Ask me about being a Traffic Engineer!

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twerking on the railroad: Jun 23, 2007; Get on my level

Cichlidae posted:

On a small scale, I think so, provided the maintenance isn't too big a deal. I'm not sure whether they'd be viable economically, though. Even producing their own electricity, it looks like you still need to build a lot of substructure, and I don't know whether it'd be worth it from a benefit-cost perspective once you got to thousands of lane-miles of roadway. And then there's the smaller issue of "concrete and asphalt are waste products," but I'm sure we'd find something else to do with them.

I just binged through this thread from the games about the State of Nutmeg onward. I vote for a Compounce aerodrome!

Seriously, what you just wrote here reminds me of something you wrote about some other lighted roadway thing: Why wouldn't people just dig up the electronics and sell it for scrap?

Also, I've been in Copenhagen lately and their approach to biking seems to actually make sense. Exactly how expensive are curbed bike lanes?

# ¿ May 27, 2014 00:20

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# ¿ Jun 2, 2024 07:51

twerking on the railroad: Jun 23, 2007; Get on my level

smackfu posted:

I would replace the hartford seal with the word "HARTFORD." People won't be able to understand the seal from 10 feet away.

Alternately: A Whalers logo. At least I know I'd love that poo poo if I were at your presentation.

# ¿ May 29, 2014 14:00

twerking on the railroad: Jun 23, 2007; Get on my level

Zodijackylite posted:

http://connecticut.news12.com/news/connecticut-transportation-officials-discuss-ways-to-ease-i-95-congestion-1.8337680

Is this... a... thing? A thing? I don't even know what to say, it sounds like lunacy to me.

I remember this happening in Atlanta. I thought we as a state were better than that poo poo. Near as I can recall they weren't even profitable enough there to support the construction of the pseudo-EZPass hardware needed to collect tolls from them.

# ¿ Jun 5, 2014 14:46

twerking on the railroad: Jun 23, 2007; Get on my level

Cichlidae posted:

Meanwhile, we've got minimal right-of-way takes and almost no environmental issues, and we'll be replacing the road mostly at-grade with a narrower cross-section. 5 billion bucks.

Which two kilometers is this?

# ¿ Jul 14, 2014 12:00

twerking on the railroad: Jun 23, 2007; Get on my level

Carbon dioxide posted:

I know this thread has talked about the subject before, but I don't think anyone linked to this particular 10 minute documentary yet.

It's about Amsterdam bicycle culture, from an US perspective. It's also about how a congested, polluted car-city in the 60s, because of the will of the people, transformed into a nice place where most people cycle daily.

https://vimeo.com/77084110

I'm currently living in Copenhagen, which is almost as much of a bike city as Amsterdam, so I'm in favor of more bike culture coming to the US, but that documentary is some crunchy hippie bullshit. What good does it talk about intersections without signage and the "6th sense" that people develop about other cyclists when you're trying to introduce people to more cycling? I asked about this earlier in the thread, and the fact remains that if you want a biking culture you need to make it safe, which means making a major investment in infrastructure - curbed bike lanes and the like. There's also the fact that the US is much bigger and its climate much less moderate, so it may be that even if you make a really big investment you won't get anywhere near the level of adoption you do in Europe.

# ¿ Jul 17, 2014 16:31

twerking on the railroad: Jun 23, 2007; Get on my level

Carbon dioxide posted:

I cycled in Copenhagen. As far as I could tell, Copenhagen's bike culture is very similar to the Dutch. There's only two significant differences I could see. The first is that they have a hand sign indicating "I'm gonna stop". In Holland, we only have 'left' and 'right' hand signs, and, actually, a lot of people only use them when it helps them getting right of way. The stop sign is useful, I guess, but it took quite some mental effort to start doing it myself.

The second is the different way cyclists take left turns. I'll show some pictures.

A Copenhagen left turn is like the green arrow here:

In the Netherlands (and Belgium, where the following pictures were taken), things are different:

In this image, people wanting to turn left stop at the left bike sign in that box, and wait for the light to turn green.

Another example with a separately marked lane:

Of course, things are different if there's a separate bike path. In that case you follow the path and the situation is more often like it's in Copenhagen, except you'd stop behind a curb on the far right edge.
If there's no bike paths or markings at all, if you want to turn left, when you approach the intersection, you make sure you end up just right of the road center line.

