than linear type fashion, you said to the 4th power?). In reality we spend a billion dollars of public money, not a private company. jason87x posted:Of course I'm stereotyping here, but typically old beat up car, old Latina-looking lady behind the wheel doing 40 mph with no traffic in front of her while 3/4ths of us are doing 70-80. Plus the other crazy shenanigans with slow drivers and people who wander into your lane that's typical of many Dallas freeways. Turns out you're just racist. Who'd have thought that about a libertarian?
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May 18, 2014 18:43
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Ask / Tell › Ask me about all these spics on my glorious Randian free market roads
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May 18, 2014 20:19
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Volmarias posted:Of course, if the toll lanes were free, the "poor" would also be able to use them, further reducing congestion? Maybe marking certain lanes off limits to the "poor" actually reduces overall capacity? I had always been under the impression that limited-accessibility lanes can actually help throughput more than an equivalent regular lane would. Car throughput doesn't always increase with the number of cars on the road---once the road gets jammed enough, an extra car will actually decrease traffic flow. But, a lane that only some people can drive in can limit the number of cars in the lane, so it can constantly operate at maximum capacity. In theory, a smart toll lane could dynamically change the toll fare in order to stay at maximum capacity all the time. This would probably be more expensive than it's worth, though. I'm not a trained traffic engineer, though, so this could all be a misconception on my part. And, of course, like most fees a toll lane is a regressive tax: the government is "taxing" the poor by giving them worse roads. So, it has to be offset by a progressive tax elsewhere, or it's awful. Of course, if you hate poor people and minorities, this is a bonus!
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May 18, 2014 21:21
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jason87x posted:Of course I'm stereotyping here, but typically old beat up car, old Latina-looking lady behind the wheel doing 40 mph with no traffic in front of her while 3/4ths of us are doing 70-80. Plus the other crazy shenanigans with slow drivers and people who wander into your lane that's typical of many Dallas freeways. Unless you look at the bad white driver and think "loving illegal canadian."
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May 18, 2014 21:28
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Minnesota has demand based tolls, so it must not be impossible.
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May 18, 2014 21:29
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nrook posted:I had always been under the impression that limited-accessibility lanes can actually help throughput more than an equivalent regular lane would. Car throughput doesn't always increase with the number of cars on the road---once the road gets jammed enough, an extra car will actually decrease traffic flow. But, a lane that only some people can drive in can limit the number of cars in the lane, so it can constantly operate at maximum capacity. This tends to happen more when the lanes are physically separated, often with their own separate and dedicated exits built. E.g. stretches of "express" lanes that skip many interchanges and may deviate from the mainline a decent distance at points. Making a lane for HOV only is more about trying to get there to be fewer cars on the road and helping throughput of people rather than throughput if vehicles, if you see what I mean.
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May 18, 2014 21:29
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jason87x posted:Of course I'm stereotyping here, but typically old beat up car, old Latina-looking lady behind the wheel doing 40 mph with no traffic in front of her while 3/4ths of us are doing 70-80. Plus the other crazy shenanigans with slow drivers and people who wander into your lane that's typical of many Dallas freeways. Speaking of stereotypes, great job dispelling that "redneck Texan" one.
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May 18, 2014 22:56
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FISHMANPET posted:Minnesota has demand based tolls, so it must not be impossible. It's not at all impossible; I'm just wondering whether it can be done without making life tougher for the poor.
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May 18, 2014 22:58
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exo posted:Wait, how can you tell that they're illegal migrants with no vehicle insurance as you pass them on the freeway? I'm terribly sorry that I responded to this horseshit of a question. I'm also sorry for arguing with a bunch of socialists on the internet, as now I'm automatically branded as a racist Texas redneck. Have you ever been to Texas? We have brutally high insurance rates here because of all the uninsured drivers. I'm not saying Texas does everything right, that all the proposed toll roads are a good idea, or that tolls are always appropriate anyway, but we've been building toll roads and lanes to work with our situation. The approach in other places is often "don't build anything" and there you go epic traffic issues. jason87x fucked around with this message at 00:51 on May 19, 2014 |
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May 19, 2014 00:40
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All the managed express lanes they are building around Dallas could be a secret plan by some forward thinking people in TexDOT to get people to start hating how car centric DFW is.
