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Four-step models are the most common way engineers forecast travel demand, although lately there's been a lot of work on activity-based models too. Check out this Wikipedia article for what those terms mean and more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_forecasting
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Dec 28, 2014 18:00
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Echo 3 posted:Four-step models are the most common way engineers forecast travel demand, although lately there's been a lot of work on activity-based models too. Awesome, thanks!
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Dec 28, 2014 18:30
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Oooh, from that Wikipedia article there's apparently a free/open source traffic simulator for the spergs who like to play with that sort of thing. https://code.google.com/p/transims/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/transimsstudio/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uL5mFuQv-bc
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Dec 29, 2014 00:40
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Volmarias posted:Silly traffic planning question I always wondered. How do local governments actually figure out who is going where? I assume that if you have a community where many people are going to X neighboring town and Y neighboring town for work, how do you know what roads to improve? In all seriousness, many local governments deal with such small volumes that they don't plan at all. None of the streets they control need more than two lanes, and often any actual busy routes are instead owned/controlled by state or county level agencies who have access to a full range of data. Even in places with a lot of people needing to get around, a lot of the power to route major roads within the town goes to state and county levels, with the municipal planning group just needing to attach their own stuff on to the network.
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Dec 29, 2014 01:14
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Yeah I talked to someone from a city hall way up island in a tiny town and their traffic planning is basically "make sure there's a road leading to every building" and nothing beyond that. It's all just 2 lane suburban/rural sort of roads servicing local residents and businesses and there's just not enough traffic to need anything more complex than a stop sign. The few traffic lights and anything over 2 lanes is controlled by the province so they don't worry about it. At such a small scale they don't need to do scientific studies of traffic they just sort of intuit and observe what needs to be improved or widened.
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Dec 29, 2014 01:24
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Usually the folks planning town traffic listen quite closely to requests and comments by local residents. For instance, the people living next to a through road in a village near here complained about trucks driving too fast, causing dangerous situations. They requested barriers, so the town narrowed the road by placing bollards. The residents then started complaining about the vibrations caused by engines of trucks waiting for opposing traffic causing damage to their houses.
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Dec 29, 2014 01:37
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You can never make people happy. There's a T junction near me that people in a small town complained up and down to the Indiana DOT to "fix it" for years because they had to wait at a stop sign before they could turn to go to the city to get groceries. INDOT fixed it by putting in a stop light for all 3 directions, now they bitch about stop lights.
Peanut President fucked around with this message at 11:12 on Dec 29, 2014 |
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Dec 29, 2014 11:08
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Blindly just listening to "the community" results in every single street being closed off and/or covered in speed humps. There were some totally normal residential streets in my old neighborhood that were between two roads. Yes, sometimes people that didn't live on the street would drive down them to get between the roads, which had no proper main-route style connection between them but the vast number of smaller street between let traffic filter through. Well a couple of the street complained hard enough and the city made them dead-ends. These streets were by a hospital though, so they had to install these super expensive gate things so ambulances could get through. Yay listening to the community! Everyone is happy right? Well not quite, now there's more traffic on the streets that were not closed, so they bitch and complain about traffic doubling. What does the city do? It closes down those streets too! This pushes even more traffic onto the local streets, generating more complaints and a third round of streets being turned into dead-ends. Now there's nearly a kilometer you have to drive to go around this stretch of dead-end streets and it's all been funneled onto 2 slightly larger streets. So what started out as a ton of local streets with very low traffic is now a couple streets taking the entire burden and becoming nasty car sewers for the people who live on them. But the people on those streets are poorer and the city has designated them primary routes so that's that.
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Dec 29, 2014 18:50
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Baronjutter posted:Blindly just listening to "the community" results in every single street being closed off and/or covered in speed humps. There were some totally normal residential streets in my old neighborhood that were between two roads. Yes, sometimes people that didn't live on the street would drive down them to get between the roads, which had no proper main-route style connection between them but the vast number of smaller street between let traffic filter through. Well a couple of the street complained hard enough and the city made them dead-ends. These streets were by a hospital though, so they had to install these super expensive gate things so ambulances could get through. Yay listening to the community! Everyone is happy right? A local street near me has had traffic calming put in, including two speed bumps. This happened about5 years ago, and I found out recently there were several fatality crashes down that street. The moral of the story is, if "the community" wants speed bumps get a couple of people killed in a high speed car crash. I also met a lady while doing a pedestrian survey (numbers crossing, I didn't want to ask them questions) who said she thought we should install speed bumps on a curve of road. This is a curve that is a major arterial (although rural) road that is used regularly by logging trucks, not to mention a lot of construction trucks and other heavy vehicles. The traffic engineers solution for this bend? Cut down some bushes.
