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kimcicle posted:I'm really excited that our city's first SPUI being opened up on Saturday. I've tried to explain how this interchange would be beneficial to my coworkers thanks to the knowledge from this thread, but they all have dismissed it in a "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" kind of way (despite the fact the intersection in question was always horrible in all traffic situations). We also opened a Michigan left, and it bugs me how many people refuse to pay attention and just turn like they normally would. A neighbouring city has the only SPUI in Ontario and it can go to hell.
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Dec 11, 2010 03:59
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Millstone posted:A neighbouring city has the only SPUI in Ontario and it can go to hell. They must have screwed something up in the design or execution, because a SPUI is about as straightforward as they get. One intersection, one signal, three phases. Compare that to 2,2,3 for a diamond, or 2,2,2 for a diverging diamond. Can you show me an aerial photo or something? Maybe they screwed up the geometrics. Edited to account for an advance left, as described below! Cichlidae fucked around with this message at 21:38 on Dec 11, 2010 |
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Dec 11, 2010 17:24
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Er, doesn't a SPUI have to have three phases? Two pairs of left turns and then straight...
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Dec 11, 2010 17:41
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Socket Ryanist posted:Er, doesn't a SPUI have to have three phases? Two pairs of left turns and then straight... True, I was treating the left turn advance as part of the through phase. Protected lefts for life! Your way makes more sense 
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Dec 11, 2010 18:59
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With a SPUI the surface-to-freeway left turns are at such an angle that I don't see how it would be at all possible to make the left without a dedicated phase
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Dec 11, 2010 20:40
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Socket Ryanist posted:With a SPUI the surface-to-freeway left turns are at such an angle that I don't see how it would be at all possible to make the left without a dedicated phase Yeah, and given the number of lanes and volumes typically associated with a SPUI, I'd be uncomfortable with a permissive phase. The real solution, of course, is for some mad scientist to merge a SPUI with a DDI and create a beautiful abomination of an interchange that solves every problem. Edit: Just tried it, and it doesn't work any better than a normal DDI. Oh well! Cichlidae fucked around with this message at 21:46 on Dec 11, 2010 |
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Dec 11, 2010 21:38
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Cichlidae posted:They must have screwed something up in the design or execution, because a SPUI is about as straightforward as they get. One intersection, one signal, three phases. Compare that to 2,2,3 for a diamond, or 2,2,2 for a diverging diamond. The problem isn't the SPUI per se, it's the amount of traffic going above it. There's too much development on either side and not enough road. The SPUI does what the SPUI is supposed to do: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&sou...8,0.010568&z=17 The road above, Fourth Avenue Louth, is maintained by the Regional Municipality of Niagara, and the arterial, King's Highway 406, is a freeway operated by the Ontario Ministry of Transportation (coincidentally headquartered in St. Catharines). The MTO is responsible for building the SPUI. Joe 30330 fucked around with this message at 23:42 on Dec 11, 2010 |
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Dec 11, 2010 23:38
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Millstone posted:The problem isn't the SPUI per se, it's the amount of traffic going above it. There's too much development on either side and not enough road. The SPUI does what the SPUI is supposed to do: In the street view pictures of it, it seems pavement markings are scarce, and given the skew, some cat tracks could help. If it's just volume, the engineers are in a tough place. Either they increase capacity, presumably by building a full interchange, and risk adding so many cars to the freeway that it overloads, or keep things as they are and allow some congestion on 4th Ave in exchange for better freeway LOS.
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Dec 12, 2010 01:45
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Millstone posted:A neighbouring city has the only SPUI in Ontario and it can go to hell. Well now, that's just not true, we have one in Ottawa too, at the Airport Parkway and Hunt Club interchange. It seems to work well. Admittedly, the Parkway is currently a 2-lane freeway, and an argument could be made that Hunt Club is more of a major road, but still. I'm shocked, SHOCKED that the MTO built something other than a parclo, though, they seem to be ridiculously in love with those things.