James The 1st fucked around with this message at 01:36 on May 19, 2014 |
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May 19, 2014 01:34
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jason87x posted:I'm terribly sorry that I responded to this horseshit of a question. I'm also sorry for arguing with a bunch of socialists on the internet, as now I'm automatically branded as a racist Texas redneck. Have you ever been to Texas? We have brutally high insurance rates here because of all the uninsured drivers. Selfishly I like toll lanes because I only drive on congested roads a couple times a month, and I will happily pay a couple bucks to avoid it when it is that infrequent. That is probably not something to base public policy on. What I do like in LA is that the toll lanes are free for 3 passengers and motorcycles, reduced cost for 2 persons, and full cost for 1. They use some fancy transponder and monitor it otherwise like other carpool lanes.
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May 19, 2014 02:00
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jason87x posted:Have you ever been to Texas? We have brutally high insurance rates here because of all the uninsured drivers. I haven't been to Texas, and I had no idea about your sky-high rate of uninsured drivers (15-20% of drivers, according to this site). That's terrible, and your state should really be doing something about that. It's still slightly racist to assume that bad drivers are old hispanic ladies, not to mention uninsured and illegally in the country.
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May 19, 2014 09:46
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Statistically, Texas has a normal uninsured driver rate (15% as compared to a national average of 14%), and has fairly good numbers for a Southern state (Mississippi leads the nation with an astounding 28%). As expected, the uninsurance rate correlates with median income, not the number of Latina ladies. http://www.insurance-research.org/sites/default/files/downloads/IRCUM2011_042111.pdf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_income Kaal fucked around with this message at 15:57 on May 19, 2014 |
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May 19, 2014 13:39
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jason87x posted:Have you ever been to Texas? We have brutally high insurance rates here because of all the uninsured drivers. Have you ever been to New Jersey? We have brutally high insurance rates here because of all of the drivers. quote:I'm not saying Texas does everything right, that all the proposed toll roads are a good idea, or that tolls are always appropriate anyway, but we've been building toll roads and lanes to work with our situation. The approach in other places is often "don't build anything" and there you go epic traffic issues. We've also got toll roads, such as the NJ Turnpike, which mysteriously takes on a lot of new debt every time it gets close to paying itself off and reverting to state ownership. quote:A brochure "Interesting Facts about the New Jersey Turnpike," dating from soon after the road's opening, states that when the Turnpike's bonds are paid off, "The law provides that the Turnpike be turned over to the State for inclusion in the public highway system." Due to new construction, and the expectation that the Turnpike pay for policing and maintenance, this has never come to pass. Basically, we're a little skeptical that the free market solves 
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May 19, 2014 14:11
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The Turnpike is also the busiest road in the country (though not North America, one of the 400-series roads in Ontario is that) and has massive amounts of out-of-state traffic using it as well as having a much more useful commuting freeway paralleling the lower half (I-295) and multiple roughly paralleling commuter routes for the upper half. Honestly even if they eventually got rid of the car tolls, I'd rather they kept the commercial vehicle and truck tolls up on it. Volmarias posted:Basically, we're a little skeptical that the free market solves The NJTA is 100% government agency, not privatized. No privatization proposals for it have ever succeeded, unlike some other states.
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May 19, 2014 15:46
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Turning off a giant money spigot unattractive to commercial enterprises as well as government organizations: news at eleven.
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May 19, 2014 17:14
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jason87x posted:now I'm automatically branded as a racist Texas redneck. Yeah, it was my question that did that and not your fine example of literal drive-by racism.
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May 19, 2014 21:02
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Looks like I'll be designing a diverging diamond interchange or two for Hartford. And to anyone who thinks DDIs are a bold new thing in the US, keep in mind that Rhode Island has been rocking one for decades.
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May 21, 2014 17:09
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Cichlidae posted:Looks like I'll be designing a diverging diamond interchange or two for Hartford. And to anyone who thinks DDIs are a bold new thing in the US, keep in mind that Rhode Island has been rocking one for decades. How do you keep people from having a head on collision? Nevermind, I see the stop lights now.
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May 21, 2014 17:23
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What the gently caress is this?
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May 21, 2014 19:09
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Baronjutter posted:What the gently caress is this? I've never seen something like that before. Looks like they're trying to encourage people to merge properly where they usually stop and wait for a gap.
