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I took a break from writing up a white paper on Hartford-area freeways (oh my god, what a mess) to do some research on the other aspects of our infrastructure. The results weren't encouraging. Basically, our rail system's in even deeper poo poo than the road system, since it's mostly 100 years old and a lot of it hasn't been regularly maintained for much of that time. Our electrical system is antiquated. Our educational system, oh my god, it's completely loving backwards. Our health system is better at treating illnesses than it's ever been, but those illnesses are also more widespread, and vector-borne diseases in particular are absolutely EXPLODING. Ebola's small fries, really, compared to the way Chikungunya's spread these past few months. Measles, Polio, I mean, things are clearly broken. And then even if we DO look at roads, what is there? France's road fatalities are climbing this year for the first time in ages, and I think America's will, too. We still can't get a highway funding bill through. And when it does go through, you can bet that the vast majority will just be for maintenance. Want to guess how much Federal funding in 2013 went toward new facilities? it was 6%
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Nov 18, 2014 23:01
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I think things will have to get a lot worse before they get better, western civilization, america in particular, really needs to reevaluate car-centric and "cheap land" obsessed land use patterns, they just aren't economically sustainable, the land is only "cheap" when you ignore the infrastructure upkeep and replacement costs. Once you start allocating the budgets needed to maintain this sprawling mess the land suddenly isn't so cheap and the whole pattern of growth and development is hosed, and there's way too many vested interests in that pattern. Plus any attempts at correcting things is agenda-21 anti-americanism.
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Nov 18, 2014 23:20
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Cichlidae posted:I took a break from writing up a white paper on Hartford-area freeways (oh my god, what a mess) to do some research on the other aspects of our infrastructure. The results weren't encouraging. Basically, our rail system's in even deeper poo poo than the road system, since it's mostly 100 years old and a lot of it hasn't been regularly maintained for much of that time. Our electrical system is antiquated. Our educational system, oh my god, it's completely loving backwards. Our health system is better at treating illnesses than it's ever been, but those illnesses are also more widespread, and vector-borne diseases in particular are absolutely EXPLODING. Ebola's small fries, really, compared to the way Chikungunya's spread these past few months. Measles, Polio, I mean, things are clearly broken. http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2014/11/13/michigan-senate-road-funding-bills-lame-duck-session/18974745/ Michigan may get through a rather large gas tax increase for maintenance, although I imagine it will take the rest of the country's roads getting as bad as Michigan's for Congress to even possibly consider raising the federal gas tax.
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Nov 18, 2014 23:41
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Dominus Vobiscum posted:http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2014/11/13/michigan-senate-road-funding-bills-lame-duck-session/18974745/ If they can get a percentage-based gas tax in, that'd be fantastic. Mass had an inflation-indexed gas tax, but it got repealed earlier this month.
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Nov 18, 2014 23:56
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Cichlidae posted:If they can get a percentage-based gas tax in, that'd be fantastic. Mass had an inflation-indexed gas tax, but it got repealed earlier this month. Percentage based sounds like a really awful idea for planning purposes.
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Nov 18, 2014 23:58
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Nintendo Kid posted:Percentage based sounds like a really awful idea for planning purposes. Inflation-indexed is better than percentage based, which is better than just a flat rate. Sure, it's not the easiest to plan for, but every country already estimates oil prices for budgetary purposes.
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Nov 19, 2014 00:00
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$1 per gallon national tax, rising with inflation. 
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Nov 19, 2014 02:26
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At some point in the 90s we got a 25 cent increase on the gas tax, but because there was no inflation indexing during this time, inflation caught up after about 3-4 years. Now, like 25 years later, people are still complaining that they want the 25 cents back...
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Nov 19, 2014 02:36
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Entropist posted:At some point in the 90s we got a 25 cent increase on the gas tax, but because there was no inflation indexing during this time, inflation caught up after about 3-4 years. Now, like 25 years later, people are still complaining that they want the 25 cents back... Pretty sure Connecticut actually reduced its gas tax by 13 cents per gallon a while back 
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Nov 19, 2014 02:42
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People in Canada bitch about our INSANE fuel taxes which are nearly double the US's. Double the US's taxes, can you imagine?? I'm surprised it's so high in Turkey, they're not exactly a rich country. Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 02:47 on Nov 19, 2014 |
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Nov 19, 2014 02:45
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How does Mexico have a negative tax? Do they just subsidize fuel?
