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I once read that road-wear ws proportional to the 8th power of axle weight, is that correct? How do you road guys model that kinda thing?
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Oct 29, 2014 16:20
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Kaal posted:Agreed. Indeed realistically virtually all of the human-caused damage to roads is being caused by commercial trucking. If we want to target our taxes on people who are damaging the roads then we should target semi-trucks 99% of the time. The remaining basic road spending requirements are driven by environmental damage, weather damage, accidents, and community reinvestment. Yeah I'm aware of that. I'm just saying that of the remaining 1% or less of road damage caused by miles driven, different consumer vehicles with different loadings can cause more damage even within that. Someone's dumbass triple cab pickup with a bed that's never used still puts more weight on the road than that dude still chugging along in a Geo Metro. Cichlidae posted:The whole idea of a VMT tax is fantastic for truckers and politicians, but pretty terrible from an environmental perspective. America has strong ties with lobbyists over common sense, so I expect it'll catch on pretty quickly. Raise road funds through progressive income tax a la 1960s style brackets. 
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Oct 29, 2014 16:42
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smackfu posted:A lot of those countries have tax rates of over 100% on fuel. At that point, it's more of a penalty fee than a tax. Is it, though? Going from the last page of discussion, it sounds like that's just the level of tax you need to offset road maintenance, never mind trying to account for environmental or human health costs. Even going from this thread in general, how many times do you hear the American engineers saying "Well, there's the right way to do this, and then there's the way it's being done because we don't have the funds" versus the Dutch engineers?
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Oct 29, 2014 16:57
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Nintendo Kid posted:Yeah I'm aware of that. I'm just saying that of the remaining 1% or less of road damage caused by miles driven, different consumer vehicles with different loadings can cause more damage even within that. Someone's dumbass triple cab pickup with a bed that's never used still puts more weight on the road than that dude still chugging along in a Geo Metro. Oh yeah, I totally agree. Sorry if I came across as disagreeing with you. What I was trying (and obviously not really succeeding) to say was that the entire idea of legitimating mileage fees based on how much "damage" cars do to the road is really just founded on fundamental misunderstandings of how roads are actually damaged. Gas taxes can be rationalized as payment for the societal cost exacted by using that fuel, but a mileage tax is basically just a head tax with an industrial-sized thumb on the scale. Lead out in cuffs posted:Is it, though? Going from the last page of discussion, it sounds like that's just the level of tax you need to offset road maintenance, never mind trying to account for environmental or human health costs. Even going from this thread in general, how many times do you hear the American engineers saying "Well, there's the right way to do this, and then there's the way it's being done because we don't have the funds" versus the Dutch engineers? I totally agree with this. The truth of the matter is that Americans enjoy extremely cheap fuel prices at the pump - almost half the price of most countries in Europe. It's pretty clear that our infrastructure funding issues are entirely self-inflicted. Kaal fucked around with this message at 17:21 on Oct 29, 2014 |
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Oct 29, 2014 17:12
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The cheap gas also encourages land use and economic patterns that eventually come to absolutely depend on said cheap gas, making any shock to the system (be it higher gas prices, traffic capacity, and lagging existing highway upkeep). Really painting themselves into a corner but the only solution most people push for is "cheaper paint!"
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Oct 29, 2014 17:37
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Britain raised gas taxes massively in the 90s for little reason, and it seems to have only put out marginal benefits for maintaining their roads or transit (especially since they insist on retaining multiple private rail companies for most rail transit, and multiple private bus companies for most bus transit). Prior to the about a decade long "tax escalator" thing their prices were not much higher than American/Canadian prices, now they're among the most expensive in Europe. Anyway gas has plummeted to $2.57 a gallon this week here in Virginia, no idea why that's going on.
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Oct 29, 2014 18:53
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Kaal posted:the entire idea of legitimating mileage fees based on how much "damage" cars do to the road is really just founded on fundamental misunderstandings of how roads are actually damaged. Gas taxes can be rationalized as payment for the societal cost exacted by using that fuel, but a mileage tax is basically just a head tax with an industrial-sized thumb on the scale. OK, so replace every single vehicle on the road with a Prius. Then a mileage tax would be very fair. 
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Oct 29, 2014 19:08
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chmods please posted:OK, so replace every single vehicle on the road with a Prius. Then a mileage tax would be very fair. Haha yeah that would definitely solve the problem of a mileage tax being intentionally blind to the fact that not all vehicles are created equally.
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Oct 29, 2014 19:12
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Nintendo Kid posted:Anyway gas has plummeted to $2.57 a gallon this week here in Virginia, no idea why that's going on. The US is pumping a poo poo ton of oil into the market is what's happening. Oil and gas companies have invested something like 2.5 trillion dollars into fracking over the last 5 or so years and now we've got a glut of both.
