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So! Here's what I saw in Costa Rica. The population hasn't gone up by too much since my last visit in 2009, but the percentage of people with cars has. As a result, the country is putting more money into its infrastructure. These are mostly capacity improvements that also improve safety: grade separating the Pan-American Highway, cutting new, more direct roads to bypass the switchbacks, and widening the gravel cliff-hugging roads to allow cars to pass each other safely. Of course, the safety standards are nowhere near what we're used to in the US: no shoulders, no guiderail, no illumination, no access control, and narrow lanes. Combined with the fact that most drivers are relatively new, and everyone goes waaaaay over the speed limit (100kph over in the construction zones on the PAH), I imagine the accident rates are tremendously high.There are hardly any ped amenities, of course, and very very few signals. The freeways are sporadic. You'll have one or two fully built-out interchanges with a dozen kilometers of two-lane undivided highway between, with fruterias right alongside. Pretty effective for improving capacity, and it eliminates some high-speed crossing accidents, but I'm sure there are still nasty head-on collisions. Guanacaste Province still paints hearts with halos wherever a pedestrian gets run over. I've always liked that idea, and figured it would be very effective at drawing attention to dangerous crossings. If you can't afford proper accommodations, you can at least get people's attention. On that last point, everything is done on the cheap. I saw them pouring concrete pavement without any rebar at all. They had the little metal stands that you use to position rebar, they just didn't have the steel itself. Probably some contractor looking to make a few mil. Instead of retaining walls, they use gabions (wire boxes filled with rocks) in most places. Catch basins are just dropped in the ground, often with nothing attached. Rather than utility poles, the wires are stapled to nearby trees and rock walls. Station markers are spray-painted on the dirt. As we sometimes say, "close enough for highway work." You know what's embarrassing, though? Without snow plows and freeze-thaw cycles, their pavement quality and markings are much better than what we have in Connecticut.
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Aug 27, 2015 23:42
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Nintendo Kid posted:The assertion that there's an epidemic of people speeding on suburb neighborhood roads is absolutely baseless. And that phraseology is absolutely a strawman. Put up or shut up, dude.
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Aug 28, 2015 19:30
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Lead out in cuffs posted:And that phraseology is absolutely a strawman. Put up or shut up, dude. GIVEN: That suburban roads inside of residential developments are often wide GIVEN: That suburban roads inside of residential developments rarely have actual speeding, even if many of the residents believe there is speeding THEREFORE: "Wide roads mean people drive fast" is false in the context of roads such as roads inside your typical suburban development (among other reasons, because things like cars parked along the road narrow the road)
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Aug 28, 2015 19:51
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C'mon guys, cut it out. I don't think we're going to make any progress on that discussion.
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Aug 28, 2015 22:29
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ChipNDip posted:Then why are they still built that wide in areas where overnight street parking is banned, and/or when all the houses have 2-3 car garages and big driveways as well? actually most neighborhood streets are designed to have parking on both sides of the road while allowing enough room for a fire truck to pass through. In Plano, you can submit a request for traffic enforcement on your street if you think there is an issue. They typically put out a radar sign or assign a citizen patrol to record speeds and such. Then if the information warrants it, they will do a 'speed trap' to get people back in line. With school starting, speeding and/or talking on a cell phone in a school zone pretty well guarantees a $500+ ticket from the Blue Line.
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Aug 30, 2015 00:08
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Don't block the box, but for people.
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Aug 30, 2015 00:24
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mamosodiumku posted:Don't block the box, but for people. Oh my god, we need these EVERYWHERE. Sidewalks, transit stops, hallways, aisles in supermarkets...
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Aug 30, 2015 03:46
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Cichlidae posted:Oh my god, we need these EVERYWHERE. Sidewalks, transit stops, hallways, aisles in supermarkets... I want to strap a laser projector to my chest so there is constantly one of those surrounding me. Like the seemingly terrible idea bike lasers 
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Aug 30, 2015 03:58
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Devor posted:I want to strap a laser projector to my chest so there is constantly one of those surrounding me. Like the seemingly terrible idea bike lasers
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Aug 30, 2015 17:58
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GWBBQ posted:Seems like a great idea until it rains. If you're riding your bike in the rain, you goofed up already.