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Dec 29, 2014 18:59
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Came across an interesting video about cyclists here. I have ridden along this bike path and have done the same thing. Ride along the smooth bluestone paving to avoid the rumble strips. http://vimeo.com/115320427 Location in streetview. https://www.google.com.au/maps/@-37.816234,144.9454289,3a,75y,294.82h,68.34t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1swYj9uUX4rtZrWzFe4Kq-fw!2e0?hl=en That whole area is going to be re-done in a few years when they built the new promenade. It was laid down and rushed when the docklands areas were developed in the early 2000s and the road needs to be re-designed now that people live and work in the area and the waterfront is soon not going to be a barren windscape in winter.
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Dec 30, 2014 15:10
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drunkill posted:Came across an interesting video about cyclists here. I have ridden along this bike path and have done the same thing. Ride along the smooth bluestone paving to avoid the rumble strips. Who the gently caress are implementing these policies? Why do they think they know better than the dutch? It boggles my mind at how idiotic a lot of this expensive cycling infrastructure is. It's like some country that's never built a freeway system stubbornly trying to invent their own system and standards instead of looking at existing successful systems. Instead of looking at modern US designs and traffic engineering and seeing how they've been building freeways for half a century and learned a ton, they just stick their fingers in their ears and start from scratch making all the same mistakes, learning all the same expensive lessons. Just hire a dutch consultant or download the dutch cycle infra engineering guidebook or even just watch some youtubes or go on street view. Maybe just sort of actually knowledge that other places have been doing this a lot longer and more successfully than you and could give you a lot of advice on what works and what doesn't and save your self millions. So often cycle and pedestrian infra is done so badly I think it's a conspiracy by the car-dependency lobby, but never attribute to malice what can easily be explained by stupidity.
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Dec 30, 2014 17:51
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Rumble strips don't make any sense for bikes. In cars they exist to make sure your attention is being fully paid to the road, since there's distractions like radios and other people, and all sorts of vehicular automation. A bicyclist is always paying attention to the road because otherwise they quickly crash. So where's the necessity for the alert? If they're having issues with bicyclists hitting pedestrians, then put up a yield sign. And then there's the whole part where they ruin the surface of the bikeway.
Kaal fucked around with this message at 19:05 on Dec 30, 2014 |
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Dec 30, 2014 19:02
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Bikes and peds are super nimble and just figure poo poo out, they don't really need signals or signs to not hit each other. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5I_GO22jels https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=560I43DZmh4 Imagine the traffic infrastructure that would be needed to handle a junction with that many people driving through it vs biking, an unsignaled intersection would not cut it. \/ I was more thinking stop signs. Yield/priority is often quite important and if not shown by a sign is shown on the pavement, although in this case it was for the car/bike interaction not for bike/bike or bike/ped. The 2nd video is more about ped/bikes mixing in a less formal way. Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 19:29 on Dec 30, 2014 |
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Dec 30, 2014 19:17
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Baronjutter posted:Bikes and peds are super nimble and just figure poo poo out, they don't really need signals or signs to not hit each other. The Dutch use yield signs all the time though? I mean they're really useful for marking where pedestrians will be crossing. That video has yield signs all over the place.
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Dec 30, 2014 19:21
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Baronjutter posted:Who the gently caress are implementing these policies? Why do they think they know better than the dutch? It boggles my mind at how idiotic a lot of this expensive cycling infrastructure is. It's like some country that's never built a freeway system stubbornly trying to invent their own system and standards instead of looking at existing successful systems. Instead of looking at modern US designs and traffic engineering and seeing how they've been building freeways for half a century and learned a ton, they just stick their fingers in their ears and start from scratch making all the same mistakes, learning all the same expensive lessons. American Exceptionalism. There are a million reasons we need to reinvent the wheel, all of them handwavy.
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Dec 30, 2014 20:12
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FISHMANPET posted:American Exceptionalism. There are a million reasons we need to reinvent the wheel, all of them handwavy. It's not just the US, it's Canada, it's Australia, it's England, it's basically every country trying to do bike infra while refusing to learn anything from previous experience. They'll literally make the exact same mistakes and learn the exact same lessons the dutch learned 10-20 years ago, or more often make the exact same mistakes and then give up saying it's too expensive or doesn't work.
