Ask me about being a Traffic Engineer!

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

Lobsterpillar: Feb 4, 2014

osirisisdead posted:

Your intentional obtuseness doesn't negate my point.

Your point is that cars can cause serious or fatal injuries?
Of course they can.
However, in the situation that we're talking about - turning right at an intersection and hitting pedestrians - speeds are generally not high enough to cause instant death. They're not fun at all but a cyclist vs pedestrian crash in the same situation would be just as bad if not worse, because then you've got TWO injured parties. The driver of a car is protected by a car, a cyclist is not.

Cars are death traps that kill I don't even know how many pedestrians a year, but in the situation we're talking about, intersection design, inattentive drivers and signals phasing are the reasons accidents will happen - not because a car is larger and heavier than a bicycle.

# ¿ Jan 23, 2016 05:33

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# ¿ May 13, 2024 16:53

Lobsterpillar: Feb 4, 2014

Baronjutter posted:

I never thought I had a violent fight of flight response, never actually hit anyone in my life, but the other day a car cut me off at a crosswalk while it was turning right but looking left. Nearly ran over my foot, so I punched the car in anger as my brain interpreted it as a thing trying to attack me. I managed to make the body panel bend in then out and made a good popping My sound. If I had left a dent would I have been in the wrong or would that be some sort of self-defense sort of case?

My friend was in a similar situation, lady looking left while slowly creeping forward into a right turn while he was crossing in front. Curious and defiant he just stood there and let her slowly creepy into him until he was laying on her hood like a scene out of a russian insurance scam video. She flipped out and started honking at him and yelling that he'll scratch the paint. He started yelling back that she hit him. People standing around who watched the scene unfold all yelled at her that they saw her slowly hit the guy. Ended up driving off in a huff. Good to publicly shame this lady, but I'd never let a car hit me to prove a point.

A car once didn't instantly stop at an unsignalled crosswalk (you have to stop here) and my friend got so mad he threw his shoe at the car, hitting the back window pretty good as it had stopped to turn a short distance after. He then had to get his shoe back from the middle of the road but the next car (who stopped) held up traffic so he could get his shoe and gave him a thumbs up.

Ideally instead of having to resort to "pedestrian rage" I do wish cops would spend more time handing out tickets to dangerous drivers like this, rather than when the police say they're going on a "pedestrian safety campaign" which always translates into handing out tickets to pedestrians rather than drivers. Just like when cops want to "get serious about bike safety" it means handing out tickets to cyclists for minor infractions.

I don't get why people think slowly creeping forward in your car is actually doing anything for them. Especially when people stopped at red lights do it ( in anticipation?).

# ¿ Jan 24, 2016 06:16

Lobsterpillar: Feb 4, 2014

Maybe remove the stop control on the northern approach? I don't see any particular reason it needs a stop control. Replace it with a yield and put a yield on the south approach (for consistencies sake) and paint over the crossing area with big yellow road markings and install signs that say DONT STOP OVER THE CROSSING YOU FUCKWIT.

but that depends on the relative traffic flows going through the intersection.
Signalising this intersection and the one on the other side of the crossing would allow more complete control, but is orders of magnitude more expensive than a couple signs and some paint.

# ¿ Mar 8, 2016 08:45

Lobsterpillar: Feb 4, 2014

Devor posted:

Stormwater Management regulations generally require you to minimize impervious area. And for the impervious area you do add, you have to do special treatments to treat the water to control the quality, and sometimes quantity, of release.

and a grass swale can also double as a form of stormwater treatment. Also, probably cheaper than concrete or asphalt.

