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Koesj posted:I do believe Jeoh was being facetious Ahhh I was hoping so! I'm so used to dealing with people who have really bizarre opinions... Like, even within the profession. I was looking at the agenda for next month's WTS banquet and there's a presentation on why we're all going to own autonomous cars in 5 years and how all our roads will be able to handle twice as much traffic with no accidents. How can people believe this crap? We're not going to have 100% autonomous vehicles on the road for the next 50+ years, the way I see it, no matter how fast the technology adapts. Relatively wealthy engineers and think tanks don't understand that people are still driving 30-year-old cars, and the Feds don't mandate new automotive technology (and will probably push their mandates back year by year by year). It'd be like TV executives in 1999 talking about how everyone was going to be using digital TV within 6 months and we may as well dismantle our analog networks right now. Cichlidae fucked around with this message at 22:37 on Sep 27, 2015 |
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Sep 27, 2015 21:58
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Hey Cichlidae, it looks like Dunkin Donuts Park is coming along nicely to be ready for next April in downtown Hartford:
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Sep 28, 2015 00:23
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Cichlidae posted:Except maybe for people who love parking spaces. We'll be removing thousands of 'em. How is this going to end up helping people?
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Sep 28, 2015 00:37
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Khizan posted:How is this going to end up helping people? More housing/business space/parks. Parking lots make cities/towns hotter and provide no appreciable benefit, aesthetic or otherwise, if they're not being used.
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Sep 28, 2015 00:40
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Cichlidae posted:Ahhh I was hoping so! I'm so used to dealing with people who have really bizarre opinions... This. Even automated transit buses (not rail, buses) are a pipe dream without vastly improved infrastructure and transportation funding (which we've been slacking on for 50 years). Florida DOT's drinking that Kool-Aid pretty hard. Edit: FDOT is currently holding our streetcar expansion funding hostage ($100 Million) unless we agree to build an $8 Billion express/local interstate system. We could move more people, more efficiently, for 1/3 of that with an actual rail system, but SELF-DRIVING CARS ARE THE FUTURE!!!  No, Uber/Lyft-style trips to take people to and from transit nodes is the future. Varance fucked around with this message at 02:20 on Sep 28, 2015 |
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Sep 28, 2015 02:14
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Varance posted:This. Even automated transit buses (not rail, buses) are a pipe dream without vastly improved infrastructure and transportation funding (which we've been slacking on for 50 years). Any day now* I'm working for a city new as their civil engineer and it's nice being on the side of construction. Pretty excited about all the poo poo I'll be doing now. *once enough bridges collapse
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Sep 28, 2015 02:15
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Khizan posted:How is this going to end up helping people? Too many parking spaces can royally gently caress up an area in a number of ways.
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Sep 28, 2015 02:43
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Varance posted:
I really don't think relying on constant turnover of exploited workers to supply transportation is a working long term strategy. Frankly you're going to run out of suckers and desperate people to sufficiently handle the load, to say nothing of the hell replacing private cars with constantly circulating and ready hired cars is gonna do on your road infrastructure. To do this you actually need the self driving cars you deride, since you don't seem to be down with having parking decks for transit nodes.
