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devicenull posted:How effective is painting the speed limit on the road going to be in actually slowing people down? Generally for every 10km/h reduction in speed limit you get a 4km/h change in average speeds. Halve that for mph. Unless they have other changes or a speed camera downstream from it, there will be done change but not much and not noticeable to the layperson.
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Sep 16, 2022 21:40
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devicenull posted:They spent a poo poo ton of money putting in belgian block curbs everywhere... they claimed so it's easier to repair later??? OK so for a Scandigoon, what would the expected material be? Concrete curb? Concrete just doesn't work here due to snowplows. A couple of seasons and you'd have to re-do the whole curb. They'd get sliced like cheese. I think stone looks more up-scale, too. I would imagine if you get cheap Chinese granite you'd probably save money just on the repairs you don't have to do when the paving project is over and all the construction vehicles have run all over the place.
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Sep 16, 2022 21:58
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Hippie Hedgehog posted:OK so for a Scandigoon, what would the expected material be? Concrete curb? As a Michigoon, they tend to just repair the concrete curbs when they're preparing to rip up and repair the entire rest of the road that got destroyed by snowplows and the freeze/thaw cycle.
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Sep 16, 2022 22:11
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Hippie Hedgehog posted:OK so for a Scandigoon, what would the expected material be? Concrete curb? The usual method here is poured concrete... it holds up pretty well, despite the snowplows and salt. I'm not sure the stone is really going to actually get repaired whenever it breaks. Lobsterpillar posted:Generally for every 10km/h reduction in speed limit you get a 4km/h change in average speeds. Halve that for mph. They expanded the road by about 5 ft, cut down all the large trees that used to be near the sides of the road, added sidewalks and curbs, and repaved fixing all the potholes. When asked about it, they swore that adding curbs was somehow going to slow people down. Not 5 minutes after they left from painting this stuff a landscaping truck went speeding down the road. I really can't blame them, the sight lines are great and there's no sense that you should be going any slower.
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Sep 16, 2022 22:26
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devicenull posted:Their masterpiece is now complete Yeah RIP. That painted "median" might work if it were actually solid, but paint will do nothing. Here are the recent NACTO guidelines for speed reduction mechanisms, in case you're interested: https://nacto.org/publication/urban-street-design-guide/design-controls/design-speed/speed-reduction-mechanisms/ Edit: devicenull posted:They expanded the road by about 5 ft, cut down all the large trees that used to be near the sides of the road, added sidewalks and curbs, and repaved fixing all the potholes. When asked about it, they swore that adding curbs was somehow going to slow people down. Lol, this is literally all the exact opposite of what's in the guidelines.
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Sep 16, 2022 22:32
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devicenull posted:The usual method here is poured concrete... it holds up pretty well, despite the snowplows and salt. I'm not sure the stone is really going to actually get repaired whenever it breaks. Yeah, I didn't really want to throw shade at the Scandinavian snowplow drivers, but they really shouldn't be hitting the curbs in the first place. That said, if the local guys are only removing 2 inches of snow or whatever they don't even have the big plow attached to the front of the truck, just a smaller one centered underneath. So if they're keeping up with the snowfall they don't even get the opportunity to beat up the curbs.
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Sep 17, 2022 00:25
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devicenull posted:The usual method here is poured concrete... it holds up pretty well, despite the snowplows and salt. I'm not sure the stone is really going to actually get repaired whenever it breaks. Yeah certainly sounds like widening was a poorly thought through mistake. Honestly that's the sort of thing that cities should know is a mistake by now-all of those things are well known to lead to higher speeds. It'll be an expensive uphill battle to get speeds back down.
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Sep 17, 2022 01:49
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Lobsterpillar posted:Yeah certainly sounds like widening was a poorly thought through mistake. Honestly that's the sort of thing that cities should know is a mistake by now-all of those things are well known to lead to higher speeds. It'll be an expensive uphill battle to get speeds back down. Well if the locals want that they could just get some junkyard cars and park them on the side.
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Sep 17, 2022 16:34
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Cat Hatter posted:Yeah, I didn't really want to throw shade at the Scandinavian snowplow drivers, but they really shouldn't be hitting the curbs in the first place. That said, if the local guys are only removing 2 inches of snow or whatever they don't even have the big plow attached to the front of the truck, just a smaller one centered underneath. So if they're keeping up with the snowfall they don't even get the opportunity to beat up the curbs. By the time the trucks get out on the road there can be a foot of snow or more, so good luck finding the curb except by touch. It’s a sparsely populated country with many many miles of roads, and snowstorms here get pretty intense, so it’s just not feasible to “keep up” with the snowfall all the time. There are rust marks all over the stone curbs in my town and I suspect they’d be a lot worse for wear if they were not massive granite.