# ¿ Mar 18, 2016 09:38

Lobsterpillar: Feb 4, 2014

Baronjutter posted:

My city did something that's worked out quite well. None of them new concepts but I've heard from people in traffic planning/parking that it's worked well. The city used to just have all meters have the same price, plus a few big city owned parkades of 5-8 levels. They moved to have different pricing in different areas (shocking!) raising the rates right downtown but lowering them on the fringes. They also for decades had a "first hour free" program where you had to get a "first hour free" coupon from a business to prove you were shopping downtown, then when you left the parkade you'd hand the ticket to the toll collector person who would then process it all and let you out. Instead they just decided to skip the cards all together and all parking in parkades are now free for the first hour plus they made the first couple levels 2-hour max parking. A lot of people just shopping or doing errands downtown would avoid the parkades because they would always be full of office workers and you'd have to drive all the way up to the roof, now there's always short term parking on the lower levels. Shoppers now actually use the big structures which frees up street parking. Many people will still circle the blocks for ever and refuse to drive into a parkade for some reason (my dad is such a person).

Parkade right across the street from the restaurant we were going for a quick lunch to. We could not be over an hour. Circled the block for street parking, paid like $3.50 to park for an hour vs free.

My city has only got metered parking in the central city, and earthquakes from 2011 basically knocked out all of the parking buildings. This made all of the employees who used to staff the parking buildings redundant, so they repurposed them to monitor the on street parking situation.
The result of this, plus a detailed GIS system and customisable parking meters means that they can make most parking spaces productive - 60 minute limits in high demand areas and all day parking for commuters in the areas where no-one wants to shop. As a bonus for commuters you can either park close to the business centre for $7/day or you can walk a couple of blocks and pay $2/day.

It's worked pretty well, but is fairly intense in terms of micromanagement and enforcement.

# ¿ Apr 4, 2016 07:13

Lobsterpillar: Feb 4, 2014

NihilismNow posted:

If you have a parking app it is easy to abuse those "cheap first hour" parking zones. Just sign out for 1 minute and sign back in again. Automated enforcement does not flag this as a violation and you will pay the cheap price all day long. Wouldn't work for a parking garage though.

If people want to go and physically check their car out once every hour then they can have the free parking. Its their time they're wasting.

# ¿ Apr 5, 2016 07:32

Lobsterpillar: Feb 4, 2014

NihilismNow posted:

No you open the app and click "stop parking action", wait a few seconds and then click "Park in zone $zone".
You could even script it if you are really lazy.

Haha so its basically a trust based paid parking zone? That is hilarious, what is even the point of trying to charge people for it?

# ¿ Apr 6, 2016 07:03

Lobsterpillar: Feb 4, 2014

Cichlidae posted:

I just spent a couple days at a training program for incorporating 3D models into construction projects. Really interesting stuff, even if it's not directly relevant to traffic engineering.

Traditionally, when an engineer designs a road, they provide a plan (horizontal alignment), profile (vertical alignment), and cross-sections for each roadway. It turns out that these aren't all that useful for the people actually building the road. Many contractors these days have computerized equipment - pavers, graders, and the like. Contractors and inspectors alike are increasingly using GPS and the other three satellite navigation constellations instead of the old types of surveying. There are huge economies to be had this way, but only if they have good data to work with.

Meanwhile, in the office, everything is done with CADD these days. That's been the case for a couple decades. In the last handful of years, many agencies have switched to electronic submissions, too, so the designer can do absolutely everything electronically. For the old guys, this is just an easier way to do the same thing: draw up their plans, profiles, and cross-sections. But for the last 30+ years, there has been software that lets the engineer build a 3D model of the site and extract the plan data from that. I know that, at least within our company, every roadway project we do is build on a 3D file from InRoads or Civil3D. But we're still just delivering the plans, profiles, and cross-sections, not the model itself. The justification for this is that the plans are the official, verified design data, and the 3D model is just a tool.

Well, it turns out that contractors and inspectors would find the 3D model extremely useful, even if it's "For Information Only." If it's included in the contract, the designer can specify that the plans are the official documents and that the contractor can use the CADD files at their own risk. But here's the trick: if the contractor FOIAs the CADD data, it does not have a disclaimer and the engineer is on the hook for whatever the contractor does with it. On top of that, if the engineer doesn't give the contractor this data, and it results in an error that could've been avoided otherwise, the engineer is on the hook due to the Superior Knowledge Doctrine and can be forced to pay for any resulting remediation. The instructor provided a bunch of legal cases where this had been invoked.