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Dec 12, 2010 07:20
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Thought I'd share this, cause it's kind of traffic related California City Hundred of planned roads etched out in the desert, but the suburb was never built. Brings new meaning to Ghost Suburb.
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Dec 12, 2010 07:27
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Minister Robathan posted:Well now, that's just not true, we have one in Ottawa too, at the Airport Parkway and Hunt Club interchange. It seems to work well. Admittedly, the Parkway is currently a 2-lane freeway, and an argument could be made that Hunt Club is more of a major road, but still. I usually use absolutes like "ONLY" to see if anyone pops up to talk about other examples  The MTO loves parclo A4s because they're the poo poo.
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Dec 12, 2010 07:38
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less than three posted:Thought I'd share this, cause it's kind of traffic related Thank goodness they didn't build anything there; our country needs another sprawling, directionless suburb like a festering papercut. What's with the ridiculous 2-lane meandering "Parkway" running through the middle? Did they figure straight lines were boring, and that adding some curves would turn any normal boring road into a parkway of some sort?
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Dec 12, 2010 16:46
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Cichlidae posted:Thank goodness they didn't build anything there; our country needs another sprawling, directionless suburb like a festering papercut. What's with the ridiculous 2-lane meandering "Parkway" running through the middle? Did they figure straight lines were boring, and that adding some curves would turn any normal boring road into a parkway of some sort? It would probably be signed 'no parking' anyway, not that you'd want to.
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Dec 12, 2010 20:22
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Cichlidae posted:What's with the ridiculous 2-lane meandering "Parkway" running through the middle? Did they figure straight lines were boring, and that adding some curves would turn any normal boring road into a parkway of some sort? Traffic calming?
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Dec 12, 2010 20:53
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Cichlidae posted:Thank goodness they didn't build anything there; our country needs another sprawling, directionless suburb like a festering papercut. What's with the ridiculous 2-lane meandering "Parkway" running through the middle? Did they figure straight lines were boring, and that adding some curves would turn any normal boring road into a parkway of some sort? I'm not sure, but it's the only road that got paved. I've just started looking at the street names and some of them are interesting/aggravating. Who wouldn't want to live on Kitten Drive? or Kitten Place, or Kitten Way, or Kitten court... They reuse a bunch of names 4-5 times, _________ drive, way, court, place, terrace, court. 
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Dec 12, 2010 22:24
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Phanatic posted:Traffic calming? Traffic calming is for neighborhoods, not the middle of the desert. Who cares if you're driving 100? All of the other streets laid out there are straight, too.
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Dec 12, 2010 23:20
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Sorry for the double post, but if anyone here lives in the Middletown area, I'm going to be doing a public info meeting tomorrow (Tuesday) at City Hall. We're going to be replacing the stringers on the Arrigoni Bridge, so there will be some pretty major traffic impacts. Fortunately, I know just what to say: "People will be spending more time in Middletown!"
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Dec 13, 2010 13:30
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Cichlidae posted:Sorry for the double post, but if anyone here lives in the Middletown area, I'm going to be doing a public info meeting tomorrow (Tuesday) at City Hall. We're going to be replacing the stringers on the Arrigoni Bridge, so there will be some pretty major traffic impacts. Fortunately, I know just what to say: "People will be spending more time in Middletown!" I'll be there and ask about the possibility of stairs on this bridge and if we can get funding for them.
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Dec 13, 2010 19:14
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Cichlidae posted:Thank goodness they didn't build anything there; our country needs another sprawling, directionless suburb like a festering papercut. What's with the ridiculous 2-lane meandering "Parkway" running through the middle? Did they figure straight lines were boring, and that adding some curves would turn any normal boring road into a parkway of some sort?