Now, as far as I can tell, both approaches are about equally safe... if drivers know what to expect. In Copenhagen they except a Copenhagen left, and everything goes well. In Holland, they expect cyclists to get to the left while approaching the intersection, they'll leave room for that, and there's no problem either. Just a different way of doing things.

Well both approaches ARE equally safe, it's just what you emphasize to people outside the culture. If you want to sell the people who are ... wow... so into the idea of just knowing the space between them and the nearest cyclist then sure that's an OK documentary. But if you want to help implement it outside of the country in question, why not instead focus on the things you do to make biking safe for people. Over here, because of all the curbed lanes, if someone wants to run you over they have to go on some Terminator 2 style rampage and not just get a little too close to your lane.

# ¿ Jul 18, 2014 00:39

twerking on the railroad: Jun 23, 2007; Get on my level

Cichlidae posted:

Seems the best way to do bikeshare is to start big - 30 stations or more. If they're only downtown, you're limiting yourself to tourists, and you really want commuters to start using them.

As to helmet laws, the consensus up here in New England is that it's ok not to wear them, since bikeshare bikes are very heavy and only go about 10mph on average. The municipalities would rather have more people on bikes, even if they're not technically following the law. And there's only been 1 bikeshare fatality in North America (I think one of the Bixi cities in Canada, recently). None in the US, and only a few hundred injuries.

Well the consensus is that it's even OK to not wear one on a motorcycle. http://www.dmv.org/ct-connecticut/safety-laws.php#Motorcycle-Helmets-and-Eyewear

# ¿ Oct 11, 2014 08:41

twerking on the railroad: Jun 23, 2007; Get on my level

Varance posted:

B-but... food trucks!

I know that when I want to relax and get away from the pressures of home, the first place I go is underneath a freeway.

It makes me feel like I don't have a home at all!

# ¿ Nov 15, 2014 09:52

twerking on the railroad: Jun 23, 2007; Get on my level

Cichlidae posted:

Pfft, that's small potatoes. We're giving some consideration to closing down I-84 entirely for months. It might result in significant cost and delay savings over a decade of partial closures.

It's not as though Hartford rush-hour traffic is particularly nice with 84 open. I hope they have some plans for what to do with the people going between Boston and NYC who don't know what the gently caress.

# ¿ Jan 25, 2015 12:48

twerking on the railroad: Jun 23, 2007; Get on my level

Ika posted:

Last time my dad was in the US for work, he almost go hit by a car while walking on a sidewalk. The hotel staff then told him "The sidewalks are there to make the place look European. Nobody actually expects people to use them".

So, Houston then.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2015 13:46

twerking on the railroad: Jun 23, 2007; Get on my level

nielsm posted:

Except in Copenhagen where carrying your bike on the commuter trains (S-trains) was made free several years back, popularity boomed, and in response they have now heavily increased bike carrying capacity. It's still stuffed, but taking your bike onto the train in rush hour is actually possible and encouraged. Unless you're getting on or off one of a few of the most central stations.

I'll just elaborate on this point. In Copenhagen if you're taking an S-train in from the suburbs you grab one of these coaches

You get in and it looks like this

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B_J5MXCWoAA1lJI.jpg:large

this is tied together with the hanicap area and the area for people with baby strollers (you still want those folks to be able to use public transit, right?)

If there's low bike traffic, there's still substantial standing/sitting room

There isn't room for bikes on the busses, but in some sense that's by design. If you can take a bike, it's a better option than the bus because they have some very serious bike infrastructure. The bus however is a pretty good option if you can't take a bike. It's a really good system.

# ¿ Apr 22, 2015 11:11

twerking on the railroad: Jun 23, 2007; Get on my level

I am anti-helmet laws and although I have a helmet I don't ride with it unless it's a downpour or something. I am not a particularly fast or risk-taking cyclist so if a car hits me with something more than a tap I'm probably dead anyway. So my defense against getting hit is being aware of my surroundings and being sufficiently lit up/visible. Wearing a helmet hurts the awareness of surroundings part because I sweat more from my head and it runs into my eyes. It's not easy to take off if it's bothering me and it's a hassle to take in to work. It slightly restricts my field of vision and if I move my head around quickly (e.g. checking for a car) it can move a little on my head, distracting me (this is outside of Copenhagen, where I pretty much didn't need to worry about cars at all).

