Cichlidae posted:

Yeah, I was telling a friend about that the other day. Depending on how the conflict monitor is set up, it would be trivial to either completely buttfuck a city's roads for a while or cause thousands of (potentially fatal) accidents. I'm surprised foreign governments haven't gone after traffic signal systems, honestly. It seems like extremely valuable sabotage.

Cichlidae posted:

Yeah, I was telling a friend about that the other day. Depending on how the conflict monitor is set up, it would be trivial to either completely buttfuck a city's roads for a while or cause thousands of (potentially fatal) accidents. I'm surprised foreign governments haven't gone after traffic signal systems, honestly. It seems like extremely valuable sabotage.

Communist Zombie posted:

Is it sad that I kinda want to go around hacking cities lights and making them work better.

Also would this work to get the Cleveland Healthline BRT's priority signal turned on again?

Cichlidae posted:

I suppose that depends on why they turned it off in the first place! Do you have an article or something?

And it's not sad at all. There are so many mis-timed signals around here, and around the country. They're supposed to be re-timed every 2 years, but almost nobody has the engineers to spare.

Streetsblog posted:

...
The Plain Dealer reported in 2010 that it takes an average of 44 minutes to travel the seven miles from downtown’s Public Square to East Cleveland. That’s only three minutes faster than the bus line it replaced, and more than ten minutes off the 33-minute pace that project planners promised. Despite some tweaking around the margins, not much has changed since 2010, according to sources familiar with the project.

The frustrating thing is that the Healthline could easily run faster. But the city of Cleveland simply hasn’t activated the transit priority technology for most of the route, according to advocates.

“We all know it takes 10 more minutes than it should because of the light issue,” said Marc Lefkowitz of GreenCityBlueLake, a Cleveland-based environmental think tank that has been active in trying to resolve the issue.

John McGovern, current chair of RTA’s Citizen’s Advisory Board, said shortly after the Healthline began operating, the city turned off the transit priority technology for most of the traffic signals.

“I recall hearing a line from the city that ‘important people in cars’ were pissed that they had to wait for a bus to make their left turn into work,” he said. “The city’s course of action was to turn off all the expensive sensors so one man could control the whole thing so as to be accountable to the needs of these very important people.”
...
Brad Chase, one of Lefkowitz’s former co-workers at GreenCityBlueLake, made it a personal project years ago to try to resolve the signal timing issue. The effort resulted in a news article and several meetings with city staff but little progress, he said. Ultimately, the city chose to leave signal timing to two officials in its traffic division: Andy Cross, a traffic engineer, and Rob Mavec, commissioner of traffic engineering and streets. (Mavec did not respond to requests for an interview for this story.)

Cross and Mavec reportedly toyed with the signal timing to an extent. They lengthened the green phase on Euclid and shortened the turn phases and crosswalk phases. Since 2010, the city has also raised the speed limit for buses on Euclid Avenue from 25 to 35. But for the most part, the signal technology that RTA and the Federal Transit Administration paid for has been deactivated, according to advocates and a public official with knowledge of the situation who asked to remain anonymous.

“In [the city's] minds, there was never a need for this complicated system in the first place, and things seem to be running pretty smoothly, ridership is up, RTA isn’t really complaining, so why make it more complicated?” said Chase

Baronjutter posted:

Yeah I've heard a lot of lamenting from planners that the (deserved) backlash against "urban renewal" and blasting highways through neighbourhoods using ED has swayed things so much the other way that we have a "tragedy of the anti-commons" where politicians and planners are so terrified of even thinking about taking a few feet of someone's property, let alone a building, lest they look like Moses ripping up the city.

smackfu posted:

I wonder if they are just worried about eminent domain lawsuits dragging on and killing the schedule.

Devor posted:

Yeah, I mean you route one interstate viaduct through black neighborhoods, and suddenly Congress is passing the National Environmental Policy Act and making you do Environmental Assessments every time you propose to tear down a building.

Grundulum posted:

Only the people whose property is being acquired can bring a lawsuit, right? So in the above case of a landlord who might actually want to sell the property, it's not like the neighbors could make a stink about it? For that matter, if the person agrees to sell it's not exactly using eminent domain, is it?

Baronjutter posted:

"Why did this do this to my road???" question.