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Sep 17, 2022 19:55
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Saukkis posted:Well if the locals want that they could just get some junkyard cars and park them on the side. In my experience the idea that parked cars calm traffic is unknown to the general public and not really understood. Also they'd much rather keep those parking spaces free for themselves and or their visitors, that's much more important to them
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Sep 17, 2022 20:10
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Hippie Hedgehog posted:By the time the trucks get out on the road there can be a foot of snow or more, so good luck finding the curb except by touch. It’s a sparsely populated country with many many miles of roads, and snowstorms here get pretty intense, so it’s just not feasible to “keep up” with the snowfall all the time. There are rust marks all over the stone curbs in my town and I suspect they’d be a lot worse for wear if they were not massive granite. Yeah, that's why I didn't really want to just go "If it were me, I'd simply plow better  ". I live right off a 5 lane highway that gets reasonably high priority to keep clear and they still can't always send a truck often enough to use the little blade if the snow starts really dumping down, so I understand them sometimes just having to do their best on the less traveled roads.
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Sep 17, 2022 20:23
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Lobsterpillar posted:In my experience the idea that parked cars calm traffic is unknown to the general public and not really understood. Also they'd much rather keep those parking spaces free for themselves and or their visitors, that's much more important to them On the other hand, parked cars also makes crossing the road much more dangerous for pedestrians.
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Sep 17, 2022 20:44
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devicenull posted:Their masterpiece is now complete I think you meant to post this in the opposite of traffic engineering thread.
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Sep 17, 2022 21:11
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Jaguars! posted:I think you meant to post this in the opposite of traffic engineering thread. Do we even have a traffic architecture thread?
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Sep 18, 2022 01:14
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nielsm posted:On the other hand, parked cars also makes crossing the road much more dangerous for pedestrians. They're also pretty hazardous to cyclists if your infrastructure sucks.
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Sep 18, 2022 05:51
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Lead out in cuffs posted:They're also pretty hazardous to cyclists if your infrastructure sucks. 
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Sep 18, 2022 14:16
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Lobsterpillar posted:In my experience the idea that parked cars calm traffic is unknown to the general public and not really understood. Also they'd much rather keep those parking spaces free for themselves and or their visitors, that's much more important to them Could you get the same calming effect while keeping parking by placing concrete bollards/planters to mark separate banks of parking spots? And adding a few feet of bike lane on the outside of the parking would narrow things down further, which should lower speeds? To mspaint! black = curb green = bike lane blue = parked cars purple = bollards orange = pedestrian crossing 
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Sep 18, 2022 14:37
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I cycle in London and we have recently started putting in some bike lanes like that with pavement on one side and parking on the other. I'm no expert but I do feel very protected! If the lane is wide enough then doors opening isn't the threat that it could be.
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Sep 18, 2022 14:41
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:Could you get the same calming effect while keeping parking by placing concrete bollards/planters to mark separate banks of parking spots? Generally speaking we don't put non-crashworthy obstructions along the corridor as traffic calming. So you'd put in flexposts, or similar. We designed a project that had buffered bike lanes, with flexposts in the buffer. Edit: And this is a bad crossing, you'd restrict parking near a pedestrian crossing to enhance visibility. Or ideally not have a mid-block crossing at all if it's an urban setting.
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Sep 18, 2022 16:50
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Strategic Tea posted:I cycle in London and we have recently started putting in some bike lanes like that with pavement on one side and parking on the other. I'm no expert but I do feel very protected! If the lane is wide enough then doors opening isn't the threat that it could be. Yeah fully separated are the gold standard, but parking-protected lanes are about the next-best, as long as they're done right. Like, I was in Guadalajara for a community bike shop conference a few years back, and they had one single block of parking-protected bike lane on a super-busy street, with basically no lane at all before or after. Apparently it was inspired by infrastructure in Vancouver, but it was worse than useless, and all the locals thought it was a joke. Devor posted:Edit: And this is a bad crossing, you'd restrict parking near a pedestrian crossing to enhance visibility. Or ideally not have a mid-block crossing at all if it's an urban setting. Yeah not an engineer, but these were my first thoughts too.
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Sep 18, 2022 18:57
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I cycle in Amsterdam and it's very rare to have to cycle close to cars parked beyond the bike lane, except maybe in a case like this where cycling takes place on a smaller parallel road where you would not be pushed close to the parked cars by traffic: https://goo.gl/maps/YJZcsLAoDsmSxT4eA One of the worst streets of Amsterdam, by the way. More typically it is like this:  (bike lane to the right, on the left there is none because there's just a canal). Though usually there isn't a lot of parking at all along main roads that would have a bike lane.
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Sep 19, 2022 19:25
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:Could you get the same calming effect while keeping parking by placing concrete bollards/planters to mark separate banks of parking spots? Make orange a big honkin' speed bump instead. That'll slow the drivers, or else. Alternatively use curbs and planters to narrow the road to single lane in that spot.