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Sep 28, 2015 02:51
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Nintendo Kid posted:I really don't think relying on constant turnover of exploited workers to supply transportation is a working long term strategy. Frankly you're going to run out of suckers and desperate people to sufficiently handle the load, to say nothing of the hell replacing private cars with constantly circulating and ready hired cars is gonna do on your road infrastructure. To do this you actually need the self driving cars you deride, since you don't seem to be down with having parking decks for transit nodes. FDOT is all-in with everyone owning a self-driving car within the next 10 years and attempting to double freeway capacity to handle the load while completely ignoring transit which is sheer lunacy and/or pocket greasing at its finest. That's what I was deriding. There are some people who will NEVER, EVER give out their God-given right to drive however and wherever they please. Also, LOL if you don't think workers aren't exploited in the transportation business. That's been happening to transit workers for the last 50 years. Anti-union legislation has weakened transit worker unions to the point where they can't actually get a decent wage in union-busting states. Starting pay for a bus driver where I am is $12.16/hour. Many transit workers move into trucking once they have the experience, because it's easier work that pays better. Varance fucked around with this message at 03:56 on Sep 28, 2015 |
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Sep 28, 2015 03:42
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Varance posted:When did I say that? The transit system I work for is actively planning for exactly that. Uber/Lyft will eventually move toward self-driving vehicles. The rollout is already in testing phases out in Temple Terrace, FL. Uber and lyft get by on massive piles of venture capital money and the fact that their "contractors" own the cars and are responsible for fuel/repairs/etc. Actually owning the cars themselves wrecks their business model, including how they undercut normal taxi companies. A mostly self driving car Uber or lyft is either grossly expensive and thus not usable except by the rich, or it's burning money too fast to last long. Either way, it's no backbone service to work with transit nodes. They're not even profitable right now despite the millions of vc dollars flowing in. Last I checked bus drivers don't have to buy and pay for their bus and ongoing costs themselves. Nor do train engineers have to do it with their trains. Regular taxi drivers sometimes do, but their employers are required to guarantee a minimum wage, certain reimbursements, and these days medical insurance in most cases. Uber drivers don't have any of that, which is why turnover is so high.
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Sep 28, 2015 03:53
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Cichlidae posted:the Feds don't mandate new automotive technology (and will probably push their mandates back year by year by year). Khizan posted:How is this going to end up helping people?
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Sep 28, 2015 03:53
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Nintendo Kid posted:Uber and lyft get by on massive piles of venture capital money and the fact that their "contractors" own the cars and are responsible for fuel/repairs/etc. Actually owning the cars themselves wrecks their business model, including how they undercut normal taxi companies. A mostly self driving car Uber or lyft is either grossly expensive and thus not usable except by the rich, or it's burning money too fast to last long. Either way, it's no backbone service to work with transit nodes. They're not even profitable right now despite the millions of vc dollars flowing in. On the agency side, we currently operate these things called flex routes: low ridership community bus routes that can deviate off-route to provide limited door-to-door service and feed people into the traditional bus service grid. You call a few hours in advance, we get the driver to pick you up at your house or take you straight home. Flex routes also have traditional bus stops, so you can also ride it in the same way as any other route. Typical usage is anywhere between 5 and 20 passengers per revenue hour, whereas most traditional bus routes are 20+. What we want to do is augment these routes to handle additional trips, which is where other solutions come in. On the autonomous side, the first tests will be within the next few years in Sun City Center and Temple Terrace, which are areas of Tampa Bay that have golf cart pathways. The prototype vehicle is currently on demonstration at our local science museum: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7p_K13riv2U. Meridian is going to take a bunch of those and use them drive people to and from major local destinations/bus stops. The University of South Florida (on the border of Temple Terrace) is also interested in using the tech on-campus, which will replace traditional shuttle bus service. A bunch of their drivers and their managers/supervisors recently jumped ship, so I believe that's happening sooner than later. In areas where that kind of infrastructure isn't present yet, our agency is working with Uber/Lyft for an automotive-based solution, which we're calling the First Mile, Last Mile program. Short 5-10 min hops to make rides practically door-to-door in suburban areas, where it's just not financially feasible to run a traditional transit route grid. Areas with greater density will get high frequency circulator bus service, which would make the entire trip pretty painless. Local taxi services will probably get involved at some point, as Uber/Lyft destroy their traditional business models. TL;DR: Transit agency runs the trunk routes, private contractors/rideshare/taxi companies take care of first mile/last mile. Nothing stopping people from riding buses/trains the old-fashioned way. Edit: We're also working with private companies like Megabus to provide express service. Varance fucked around with this message at 04:36 on Sep 28, 2015 |
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Sep 28, 2015 04:05
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There's going to be just a bit of an issue doing public private partnerships with companies that will likely have reverted to black car service with an app, if not entirely dead on the national scene, by the time cars that self drive and are trusted without any one on board are available. I get that Florida DOT is dumb and somebody lobbied for this, but it's got a 99 percent chance of crashing and burning.