So why not provide the contractor and inspector the full set of design data? If it's approximate, say so. If it's not to be used for construction and just for information, say so. Your liability is reduced if you provide it, and the end result will be a better project.

Any other engineers (or anyone else, I guess) have experience with this?

I can see the value in that, the majority of traffic projects are seen from the road, not from the air or in profile. I mean, most roads are flat enough that an aerial plan is sufficient, but if you can visualise something in 3D it can be incredibly useful. If nothing else, it means the contractor can compare their 3d model to what they're actually building on site and make sure its going according to plan.

The closest experience I've had with this is using a screenshot of google streetview to identify to contractors 'That sign is hosed. Go fix thanks' and the like.

# ¿ Apr 14, 2016 08:53

Lobsterpillar: Feb 4, 2014

Communist Zombie posted:

While driving today I saw a stop sign that was so old and faded that I thought it was an old wooden sign until i got close to it, and even then you could only really see the 'STOP' due to the lettering reflecting light differently than the rest of the sign. Is that sign still legal? Or atleast able to argue that it should be invalid if I got a ticket from ignoring it?

Also think people here would be interested in the Transit/Planning Politics thread in D&D; a goon there is doing a series on SEPTA and the various trials and tribulations its suffered as it shrank, starting with how "Ronald Reagan Goes All America Over SEPTA's rear end".

Its probably dubious enough that you could reasonably argue your way out of the ticket - especially if you've got a good lawyer. Maybe ask in the legal questions megathread - there be traffic lawyers.

# ¿ Apr 17, 2016 07:45

Lobsterpillar: Feb 4, 2014

Jaguars! posted:

Ooh, that reminds me! Are traffic engineers good drivers? On the one hand, they know the rules and the roads, but on the other hand, they know just how far to push the envelope. It occurs to me that crashing one's car or getting a speeding ticket would bring a lot of unsympathetic jokes on ones head.

It really differs from person to person and depends on their background. Generally I've found that traffic engineers are more confident drivers than most average members of the public and are more aware of the road environment.

Then again if you're a designer who spends most of the time in the office with CAD and traffic simulation its quite different to someone who works a lot with temporary traffic management (which involves a lot of visiting road construction sites), and that again is different to someone who spends a lot of time doing safety audits.

# ¿ Apr 21, 2016 10:54

Lobsterpillar: Feb 4, 2014

mamosodiumku posted:

Any tips for unfamiliar roads for those not in the field?

Don't ignore curve advisory speeds. If you go around a 65km/hr curve at 100km/hr without even bothering to slow down you're going to roll your car and/or kill yourself.

# ¿ Apr 22, 2016 06:43

Lobsterpillar: Feb 4, 2014

New Zealand puts out a number of pretty out there adverts, here is one relatively recent one relevant to the current topic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wM75ulDRkhI

# ¿ Apr 27, 2016 08:07

Lobsterpillar: Feb 4, 2014

smackfu posted:

Interesting traffic control signs from Denver:

NO DOUBLE TURN

NO RIGHT ON RED
(much smaller)
WHEN PEDESTRIANS ARE PRESENT

Wait, so you are allowed to turn on red when pedestrians are not present? Doesn't that completely undermine the point of it being red? Just put in pedestrian detection so that you don't have pointless reds.

# ¿ Jun 15, 2017 09:08

Lobsterpillar: Feb 4, 2014

cheese-cube posted:

Over a year ago now they started allowing LTOR (Left Turn On Red, because we drive on the left) at intersections with traffic signals in Perth, Western Australia. In the beginning people who weren't paying attention whilst crossing (Read: staring at their loving phones) did freak out when they looked up and saw a car moving towards them however AFAIK there were now major accidents. Pedestrians have right-of-way as long as the crossing light is green so no one really cares anymore.

In the inner CBD of Sydney, New South Wales they've had LTOR for taxis and buses at signalled intersections for years now. When I first went there for work in 2010 I almost got run-over twice because loving taxi drivers. You get used to it after a while though.

