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Silver Falcon posted:The future is now! You know, I just had a train of thought regarding driverless cars.
Given all those things ... there might not be much incentive to develop decent public transit. Now that cars are much less worse for the environment, no longer depend on dwindling nonrenewable resources, and no longer require that you pay attention to driving (you can sleep, even), suddenly it becomes much more feasible to commute from very far away. As a result, the trend towards far-flung suburbs actually strengthens. Is there some flaw in my reasoning here? (Actually, the limiting step here might be the range of electric cars, come to think of it; advances in battery technology may well come much slower than the other technologies.)
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Aug 7, 2014 06:55
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Boldor posted:As a result, the trend towards far-flung suburbs actually strengthens. Is there some flaw in my reasoning here? The massive increase in taxes that will be required to maintain all this subsidised suburban infrastructure in the next -5 to 25 years, depending on how strapped for cash your current municipality/state is at the moment.
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Aug 7, 2014 07:37
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Boldor posted:As a result, the trend towards far-flung suburbs actually strengthens. Is there some flaw in my reasoning here? (Actually, the limiting step here might be the range of electric cars, come to think of it; advances in battery technology may well come much slower than the other technologies.) That's about my take on things, too. Of course, the US isn't going to switch over to sustainable electricity production, at least not in the next fifty years. less than three posted:The massive increase in taxes that will be required to maintain all this subsidised suburban infrastructure in the next -5 to 25 years, depending on how strapped for cash your current municipality/state is at the moment. Transit ain't free, bub. And if current trends indicate anything, it's that governments would rather pay $10 per year forever than a $100 one-time cost.
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Aug 7, 2014 12:09
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less than three posted:The massive increase in taxes that will be required to maintain all this subsidised suburban infrastructure in the next -5 to 25 years, depending on how strapped for cash your current municipality/state is at the moment. Are you serious? States will bankrupt themselves to make more suburbs. More more mORE MORE MORE!!!
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Aug 7, 2014 13:47
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Boldor posted:
Yeah, unless driverless cars are also able to travel well in excess of 100 mph for most of their route, there's little reason to think people at large are going to move way out. For that matter even if they're able to do such speeds on freeways, they're unlikely to be allowed to on the many miles of surface routes on either end of the commute.
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Aug 7, 2014 15:53
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Boldor posted:As a result, the trend towards far-flung suburbs actually strengthens. Is there some flaw in my reasoning here? (Actually, the limiting step here might be the range of electric cars, come to think of it; advances in battery technology may well come much slower than the other technologies.) Additionally, the cost of sitting in traffic decreases pretty substantially if you can be asleep or reading or playing video game or whatever. So that's one more factor promoting suburbs and rampant road construction.
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Aug 7, 2014 17:04
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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PittTheElder posted:Additionally, the cost of sitting in traffic decreases pretty substantially if you can be asleep or reading or playing video game or whatever. So that's one more factor promoting suburbs and rampant road construction. Who's going to pay for the road construction though? We really haven't seen all that much spent on it in quite a long time. Like where's the money and land going to come from to start upgrading all the arterial surface roads to at least "Jersey Freeway" grade roads where there's access onto the road from curbside businesses but traffic to other roads int he area has to go through full grade-seperated interchanges?
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Aug 7, 2014 17:10
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Nintendo Kid posted:Who's going to pay for the road construction though? We really haven't seen all that much spent on it in quite a long time. Itll be taken from education and transit as usual. Wish I had on hand the articles about the various useless and all very expensive highway boondoggles states are making despite strained budgets.
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Aug 7, 2014 17:14
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Communist Zombie posted:Itll be taken from education and transit as usual. Wish I had on hand the articles about the various useless and all very expensive highway boondoggles states are making despite strained budgets. How, where? Like seriously you're going to have to actually put some stuff forward here. And what transit to cut from either? How are you going to get the people who already live near the roads you'd have to expand and the routes you'd have to build anew to agree to the projects going through? Are you really thinking that there's going to be tens of thousands of route miles of freeways built anew "just because"?
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Aug 7, 2014 17:41
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I'm pretty sure that congestion will just get worse, and transit will be ignored in favour of funding roads whenever possible, not that we're going to be building super-roads all over the place.