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Sep 28, 2015 05:16
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Transit is still very expensive to do in a suburban setting, where cul-de-sac neighborhoods make it impossible to run an actual bus route (and we have tons of them). Standard transit service with a 30/40ft is at minimum $70/hour to operate, and $400k+ every 12 years to purchase each bus in the first place. We've been experimenting with door-to-door solutions since 2006, which cost about half of what a standard bus service would (~$35/hour). The current roster of flex routes have been in service since 2010-2011, so we're actually ahead of Uber in some respects, minus the app-based ride hailing. Over time, we've come to figure out that running set routes that deviate is the most cost-effective and efficient way of running the service, which is basically how Uber's new UberPool service in San Fransisco is going to work. Even if Uber/Lyft go Black Car, it's still possible that they can run subsidized service within a set area to pick up transit passenger, because it's still quite expensive to pick them up with an actual bus. You can also do SuperShuttle-type service with vans to achieve the same effect. Worse comes to worse, we'll plaster the countryside with flex service. In addition to all the private partnerships we're looking to try, we have 5 flex zones already in operation, with a 6th zone in the spring and another 10 in planning. Varance fucked around with this message at 05:51 on Sep 28, 2015 |
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Sep 28, 2015 05:33
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Varance posted:Transit is still very expensive to do in a suburban setting, where cul-de-sac neighborhoods make it impossible to run an actual bus route (and we have tons of them). What you're not getting is that Uber/lyft etc are not likely to have the drivers to support this plan. Maybe if the Florida DOT sets up and runs their own paratransit-for-non-disabled service it can handle the load, but I'd doubt they'd pay enough to get a big enough workforce in. Unless the plan is actually "we only want to have a few thousand people moved off car commutes to Transit" that is.
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Sep 28, 2015 05:41
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Nintendo Kid posted:What you're not getting is that Uber/lyft etc are not likely to have the drivers to support this plan. Maybe if the Florida DOT sets up and runs their own paratransit-for-non-disabled service it can handle the load, but I'd doubt they'd pay enough to get a big enough workforce in. 1) I'm talking from a position of knowledge on this subject, having been involved with flex service for the past 2 1/2 years. 2) Flex service *is* a paratransit-for-non-disabled service, and we've been running such a service out in the 'burbs for half a decade now. 3 of the 5 routes are running at maximum capacity during rush hour. On the busiest route, which is full practically all day long, we moved 3,259 people with a single van this past August... and August is one of the slower months. ~40k rides so far this fiscal year, up 10% versus same period last year. 3) Uber is already testing their version of the service in San Francisco. It's called UberPool. We're basically willing to sponsor UberPool routes as an official part of the transit system, with funding to allow the operator to maintain a minimum level of service using their own employees/vehicles in addition to volunteers. 4) FDOT has already set aside $500,000 to get Uber/Lyft/MetroBee/someone else into the game. That number is scheduled to grow by half a mil each year for the next 10 years. Varance fucked around with this message at 06:41 on Sep 28, 2015 |
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Sep 28, 2015 05:51
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Cicero posted:(Parking spaces for) Cars create distance that only cars can solve. Presumably also they're replacing the parking spaces with something else that's useful, like bike lanes or bus lanes or sidewalks or new development. Maybe this is just because I've spent most of my life in San Antonio, where there's no effective public transit and no effective ped/bike routes and everybody drives everywhere because that's the only real option, but I just can't picture any of that kind of stuff being useful enough to be able to replace parking spaces without a problem.
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Sep 28, 2015 06:12
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Khizan posted:Maybe this is just because I've spent most of my life in San Antonio, where there's no effective public transit and no effective ped/bike routes and everybody drives everywhere because that's the only real option quote:But when I talked with them one-on-one and explained our methodology (shoot for a LOS E for cars, LOS A-B for bicycles and peds)and how we'll be incorporating the East Coast Greenway, the overall impression was really positive. This project is going to help everyone out.