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Aug 31, 2015 02:30
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Eskaton posted:If you're riding your bike in the rain, you goofed up already. Devor posted:I want to strap a laser projector to my chest so there is constantly one of those surrounding me. Like the seemingly terrible idea bike lasers This reminds me of this interesting thing I saw the other day for bikes. In my parents subdivision the put speed bumps in to attempt to slow people down. However, they are short and long so they are more like speed mounds and it is easier to drive over then going 30mph, and the limit is 25. Though I suppose it's better than 50 where your shocks bottom out on you as you go over. But there are only 2 installed a quarter mile apart on a mile long road.
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Aug 31, 2015 03:40
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Soooo... who wants to hear my story about how bad construction MOT sent motorists across a light rail line without stopping, while also disabling active signal protections that are supposed to stop said traffic, for over 24 hours before we could get someone to add a a pair of stop signs just before the tracks? 
Varance fucked around with this message at 05:38 on Sep 2, 2015 |
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Sep 2, 2015 05:34
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Since most of you don't read the thread I'll post my freakin' Cities: Skylines project here as well: So much whitespace...
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Sep 2, 2015 08:11
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Sep 2, 2015 11:15
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I wonder how the Chinese drivers will react when they come upon this?
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Sep 2, 2015 12:12
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RazNation posted:I wonder how the Chinese drivers will react when they come upon this? It's supposed to be in Montreal.
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Sep 2, 2015 13:12
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Carbon dioxide posted:It's supposed to be in Montreal.
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Sep 2, 2015 21:03
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Those are not north american plates on the cars.
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Sep 2, 2015 21:15
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I too am confused when I see Asian people outside of China.
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Sep 2, 2015 21:21
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Carbon dioxide posted:It's supposed to be in Montreal. k-nuck plates are like US plates, the old fashion 4x3. Those plates look Chinese, besides look where they parked their fuckin car......gotta be Chinese.
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Sep 3, 2015 00:54
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https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/21m2qm/cool_crosswalk_design_in_kyrgyzstan/ Kyrgyzstan, apparently.
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Sep 3, 2015 01:32
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 This is true and good
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Sep 3, 2015 04:47
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Varance posted:Soooo... who wants to hear my story about how bad construction MOT sent motorists across a light rail line without stopping, while also disabling active signal protections that are supposed to stop said traffic, for over 24 hours before we could get someone to add a a pair of stop signs just before the tracks? Go for it! That's gorgeous. Is it based on a real city? Baronjutter posted:
Eh, it's not really true. Ped accommodations are better than they've ever been (I imagine it's the same with bikes), lacking as they may be in some places. Ask someone who's blind or in a wheelchair. I'll bet they're a lot happier with dedicated, accessible ped phases and sidewalk ramps than they would've been pre-1950 rolling though grass or over gravel and horse poo poo on an unpaved shoulder. The tram lines are totally correct, though. I'm still pissed about how many good, very direct lines got ripped up around here.