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Dec 30, 2014 20:19
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US, Canada, and Australia can all point to their lineage as new colonial nations rather than old European nations. And haven't the British felt they were better than everyone else since basically forever? It's as much of a cultural thing as anything else, the Dutch have embraced cycling full on. At least here in America, people may say they're embracing cycling full on, and certain leaders may actually embrace cycling full on, but the general establishment is to embrace cycling as much as it doesn't inconvenience motorists.
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Dec 30, 2014 20:27
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Also the cycling "culture" that's grown up in areas without any cycle infra or mass appeal can adopt some really weird ideas. It's like being an outspoken atheist in a small religious town, they tend to be really annoying and have huge chips on their shoulders. They also, because they are so use to fearlessly riding mixed with high speed traffic, tend to be very against segregated/protected bike paths. They don't want dutch style infrastructure, they don't want their own space they want to conquer car's space. To them it's a war, bikes vs cars and they view bike lanes as a "separate but equal" solution. They often want nothing less than being treated 100% like a car and "taking the lane" everywhere, and if drivers don't like being stuck behind them tough poo poo. So when you're a small or medium town or don't have a big budget for cycle infra, nor the local experience, you end up listening to these idiots as the only local voice. In many places "the bike lobby" is one of the biggest enemies for local mass adoption of cycling.
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Dec 30, 2014 20:38
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Completely unrelated to the discussion at hand, but is anyone interested in helping me re-make Nutmeg? Stuff like naming towns, setting up some basic geography, and the like. If you are, shoot me a message.
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Dec 30, 2014 23:18
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Melbourne's not so bad but in Sydney the press is absolutely hostile to the idea of any kind of cycle infrastructure (fortunately Clover Moore keeps persisting) and tends to lump all cyclists in with the lycra warriors. It doesn't help that Australian drivers are probably amongst the worst in the developed world either.
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Dec 31, 2014 00:12
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Seeing those bike videos reminded me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pj6Oc4TlblE Do you think, absence any signals or control devices, people would just HAVE to be more observant?
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Dec 31, 2014 00:23
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Maybe Cichlidae has some actual numbers or better technical understanding but I've heard from quite a few people, specially in more progressive planning circles, that traffic/intersections actually get more efficient and safer when signals are removed and a very simple right-of-way rule of thumb is used instead. Everyone slows way down, look each other in the eye and pays attention to the situation and it works out much like pedestrians or bikes navigating around each other. Obviously this only (potentially) works in low speed urban situations. Wasn't there some little town in germany that just slapped a blanket 30 or 40 kph speed limit in the town and removed all signs and signals to some success? Ah here's some videos on it https://www.minds.com/blog/view/248215469679448064/german-town-abolishes-traffic-lights-and-codes-accidents-are-now-almost-non-existent It sounds like where it's been implemented it's been extremely successful at reducing accidents, but most places only have a few years of data so far. Most problems seem to be from people not familiar with the area not understanding the local rules (or lack of them). If such streets were more common though it would probably help that issue. Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 00:38 on Dec 31, 2014 |
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Dec 31, 2014 00:32
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Baronjutter posted:Maybe Cichlidae has some actual numbers or better technical understanding but I've heard from quite a few people, specially in more progressive planning circles, that traffic/intersections actually get more efficient and safer when signals are removed and a very simple right-of-way rule of thumb is used instead. Everyone slows way down, look each other in the eye and pays attention to the situation and it works out much like pedestrians or bikes navigating around each other. Obviously this only (potentially) works in low speed urban situations. Wasn't there some little town in germany that just slapped a blanket 30 or 40 kph speed limit in the town and removed all signs and signals to some success? As usual, the fly in the ointment is liability. It's pretty well proven that removing extraneous signs, for example, will reduce accident rates, but I know nobody at ConnDOT would consider it for more than a minute. We're pretty much bound by inertia to keep adding more and more and more and more; it would take a tremendous force to make the graybeards switch tracks. The MUTCD already warns about oversigning; maybe in 20 years, they'll have some more guidance on removing supernumerary traffic control devices.