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Oct 29, 2014 19:34
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It's also the time of year when they start switching to winter gas which is cheaper to produce than summer gas.
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Oct 29, 2014 19:45
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I expect this version of Oregon's mileage tax to die just like the last one.
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Oct 29, 2014 19:46
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I know this is the traffic engineering thread not the model tram engineering thread, but I'm building something not unlike the Chicago "L" (elevated metro) but I'm wanting larger spans between supports. Instead of using a web I'm using big solid I beams. Imagining a simple structure of 2 I beams under each track (one under each rail) and loads being nothing but trams (no metro let alone heavy rail) about how tall would the I beams need to be? Just a general ballpark given experience with bridge design. The spans would be about 20m/70'. This is about double what the "L" uses. I was just going to double the height of the supports but I figure a solid I beam has more strength than a web beam (or what ever they're called, triangles!) Basically like this but with 70' spans.  Here's the location in street view. You can see in this section it goes from web to solid beam to cross the road. Bigger span but only half as thick. The span pictured here is about 14m but I have no idea how thick the beam is eye-balling it. http://goo.gl/maps/EmSkw Also elevated metros are cool. There seemed to be a boom of them at the turn of the century then no more. They seem really practical and cheaper than tunneling and more pleasant as you can see out the window as you travel around. I much preferred the elevated system in Berlin vs the subway for that reason, you can actually see where you are and as a pedestrian on the street you get a sense of where the trains go and if you see the metro you can just follow it to the closest station. Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 03:33 on Oct 30, 2014 |
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Oct 30, 2014 03:29
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Matching the depth of those girders would be fine. Looks like 4-5 feet. The reason that trolleys and public transportation stopped being built in the early 1900s was because of cars. The Automobile lobby basically convinced municipalities to dismantle their light rail systems. Quite a shame - and now we're rebuilding them these days.
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Oct 30, 2014 03:47
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Baronjutter posted:Also elevated metros are cool. There seemed to be a boom of them at the turn of the century then no more. They seem really practical and cheaper than tunneling and more pleasant as you can see out the window as you travel around. I much preferred the elevated system in Berlin vs the subway for that reason, you can actually see where you are and as a pedestrian on the street you get a sense of where the trains go and if you see the metro you can just follow it to the closest station. I'd figure it's a noise thing. Having the apartment or office right next to the train is probably just a bit annoying. I do wish we saw more systems like that though. I love the L, and it's way more interesting to ride then the underground portions.
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Oct 30, 2014 05:31
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They still build them raised here but usually only in lower density areas, i assume in urban area the extra cost for tunneling is offset by preventing noise issues and most people don't actually appreciate the sight of trams/subways passing by their appartment. On a suburban line you see a train maybe every 7 minutes (4 per hour each way). There is a raised urban line here that has trains every 90 seconds during peak use (train both ways every 3 minutes). Even if it is not a ton of noise that would get old fast.
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Oct 30, 2014 19:55
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dupersaurus posted:It's also the time of year when they start switching to winter gas which is cheaper to produce than summer gas. I thought it was the other way around?
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Oct 30, 2014 20:03
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RadioPassive posted:I thought it was the other way around? My understanding's been that lower temps mean you can get away with a more volatile (ie, more likely to up and evaporate on you) mixture, which requires less refining.
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Oct 30, 2014 20:12
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Opals25 posted:I'd figure it's a noise thing. Having the apartment or office right next to the train is probably just a bit annoying. I do wish we saw more systems like that though. I love the L, and it's way more interesting to ride then the underground portions. Fun fact: from the 1930s right up until 1979, the plan was to replace the iconic downtown 'L' Loop with a subway loop. Thankfully, cooler heads finally prevailed.
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Oct 30, 2014 20:52
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Kakairo posted:Fun fact: from the 1930s right up until 1979, the plan was to replace the iconic downtown 'L' Loop with a subway loop. Thankfully, cooler heads finally prevailed.
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Oct 30, 2014 22:54
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I think the biggest reason we stopped building Els and started building subways is noise. The El is loud as hell, though modern structures can be much quieter. I do kinda wonder if it's just some groupthink thing where people never think about elevated guideways, and are either thinking subway or street running LRT. Or maybe there's concern that neighbors would just complain about the noise and views and it's a political non-starter?
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Oct 30, 2014 23:27
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Subways have the undeniable advantage of being able to seal out much of the weather. Plus the means of supporting your elevated rails have a habit of either cramping pedestrian room on the sidewalk or vehicular room in the street.