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Aug 7, 2014 17:57
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PittTheElder posted:I'm pretty sure that congestion will just get worse, and transit will be ignored in favour of funding roads whenever possible, not that we're going to be building super-roads all over the place. So there'd be no reason to build even farther out. If you expect there to be so many people moving so much farther out, there's going to have to be new roads as well as expanded existing roads in order to fit them, even with perfect automated cars - the pavement can only hold so many vehicles at once. You would need to build a bunch of new freeways to really be able to support people randomly moving 120 miles out "because my car's automated now  ".Just because you don't have to drive yourself doesn't mean losing 4 hours a day in commutes is enjoyable: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/28/realestate/28comm.html Nintendo Kid fucked around with this message at 18:09 on Aug 7, 2014 |
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Aug 7, 2014 18:01
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There will probably still be a hard limit on how long commutes could get, but where here commutes might be 30 minutes on average, bumping that out to 45 minutes or even an hour probably wouldn't be so bad if you didn't have to drive. And that leaves a shitload of room for growth.
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Aug 7, 2014 18:30
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PittTheElder posted:There will probably still be a hard limit on how long commutes could get, but where here commutes might be 30 minutes on average, bumping that out to 45 minutes or even an hour probably wouldn't be so bad if you didn't have to drive. And that leaves a shitload of room for growth. Where's here? I mean New York City only has these pockets of regular 90 mile commuters because its the focus of a metropolitan area of 20 million people, and most of the commuting population never considered going that far out in the first place, or is only far away (but not quite that far) because they're actually on or accessible to century-old rail transit lines. People aren't going to be likely to willingly move farther out just because they no longer have to drive themselves, and when you have a lot less people involved all around it takes a lot longer to build up closer areas "too much" for people who hate that sort of thing. Not to mention that adding an extra 15 minutes to the commute could easily mean only going 7-10 miles farther out because the more spread out you are the less likely you're going to get any sort of high speed road taking you the extra way, rather than you as the super-sprawl person taking some trundly old road built to connect farms in 1948 that you can only do 25-40 on.
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Aug 7, 2014 18:35
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Nintendo Kid posted:How, where? Like seriously you're going to have to actually put some stuff forward here. And what transit to cut from either? Ok to be fair spending money on highways instead of transit would be more accurate. Alot of the construction money comes from the federal government which is plentiful leaving the states on the hook for actually upkeeping all the roads built. This is partly why our infrastructure is in such poor shape, all the money is for building new facilities. Leading to such insanity as building a $118m bypass for a town with 10k residents to "reduce traffic in the center of the city" Illiana tollway, illegally bypassed the regions state planning agency quote:On October 9, the Chicago Metropolitan Planning Agency board voted 10-4 against amending the GO TO 2040 regional plan to include the Illiana Expressway as a “fiscally constrained” project. Doing so, the equivalent of adding the toll road to the region’s transportation budget, would have ensured funding for construction before 2040. According to the Illinois Regional Planning Act, this vote should have stopped the project from proceeding. Instead, IDOT scheduled a second vote a week later by the MPO Policy Committee, and made sure that committee’s vote went in its favor. The I-69 in Indiana, new multi billion dollar highway whose's competitor, the I-64 is the least traveled highway in state. NYC's Tappen Zee Bridge: original proposal had subway tracks but now only has lanes that might be used for BRT and the state isnt even commited to that. They are also Then theres the lawsuit against a highway project on the grounds that "that low-income residents could suffer “irreparable harm” if the project moves forward. The groups contend that the project advantages wealthier auto commuters at the expense of poorer transit riders, and the judge found that the plaintiffs have a likelihood of success on the merits." I believe the lawsuit has concluded in the plantiffs favour but cant seem to find articles about the trails result. And you have related things like the constant raids on New York's MTA funds (see also) to cover the state. Also dont forget transit projects being held to higher level of financial 'scrutiny' than highway projects. (source) Communist Zombie fucked around with this message at 18:48 on Aug 7, 2014 |
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Aug 7, 2014 18:41
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In the case of the Tappan Zee Bridge, there's no "subway" class rapid transit on either side of the existing bridge. And the plain rail connection was always iffy because it wouldn't have provision for freight rail (which could actually use a freight crossing of the Hudson River this far south) and little plausibility of tying in existing Metro-North/NJTransit passenger operations in the area that the BRT method can't solve just as well with less logistics issue. Also 64 isnt a "competitor" to 69 - they're intended to be perpendicular and carry completely different primary traffic flows.