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Dec 31, 2014 00:43
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I think a lot of it has to do with europe being so old, so much "existing non-conforming" infrastructure forces people to be aware. While in north america most everything is very new and designed to be rapidly replaced, so everything should always be to the latest standards. But the saddest thing is that over-singing and over-controlling everything seems to actually produce more accidents as people zone out, people expect the infrastructure to protect them and not require any awareness. It's entirely a product of lawsuits and liability rather than an actual care for results-based safety. A city rather have 20 accidents but their rear end covered legally than 2 accidents and a potential liability. The status quo is lovely for everyone except lawyers, what actual technical legal/liability changes could fix the situation?
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Dec 31, 2014 01:06
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Baronjutter posted:Also the cycling "culture" that's grown up in areas without any cycle infra or mass appeal can adopt some really weird ideas. It's like being an outspoken atheist in a small religious town, they tend to be really annoying and have huge chips on their shoulders. They also, because they are so use to fearlessly riding mixed with high speed traffic, tend to be very against segregated/protected bike paths. They don't want dutch style infrastructure, they don't want their own space they want to conquer car's space. To them it's a war, bikes vs cars and they view bike lanes as a "separate but equal" solution. They often want nothing less than being treated 100% like a car and "taking the lane" everywhere, and if drivers don't like being stuck behind them tough poo poo. All of this, repeated forever and ever, engraved on the casket and headstone of every numbnut who thought bikes are equal to cars as vehicles, right up to the point that the Excursion's radiator support crushed his torso like a dragonfly on the highway.
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Dec 31, 2014 01:29
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Well, while we're talking cycling, I thought I'd post about two issues I brought up in this thread over a year ago. Stanley Park Causeway Lead out in cuffs posted:OK, here's a serious traffic planning question. And the replies were: John Dough posted:Looking at Streetview, a cheap solution could be to convert the sidewalk on one side of the road into a bikepath, and the other side into a pedestrian route with no bikes allowed. Broaden the bikepath where possible, and add a railing. Hippie Hedgehog posted:That was my first thought as well. That solution does require widening the pavement on the bike side, since it currently looks a bit too narrow to have two bikes meet at reasonably high speeds. Would involve moving a few lamp posts on the bike side. Cichlidae posted:The best thing to do would be to widen the sidewalk on one side of the road and make it bike-only. You might be able to grab another half meter out of the grass on either side, and a meter or more by narrowing the travel lanes. That'd give you at least some room for a proper fence or half-section concrete barrier. Update: Anyway, plans were revealed about a month ago, and this is pretty much exactly what they're doing -- make the downhill side bikes-only, and widening the uphill side to have separated bike/ped paths, plus installing railings. It all looks pretty nice, actually. I chatted to the engineer who designed it, and she seemed really into it. http://www.gov.bc.ca/StanleyParkCauseway Point Grey Road Cycling Facilities Lead out in cuffs posted:Yay! Cycling infrastructure upgrades are being turned into a wedge issue in my city again. OK, to be fair, the engineers' proposal to remove a 14,000 car/day arterial (that should never have been an arterial, given how narrow it is) was probably a little too much for the car driving psyche, but it still makes me sad. Lead out in cuffs posted:As an aside, and to update everyone on this particular issue, the council meeting to decide on this is in progress. It started last Tuesday, with more than 200 speakers registered, each allocated 5 minutes. They'll be reconvening for the fourth time tomorrow, although I think they're getting close to the 200 mark, so that may be the last. I haven't followed too much of it (the 40 or so hours of meeting can all be viewed online at that link Lead out in cuffs posted:And on the topic of the Vancouver bike lane I was talking about earlier, it passed in City Council last night. Cue wailing and gnashing of teeth, then everyone getting back to their lives and completely forgetting about it by this time next year (when the slightly more conservative party running for Council will doubtless try unsuccessfully to resurrect the issue, like they did the last major cycling infrastructure upgrade.) Update: It got built, mostly in time for the summer. It got used by thousands upon thousands of cyclists, including people with the tiniest of kids. Somebody made an absolutely amazing video of it, set to epic music. Watch for fantastic use of low-altitude camera drone footage (don't you wish people took videos of your infrastructure that made it look this good?)
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Dec 31, 2014 01:41
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), but reports seem to suggest that it's a mix of people speaking for and against.