Oh, thats interesting. I might have a look on Austroads to read up a report on it, there is bound to be something there.

# ¿ Jul 26, 2017 08:57

Lobsterpillar: Feb 4, 2014

FantasticExtrusion posted:

Hey I'm sorry if this is sort of a driveby or a repeat (gonna read this one today) I moved to WA, near Seattle. Wrongness 0-10 (if you) please? People are like, mean about this stuff here.

Zipper merge good for saving hesitation time, bad during sparse traffic. You should merge smoothly on at the first available opportunity (e.g. don't panic fart swerve in the instant the line breaks just because you can either.)

My issue is that I'm having very natural, smooth merges where I'm in the flow of traffic, traffic's speeding up, I can see another guy merge behind me:

And then a dude rockets past (on the ramp! To your right! While 68 is turning into 75!) to the very end of the ramp, where they just force their way in by merging when/with the outside line, as if they're some kind of robot. Presumably to go post the RCW/ local city ordinance/law they've misinterpreted as reading that they should always use the whole on ramp.

It's like, I can see how this could work. I am programming sci-fi flying cars. They zipper. Their brains also know nothing but whether they are an even or an odd tooth and some distances. Real humans can't do what they do.

If it's a gridlocked queue, I wait until it's "my turn" unless someone just leaves such a large gap (screwing up the pattern) that it needs to be taken to stop any confusion.

I feel simple PSA's on TV could greatly improve our situation in most big cities. It's not that people are assholes, we're just not on the same page.

I think, in that case, that person really is just an rear end in a top hat and no amount of PSAs or education will change that.

# ¿ Sep 19, 2017 10:40

Lobsterpillar: Feb 4, 2014

Part of the costs associated with those bollards is likely to include: temporary traffic management if they need to do anything on the road, underground services location / excavation for the foundation of the bollards, plus all of the other things mentioned.
The bit you see above ground is only part of it - if its expected to stop a vehicle its going to need a strong foundation.

# ¿ Nov 2, 2017 06:42

Lobsterpillar: Feb 4, 2014

Hasn't Homer Simpson already designed the perfect car of the future back in the 90s?

# ¿ Nov 22, 2017 10:11

Lobsterpillar: Feb 4, 2014

pkells posted:

Speaking of modeling traffic flow at intersections with no traffic lights, I was just down in Puerto Rico for the month of November, and large parts of the island were still without power, including traffic signals. That made for a stressful time driving, but it was also fascinating observing how people react in those situations.

I thought I was going to die the first time I had to cross three lanes of a divided highway to turn left at an intersection, but by the end of the trip it was nothing. People were just used to traffic flowing like that, and did their best to accommodate other drivers. I�m sure the accident rate skyrocketed directly following the hurricane, but a couple months later, everything seemed like normal, just with lower speeds and higher congestion.

Maybe, maybe not. People do tend to drive a lot more cautiously when things suddenly change. It could be that the accident rate suddenly dropped and only started to rise again when people got more used to the new status quo and started running on autopilot and / or taking risks.

# ¿ Dec 22, 2017 10:55

Lobsterpillar: Feb 4, 2014

devicenull posted:

On the Merrit? Not unless you have a death wish. Two narrow lanes of twisty highway traffic is not a good match for a bike lane.

He didn't say that it was a safe or a responsible attempt at a bike lane.

That's really all I can think of that it might be - its clearly nothing to do with parking, and the width is small enough that it could be an attempt by people decades out of date who have no idea what they're doing.

# ¿ Jan 10, 2018 06:42

Lobsterpillar: Feb 4, 2014

Tatrakrad posted:

This was months ago but I work for one of the big two bikeshare companies in Dallas if anyone wants to know stuff about our bike swarm apocalypse

That sounds interesting. Bike share isn't a huge thing here, what sort of hurdles do you face setting it up and operating it?

# ¿ Mar 11, 2018 00:32

Lobsterpillar: Feb 4, 2014

Corla Plankun posted:

What's the difference between a left turn with a yield on green light versus a flashing yellow arrow? Why would an engineer choose one over the other? In my area it is mostly flashing yellows and i hate them because i routinely find myself in the process of turning when they turn red because there isn't a clear distinction between "about to be red" yellow and "about to blink back off again" yellow.