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Aug 7, 2014 18:50
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Boldor posted:
It's physically impossible for renewables to produce enough electricity to even keep up with current consumption, let alone power cars on top of that. Nuclear is much-beloved by many goons (and internet nerds generally) as a "sustainable" option, although the technologies for newer (safer/cheaper/cleaner) reactors are unproven, and it's entirely unclear that either the political will or the resources exist to actually replace the current fossil fuel infrastructure before it runs out and/or destroys the climate. From the US EIA currently: EIA posted:What is U.S. electricity generation by energy source? Right now, and barring a political and technological miracle in the future, electrical cars are just another (and less efficient) way of burning fossil fuels. I mean sure, in a fantasy world where electricity is both fully sustainably generated and provides twice the current KWH, the rest of your theorycrafting might hold. But in practical terms, the kind of future where everyone has a self-driving, fully sustainable car is utopian thinking on the scale of the super-skyscrapers and 50-lane expressways imagined in the 1920s.
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Aug 7, 2014 18:52
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God dammit. I actually just came here to post about actual traffic engineering stuff. Here goes: Physically separated bike lanes are, generally speaking, a good thing, and pretty standard in Denmark and the Netherlands. They are starting to appear in North America, but rather being raised up on a curb like in Europe, they tend to just be a chunk of roadway separated by a concrete barrier. One consequence is that drivers sometimes end up going down them: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/vancouver-driver-in-separated-bike-lane-almost-right-hooks-cyclist-1.2729054 I guess one solution would be to put a bollard at the end of each block, physically blocking cars out. But is there some reason why, in North America, they don't just raise the bike lane up on a curb?
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Aug 7, 2014 18:58
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Lead out in cuffs posted:God dammit. I actually just came here to post about actual traffic engineering stuff. Here goes: North america is absolutely determined to gently caress bike infra up as hard as possible. I'm sure it's just a lack of funding and expertise but the conspiracy part of me almost thinks they're doing it on purpose to discredit any spending on cycling related infrastructure. Spend just enough to get people angry about government waste,but not enough to actually improve cycling. Also, cost aside, I think a big reason our bike lanes are generally always painted on or a little curb is so they can more easily be turned back into car lanes after the whole "experiment" with bike infrastructure is deemed a failure.
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Aug 7, 2014 19:01
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Lead out in cuffs posted:I guess one solution would be to put a bollard at the end of each block, physically blocking cars out. But is there some reason why, in North America, they don't just raise the bike lane up on a curb? We've got a curbed one under construction here in Cambridge, MA: http://www.cambridgema.gov/theworks/cityprojects/2012/westernave.aspx There's an existing curbed cycletrack (in both directions, one on each side of the street) on Vassar Street in Cambridge, which I think is somewhat poorly designed. Having it at curb level, with no real barrier between the "sidewalk" and the "bike lane" basically leads to a lot of pedestrians walking in the bike lane and pissing off cyclists. The Western Ave project I linked to above aims to fix that problem by having trees and other street furniture separating the cycle track from the sidewalk.
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Aug 7, 2014 19:05
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Lead out in cuffs posted:It's physically impossible for renewables to produce enough electricity to even keep up with current consumption, let alone power cars on top of that. Nuclear is much-beloved by many goons (and internet nerds generally) as a "sustainable" option, although the technologies for newer (safer/cheaper/cleaner) reactors are unproven, and it's entirely unclear that either the political will or the resources exist to actually replace the current fossil fuel infrastructure before it runs out and/or destroys the climate. Newer reactors are proven as all hell, because in the case of North America "newer" designs include stuff from the late 70s to today that have already been operating in other places for 30 years without issue, and would be themselves perfect replacements for our current 20% nuclear generation as well as generally being able to put out more power within the same footprint and uing only marginally more fuel than most of the old reactors in service. Incidentally there's already new nuclear reactors being built in Georgia, of the Westinghouse AP 1000 (generation III) type.
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Aug 7, 2014 19:11
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Baronjutter posted:Also, cost aside, I think a big reason our bike lanes are generally always painted on or a little curb is so they can more easily be turned back into car lanes after the whole "experiment" with bike infrastructure is deemed a failure. I feel its more due to institutional apathy and benign neglect of bike lanes are lanes, lanes go on roads, ergo paint bike lanes on roads; mixed with heavy amero-centrism where american institutions have to reinvent the wheel because we're too good to look at what other countries, or even other states!, are doing.  Nintendo Kid posted:In the case of the Tappan Zee Bridge, there's no "subway" class rapid transit on either side of the existing bridge. And the plain rail connection was always iffy because it wouldn't have provision for freight rail (which could actually use a freight crossing of the Hudson River this far south) and little plausibility of tying in existing Metro-North/NJTransit passenger operations in the area that the BRT method can't solve just as well with less logistics issue. Fair enough, I dont really know those areas. But I do think I proved my point about how DoTs are subservient to highways. And I forgot to mention all the corruption and graft that highway contracts are used for.