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Sep 20, 2022 14:35
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Entropist posted:I cycle in Amsterdam and it's very rare to have to cycle close to cars parked beyond the bike lane, except maybe in a case like this where cycling takes place on a smaller parallel road where you would not be pushed close to the parked cars by traffic: https://goo.gl/maps/YJZcsLAoDsmSxT4eA Yeah IIRC, getting rid of street parking was an explicit aim of Stop der Kindermoerd, and one which they largely achieved.
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Sep 22, 2022 03:25
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Could anyone point me towards research/examples of eliminating transit fares? It's always seemed backwards to create barriers to systems that are more efficient at capacity, and fares recoup a fraction of costs at best. Is it just a political question, or are there reasons traffic engineers would recommend implementing fares for transit since that seems to be the default state in most places.
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Sep 24, 2022 04:13
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The more infrastructure is run by a notionally third party business for profit* ** *** the less direct blame politicians have to take for corruption, financial disaster and bad service. The system works! * BITDA ** Based on adjusted revenue at assumed market rate tickets, may vary from actual pricing *** Excludes exceptional items such as the month of strikes last year
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Sep 24, 2022 11:34
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:Could anyone point me towards research/examples of eliminating transit fares? It's always seemed backwards to create barriers to systems that are more efficient at capacity, and fares recoup a fraction of costs at best. Is it just a political question, or are there reasons traffic engineers would recommend implementing fares for transit since that seems to be the default state in most places. It seems to be mostly because of a moral/ideological standpoint: “those who use the system should pay a larger part of the cost than those who don’t use it”. See also US gas taxes (usually earmarked for road maintenance iiuc) and health insurance deductibles. This ideological view seems to mostly ignore the fact that a larger usage of transit is better for *everyone*, not just those who ride transit, since it gets cars off the road, leads to safer and more walkable cities, and oh by the way it also helps save the world from climate hell. So IMO it’s a fairly irrational argument. I think places that implemented free public transit have mostly been run by socialists of some color, so far.
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Sep 24, 2022 15:11
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It makes things a lot fiscally cleaner for the vital revenue towards running a thing to come from the thing itself, although in practice the accounting might not add up and the revenue may all get poured into the same source everywhere. Toll roads are an example, as well as an example of the purpose of works paying for themselves not really working. Build an expensive new road and want to recoup the cost? Put a toll on it. And then the toll will never come off regardless of whether it paid for the cost, and often the rights to collecting the toll will be sold off to some third party anyways. I think the idea of some tolls is to even introduce an economic cost to people using the thing to try to encourage them using alternate routes and means? Which seems...dubious as a goal for most forms of transit. There's also the argument that enforcement against people getting around subway fares is a massive load of trouble that wastes a lot of money and ruins people's lives.
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Sep 24, 2022 18:27
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SlothfulCobra posted:I think the idea of some tolls is to even introduce an economic cost to people using the thing to try to encourage them using alternate routes and means? Which seems...dubious as a goal for most forms of transit. Tell me about "congestion taxes" in London, Stockholm, Gothenburg etc... (Actually, don't.) Congestion fees in cities would probably work well if they were used to finance/subsidize public transit. I believe London does use about half of the income for that. But when you use the money to finance more freeways, you will induce more demand by the increased capacity, while also penalizing low-income families. So you get rich people still on the road, still stuck in queues, while poor people are stuck on under-financed transit just like before. Nobody wins. Well, at least the politicians get to say they managed to upgrade the roads without raising income taxes. Edit: To get back to the topic, I don't think it's much to do with traffic engineering except as it relates to things like induced demand. Hippie Hedgehog fucked around with this message at 21:41 on Sep 24, 2022 |
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Sep 24, 2022 21:37
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One problem with the "use X to finance Y" tricks is that it can easily just result in a compensatorial reduction in Y's budget from other sources. For example, a common thing in the US is for state lottery incomes to be used to fund schools, presumably because that makes the lottery seem less "evil" or reduces the moral hazard somehow, I don't know. But the school budget comes from a myriad sources, including the state general fund. So if the lottery produces $100 million for the schools, say, then the state can just reduce the general fund's contribution to school budgets by $100 million, and have that money to spend on whatever they want. They might as well just have the lottery money go straight into the general fund directly. In other words, just because something's being used to fund a worthwhile thing doesn't mean that the money available to that worthwhile thing actually goes up.
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Sep 24, 2022 23:08
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There is also a psychological component. People don’t value something that is free, and it leaves transit totally dependent on the whims of politicians and those who bribe them. Charging something helps people respect the system, even if the charge is only a token amount and/or people in need can easily get subsidies. I actually like Melbournes idea for this: transit in the city centre is free, but only goes to city centre destinations. It means shopping, clubbing, eating out, all has no cost to keep a car out of downtown, and you can make an day/evening of it without worry. Transit that comes and goes from the city centre does charge, both to recoup costs and as a reminder of its value.