I am generally quite suspicious of people who don't bike to work giving helmet advice, especially those who only drive. Although the sport cyclists/lycra crowd are almost as bad.

Biking to work in CT was terrifying the few times I did it, although I did wear a helmet then.

edit: ^^^ sorry! I was typing this while you posted that

# ¿ Apr 22, 2015 18:51

twerking on the railroad: Jun 23, 2007; Get on my level

Chemmy posted:

I have no problem with the NYC subway if you're in the city. It works fine, there are maps everywhere, etc.

The JFK AirTrain to Subway transfer is hysterically bad. When I was there you needed to buy MTA cards from different machines to pay your way out of the AirTrain and into the regular subway. I get that the money probably goes different places but it's a hundred times more complicated than it needs to be.

I can't even give you the full or accurate breakdown of what you have to do because it's so mind numbingly complicated that I had to give in and have some MTA employee walk me through step by step. That's what he was doing with literally every single person there that day.

I'll get a taxi next time, it's not worth the bullshit.

They don't do the separate metrocard system anymore. Just get a metrocard with like ten dollars on it and you'll be good. The air train is not perfect but it beats paying $40 for a taxi into Manhattan.

# ¿ Apr 28, 2015 11:54

twerking on the railroad: Jun 23, 2007; Get on my level

Entropist posted:

Well, another guy broke his leg there today. They announced a solution now: raising the bike path to the level of the tram tracks.
Seems more expensive than just changing the kerb, but I guess it's better.

We are not that used to sloped kerbs actually, rather to there being no kerbs at all between the path and the road. Other parts of this street have no such kerb, so that also doesn't help.
The standard situation is that there is no kerb between the path and the road, only between the path and the sidewalk. This kerb is often not sloped, but also much higher and visible and everyone knows it's there.

This is part of why I suspect that Copenhagen's bike culture would be easier to port over to the US than Amsterdam's. Driving a car in the US requires some portion of the time spent on "autopilot" and curbs/ other clear demarcations help a lot with that. Of course sometimes even a curb isn't enough https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raRcYkvnoZ0

# ¿ Aug 8, 2015 11:37

twerking on the railroad: Jun 23, 2007; Get on my level

Cichlidae posted:

Thanks so much for your help, guys. I've sent it along to the project team and I'll discuss it with them tomorrow. These are the same guys I have to fight tooth and nail for every little thing (like 10-foot lanes instead of 11, or removing on-street parking).

You're doing the lord's work. Hartford needs this sort of thing as much as anywhere else in the country. Growing up, my friends and I used to joke that it was like 28 days later after 5pm. And a bus line to New Britain isn't going to fix that.

# ¿ Nov 1, 2015 19:57

twerking on the railroad: Jun 23, 2007; Get on my level

Welcome to dig whistle bingo, Atlanta style.

http://politics.blog.ajc.com/2015/11/19/johns-creek-council-votes-full-and-complete-opposition-to-marta-rail-expansion/

"the expansion of MARTA would increase high density housing further increasing
traffic, straining the public school system, eroding the residential character of the
surrounding areas and reducing property values; and"

# ¿ Nov 21, 2015 04:01

twerking on the railroad: Jun 23, 2007; Get on my level

smackfu posted:

I cannot stand this intersection. Basically it's a standard left turn lane, except that the oncoming traffic is coming downhill, with a curve. So you are sitting there in your car waiting to turn (where the red box is) and oncoming cars are flying past a foot away at 50 MPH+.

I've noticed some intersections of this type would include a buffer space to the left of the turn lane. Is that considered best practice?

Hey, I remember that intersection. It's not nearly as bad as the entrance to the apartment complex just up the hill. That was a nightmare in the snow.

# ¿ Dec 8, 2015 10:00

twerking on the railroad: Jun 23, 2007; Get on my level

PhilippAchtel posted:

This is just a poo poo post.

I know, next thing he's going to say is that we shouldn't drive drunk!

# ¿ Dec 23, 2015 23:02

twerking on the railroad: Jun 23, 2007; Get on my level

nielsm posted:

This, so much.

Nowadays you can also get those contactless induction lights. A magnet mounted on the spokes, and a LED lamp mounted so the magnet passes it when the wheel is running. The result is you won't even have to remember turning the lights on, they just activate whenever you ride, and there's practically no resistance on the wheels.
It won't light up a dark country road, but it will give away your position.