The road I live on, and thus drive on a lot is fairly wide. No bike lanes but it's wide and quiet enough that there's more than enough room. It also means at intersections there's naturally enough room for a right turn lane. In one such instance my road crosses a busy 1-way road that also sees a lot of pedestrians crossing. So people turning right onto the one-way would line up along the right so that they could turn when safe on a red, and not hold up traffic behind them when the light turns green but there's peds in the way.

Recently the city added a huge yellow apron thingy to force the intersection to stay single lane. The area now sees cars lined much much farther back, often blocking the side street with a busy fast food restaurant.

Why would they do this? Did they not like that drivers were automatically using some common sense and dividing them selves into straight/right ? Because it was "unofficial" was there a risk of people going to the right then going straight and hitting cars on their left? Make space for bikes? I don't get it, the intersection worked very well.

Here's the area:
http://goo.gl/maps/JHvJo

Seems more than wide enough for them to have put in a little 2-3 car capacity right turn lane. But now a single car turning right can block the entire light cycle for everyone behind them if pedestrian traffic is high.

Devor posted:

It's because of how the lanes line up. The through traffic needs to be all the way to the right, otherwise they would tend to drive straight into the oncoming left turn lane.

Baronjutter posted:

Worked without incident for a very long time some how. People would just go around people stopped waiting to turn right. The accidents would often happen a bit to the right at the McDonald's Parking lot. Driving around there I could always tell if someone was a lovely awful driver they were invariably heading to McDonalds.

quote:

Work is anticipated to begin in the spring of 2014 and be completed in the fall of 2015. The replacement of this bridge is to be undertaken with Federal-aid funds. The estimated construction cost for this project is $2,000,000.

quote:

The project consists of the replacement of Bridge No. 02190 using a rapid construction technique to compress the time to 68 hours for replacement of the structure due to the high traffic volumes in the area and the associated inconvenience of long duration stage construction used in typical bridge replacement projects. ... DOT Project No. 0082-0298 was awarded to J. Iapaluccio, Inc. of Brookfield at a cost of $1,652,051.35. The project is being administered by the District 1 Office of Construction in Rocky Hill and is scheduled for completed in November 2014.

GlyphGryph posted:

Maybe this was asked and answered somewhere in the long, lengthy history of this thread, but:

Question: What do you consider to be an effective way of marking, and even place, left or right turn only lanes?

I live in Massachusetts, and moving from Rhode Island this was one of the worst changes. The only markers here for left turn only lanes seems to be a left turn only arrow right at the end of the lane, that you can't see until you're on top of it because there are cars in front of you, and along with our super-crappy rotaries seems to cause no end of near-collisions or actual collisions as people desperately don't want to go in the direction the lane wants them to.

This is the absolute worse in my area:
https://www.google.com/maps/@42.4257439,-71.0676427,135m/data=!3m1!1e3

This is a two line road, heading north, that has a right turn only lane in the 100 foot stretch between the first and second light, and then a left turn only lane before the second light. This means that if you want to go straight, you actually have to switch lanes inside the intersection.

This IS actually a bad design, right, and it's not just me?

But I don't even know what a good design would look like here, with everything so cramped. But I assume there has to be a less stupid way to do this sort of thing?

Is putting "left turn only" indicators on the road, after it's too late to leave the lane, actually considered good policy for some reason? Does the solid white line actually mean you aren't supposed to leave the lane?

I actually miss Rhode Island roads, compared to my Boston Suburbs roads they seem so much better.

GlyphGryph posted:

Maybe this was asked and answered somewhere in the long, lengthy history of this thread, but:

Question: What do you consider to be an effective way of marking, and even place, left or right turn only lanes?

I live in Massachusetts, and moving from Rhode Island this was one of the worst changes. The only markers here for left turn only lanes seems to be a left turn only arrow right at the end of the lane, that you can't see until you're on top of it because there are cars in front of you, and along with our super-crappy rotaries seems to cause no end of near-collisions or actual collisions as people desperately don't want to go in the direction the lane wants them to.

This is the absolute worse in my area:
https://www.google.com/maps/@42.4257439,-71.0676427,135m/data=!3m1!1e3

This is a two line road, heading north, that has a right turn only lane in the 100 foot stretch between the first and second light, and then a left turn only lane before the second light. This means that if you want to go straight, you actually have to switch lanes inside the intersection.

This IS actually a bad design, right, and it's not just me?

But I don't even know what a good design would look like here, with everything so cramped. But I assume there has to be a less stupid way to do this sort of thing?

Is putting "left turn only" indicators on the road, after it's too late to leave the lane, actually considered good policy for some reason? Does the solid white line actually mean you aren't supposed to leave the lane?