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Nov 19, 2014 02:52
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Javid posted:How does Mexico have a negative tax? Do they just subsidize fuel? Yes. Most countries with massive state owned petroleum companies do.
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Nov 19, 2014 02:54
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To use American units, Dutch fuel tax this year is $3.61 / gallon for gasoline* + a tax that's used to keep a fuel reserve, ensuring a stable supply to customers + 21% VAT/sales tax. Dutch Wikipedia has a nice table, saying that the official consumer price (today it's officially $8.16 / gallon**), is built up like this (2011 data, but it should still mostly be valid): 29.6% Consumer product price 6.6% Distribution costs and sales profits 42.7% Fuel tax and fuel reserve tax 21% VAT/sales tax * Diesel and LPG are cheaper, but have a way higher yearly car ownership tax. ** Many gas stations reduce the price by like a quarter to half a dollar per gallon because of competition. Carbon dioxide fucked around with this message at 12:02 on Nov 19, 2014 |
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Nov 19, 2014 12:00
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Cichlidae posted:Pretty sure Connecticut actually reduced its gas tax by 13 cents per gallon a while back Yeah, they cut it from 32 to 25 cents per gallon in 2000. But there is also a Gross Receipts Tax which has gone from 5% to 8.1% in that time. So in theory not much of a change. At the time of the cut, CT had the highest gas taxes, and there was a new governor, so....
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Nov 19, 2014 14:05
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Nintendo Kid posted:Having narrow paved shoulders counts as bicycle infrastructure now? America has assloads of bike lanes then. This is from way, way back, but it's been sticking in my head. In BC, our loving provincial government does, quite literally, consider painted shoulders to be bicycle infrastructure. quote:Shoulder Bikeway - A shoulder bikeway is located on the right side of the shoulder line of an open roadway, using the paved shoulder of the roadway. It does not encompass any of the regularly travelled motor vehicle portion of the roadway. The minimum width accepted under GPC for a Shoulder Bikeway is 1.5 meters. A shoulder bikeway may be indicated by road signs and/or pavement markings. http://www.th.gov.bc.ca/BikeBC/Documents/gatewaycycling/Guidelines.pdf What they mean by that is that they build a freeway with an 80km/h speed limit (so the traffic goes at 100km/h), put in a painted shoulder with a few connections to real cycling infrastructure, then loudly proclaim how much tax money they've spent to make things better for cyclists.  Here's a good blog post about it. quote:
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Nov 19, 2014 18:41
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Other than a few areas being kinda ok Vancouver is a sprawling suburban nightmare. I don't know why it gets a rep as being a "progressive" city. I guess it has slightly better land use than Dallas or Calgary? The bike infra is a joke, a few separated paths downtown and that's about it. Even the neighbourhoods people laud are bisected by huge busy stroads that only have crosswalks every few blocks, making walking really unpleasant. I've never driven in Vancouver but it seems a nightmare as well, and most people still "need" to drive as transit just isn't up to the task and short trips that could be easy converts to bike are stopped by a lack of infrastructure. The roads are all jammed so unless you're on a skytrain your bus gets stuck in the same traffic anyways.
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Nov 19, 2014 19:54
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A lot of people seem to think just not having freeways going through a city counts as progressive design. It's easy to see where that idea comes from, but it falls apart under the fact that when you have a major city you really do want to have at least some of them to get major loads off street level, and also give greater leeway into turning more surface roads pedestrian friendly, or even closed altogether to vehicular traffic. It's obvious by now that just because building new roads attracts traffic over time, it doesn't mean that refusal to build them makes it level out or reduce. Many cities that had canceled or half-complete freeway plans could really do with having those plans finished, but in more appropriate ways. Sunken and fully tunneled freeways can be key to alleviating long term issues without the many many problems elevated and surface level freeways often caused. Nintendo Kid fucked around with this message at 20:13 on Nov 19, 2014 |
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Nov 19, 2014 20:09
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If at the same time Vancouver decided to not build urban freeways they also heavily invested in transit, securing the surface space needed and planning land use around said transit things could have worked out. But all they did was not build the freeways but then allow the same pattern of typical north american sprawl while resisting density in the core outside of downtown. Skytrain is great but only a tiny percentage of Vancouver is near skytrain. If back in the day when the roads were not totally jammed they had dedicated space for bus lanes or better yet a tram system the city would have grown up used to that balance. But instead it's grown up around the same jammed roads and now the idea of reducing speeds or capacities on any of those routes seems insane. There's no wiggle room, every road is jammed, even minor road works can gently caress up entire regions of the city. The time to plan poo poo like that is before your roads are jammed, not after. So now bike infrastructure is impossible, bus lanes are impossible, and the only transit option is more skytrain which is extremely expensive. The urban freeway ship has sailed though, building one now would be even more expensive than more grade separated transit. Maybe some sort of crazy cut and cover highway under some of the worst roads along with turning the surface road into a ped/bike/transit zone would be nice, but once again ridiculously expensive. You know who loves underground urban highways? The loving Czechs. Prague is absolutely covered with a ridiculous amounts of highway tunnels. But at the same time nowhere in the city centre is more than a 10min walk from a metro station or a 5 min walk from a tram stop. poo poo for bikes though.