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Oct 31, 2014 01:47
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FISHMANPET posted:I think the biggest reason we stopped building Els and started building subways is noise. The El is loud as hell, though modern structures can be much quieter. I do kinda wonder if it's just some groupthink thing where people never think about elevated guideways, and are either thinking subway or street running LRT. Or maybe there's concern that neighbors would just complain about the noise and views and it's a political non-starter? Skytrain in Vancouver is pretty quiet. Tracks are all boring concrete not amazing ironwork and wood though.
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Oct 31, 2014 01:54
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzmWxn1Sfz8 Great video about another major intersection re-design. Holy poo poo that 60's intersection, what the hell were they thinking??? It's inspiring that there's places in the world with the talent, political will, and budgets to fix poo poo like that. In North America we're lucky to get one or two of those needed aspects, never all 3.
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Oct 31, 2014 19:13
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I didn't watch the whole video, so maybe the dude didn't fail to mention it, but IIRC the Heetmanplein redesign was only possible thanks to the €107m Randweg project being done first: http://defotograaf.eu/blog/randweg-vught-den-bosch/ Fixing problems on the cheap is hard. e: Since I was planning on plugging his site anyway, have some nice aerial photography of current Zuid-Holland megaprojects: A4#1, A4#2, and A15. Koesj fucked around with this message at 09:23 on Nov 1, 2014 |
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Nov 1, 2014 09:09
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Koesj posted:
Don't get jealous just yet, we've had to wait 50 years for that A4#2 construction (planning finished 1965, construction started 1968, construction restarted 2012). And they've been reconstructing that A4#1 for 5 years or so now. But once these are done it will be glorious.
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Nov 2, 2014 11:48
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How are roadworks planned, I have a friend who thinks there's a conspiracy to congest a road because whenever there's roadworks on one section there's often multiple roadworks elsewhere on the road... i.e. 10 months of the year there will be no roadworks at all, then there'll be 3 or 4 all running at the same time over the course of a few miles. How do roadworks get planned? Also have you seen the russian dashcam vids, is there anything a traffic engineer could do the make them more, or less, exciting?
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Nov 5, 2014 21:57
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Crankit posted:How are roadworks planned, I have a friend who thinks there's a conspiracy to congest a road because whenever there's roadworks on one section there's often multiple roadworks elsewhere on the road... i.e. 10 months of the year there will be no roadworks at all, then there'll be 3 or 4 all running at the same time over the course of a few miles. How do roadworks get planned? Would he rather prefer that the roads are always blocked somewhere? It's probably cheaper in all kinds of factors to concentrate roadworks. Of course there's no arguing with conspiracy theorists, even if they can't name anyone who would actually benefit from roads being congested it's still a conspiracy of someone. Well, it probably is a conspiracy (see above), but the goal is certainly not to build congestion.
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Nov 5, 2014 22:07
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Crankit posted:How are roadworks planned, I have a friend who thinks there's a conspiracy to congest a road because whenever there's roadworks on one section there's often multiple roadworks elsewhere on the road... i.e. 10 months of the year there will be no roadworks at all, then there'll be 3 or 4 all running at the same time over the course of a few miles. How do roadworks get planned? Roadworks tend to be avoided in the height of summer and the height of winter due to weather conditions that can gently caress with it being most likely at those times. But would you mind mentioning whereabouts you are and when they choose to do it? It's probably some sort of local conditions behind it (or maybe the same crews doing a bunch of them on that road or your area for a few months have to rotate out to another road/area throughout the year) In northern parts of the US for instance, where a lot of freeze-thaw cycles causing potholes tend to happen over winters, there'll be a lot of roadwork out to patch potholes or even replace whole sections of road during the spring.
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Nov 5, 2014 22:15
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nielsm posted:Would he rather prefer that the roads are always blocked somewhere? I guess? I didn't really ask. I think he said the goal of a conspiracy would be to gain favour for funding a bypass of some sort. Nintendo Kid posted:Roadworks tend to be avoided in the height of summer and the height of winter due to weather conditions that can gently caress with it being most likely at those times. I'm in the south east of the united kingdom. I never really paid any attention to when the roadworks take place.
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Nov 5, 2014 22:26
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I remember signs all over Prague explaining that they do all their works in summer because it has the least traffic and the work has to be done so this will impact the least people please stop bitching about roadworks you fuckers. Kids are off school, people are off on vacation, the city isn't flooded or covered in snow, I guess they know what they're doing.