These are very very common in Copenhagen. They are also awesome.

# ¿ Dec 27, 2015 23:05

twerking on the railroad: Jun 23, 2007; Get on my level

Hey Cichlidae, how long ago did you know the breach of contract thing for the Yard goats stadium was coming up? I've seen people who claim to be in the know say that if you look at the original order at all it was basically unavoidable.

# ¿ Dec 29, 2015 13:50

twerking on the railroad: Jun 23, 2007; Get on my level

Cichlidae posted:

Yesssss, finally considered the client to consider Dutch-style protected bicycle lanes and intersections! The next obstacle will be getting the city's traffic engineer to allow dedicated ped phases instead of concurrent.

You do amazing work.

I greatly appreciate your efforts to drag Hartford out of the national shitter.

# ¿ Jan 22, 2016 01:30

twerking on the railroad: Jun 23, 2007; Get on my level

donoteat posted:

I'm guessing this is a tied-arch bridge, and with that in mind, if you extended the truss out to the road deck level, it would be purely aesthetic. In a tied arch the thrust load (the part where you press on the top of the arch and it makes the two legs spread out) is taken by the deck (imagine you tied a string between the two legs of the arch, now it can't move when you press on the top).

Bingo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrigoni_Bridge

# ¿ Feb 15, 2016 10:29

twerking on the railroad: Jun 23, 2007; Get on my level

Cichlidae posted:

Indian roads definitely move more traffic. Probably a good 30-50% more than they do here, in fact, when you consider the average vehicle is a lot smaller. The lack of good traffic signals is probably a detriment to capacity, but it's more than balanced by the fact that there's basically 0 headway between vehicles.

The value of a human life is incredibly low in India, though. Here in the US, we're willing to spend millions to prevent a single casualty, to the point where we even attach anti-suicide nets to bridges. Even so, it doesn't look like India is that much behind the US on a per-capita basis. Divide that out by per capita VMT and it'd be a completely different story.

I wonder what makes driving in Iraq so dangerous, by the way. IEDs?

Given that the map is from 2004 I'm going to go ahead and say yes. Perhaps you'll get a different reading today.

# ¿ Mar 20, 2016 18:59

twerking on the railroad: Jun 23, 2007; Get on my level

Haifisch posted:

So they want it, they just don't want to have to pay for it with taxes or have any responsibility towards it. The system works!

While this is A factor, it's almost certainly not the main factor.

Hint: A popular "joke" among rich white people in the northern suburbs is that MARTA stands for "Moving Africans Rapidly Through Atlanta"

# ¿ Apr 9, 2016 23:22

twerking on the railroad: Jun 23, 2007; Get on my level

Cichlidae posted:

I used to think that it was really stupid to consider the CO2 humans emit when under exertion, but someone said in another thread that bicyclists emit about 90g/km of CO2 above the normal human resting metabolic rate. This is compared to something like ~120g/km of CO2 for a passenger car. So if those numbers are correct, overall CO2 emissions would be lower if you carpooled than if you rode a bike.

Something seems very off here, maybe even order-of-magnitude off. Let's say we have a small, very fuel-efficient car with only an internal combustion engine so let's say it gets say 40 miles per gallon. Gasoline is just refined hydrocarbon and the car does a good job of converting that plus air into Water, Nitrogen, and CO2. A gallon of gas contains roughly 30000 calories worth of energy - and the CO2 produced over that 40 miles should be roughly proportional to the energy converted.

A good amateur cyclist can do 40 miles in a few hours without heavily adjusting their caloric intake for the day. The food they consume is not refined hydrocarbon, but even if it was, they're only going through 1500-2500 calories worth. No matter how much a cyclist is huffing and puffing or how much of the day they take on that ride, there's no way they could process, let alone expel the 30000 calorie equivalent of CO2 in a day. This lines up with the amount of work being done by each - a 2000 lb car/human combo vs as 200 lb human/bike combo.

There's another thing that seems off about those numbers: Does that 120 g/km mean just what comes out of the tailpipe or does that include what a human expels just by sitting there. Because even if that 90g/km is correct, I'm not sure it would be that much lower for a human just sitting there.

# ¿ May 19, 2016 09:23

twerking on the railroad: Jun 23, 2007; Get on my level

Haifisch posted:

This article has a picture of the planned roundabout. It looks like it is grade separated.