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Thanks for the Vancouverpost! The fully protected lane is great but man, why can't we built dutch style intersections that are so much safer and not really much more work?? Oh it looks like they sort of implemented dutch style intersections in a few spots, that's good! \/ That's awesome. A lot of the "cycle lobby" criticizes protected bike lanes because they claim it makes intersections more dangerous. That can be true if you just dump people from a protected lane into traffic right at the corner as if they were pedestrians crossing at a sidewalk. But if you do it dutch style with the little corner protections and have the crossings set back from the corner so that people turning right are already driving straight when they cross your path it's so so much safer. It's all about giving the cyclist a little safe spot to wait for the light without blocking the other direction, and being set back enough from the corner so no one is turning blindly into them. Yet so often I see well meaning cities building these great protected lanes that just suddenly turn to nothing at the intersection, as if that isn't a solved problem. *edit* Er wait I was looking at the colours reversed I think. Is the more bluish or greenish the bike or the pedestrian paths? If it's the more bluish then that's certainly not to dutch standards. There should be little corner protection crescents, otherwise the bikes are very vulnerable to cars turning right. 
Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 02:19 on Dec 31, 2014 |
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Dec 31, 2014 01:45
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Yeah a lot of it is to Dutch standards, especially the Burrard-Cornwall intersection, which is a thing of beauty:
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Dec 31, 2014 02:08
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The Deadly Hume posted:Melbourne's not so bad but in Sydney the press is absolutely hostile to the idea of any kind of cycle infrastructure (fortunately Clover Moore keeps persisting) and tends to lump all cyclists in with the lycra warriors. I heard that Australian drivers do hook turns when they want to turn right (they pull over to the left, wait until through traffic goes through, and then turn right).
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Dec 31, 2014 04:46
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Lobsterpillar posted:I heard that Australian drivers do hook turns when they want to turn right (they pull over to the left, wait until through traffic goes through, and then turn right).
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Dec 31, 2014 05:32
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So you come across an all way stop with five intersections. Who goes first?
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Jan 3, 2015 20:03
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mamosodiumku posted:So you come across an all way stop with five intersections. Who goes first? Like all All-Way Stop intersections, whoever arrived first goes first. If two people arrive at the same time, the person on the left should yield. If it's busy and there's just a lot of people arriving, O̶͖̻̬̮P͇̗͚̠͘E̸̪͈͎N͞ ̥̳͇͍T̰̗̘̣̦ḨÉ̺͚̜̲ ̟̤̝̦B̮̹L͓̪O̮̝̠O̖̣̩̘͇͞ͅD͓͞G̡̬̯͈̬̗͓ͅA̼̭͓̞̮̟T̨̙̙͚̤ͅE̦S͇̼̤̗͕͢
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Jan 3, 2015 20:08
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Real answer: It doesn't matter, that intersection would work way better as a roundabout.
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Jan 3, 2015 20:15
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Carbon dioxide posted:Real answer: It doesn't matter, that intersection would work way better as a roundabout. You'd probably have to take like 2 or 3 buildings in order to fit a modern roundabout with 5 approaches there. Maybe a lovely pseudo-traffic circle thing, but at that point it basically operates like a 5-way stop anyway.
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Jan 3, 2015 20:20
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mamosodiumku posted:So you come across an all way stop with five intersections. Who goes first? Fortuna audaces Iuvat
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Jan 3, 2015 20:22
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mamosodiumku posted:So you come across an all way stop with five intersections. Who goes first? You wait for the local transport authority to signalise it.
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Jan 3, 2015 21:20
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mamosodiumku posted:So you come across an all way stop with five intersections. Who goes first? The rear end in a top hat in the SUV with the "Nobama" bumper sticker.
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Jan 3, 2015 23:53
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There was a set up almost exactly like that by my old place, but they awkwardly re-jiggered it to be a 4-way by making one of the lanes do a tight 90 degree turn with its own stop sign immediately before the intersection.
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Jan 4, 2015 01:57
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Yep. Kill through access on one of the roads, problem solved. Works on pretty much any intersection when you want to simplify things. https://www.google.com/maps/@27.9337881,-82.5057992,204m/data=!3m1!1e3 Edit: someone remind me to make a post about what's going on in Downtown Tampa. It's not every day that you basically get to rebuild the street grid of a downtown CBD. Varance fucked around with this message at 03:02 on Jan 4, 2015 |
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Jan 4, 2015 02:49
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Carbon dioxide posted:Real answer: It doesn't matter, that intersection would work way better as a roundabout.
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