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May 21, 2014 20:41
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Reminds me a bit of a Dutch information campaign a while (decade?) ago about 'ritsen' (closing a zipper). The idea was that if lanes merge and there's a jam, each car lets exactly one car from the other lane merge in front of them. There were tv ads about how this is the fairest and fastest system and there were even official traffic signs (just a lane merge sign with another sign saying "ritsen"). By now, most of those ritsen signs are gone or have been replaced, and I guess most people forgot that that campaign ever was a thing.
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May 21, 2014 20:56
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http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2014/05/21/train-and-car-collide-in-burlington-county/ You'd think people would have laerned what the crossing gates mean by now.
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May 21, 2014 21:12
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That happens many times a day, it's insane. Then again people run reds all the time too, but in this case the opposing traffic is a loving train. I can sort of see people doing something a little risky to avoid some 2km long freight train going at like 30k. But to avoid some short little LRT?? Level crossings just seems like one of those things where nothing will ever stop people from doing poo poo like that short of little pop-up walls like they have in Eastern Europe, but even then people manage to find ways to get stuck on them. No one says "avoid all intersections, it's where accidents happen!". Nothing could be safer than a level crossing, it's like a red light that also makes a sound and has a loving gate and the opposing traffic is also making a super loud noise and flashing lights. It sounds goony as gently caress but anyone who can't figure that out is dangerously stupid and I'd rather a train take them out than their lovely driving taking out an innocent. Also anyone hit by a train that survives needs to have their license taken away for a long long time.
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May 21, 2014 22:00
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jason87x posted:KC Highway talk Well since you called out Missouri drivers, my own observations are that drivers with Kansas plates and a little "JO" in the corner are far worse. Back to traffic talk, I-35N to I-435E is always terrible because of drivers who don't know how to driver faster than 35 on a ramp which has a gentle curve. Although they did just tack on a few lanes, at least the lanes are a few miles long and are exit only, so while it may move the slowdown into the new lanes, at least it's not slowing down the major through traffic lanes. As far as 69 goes, I wonder if they just extended the lanes until the exit for 635 would help things a bit, but you can only keep adding so many lanes. If you really want to bring up a clusterfuck, I'm surprised you didn't bring up 71, a highway, originally planned as an interstate, until a lawsuit over racial issues demanded they put 3 at level intersections in the middle of it. I dream of the day when those are finally removed and it's marked I-49 all the way to the downtown loop.
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May 21, 2014 22:13
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Cichlidae posted:Looks like I'll be designing a diverging diamond interchange or two for Hartford. And to anyone who thinks DDIs are a bold new thing in the US, keep in mind that Rhode Island has been rocking one for decades. First one in Minnesota. 8 months in and I'm surprised; no wrong way or light rail accidents.
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May 21, 2014 23:31
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Baronjutter posted:What the gently caress is this? Squeeze signs have largely been replaced by a graphic sign similar to its MUTCD counterpart. Wikipedia has a fun little comparison of international traffic signage that closely follows US MUTCD standards. --------------------- I really like that crosswalk signage in Canada has a white background, to indicate that adherence is enforceable by law. We have to spam state law signs all over the drat place because people simply won't stop for neon green signage. They won't stop for RRFBs either, so we've recently gone straight to mast arm HAWK beacons as standard crosswalk devices. Give it 10 years, we'll have HAWKs on every major street in Tampa. Varance fucked around with this message at 02:12 on May 22, 2014 |
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May 22, 2014 01:37
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 This is what Maryland SHA likes to use to convey the "don't be a jackass and merge peacefully" concept. I think there was some issue with FHWA reviews and using it on the National Highway System, though.
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May 22, 2014 01:45
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Varance posted:That's a 70s-era "Lane ends, merge left" sign in Toronto, on the Gardiner Expressway from the look of it. Deprecated signage that's as old as the expressway itself. File that in the same category as "flashing green traffic signal." It could just be the places I've visited vs the places I've come from, but I've never had more than a single car drive by me when I'm at a crosswalk. Cars driving by a pedestrian clearly waiting to cross is unthinkable, it's like running a red light. But holy poo poo in the US a crosswalk is like "this is technically a legal place to cross but no one has to stop"
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May 22, 2014 02:49
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Varance posted:Squeeze signs have largely been replaced by a graphic sign similar to its MUTCD counterpart. Wikipedia has a fun little comparison of international traffic signage that closely follows US MUTCD standards. Wow, this is a great page. I love seeing the tiny differences between countries. Also, the chart really drives home the fact that the US and Canada are among the few, if only, that use speed limit signs other than a red circle.
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May 22, 2014 02:51
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