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Nov 19, 2014 22:07
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On the other hand, I was ecstatic that I was able to take Skytrain to a suburban bus that ran ever ~20 minutes that took me to basically a farm.
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Nov 20, 2014 00:43
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Baronjutter posted:most people still "need" to drive as transit just isn't up to the task CMBC and SkyTrain are loving miles ahead of other North American transit authorities other than NYC. Please outline how within comparable places it isn't "up to task." Vancouver has basically hosed up the least in cities this side of the Atlantic, so calling it a "sprawling suburban nightmare" is pretty undeserved. You'd have to travel a bit westward and examine Metro Victoria for actual sprawling suburban nightmare. less than three fucked around with this message at 07:38 on Nov 20, 2014 |
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Nov 20, 2014 07:31
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Dominus Vobiscum posted:http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2014/11/13/michigan-senate-road-funding-bills-lame-duck-session/18974745/ Wisconsin has been talking about increasing the gas tax to help pay for more infrastructure as well. I'm on the fence about it mostly because I'm both a consumer and a person in the business that would profit from increased roadwork.
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Nov 20, 2014 14:24
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less than three posted:CMBC and SkyTrain are loving miles ahead of other North American transit authorities other than NYC. Please outline how within comparable places it isn't "up to task." Europe. Vancouver may be miles ahead of most of North America in terms of both transit and cycling, but that isn't really saying much. less than three posted:Vancouver has basically hosed up the least in cities this side of the Atlantic, so calling it a "sprawling suburban nightmare" is pretty undeserved. You'd have to travel a bit westward and examine Metro Victoria for actual sprawling suburban nightmare. He lives in Victoria, as I'm sure you knew, and says this about their metro all the time, too.
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Nov 20, 2014 17:41
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I'm writing a white paper on the history of freeways in Hartford, and why building a new one might not be such a good idea. We have a TON of people who still think that, if we built a bypass around Hartford, we could demolish I-84. Turns out, even with optimistic projections, we might be able to reduce I-84 volumes by 5-10%. But hey, that's not enough of an argument for some people, so I'm going to bury the issue with 20 pages of well sourced research and analysis. My language degrees will finally come in handy 
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Nov 23, 2014 15:27
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While Hartford would surely benefit from a bypass, the time where such a benefit could be realized has long since passed. Most of the through traffic is on 91 N/S and from 84 to 91 to head to New Haven/NYC. It would just shift the bottleneck points. Plus, the problems that were there in the 50s/60s are still there today, and even worse. There's literally nowhere to put a freeway even if you wanted it. Decades of lack of any commuter infrastructure (rail, etc) has set Hartford down its current path. NHHS Commuter rail will help but it won't help on the I-84 corridor. kefkafloyd fucked around with this message at 20:27 on Nov 23, 2014 |
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Nov 23, 2014 20:20
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http://www.baltimoresun.com/business/bs-bz-amtrak-meeting-20141119-story.html#page=1quote:The two proposals, both of which would require extensive tunneling, were shortlisted recently as part of an engineering and environmental review aimed at replacing the nearly 150-year-old Baltimore & Potomac Tunnel, which twists under the city, slowing traffic along Amtrak's Northeast Corridor. a billion dollars to replace that?