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Sep 3, 2015 12:08
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Cichlidae posted:That's gorgeous. Is it based on a real city? Not directly, no. I was trying to roleplay it a bit and stole all kinds of ideas from different North American places: a square grid Saint Louis-like downtown, that turbine interchange cutting through neighborhoods in the center of the map (with subsequent freeway revolts? who knows!), streetcar-ish suburbs, a Los Angeles-like offramp complex for downtown, etc. I guess it's vaguely midwestern in general (flat map). Ultimately I kinda did an ex post justification for the road system, look at the maps below:   The initial dark yellow cross is part of some kind of interstate project connecting the city in the first place, with the bend preserving downtown real estate. I'd say this was a late 50s ealy 60s development. Then you get the orangeish part added a decade later as a bypass towards the south, together with the first half of that downtown stack and part of the southern interchange (first planned as a cloverleaf with one semidirectional connector). After that I gather there were some big problems in getting more construction done from the mid-70s onwards, but the third freeway bridge and northern bypass finally got going in the late 80s/early 90s (in red). After that you see massive suburban/exurban growth to the east and north, where land is cheap (haven't gotten to building this in-game). So the final stage of the freeway network is a bigass, three-quarters loop around the city, with two five level stacks and frontage roads (not drawn on the map, stupid plugin). Also the southern interchange gets a bit of an upgrade and the western one is some Euro intern's creative design  I wish I wasn't stuck at home with an injury, otherwise I could have spent my time more productively. Video games. Koesj fucked around with this message at 14:22 on Sep 3, 2015 |
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Sep 3, 2015 13:33
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Cichlidae posted:That's gorgeous. Is it based on a real city? https://www.google.com/maps/place/Louisville,+KY
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Sep 4, 2015 05:43
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Whoa that river! Might as well be a GTA Derby City map 
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Sep 4, 2015 15:00
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http://www.techinsider.io/urbi-before-after-gallery-2015-8 Nice gallery of how effective taking space away from cars can make an area so much more safe, pleasant, and attractive.
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Sep 7, 2015 20:10
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Baronjutter posted:http://www.techinsider.io/urbi-before-after-gallery-2015-8 I find it a little amusing how my brain goes "those architect's renderings don't look entirely convincing, they should work on that". I guess it's something to do with the extreme wide angle and the fact that the trees and plants are so very green on all the "after" pics.
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Sep 8, 2015 23:52
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I've been complaining about Stamford CT being an awful place to drive and walk (God help you if you want to ride a bike,) since drat near the beginning of this thread, and apparently I wasn't the only one thinking that. The city recently hired Josh Benson, who was largely responsible for the NYC projects to make the city more bike and pedestrian friendly. I'm excited to see what happens with not just him on board, but the kind of attitude the city has looking forward to hire someone like him.
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Sep 10, 2015 04:11
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So my city just hired a "dream team" of foreign consultants to plan our city's bike infrastructure and they'll be throwing a few million at it to start. Normally I'd be very happy about this, but the experts they hired are all from cities with fairly universally criticized ways of doing bike infra that don't come close to dutch standards and are full of their own local biases. They're all better than nothing, but still not the best. I don't understand why if you're starting from basically scratch why you wouldn't hire from objectively the best system? Also they paid 300k for this dream team to do some consulting. Jesus Christ buy me a CROW manual and maybe fly in someone from the dutch Cycling union for a couple weeks and I would have done it for free and probably not hosed up the intersections as bad as these guys will. Why yes this fully protected network of bike paths is safe! On intersections? Nah don't do anything special there, just become a car. Dutch style protected intersections?? No way, it's oppressive to force cyclists to use them! Left turn in 2 fully protected movements balanced by right turns not involving vehicle traffic interaction at all? No way, go out there and mix with heavy downtown traffic! http://vancouverisland.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=701011 Like great a Danish expert, yeah they have a better mode share than Canada but their infra is widely criticized and their awful "Copenhagen left" is proven a very unsafe design. It's not like this topic hasn't been studied to death with clear best practices, but we just keep ignoring and thinking we need to dream up our own methods, or just sort of cargo-cult a mish-mash of styles from around the world without understanding why they work or not. Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 18:47 on Sep 10, 2015 |
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Sep 10, 2015 18:44
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I can guaran-loving-tee you there's tons of junior cycleway engineers mulling about who are either un- or underemployed right now. The Dutch construction industry has been hardest hit by the crisis in what has been a generally stagnant economy already. Dream team my rear end.