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Dec 13, 2010 21:21
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Millstone posted:I'll be there and ask about the possibility of stairs on this bridge and if we can get funding for them. I will be sitting in the corner chuckling as the consultants try to figure out what the heck you're asking. They'll be running the show at this meeting, but if anyone asks specific questions about traffic, I'm there to help out. On a side note, I hope you don't have to commute across the bridge, because my (preliminary) calculations are showing ~ 30-minute delays westbound in the morning peak, and eastbound in the afternoon. Realistically, they'll be a decent amount lower, due to less traffic using it during construction and a slightly higher-than-anticipated capacity available. On a normal day, that'll be about 10 minutes delay each way for most drivers. In other news There was a very relevant article in the Hartford Courant this morning regarding our governor elect's vision for the future of the DOT. The article can be found here, but these are the most relevant bits: The Courant posted:New Governor Wants DOT On A New Track Well first off, we see what I predicted, that the Busway has one foot in the grave. Malloy has been careful about the issue, but now that he's taking a stand, you can bet that the Busway won't be around long. As for Route 11, I still don't see it being done, tolls or no. Involving tolls means a loss of most federal funding, and we certainly can't foot a billion-dollar bill on our own. The most frustrating thing in this article, though, is the bit about Route 1. It might not seem particularly interesting to you, but hopefully this rant will explain the situation, and why we're going to be wasting quite a bit of money. Why Route 1 Sucks I'm not here to give you a history lesson, but basically, US Route 1 along Connecticut's panhandle has been pretty congested for a hundred years. The Merritt Parkway was built to bypass Route 1, the Connecticut Turnpike (later I-95) was built to bypass Route 1; heck, even pieces of the current Route 1 were built to bypass the old Route 1. It's not surprising that Route 1 is one of the most congested roads in the state. It shouldn't surprise anyone that the route is constantly deluged in accidents. I'm not allowed to say too much about this, but suffice it to say that Route 1 from Greenwich to Bridgeport probably has had more blood poured over it than asphalt. This is a typical section of Route 1 in that area:  There's a mixture of residential and commercial use along Route 1 in this area, which is logical, since it's one of the oldest roads in the country. The road also predates access management by a couple centuries. Anyone who's wanted a driveway at any point since it was built only had to build it. Consequently, there's very little of Route 1 that has a continuous curb. Why is this a problem?  The accident rate along a road is roughly proportional to the number of driveways and intersections, squared. Where does Route 1 fit in this graph? I picked an average half-mile section and counted 43 intersections and driveways. That's over 80 per mile, waaaaay outside that graph up there. No wonder Route 1 is such a death trap, eh? It's estimated that removing one curb cut per mile reduces the accident rate by 4% and increases speeds (and throughput) by .25 mph. Imagine what closing 60 would do. So, what can we do to fix it? It's pretty simple, if you think of it from an engineering standpoint. Consolidate driveways, move access to side streets, remove unnecessary intersections and signals, remove on-street parking, add turn lanes, restrict left turns, make driveways right-in right-out, perhaps build frontage roads and medians where possible. Heck, here's a whole list of things we could do to improve safety and capacity.  (from the TRB access management manual) Of course, endorsing most of those improvements would be political suicide. The right-of-way battles alone, trying to close driveways, is enough to send almost any project to the dreaded "bin." What makes it worse is the towns that Route 1 goes through. Greenwich, in particular, is incredibly protective of its roads. The town owns all of the signals on Route 1, whereas in almost any other town, all signals on state-maintained roads are state-owned. Why do they own the signals? So they can screw with Route 1 traffic and keep all of those New Yorkers and Stamforders out of Greenwich. They want Route 1 to be a local road, when it clearly acts as a major arterial. Greenwich will NOT let anyone touch Route 1, and no amount of carrot or stick will change this. SO! Now we know enough to consider Malloy's plan. Let me copy it again so you can have a look: •Hire traffic professionals [consultants] to design an overhaul of traffic-choked Route 1 from Greenwich to Bridgeport. So we'll pay some consulting firm probably $10 million to crack open the Access Management Handbook and tell us that Route 1 needs... well, exactly those improvements I just mentioned. They'll have grand meetings, make glossy plans and photo-realistic renders showing how much better Route 1 will look once it's smoothed out. And then the DOT will say "thanks very much, here's your money." And do nothing. Because our hands are completely tied by the municipalities and property owners. The current situation sucks, but it's a total waste of money to have it studied, because there's nothing we can feasibly do. Well, that's it for my rant. Hope it was coherent.