I actually miss Rhode Island roads, compared to my Boston Suburbs roads they seem so much better.

GlyphGryph posted:

That's actually a good idea, thanks. I'm just always terrified going through there, because I either get stuck in the left lane or have to deal with someone trying desperately to get out of the left lane.

The distance from light to light is so incredibly short, though, that even if you made the whole thing left turn arrows, by the time you see them it's probably too late. Should I just lodge a general complaint, or is there something specific I should request like "Add a sign or something you can see before you get stuck in the lane"?

SurgicalOntologist posted:

quote:

Signs would be tricky because it would have to be something like "Left Lane Must Turn Left at XXX Road" placed on the previous traffic signal. I think adding another left turn arrow pavement marking would be a good idea.

GlyphGryph posted:

I'm not sure where you would put it though - the entire length of lane seems to be left turn only, so no matter where you would put it, it would mean you wouldn't know it's left turn only?

I guess there's not really an easy solution and that's why it's still the way it is.

GlyphGryph posted:

Also, am I misunderstanding what the solid lines on turn-only lanes mean (i.e. that you should no longer switch lanes?)

Because I don't think I've ever seen a left turn only arrow occur in the greater boston area before the line turns solid.

SurgicalOntologist posted:

I'm going to stop editing my post... on the topic of awkward lanes, how about US-6 east-bound between RI-10 and I-95? The left-most lane becomes right-exit-only in about 200m, meanwhile traffic is entering on your left.

Cichlidae posted:

With a normal four-way intersection, it is a lot safer the way they've striped it. Having an "unofficial" second lane is a huge hazard to an opposing car turning left. In this case, since the cross street is one-way, it's not quite as dangerous. There aren't as many conflict points and there aren't opposing left turns that could conceal a through vehicle.

You'd have to do a full cost/benefit analysis to figure out whether it was worth doing, but typically, even the very remote possibility of an expensive accident significantly outweighs the delay costs you are guaranteed to incur. And we engineers love to be risk-averse when we can afford it.

Lead out in cuffs posted:

It gets much, much worse when you include cyclists, and an (incorrect but pervasive) expectation that cyclists should always be to the far right, even when going straight or turning left. Four way stops become eight-way, and intersections end up with more possibilities for conflict than not.

Kaal posted:

Well, cycle lanes ought to be on the far right because it reduces conflicts and is safer, but that is often not the case in Canada and America.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlApbxLz6pA

SurgicalOntologist posted:

Yeah I didn't even mention the turns. Awesome diagram. The most dangerous spot on there is not even what I mentioned, it's the merge onto the I-95 S onramp (not sure what it's merging with... traffic from Memorial Blvd?). It's gotta be the right-most merge on the bottom of your diagram.

For those who don't know: here it is. The merge area is like 1.1 car lengths, and you come into it blind. I swear every time I drive through I almost have an accident. I'm always like "Oh, right there's a merge around the corner...Holy poo poo no we're merging right here...drat it's over thank god there wasn't a car coming the other way."

It's even worse now with construction going on, it's narrower and you can't see the other lane until it's too late. At least they have a sign "Warning: short merge area".

Carbon dioxide posted:

A Dutch town official sent a wrong paint colour code to the paint company.

As a result, some traffic islands in town have now been painted pink instead of white:



The town government's first reaction was "We're gonna get them changed to the normal colour within a few days". But today, a town official said that he got a whole lot of positive reactions to the change, so he's gonna find out whether it's possible to keep them this way.

===

In other news, need to get some potholes fixed? These Russians found a way to get them fixed real fast

Cichlidae posted:

I read about the pink islands on Spiegel: http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/verkehrsinseln-in-rosa-falsche-farbe-im-niederlaendischen-wijchen-a-989673.html

On there, they say they're getting repainted later this week, but who knows? I think it's a lovely splash of color, especially since it's only some islands and not all of them.

John Dough posted:

That was the municipality's initial reaction, but now they have received so many positive comments that they are keeping them, and have hired a local artist to spruce it up some more

Fragrag posted:

I'm staying in suburban Jakarta at the moment and my god the traffic infrastructure is so awful. I don't mind the driving style that much, but there are so many cars and the roads simply can't handle the volume. We left my cousin's house and not even a mile away we end up in traffic and there's till roughly 30km to our destination. I'll think twice before cursing the traffic back home in Antwerp. (but I still will because we're still the second most congested city according to INRIX)