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Sep 25, 2022 08:44
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:fares recoup a fraction of costs at best. This only applies to low quality systems (which encompasses most American systems, to be fair). Several Asian systems are even profitable by farebox revenue alone. 
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Sep 25, 2022 12:45
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Where's the cutoff for "low quality systems" or what's the definition for that? I mean, a handful of buses in a big US city is obvious, but in a lof ot the <100% cities there are probably other reasons for why fares don't cover all the cost (eg. political, historical, geographical).
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Sep 25, 2022 13:35
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Jasper Tin Neck posted:This only applies to low quality systems (which encompasses most American systems, to be fair). Several Asian systems are even profitable by farebox revenue alone. "does not include capital costs" is going a lot of work in that image. e: Here's WMATA (Washington DC) for example. 3-4% seems more accurate than 62%. 
AreWeDrunkYet fucked around with this message at 19:40 on Sep 25, 2022 |
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Sep 25, 2022 19:36
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orcane posted:Where's the cutoff for "low quality systems" or what's the definition for that? I mean, a handful of buses in a big US city is obvious, but in a lof ot the <100% cities there are probably other reasons for why fares don't cover all the cost (eg. political, historical, geographical). Presumably a combination of frequency, convenience, compared to alternatives. For example in Singapore, you can basically get everywhere by the subway and private car ownership is taxed significantly.
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Sep 25, 2022 19:37
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:"does not include capital costs" is going a lot of work in that image. If you're constantly incurring capex with massive boondoggles (like, again, so many American systems), sure. But running a decent service where the farebox covers a significant portion of expenses is possible, even common, around the world.
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Sep 25, 2022 20:39
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Jasper Tin Neck posted:This only applies to low quality systems (which encompasses most American systems, to be fair). Several Asian systems are even profitable by farebox revenue alone. I suspect there is some hidden "population density.map" thing in this graph. With very high correlation to some political variable. Like, size of the transit zone relative to the size of the urban zone.
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Sep 25, 2022 21:23
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If it included capital costs it'd probably include HK MTR's massive real estate business.
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Sep 25, 2022 21:49
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Jasper Tin Neck posted:This only applies to low quality systems (which encompasses most American systems, to be fair). Several Asian systems are even profitable by farebox revenue alone. This is extremely misleading. Capital is always included in your budget as an expense. Wouldn't be surprised if this chart is leaving off debt service as well. They probably just used NTD data, which is readily avaialble and gives ridership and operating expenses. Low hanging fruit. Varance fucked around with this message at 19:31 on Sep 26, 2022 |
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Sep 26, 2022 19:07
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Varance posted:This is extremely misleading. Capital is always included in your budget as an expense. Wouldn't be surprised if this chart is leaving off debt service as well. I mean, in Vancouver, at least for subway lines, somewhere around 60-70% of the capital expenses come from outside the transit authority. e.g. for the last line to open, the Evergreen Line: https://www.canada.ca/en/transport-canada/news/2016/11/evergreen-line-project.html quote:Funding for the Evergreen Line Project is a partnership between the Government of Canada, the Government of B.C. and TransLink. The project cost is $1.43 billion, with the Government of Canada contributing $424 million ($350 million from the Building Canada Fund, $67 million from the Public Transit Capital Trust Fund, and $7 million from the P3 Canada Fund), the Government of B.C. contributing $586 million, and other partners contributing $21 million. TransLink is contributing the remaining $400 million and will operate the system when it opens on December 2, 2016. TransLink, the transit authority, is part of the provincial government, but they make a clear distinction here between the $400M coming from TransLink itself (ie mostly out of fares) and the other $586M coming from "Government of B.C." The previous line, the Canada Line, had similar numbers, except with the addition of a private partner. I couldn't find as detailed a breakdown for the Broadway Line currently under construction, but it looks pretty similar too. https://www.broadwaysubway.ca/about/partners/ So yeah, at least here, the construction portion of capital costs is heavily subsidised from outside the transit authority. In terms of farebox contribution, they actually break things down in the article below. With capital included, it actually only covers 33% of the annual budget (but 52% of operating costs as shown in that figure). https://buzzer.translink.ca/2020/05/how-is-translink-funded/ (We should still be throwing more money at it if we want to actually address emissions in Metro Vancouver, but at least it isn't expected to operate at a profit.)
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Sep 26, 2022 20:11
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It’s well-known in online urbanist circles that capital costs for public transit in the United States are way too high; Alon Levy is a good person to read on this subject.
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Sep 26, 2022 20:16
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