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Dec 13, 2010 23:42
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I know that area (Aunt lives nearby), why not build a new road, call it New Route 1, and make old Route 1 a local road, and leave them to die.. er um have their observe road. I mean Route 1/9 here is a giant truck highway/path to the airport around north New Jersey, but thats just due to all the connections to the local bridges to New York.
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Dec 14, 2010 00:09
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Cichlidae posted:Greenwich, in particular, is incredibly protective of its roads. The town owns all of the signals on Route 1, whereas in almost any other town, all signals on state-maintained roads are state-owned. Why do they own the signals? So they can screw with Route 1 traffic and keep all of those New Yorkers and Stamforders out of Greenwich. They want Route 1 to be a local road, when it clearly acts as a major arterial. Greenwich will NOT let anyone touch Route 1, and no amount of carrot or stick will change this. 
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Dec 14, 2010 01:01
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Ryand-Smith posted:I know that area (Aunt lives nearby), why not build a new road, call it New Route 1, and make old Route 1 a local road, and leave them to die.. er um have their observe road. I mean Route 1/9 here is a giant truck highway/path to the airport around north New Jersey, but thats just due to all the connections to the local bridges to New York. I-95 was already built for that reason, as was Route 15. The problem is that everything is ON Route 1. 20-30 years ago, when the developers came in and decided to build tons of retail shops on the route, the towns said "sure, whatever you want!" and let them run wild. Now, Route 1 is the destination. grover posted:Am I the only one in the world who thinks blocking off roads to through-traffic, abnormally slow speed limits, speed bumps, banning turns, etc, are the wrong way to address people using alternate routes to bypass congestion? All it does is make congestion worse on the roads that need fixed the most Prohibiting left turns actually increases capacity and lowers the accident rate, but you're absolutely right about the rest. That's what happens when we let local politicians design regionally important roads. They don't understand that roads provide access AND throughput.
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Dec 14, 2010 01:24
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Why does the Northeast love tolls so much?
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Dec 14, 2010 07:16
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Choadmaster posted:Why does the Northeast love tolls so much? I guess they have a problem with using public funds for roads or just can't find funding for them? Orange County, CA has a few freeways that were only able to be built as toll roads because Orange County was broke as poo poo at the time. 20+ years later they're still toll roads. San Diego just pays for its freeways with sales taxes. We've had a 1/2 cent sales tax for the last 20 years (and goes through 2048) to pay for (among a lot of other things) about 70 miles of this:  (14 lanes, physically separated HOV/toll lanes, direct access to those lanes)
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Dec 14, 2010 09:56
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What's fun is to go down those HOV lanes and realize that almost every car in the regular lanes has only one occupant.
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Dec 14, 2010 10:29
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Cichlidae posted:remove on-street parking [on Route 1] 
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Dec 14, 2010 19:27
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Cichlidae posted:I-95 was already built for that reason, as was Route 15. The problem is that everything is ON Route 1. 20-30 years ago, when the developers came in and decided to build tons of retail shops on the route, the towns said "sure, whatever you want!" and let them run wild. Now, Route 1 is the destination. Just as a point of reference: Orange, CT basically has no downtown. It's all former farmland and postwar suburbia and the commercial development is entirely on Route 1.
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Dec 14, 2010 19:56
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Cichlidae posted:
That's interesting, why is that? I'd expect the relationship to be more or less linear with the number of intersections; if you have two intersections along a road that's twice as many opportunities for someone to pull out without looking and get smacked as if you have one intersection; three intersections, you've got three times the opportunities. Where's the square term come from?