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Nov 23, 2014 21:01
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So, I live in Edmonton (a winter city). The city is trying to implement bike lanes/infrastructure into the city, but there have been some issues. The first is that we don't have a lot of cyclists, even in the summer and we don't currently have dedicated bikelanes in most areas. The second is our roads are completely crap, since we have awful winters. In a city of about a million people, we spend $50 million (well, thats the budget) on maintaining roads. Potholes abound which are not exactly friendly to cyclists either. The third is that a vast majority of people in the city drive to where they are going, and its a sprawling suburb layout. So, our city is putting bikelanes into residential areas to give cyclists a dedicated route for biking, since its easier than taking up space on the main roads. They are marking bikelanes in the same spots that buses use in some areas, and in others they are just putting it along the shoulder of the road and making it into a one-way street. Which has lead to stuff like this. Just prior to that bikelane, it was a two-way street with no bikelane markings.  The marked bike areas are sporadic at best, and they don't really have a clear plan to implement them. Their current map is here http://www.edmonton.ca/transportation/RoadsTraffic/CycleEdmontonMap_13092013.pdf with almost all of the major routes being shared pathways, often unmarked. As well, traffic bylaws in the city do not allow cyclists to use sidewalks unless specifically marked. Its a giant mess right now. So my question is, how would you suggest implementing bikes into existing infrastructure safely? Especially in a city that has snowfall from October to May every year.
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Nov 23, 2014 21:03
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Nobody is going to cycle in the snow. I think the most reasonable option is more use of bus lanes that cyclists can also use. Just my 2 cents, anyway.
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Nov 23, 2014 21:06
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will_colorado posted:http://www.baltimoresun.com/business/bs-bz-amtrak-meeting-20141119-story.html#page=1 That's pretty loving cheap for what they're going to build dude. At least like 1.8 miles of new tunnel, all the connections necessary between the existing lines on either end, building it to a larger height and structure gauge in the tunnel than the old one had in all likelihood, all sorts of modern signaling and stuff. And then there's all the stuff aboveground that will have to be purchased and demolished, and money for handling any detouring and alternate routes for road traffic around construction areas.
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Nov 23, 2014 21:09
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Yeah. If we tried to tunnel 2 miles of I-84 (which we're looking at, by the way), we'd be talking about $10B, minimum.
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Nov 23, 2014 21:46
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Nintendo Kid posted:That's pretty loving cheap for what they're going to build dude. At least like 1.8 miles of new tunnel, all the connections necessary between the existing lines on either end, building it to a larger height and structure gauge in the tunnel than the old one had in all likelihood, all sorts of modern signaling and stuff. And then there's all the stuff aboveground that will have to be purchased and demolished, and money for handling any detouring and alternate routes for road traffic around construction areas. All while retaining service! Yeah, a billion dollars seems almost reasonable.
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Nov 23, 2014 22:42
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I am so goddamn sick of writing research papers. But on the plus side, I can fill up 20 pages (single spaced!) in a couple days, which would've taken me weeks back in college.me posted:Nearer to Hartford, CT 72 and CT 9 provide a second circumferential route. It consists of many individual segments of freeway, variously opened between 1962 and 1989. The westernmost section, between I-84 and the eastern terminus of CT 72, was completed in 1978 . It carries three lanes in each direction, with a maximum ADT of 65,500 in 2013. The portion of CT 9 immediately south of CT 72, extending one interchange south to Ellis Street, was also built at this time, and carried 71,800 vehicles per day in 2013. Between Ellis Street and today’s SR 571, a 2-lane-per-direction freeway was built in 1969, originally designated as SR 507 . The 2013 ADT on this stretch of CT 9 was 67,400. The following section, between SR 571 and the Berlin Turnpike, is the oldest portion of the bypass, built in 1962 . It carries two lanes of CT 9 in each direction, and with a 2013 ADT of 76,400, serves over 2,000 vehicles per lane per hour during the peaks. The final portion of this southwestern bypass, connecting the Berlin Turnpike to I-91 in Cromwell, was completed in 1989. It has two lanes in each direction and carried an ADT of 58,700 in 2013.