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Aug 7, 2014 19:14
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Echo 3 posted:We've got a curbed one under construction here in Cambridge, MA: http://www.cambridgema.gov/theworks/cityprojects/2012/westernave.aspx Yeah a lot of the bike lanes in Berlin were like that too and people constantly would stray into the bike lane because the were just sort of the outer edge of the sidewalk and barely marked with a slightly different pavement or border. I guess it's a hell of a lot better to have bike/ped conflict vs bike/car conflict, from a safety perspective. Still, it's not like this isn't a well figured out science. The Dutch and Danes pretty much have bike infra design perfected, one only needs to copy and learn.
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Aug 7, 2014 19:16
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At least around here, Florida is moving quicker with oversized and segregated bike lane projects, so it's not like all hope is lost or something. http://www.baynews9.com/content/news/baynews9/news/article.html/content/news/articles/bn9/2014/8/6/new_bike_lanes_for_f.html https://twitter.com/CityofTampa/status/496305931878400001 https://twitter.com/CityofTampa/status/497109001633796097 https://twitter.com/CityofTampa/status/496351049083813889 Varance fucked around with this message at 19:32 on Aug 7, 2014 |
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Aug 7, 2014 19:22
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Communist Zombie posted:
But you didn't really. I-69 is part of a long term plan to make a direct-ish all freeway route between eastern Canada and Mexico. The Tappan Zee bridge is located in a region extremely well served by transit that has been developed for a very long time - and where making a cross-river conenction between the west of hudson and east of hudson operating zones could introduce serious track issues. Wisconsin's highway bullshit is coming from the current and recent state government officials having special ties to contractors and most of it is stuff being done in places that were never going to get transit. And the Illinois tollway extension thing has similar kickback stuff going on. Notably both the major interchange revision in Wisconsin and the Illinois tollway thing are or were planned to be built well within the existing developed areas around cities, too, and especially in the case of the Wisconsin interchange were going to provide little in the way of car capacity benefits.
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Aug 7, 2014 19:23
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Lead out in cuffs posted:Right now, and barring a political and technological miracle in the future, electrical cars are just another (and less efficient) way of burning fossil fuels. Are they truly less efficient though? Just by concentrating your carbon emissions in one place, it becomes much more feasible to scrub it and reduce the carbon content before it hits the atmosphere. Now I have no idea if US plants actually bother to do it, but doing it on a few thousand power plants is much easier than doing it on a few million consumer vehicles.
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Aug 7, 2014 20:59
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Communist Zombie posted:The I-69 in Indiana, new multi billion dollar highway whose's competitor, the I-64 is the least traveled highway in state. That article is wrong. Southwest Indiana doesn't want I-69. Several counties fought against it (including Monroe County, where IU is. INDOT actually held their road work projects hostage until they allowed 69 to go through). Sixty-Nine only exists so the rich people in Indianapolis can import their servants straight from mexico. edit: In one town where the main paving company has a plant, people chained the gates shut to stop them from building it.
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Aug 7, 2014 21:19
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Peanut President posted:That article is wrong. Southwest Indiana doesn't want I-69. Several counties fought against it (including Monroe County, where IU is. INDOT actually held their road work projects hostage until they allowed 69 to go through). Oh wow, didnt know that people got that opposed to it. Nintendo Kid posted:But you didn't really. I-69 is part of a long term plan to make a direct-ish all freeway route between eastern Canada and Mexico. The Tappan Zee bridge is located in a region extremely well served by transit that has been developed for a very long time - and where making a cross-river conenction between the west of hudson and east of hudson operating zones could introduce serious track issues. Track issues are a legitimate reason to drop it but that doesnt explain why the state is so hostile to the idea of buslanes and transit improvements. quote:Wisconsin's highway bullshit is coming from the current and recent state government officials having special ties to contractors and most of it is stuff being done in places that were never going to get transit. The articles that I want to cite seem to have disappeared so Im conceding this point. Can anyone find me an article about how the result of the discrimination lawsuit against a Wisconsin highway went? I remember reading that the DoT was found guilty and was ordered to provide tranist service to the affected areas, but I cant find any sources. quote:The Illinois tollway thing are or were planned to be built well within the existing developed areas around cities, too, and especially in the case of the Wisconsin interchange were going to provide little in the way of car capacity benefits. Cept for the Illinois tollway in particular the regional planning agency denied it funding or even being part of its master plan which pokes a hole into it being needed and even certain definitions of 'planned' Though is straying from my original point slightly, which i dont even remember now. State DoTs will build unneeded unnecessary highways, implicitily sacrificing transit by promoting sprawl even if they dont take money directly from transit programs, aided by beholden politicians who will make sure the money keeps flowing. And this is an institutional if not structural issue of the system. And Im done arguing about this, mainly due to having forgotten the point.