If they can actually get it done for $75 million they should start yesterday.

# ¿ Jun 25, 2016 22:22

twerking on the railroad: Jun 23, 2007; Get on my level

Hippie Hedgehog posted:

Yeah the fishmech is right on this one. Show us the evidence.

You think when towns won't pay for separated bike lanes that they'll pay for some study which involves equipping a bunch of bikes with remote distance sensors?

Which town was that which did the study on bike accidents? How much of that was on road accidents versus trail riding? Absolutely people should be wearing a helmet on the trail.

# ¿ Sep 26, 2016 15:14

twerking on the railroad: Jun 23, 2007; Get on my level

mastershakeman posted:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-helmets-attract-cars-to-cyclists/

So, Walker attached ultrasonic sensors to his bike and rode around Bath, allowing 2,300 vehicles to overtake him while he was either helmeted or naked-headed.

so just one dude in one town

I am legitimately surprised and delighted that this occurred.

I'm surprised because if this were in the US then surely some IRB board would have spiked the study. I'm delighted because now that it's a piece of published research, repeating the study in other countries becomes much easier. We could have a real piece of science on our hands.

# ¿ Sep 26, 2016 16:31

twerking on the railroad: Jun 23, 2007; Get on my level

Entropist posted:

2300 seems like a pretty good sample size! It'd be interesting to do the same experiment in other countries though. In the Netherlands he can also count how many people point and laugh.

It's a fine sample size, but

a) It's only one study

b) British drivers training is much different than American.

Just because the study confirms what I suspect to be true based on personal experience doesn't mean the work is finished.

# ¿ Sep 26, 2016 17:29

twerking on the railroad: Jun 23, 2007; Get on my level

Baronjutter posted:

Maybe i'm a horrible anti-bike driver but I think it's not the distance that matters, just that you are paying attention and aware of what the bike is doing. I pass parked and moving cars with only a couple feet of space, I can pass a bike without going fully into the other lane like some street cyclists demand.

Nice strawman

# ¿ Sep 27, 2016 22:47

twerking on the railroad: Jun 23, 2007; Get on my level

Hippie Hedgehog posted:

I'm not really going to disagree with that. There are obviously several question marks to straighten out here. I believe "further studies are needed" is the way an academic would put it. Essays like Walker's cannot be used to draw any conclusions, but they are not useless if they can point science into a new line of investigation. Hopefully it will be followed up by proper quantitative studies. I expect that's part of why he did it solo - to be able to get grants for a real study.

Walker's work is clearly a peer-reviewed and published study, not an essay. And to claim that it's useless because more work is needed is plainly wrong.

For instance much more work is needed to establish the link between American football and chronic traumatic encephalopathy. There is no medically established link between the two, as that requires decades of work. But I think by now we can say that it's a pretty good medical hypothesis, and I don't think anyone would fault you for taking your son off the football team based on the work that's already been done.

# ¿ Sep 29, 2016 08:37

twerking on the railroad: Jun 23, 2007; Get on my level

WrenP-Complete posted:

I was way back in discussions of loop technology and cloverleaf patterns for on and off ramps and noticed all the action and skipped forward. I feel surprised at where things have gone, but accepting.

While I'm glad to have learned about Walker's study, I'm truly sorry at having contributed to the helmet laws derail. At least I didn't engage fishmech.

# ¿ Sep 30, 2016 09:43

twerking on the railroad: Jun 23, 2007; Get on my level

Carbon dioxide posted:

There must be a better way to implement such a huge change in the traffic plan, though?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagen_H

# ¿ Apr 8, 2017 14:02

twerking on the railroad: Jun 23, 2007; Get on my level

I know that many other cities severely limited the number of licences for the bikes. Maybe that just didn't happen in Dallas?

# ¿ Mar 11, 2018 21:14

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# ¿ Jun 2, 2024 07:51

twerking on the railroad: Jun 23, 2007; Get on my level

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/opinion/os-ed-thank-rick-scott-for-hartford-train-guest-editorial-20180622-story.html

I wish the op was still around, cause I bet he had something to do with this.

Tl;Dr: Rick Scott turned down transit money for Florida in 2011 and Connecticut scooped it up to revive rail service between New Haven and Springfield Mass. It was so popular on opening weekend that they needed to call in bus replacements.

# ¿ Jun 24, 2018 16:52

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Ask me about being a Traffic Engineer!