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Nov 26, 2014 16:30
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Brainbread posted:Which has lead to stuff like this. Just prior to that bikelane, it was a two-way street with no bikelane markings. The ideal is the way the Dutch do it. That blog is full of really good discussion of specifics, but the general idea is that cycling infrastructure is totally separated from both motor vehicle and pedestrian infrastructure almost everywhere. The only exceptions are the quietest neighbourhood streets, which are mixed-use but have speed limits set at walking pace, and are intended for children to be able to play in safely. This works -- even the car accident rate in the Netherlands has dropped enormously since the 60s/70s (in part because there aren't as many cars on the roads because everyone bikes). If the US adopted Dutch policies, 20,000 fewer Americans would die on the roads every year. Since Canadians, like Americans, are Wikipedia posted:Bicycle boulevards attempt to achieve several goals: Fangz posted:Nobody is going to cycle in the snow. Come to the bike commuting megathread and say that.  Jan posted:
But hey, that's just trivially disproving your dumb generalisation with a counter-example. How about some science? Study to Identify Determinants of Winter Bicycling in Two Cold Canadian Cities posted:From the results in the two cities, it is clear that the improvement of winter maintenance operations on bicycle infrastructure has a positive and significant impact on winter cycling. After controlling for other factors, increased maintenance of bike facilities in the winter months is expected to increase in 20% to 30% the propensity to bike in the winter in the study cities. And here's the newspaper article version. Note the title.
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Nov 26, 2014 19:01
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Lead out in cuffs posted:But hey, that's just trivially disproving your dumb generalisation with a counter-example. How about some science? Hmm, okay. I was just reflecting my personal experience living in Oxford, and the utter absence of cyclists on those (few) days it snows. Things may well be different in other cities.
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Nov 26, 2014 19:18
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JQr8cm-6X4 Snow cycling!
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Nov 26, 2014 19:39
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Lead out in cuffs posted:Since Canadians, like Americans, are I can think of one area that would qualify as a "bike boulevard". Its near the High-Level bridge in Edmonton (north side). It goes in a bit of a round-about way through a more residential area, and leads into a bike path near the bridge. I guess that is part of their plan with directing cyclists through residential areas. Now if only our driver's didn't vehemently hate cyclists. As for clearing snow from those physically divided bike areas, the issue I've seen is that they're smaller than sidewalks, which means the smaller riding snow-clearing machines are too big for them (same with the plows, obviously). Those ones look like they need locals to clean them out. But winter is cold so who wants to do that. (For the record, I do bicycle when I can during the summer. Mostly when parking is too expensive and/or I'll be out too late for buses).
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Nov 26, 2014 22:06
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Fangz posted:Nobody is going to cycle in the snow. I have lived in a village of 800 people in the Netherlands, and when it snowed, the muncipality would clear the bike paths before they would clear the main roads, at 6AM in the morning. This way, all the kids could still get to school safely and in time, because they'd have to bike to other towns for that. They had small snowplows for that which could cover about 2/3rd of a two-way bike path in one go, with salt being sprayed from the back to melt the remaining snow, or any new snowfall. Entropist fucked around with this message at 02:28 on Nov 27, 2014 |
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Nov 27, 2014 02:25
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Entropist posted:I have lived in a village of 800 people in the Netherlands, and when it snowed, the muncipality would clear the bike paths before they would clear the main roads, at 6AM in the morning. This way, all the kids could still get to school safely and in time, because they'd have to bike to other towns for that. Yeah it's all about priorities. If you prioritize car infrastructure you're going to get a lot of cars, if you prioritize cycle and pedestrian infrastructure you're going to get more of those. A north american watching a bike path cleared of snow while the road sits snowed over would go into a rage and there would be a million letters to the editor about the city's dangerous social engineering that's putting driver's lives at risk for someone's silly hobby.
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Nov 27, 2014 02:43
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That's just silly, you can't use a bike path snow plow to clear a road anyway, so it's not like it would help to not do it  The residential streets usually didn't get cleared until maybe two or three days later if the snow remained, or not at all, but that wasn't really a problem since it was only the first bit of the journey and after a few cars passed through you could bike on the compacted snow.
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Nov 27, 2014 02:48
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Baronjutter posted:Yeah it's all about priorities. If you prioritize car infrastructure you're going to get a lot of cars, if you prioritize cycle and pedestrian infrastructure you're going to get more of those. A north american watching a bike path cleared of snow while the road sits snowed over would go into a rage and there would be a million letters to the editor about the city's dangerous social engineering that's putting driver's lives at risk for someone's silly hobby. It would be quite bizarre to spend all the time and money to buy a special snow plow just for 5 blocks of pathway, you have to admit.
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Nov 27, 2014 02:49
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Nintendo Kid posted:It would be quite bizarre to spend all the time and money to buy a special snow plow just for 5 blocks of pathway, you have to admit. 5 blocks??? That's way too long for a north american bike path, that's more akin to a north american tram system.
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Nov 27, 2014 02:54
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