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Sep 28, 2015 07:49
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You're getting fishmeched m8
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Sep 28, 2015 08:34
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Cicero posted:Eh? Don't they though? Aren't anti-lock brakes mandated, and rear-view cameras scheduled for 2018 as a mandate? Those aren't exactly new technologies. I don't mean that they never mandate things that weren't required before, I mean they're not going to mandate what will still be in 2020 an unproven technology. The Feds like to wait until something's been around for decades and has a decent market penetration. Cichlidae fucked around with this message at 22:11 on Sep 28, 2015 |
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Sep 28, 2015 22:09
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Khizan posted:How is this going to end up helping people? One of the big ways is safety, both directly and indirectly. Directly, in that Parallel parking is a big source of accidents, especially for cyclists. Indirectly, in that if you use the space for things like bike lanes (separating bikes from pedestrians and cars is the safest option), widened sidewalks or turning lanes, you're improving safety all round. It's funny how up in arms people get about removing parking, though. In Vancouver, that's always one of the big objections to bike infrastructure projects, especially from local business associations. This is in spite of studies in other cities showing that replacing parking with bike lanes actually increases the profits of local businesses, or, in the case of one particular project, a survey that showed that 80% of the customers to those businesses get there by bike, on foot or on transit.
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Sep 30, 2015 20:12
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That's interesting. In the Netherlands people see the benefits of removing parking, to the point that local business owners will protest against the inclusion of parking spaces in a reconstruction: https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2015/09/22/reconstruction-of-st-marys-place-in-utrecht/ quote:The city had first planned to keep 20 parking places, but after the demands of the stakeholders only 7 ‘special interest places’ were implemented in the final design. In exactly the same numbers as before: 4 spaces for the handicapped, 2 spaces for electric cars and 1 space for a shared car. The article also lists some of the downsides of having parked cars in the city center. In Amsterdam there are also protests against the parking now, with newspapers citing numbers on what proportion of the available space in the city is used by cars, even though a minority of people uses them. Entropist fucked around with this message at 21:54 on Sep 30, 2015 |
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Sep 30, 2015 21:50
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Entropist posted:In the Netherlands people see the benefits of removing parking, to the point that local business owners will protest against the inclusion of parking spaces in a reconstruction:
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Sep 30, 2015 23:40
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Anyone have a program they use besides SignCad? We tried GuideSign but it doesn't create the large guide signs in the correct size....gaps off, text not correct from edge of panel, etc. We think that SignCad hasn't been updated in several years.
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Oct 1, 2015 01:33
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RazNation posted:Anyone have a program they use besides SignCad? I design my signs in Photoshop using Roadgeek EM. Nobody's been able to tell the difference so far  Edit: 
Cichlidae fucked around with this message at 03:07 on Oct 1, 2015 |
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Oct 1, 2015 03:02
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http://i.imgur.com/njpHHfh.webm Cichlidae can you have this built somewhere please
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Oct 1, 2015 11:37
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Jusupov posted:http://i.imgur.com/njpHHfh.webm It's just crazy enough to work! Reminds me of an interchange someone proposed waaaaay back in the thread that looked like a giant toilet bowl - all vehicles entered on the outside, spun around counterclockwise, and then exited in the middle.
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Oct 1, 2015 12:09
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Cichlidae posted:It's just crazy enough to work! Reminds me of an interchange someone proposed waaaaay back in the thread that looked like a giant toilet bowl - all vehicles entered on the outside, spun around counterclockwise, and then exited in the middle. For all the crazy buildings being built in Dubai, it saddens me that the roads are super boring and don't have any crazy poo poo.
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Oct 1, 2015 12:21
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Oh they've got super 'exciting' road design in the UAE, you just gotta experience it at ground-level. Sudden curve radius changes galore.
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Oct 1, 2015 12:31
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Jusupov posted:http://i.imgur.com/njpHHfh.webm Sometimes you have to make up grade and don't have a lot of length to do it 
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Oct 1, 2015 12:40
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Cichlidae posted:It's just crazy enough to work! Reminds me of an interchange someone proposed waaaaay back in the thread that looked like a giant toilet bowl - all vehicles entered on the outside, spun around counterclockwise, and then exited in the middle. Just call it a NASCAR(tm) Roundabout and Americans will flock to defend it against any nay-sayers.