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Dec 14, 2010 20:05
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Choadmaster posted:Why does the Northeast love tolls so much? Because many of the freeways (turnpikes) were built and commissioned before the Interstate Highway act, and the states needed tolls to bankroll the highways. When they were added as interstates, they were grandfathered into the whole "No Tolls" thing as long as they don't use federal funds for those roads. The tolls were supposed to go away after the bonds were paid off, but, well, you know what states do when they get streams of revenues, and toll takers are hard to fire...
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Dec 14, 2010 20:11
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The NY Thruway seems to keep finding ways to take on more debt. Usually they buy a new road.
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Dec 14, 2010 22:53
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Well, that was a fun public info meeting. Middletown's not as bad as I thought; has some decent restaurants.Phanatic posted:That's interesting, why is that? I'd expect the relationship to be more or less linear with the number of intersections; if you have two intersections along a road that's twice as many opportunities for someone to pull out without looking and get smacked as if you have one intersection; three intersections, you've got three times the opportunities. Where's the square term come from? Adding an intersection doesn't just cause conflicts with traffic on the road, it cuts the distance between intersection. That means less room for queues, more closely-spaced conflicts, more weaving, and more interference between left-turning traffic. It's probably closer to an exponential relationship than quadratic, even, but traffic engineering is a pretty fuzzy field as far as empirical relationships go.
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Dec 15, 2010 02:46
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Silver Alicorn posted:What's fun is to go down those HOV lanes and realize that almost every car in the regular lanes has only one occupant. Know what's even more fun? Paying my $0.90 to drive in those lanes by myself for 16 miles.
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Dec 15, 2010 07:44
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I have a horrible street that I bike up every work day and I was wondering what you would do to make it different. I live in Portland and this street is Sandy going from 7th to 12th. The street is diagonal to all of the other streets there so it means that each intersection from 7th to 13th is a 6 way. And most of the intersections don't have a street light, which means aside from Sandy all the other streets have a stop sign. Add to the confusion of everybody a well used bike lane and the chaos is complete. I have never felt very comfortable crossing that street and I would like to know what could be done here; if anything. Here is the street: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&sou...002411&t=h&z=19 Prviglupan fucked around with this message at 19:16 on Dec 16, 2010 |
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Dec 16, 2010 19:14
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Prviglupan posted:I have a horrible street that I bike up every work day and I was wondering what you would do to make it different. A series of roundabouts might work if there's enough right-of-way, but that's not a great solution if there are a lot of bicyclists. A simpler fix would just be to choose the 2 least important legs at each of those 6-way intersections and close them off.
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Dec 16, 2010 23:10
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Saw this today, thought this thread might be interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FemH4GhEqEs
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Dec 18, 2010 22:27
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Zero One posted:Saw this today, thought this thread might be interested: Well, I'm definitely interested. Hopefully the interface is as good as the simulation looks. It looks like there's heavy/light rail, motor vehicles, helicopters, planes, pedestrians, and water traffic, so that would be the 7 types of transportation they mention.
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Dec 18, 2010 22:48
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http://www.paradoxplaza.com/games/cities-in-motionquote:Choose between more than 30 different vehicles based on real-life models of buses, trams, water buses, helicopters, and subways, complete with an underground view It sounds like trains and roads are not included. So you can build buses and trams on the roads, but can't design/redesign the streets yourself. And according to this: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?510529-Cities-in-Motion-A-Beta-Preview-AAR (which is very informative) the heavy rail is there for "flavor" and is not playable.
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Dec 18, 2010 23:00
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Zero One posted:Saw this today, thought this thread might be interested: Awesome! This game had been on my radar for a while, but was expecting a mid-late 2011 launch, not February. As long as it's equal or better than Traffic Giant I'll be happy.
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Dec 19, 2010 00:06
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Zero One posted:http://www.paradoxplaza.com/games/cities-in-motion So it'd be a bit like TTD, in which all of the origins and destinations are already there, and you just connect them and try to maximize profit. The pre-built roads should help realism and vehicle routing, at least. It's coming out right around my birthday, too, so I can put it on my wish list! Awesome.
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Dec 19, 2010 01:24
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