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Aug 8, 2014 00:04
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Communist Zombie posted:Track issues are a legitimate reason to drop it but that doesnt explain why the state is so hostile to the idea of buslanes and transit improvements. Basically because the Tappan Zee bridge is situated where it is only because it's about the closest possible bridge location to New York City across the Hudson that can dodge the radius where the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey would take jurisdiction over it (the Port Authority is entitled to take jurisdiction over all Hudson River and New York Harbor bridges and tunnels within 25 miles of a point in Midtown Manhattan - the Tappan Zee Bridge is basically located at 25.000001 miles from that point). This allowed the route of the New York State Thruway to remain entirely within the Thruway's authority. That's why it crosses the Hudson at one of its wider points - 3 miles shore to shore or so - and in an area where access to the west has to immediately cut through and climb out a rather high ridgeline for the area. Now these factors all contribute to it being located somewhere that makes it nearly impossible to sanely connect current passenger rail systems across it. The lines on the east side of the Hudson are either way down at riverbank elevation (the Hudson Line) or another 6 miles to the east and requiring extensive cutting and climb/descent to get to (the Harlem Line). On the west side the closer line is 7 miles away, again up the cliffs and such and is a dead end on the Pascack Valley line, and the Port Jervis line is a further 8 miles away. You could basically produce out of this a minimal commuter service from Orange and Bergen County commuters to the edge city of White Plains and general southern Westchester County, but those loads are already being handled pretty well by existing transit, and there's minimal future growth expected due to regional development. And consider the traffic crossing it - there's nothing for a transit line to really do for it. The existing commuter rail is robust, and there's no room on either side of the bridge or really much point to add new BRT or other transit that would go to people's destinations. And the long distance traffic across it, which is pretty heavy since the bridge is part of a cheaper and less congested bypass of NYC proper, certainly won't be using it. No matter which side of the river you're on, you'd be better off going down your respective side's transit corridors to get from the suburbs to the cities rather than crossing the river for it. That's why I said the only rail option that would really have made sense was freight rail connections - currently freight from southwest of NYC aiming to get across has to either take a low capacity railcar ferry in New York Bay or go nearly 140 miles upriver to cross just south of Albany. However, the freight rail operators in the region didn't seem interested in spending to build connections to the new bridge which is why that's probably not going to happen. Plus to be really effective (since the new bridge's eastern bank landing is very close to an existing rail station a few hundred feet down the cliff) a BRT would have to either have a station on the bridge itself with an elevator down, or a special set of ramps to wind down to the station.
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Aug 8, 2014 00:38
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Still catching up on this thread, but I thought I'd jump ahead and post my favorite local clusterfucks for a professional opinion.  This is the smallest; I kinda wish they'd just eminent domain the adjacent parking lots and make the street ends line up. Not likely, since they're currently spending money fixing the crosswalks, none of which have ramps off the sidewalk at present.  These streets significantly predate the interstate, obviously. Dunno why they don't just use all that empty space to make it less horrible. The spot where the two offramps converge and become 6th street has the worst asphalt ruts I have ever seen, also.  
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Aug 8, 2014 01:26
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It's like they tried to make an interchange and forgot that you had to do it in three dimensions.
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Aug 8, 2014 02:05
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Javid posted:
Haha, oh man, none of our streets line up; you just have to know which way to turn in order to go "straight".  
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Aug 8, 2014 02:43
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PittTheElder posted:Are they truly less efficient though? Just by concentrating your carbon emissions in one place, it becomes much more feasible to scrub it and reduce the carbon content before it hits the atmosphere. Now I have no idea if US plants actually bother to do it, but doing it on a few thousand power plants is much easier than doing it on a few million consumer vehicles. I was thinking more in terms of EROEI due to losses from the battery (vs gasoline which can be stored more efficiently. However, now that I'm looking, I'm having a hard time getting solid numbers for comparison. You would also have to factor in coal power transportation, generation, and transmission EROEI vs gasoline extraction, refinement and transportation EROEI. It is possible that electric cars use less energy than gasoline powered ones.  For sure, though, electric cars would make carbon scrubbing easier. I don't think they're doing it widely in the US as yet, but Obama has been making rumblings about mandating it for new coal plants. Of course, carbon sequestration makes the electricity generation EROEI even worse, and the feasibility of widespread adoption of electric cars even lower.