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Oct 1, 2015 15:33
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Just so you know, Cities Skylines is 50% off on Steam until October 5. This includes the deluxe version... Also all the DLC for 5 bux.
Spacman fucked around with this message at 14:52 on Oct 2, 2015 |
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Oct 2, 2015 14:50
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Spacman posted:Just so you know, Cities Skylines is 50% off on Steam until October 5. This includes the deluxe version... Also all the DLC for 5 bux. The base game's 50% off yes, but the After Dark DLC (which only came out last week) is full price still because the 'deluxe edition' doesn't include it. IIRC there's places where you can get a couple of bucks off of this recent release, but I'm fine with it being full price myself since the developer is doing tons of work in supporting the product If you wanna see whether or not the game's for you, just buy the regular edition. If you like it a lot then add the DLC later but it's by no means mandatory. Also, if you've got the game, take a look at my stupidly large interchanges.
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Oct 2, 2015 17:42
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So I'm super interested in what flooding actually does to road ways. One of my friends posed this specific question:quote:SC's bridges are routinely graded as being in extremely poor shape by The American Society of Civil Engineers. A lot of those are the little bridges that span creeks and marshes. In addition, I'd be curious to know how roads themselves (pavement or asphalt) react to being submerged. I often see reports of bridges being "washed out" or roads that have collapsed and revealed plumbing underneath, but how does this happen and what do we do to mitigate it?
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Oct 5, 2015 14:15
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Hey chiclidae, The next thing I'm working on.  You wouldn't happen to know of any public diagrams of what the "finished" upgraded I-95/91/CT34 interchange will look like, would you? kefkafloyd fucked around with this message at 02:40 on Oct 6, 2015 |
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Oct 6, 2015 00:54
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SquadronROE posted:So I'm super interested in what flooding actually does to road ways. One of my friends posed this specific question: Since we don't build bridges out of platinum, salt water (or any water with electrolytes) is going to corrode metal; it's just a question of how long it takes. Your friend might be happy to know that bridges are routinely inspected. A lot of them are in HORRIBLE shape, yes, but they're almost always caught before they collapse. Obviously don't drive over any bridges that are visibly messed up. Now as for the road, typically it isn't the concrete or asphalt itself that has a problem with water, but rather the gravel and soil beneath being washed away. A road is typically elevated above the surrounding terrain, serving as sort of a natural dike. When water wants to move through it, it typically seeps through the gravel supporting the road. If there's too much water pressure, it'll blast the gravel out the other side, undermining the road and collapsing the pavement. kefkafloyd posted:Hey chiclidae, Have a look: http://i95newhaven.com/pdfs/contracts/contract_e_0510.pdf
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Oct 6, 2015 03:42
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Thanks. I already built the current configuration; debating on whether or not to have two separate versions of the map.
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Oct 6, 2015 03:56
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One thing I noticed in last winter's flooding in the UK was that a lot of the crappy patches that had been put over potholes were lifted up by the flood, leaving a combination of giant holes in the road and piles of soggy tarmac all over the place. Made for some fun driving.
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Oct 6, 2015 13:17
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Then again, there are a few peninsula/islands in some parts of the world that can only be reached by a road that floods every day with the tide. Those roads have no trouble with water, apparently. If you build them expecting floods, it's no problem.
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Oct 6, 2015 13:27
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Cichlidae posted:Since we don't build bridges out of platinum, salt water (or any water with electrolytes) is going to corrode metal; it's just a question of how long it takes. Your friend might be happy to know that bridges are routinely inspected. A lot of them are in HORRIBLE shape, yes, but they're almost always caught before they collapse. Obviously don't drive over any bridges that are visibly messed up. Fascinating, I didn't realize that the gravel under roads would be so at risk.
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Oct 6, 2015 13:48
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