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Sep 10, 2015 18:48
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Oh my god, I'm so burnt out on Synchro right now. I've spent the past 6 months doing almost nothing but intersection design, trying to squeeze the last 5% of performance out of the same handful of intersections in dozens of alternatives. They're all designed for the absolute minimum cross-section that won't back cars onto the freeway, but that's assuming that volumes won't increase by 2040, which is rapidly showing itself to be a false assumption. I took a look at the latest volumes this morning and, even with the Busway, they're still climbing, especially on weekends. You urban designers will be happy to learn I'm designing all of these intersections with the best ped and bike accommodations I can, but the result is that the cycle lengths have to get longer as the v/c climbs, and eventually that means adding more lanes, which means longer ped crossing times, which means longer cycles... it's really not a lot of fun. I was hoping I could put in left turn bays at unsignalized intersections, since I learned that they're a MASSIVE safety boon, but there's just no room. Even in some utopian world where car volumes dropped by 50%, we still wouldn't have room for everything merited by benefit/cost without demolishing half the city. So yeah, six straight months, and no end in sight. I want a new job.
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Sep 10, 2015 21:33
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Hang the people who did the c/b analysis parameters from the highest tree, then quit your job.
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Sep 10, 2015 22:33
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Koesj posted:Hang the people who did the c/b analysis parameters from the highest tree, then quit your job. It's pretty solid science, though. Americans are such terrible drivers that it's worth demolishing a few houses to put in a left turn lane whenever you've got more than a handful of cars turning left in an hour. This is especially true in CT, where the value of a single fatality eclipses $8M.
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Sep 10, 2015 22:51
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Cichlidae posted:This is especially true in CT, where the value of a single fatality eclipses $8M. Sorry for the ignorance, but what does that mean?
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Sep 11, 2015 00:36
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Minenfeld! posted:Sorry for the ignorance, but what does that mean? Serious answer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life
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Sep 11, 2015 00:50
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Cichlidae posted:It's pretty solid science, though. Americans are such terrible drivers that it's worth demolishing a few houses to put in a left turn lane whenever you've got more than a handful of cars turning left in an hour. This is especially true in CT, where the value of a single fatality eclipses $8M. Is there any push in your industry to, you know, actually make the driving test/drivers training more strenuous than simply having a pulse and seven hours to waste at the license bureau?
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Sep 11, 2015 07:14
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MrYenko posted:Is there any push in your industry to, you know, actually make the driving test/drivers training more strenuous than simply having a pulse and seven hours to waste at the license bureau? Nothing concerted. It'd be tantamount to political suicide to enact anything that would affect seniors. On the other end of the age spectrum, I'd love to be able to say that driver's ed is better than ever, but it's clearly still terrible compared to Europe and I'd wager the increase in distracted driving has wiped out any safety benefits.
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Sep 11, 2015 12:29
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So in about a week or so I'll be starting a new job as a city civil engineer! I'll be helping with traffic a little bit but my focus will be on managing the ongoing construction projects and improve some of the things they're trying to do now. I can't tell you how happy I am. The position kinda popped out of nowhere and was thrown my way and the whole process of "hey there's to job" to "here's an offer" was like 4 days and gently caress traveling out of state for months at a time ever again!
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Sep 11, 2015 12:57
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Cichlidae posted:Nothing concerted. It'd be tantamount to political suicide to enact anything that would affect seniors. On the other end of the age spectrum, I'd love to be able to say that driver's ed is better than ever, but it's clearly still terrible compared to Europe and I'd wager the increase in distracted driving has wiped out any safety benefits. Well the driver license requirements in for example Germany (1950/60s) was similar to what it is now in the USA. Everyone was allowed to keep their license when the new requirements were stricter. A couple of years back a normal drivers license allowed anyone who passed it in a normal car to drive trucks up to 7.5tons. Someone who made their license in the 60s was allowed to drive up to 40tons. Nowadays a normal passenger car license is restricted to vehicles of up to 3.5 tons. The only reasonable way to go about it is to slowly increase requirements for new licenses. And then hope that peer and social pressure will change the behaviour of older drivers.
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Sep 11, 2015 13:43
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