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Aug 8, 2014 07:44
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Lead out in cuffs posted:I was thinking more in terms of EROEI due to losses from the battery (vs gasoline which can be stored more efficiently. However, now that I'm looking, I'm having a hard time getting solid numbers for comparison. You would also have to factor in coal power transportation, generation, and transmission EROEI vs gasoline extraction, refinement and transportation EROEI. It is possible that electric cars use less energy than gasoline powered ones. The EPA just gained the authority to better regulate coal plants, and Obama proposed stricter regulations, but now a bunch of states are suing to keep it from happening because ARE JORBS. It's kind of a big deal in the transportation industry, too: coal shipments are huge for freight rail.
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Aug 8, 2014 12:15
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You'd think they'd be happy. Carbon sequestration means burning more coal per kWh, which means more coal needing to be freighted around.
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Aug 8, 2014 16:25
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Not looking at the total EROEI, some back of the envelope calculations put a 100% coal powered electric car at a lb CO2/mile close to that of a car that gets 20 mpg. So depending on how you get your power, an electric car is anywhere from "not great" to "a little better than a Prius".
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Aug 8, 2014 17:51
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I don't think you're reading that correctly. The conclusion is that if your grid is 100% coal powered, then you'll get about
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Aug 8, 2014 18:02
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This might be of intrest to anyone who does cad stuff in the thread. http://bdon.org/cad/ Tons of cities all with tons of layers of transport info. Also some great news out of CA http://la.streetsblog.org/2014/08/07/california-has-officially-ditched-car-centric-level-of-service/ "In an extreme example of LOS wreaking havoc, a lawsuit in 2009 forced San Francisco to spend more money studying the traffic impacts of its bike plan than it will take to completely implement it. But perhaps a larger change will be what kind of development the law now encourages. When the state measured transportation impacts of a project based on car delay, it was fighting against its own environmental goals. Using LOS, it was easier and cheaper to build projects in outlying areas where individual intersections would show less delay resulting from new development. At the same time it was much harder and more expensive to build in dense areas where there was already a lot of traffic, and where measured LOS impacts would require expensive mitigations or reduced project size — but also where higher density would make transit, walking, and bicycling more viable transportation choices." Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 21:03 on Aug 8, 2014 |
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Aug 8, 2014 19:10
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Lead out in cuffs posted:God dammit. I actually just came here to post about actual traffic engineering stuff. Here goes:
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Aug 9, 2014 01:04
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New question based on what annoyed me today: Right off I-5 here is this thing.  The problem is that somebody decided all of 199 needs to stop every time somebody leaves the fred meyer parking lot. During the evening rush this will back up traffic clear to the previous intersection, and because people are loving retards, they just stack up across it and block a road that actually matters.  In another city nearby, there's this solution to a similar intersection:  The right lane has a permanent green and is physically separated from the lanes exiting traffic can turn into. The barrier is mountable and the things sticking up just bend and bounce back if you do go over it so it's not an impediment to emergency vehicles at all, but you don't have to be stuck waiting on the piddly amount of traffic that turns left onto that road. Why wouldn't they do this EVERYWHERE there's a lovely T intersection like that?
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Aug 10, 2014 05:02
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Javid posted:Why wouldn't they do this EVERYWHERE there's a lovely T intersection like that? What you would do, assuming the cost could be justified and the side road is minor enough, is to install an intersection like this one, with the farside traffic only receiving a red if someone requests a pedestrian phase. The one I linked used to be a permanent green, but you can zoom to street view to see the crosswalk modification. Alternately, assuming nobody cares about the ped crossings, you could just make the entire thing right turn only to eliminate the intersection and lengthen the appropriate left turn lane to accommodate extra traffic from U-turns. It appears that both adjacent intersections also have entrances to the plaza, so it's not that huge a deal to pull off (assuming the community doesn't cry foul). The ped crossing can be pereserved with a pedestrian signal, which likely wouldn't screw up traffic anywhere near as much as the light turning red every time the detectors go off. Varance fucked around with this message at 05:58 on Aug 10, 2014 |
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Aug 10, 2014 05:43
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