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Nov 5, 2014 22:26
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The other response about roadworks conspiracies is that if you are doing some very disruptive work on a road, you would get as much of it out of the at once, so that people divert to other routes for shorter periods of time. Would you rather have 4 miles of one lane closure for 2 years, or 1 mile of lane closure for 8 years?
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Nov 5, 2014 22:40
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Crankit posted:Also have you seen the russian dashcam vids, is there anything a traffic engineer could do the make them more, or less, exciting? Driving would be a LOT more interesting if we planted trees and built signs and fences on every corner to impede visibility. Then we yank out all the stop signs, or set the signals to be green in every direction at once... excitement! ----- I mentioned an October Surprise a few weeks ago. Now that the election's over, and the candidate in question has won, I guess I can go ahead and spill the beans on what I learned. Basically, Governor Malloy's main goal was to increase the number of skilled jobs in Connecticut. Two very visible projects were a $1B expansion of the UConn Health Center and attracting Jackson Labs to Farmington. These are long-term endeavors, of course, and completing them would be contingent on a bunch of road network improvements. The road improvements aren't done yet. That OSTA report gives the developers of both the UConn expansion and Jackson Labs permission to open partially before the work is complete, so long as they open before October 31. So Governor Malloy got to do a big ribbon-cutting in front of a mostly empty building, welcoming a ton of new jobs to Connecticut. A paper launch, essentially. Must've worked! He won by a relatively thin margin.
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Nov 5, 2014 22:59
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How to fix driving in russia: -Actually make people earn their license through testing and education rather than bribes. -Actually enforce traffic and drunk driving laws. Also russian city planning is hosed. It's all super-blocks of nasty "stroads" and huge chaotic intersections with a network of narrow mostly unmarked/signed access lanes inside the super blocks filled with huge apartment towers that have barely the density of single family suburbs because of the huge useless open space and parking around them and gently caress all for pedestrian infrastructure. Plus a horrible driving culture centred around the worst sort of unskilled aggressive driving. Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 23:27 on Nov 5, 2014 |
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Nov 5, 2014 23:22
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So, they're fixing/changing/doing something to a road near here. It has the standard yellow temporary signs for road works, but there's one of those in the middle of the blocked-off portion showing what looks like a kid-drawn stick figure and the text "Watch out! My father works here!" Last week, they put a second sign right under it saying "So does my mommy!" I don't know who came up with it, but it made me chuckle.
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Nov 5, 2014 23:50
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Carbon dioxide posted:So, they're fixing/changing/doing something to a road near here. That's an old workzone safety message, though I haven't seen the second part. The states come up with a new one every year, then swap messages with each other. We've had Slow Down for the Cone Zone, Obey the Orange, Double Fines Double Trouble, uh... a lot of 'em. And then we have a gigantic orange cone monster that gets moved around to different construction sites to scare the crap out of inattentive drivers.
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Nov 6, 2014 00:03
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The VMS programmers here in Mass have gotten a little more clever/jokey over the past year. This coincided, of course, with taking suggestions from people for slogans to put on the VMS. "USE YAH BLINKAH" (which I saw made into a bumper sticker at a Newbury Comics. I hope the person who entered that phrase into the VMS contest gets a cut) "MAKE YAH MAH PROUD, USE YAH SEATBELT" "THINK B4 U DRINK" I also saw a "KEEP CALM AND DRIVE ON" on 495 before Marlboro once. Yes, not even MassDOT is immune to memes.
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Nov 6, 2014 00:38
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Cichlidae posted:a gigantic orange cone monster that gets moved around to different construction sites to scare the crap out of inattentive drivers. My favorite 'act of vandalism' 
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Nov 6, 2014 15:21
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These things are popular in suburbs here: (little flag optional)It's obviously meant to warn people for small children playing on the road. I think it's intended to be put right behind a tree or parked car. So as you drive up to it, suddenly it comes into view and for just half a second you think there's a small child suddenly running across the road right in front of you. The illusion doesn't last long, but it's just long enough to make you jump.
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Nov 6, 2014 18:56
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My neighbours use it more as a road block We live on a cul-de-sac and they put it out when their kids are playing there. It seems pretty effective, though I always have to repress the impulse to buzz it on my bike.
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Nov 6, 2014 19:22
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Carbon dioxide posted:I think it's intended to be put right behind a tree or parked car. So as you drive up to it, suddenly it comes into view and for just half a second you think there's a small child suddenly running across the road right in front of you. Shouldn't they be placed to be as visible as possible? Hiding it behind things sounds like a good way to suppress the trained emergency stop reflexes of all your neighbors when they see a child-like shape pop out. Next time little Billy runs into the road, he just might be roadkill.
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Nov 6, 2014 21:29
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