We don't use them here but my best guess would be that the flashing yellow inspires drivers to be more cautious when turning. They're probably a response to high crash rates at those intersections.

# ¿ Jun 2, 2019 22:31

Lobsterpillar: Feb 4, 2014

This hit the news last week and is relevant to the current topic
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2019/06/speed-limits-too-high-on-nearly-all-kiwi-roads-nzta.html

The headline is a bit sensationalist, but essentially what it's saying is that most of the roads around the country have higher speed limits than the most recent guidelines would recommend (for example, the recent guidelines suggest 40kph for most local residential roads, and the vast majority are currently 50. Also a winding mountain road might be more appropriately 60 or 80, and most are 100.

# ¿ Jun 10, 2019 08:25

Lobsterpillar: Feb 4, 2014

Yeah, that's exactly what the tool does. It doesn't remove the need for actually designing a road to be self-reinforcing and the vast majority of changes are left to local authorities to make. The reason it's got into the media is politics, though, this is something that has been in the works for ages.

# ¿ Jun 10, 2019 16:04

Lobsterpillar: Feb 4, 2014

Anyone have any experience with roadside mirrors? I've seen some tiny ones that are placed a really long way away from driveways/side roads, and doubt that you can process the distorted image in time for it to be relevant, if you can see the road at all.
On the other hand, they're not bad in a parking building on the blind ramps, because it's so much closer to your eye.

# ¿ Sep 23, 2019 10:55

Lobsterpillar: Feb 4, 2014

RFC2324 posted:

pretty much this. The part that upsets me the states that do an auto-issue of the ticket count on the citizen to stop and go "hey wait" instead of being unjustly punished, and even then you have to fight against a bullshit scam being literally run by the courts

as they exist in america, they aren't a tool for safety by any stretch.

And because they're used that way in America, and American culture has spread globally to many English speaking countries, it means that there is an extra cultural barrier to using them in other countries.

# ¿ Oct 23, 2019 08:51

Lobsterpillar: Feb 4, 2014

People who drive slow can be frustrating, but is there any evidence that they cause crashes as often quoted by people who get frustrated at slow drivers?

# ¿ Oct 25, 2019 02:03

Lobsterpillar: Feb 4, 2014

Kaal posted:

I did a little bit of research, and it's interesting because while studies get referenced they mostly seem to have been pulled offline. Slow driving studies have a variety of issues because there can be so many causes. For example intoxicated drivers, old drivers, distracted drivers, etc., tend to be driving slowly shortly before they have a collision. Slow drivers also tend to ignite road rage in surrounding drivers, who often pass on the right or do other dangerous maneuvers. How much of these collisions are due to the speed, hard to say.

In general, the best takeaway is that collisions are caused by speed differentials rather than specific speed. Accident rates can best be improved through good traffic engineering (setting and enforcing roads at appropriate speeds) and smart policies like laws prohibiting traveling in passing lanes or passing on the blind side of slower vehicles.

I can definitely see that slow drivers can ignite road rage, and that might cause dangerous driving causing an accident. But I would say that the cause of the accident was the driver who can't control their emotions.

# ¿ Oct 25, 2019 07:40

Lobsterpillar: Feb 4, 2014

Put it this way, if you stopped on the other side of the stop line, would you have been able to see a pedestrian who was in your path or about to step into your path, and if so would you have been able to stop?
I'm guessing that unless you are literally braking as hard as possible, the answer is yes.

# ¿ Oct 26, 2019 09:56

Lobsterpillar: Feb 4, 2014

The contractor doing the roadworks causing the detour should be mitigating this, and if they aren't then the city should be forcing them to. There should also looks to be double parking going on, there should be some short term parking facilities provided in the school grounds and/or directly outside the school, and someone with some authority moving people along. In some places (non-police) officers employed by the city may be able to issue parking infringements: it doesn't have to be the police.
The reality is that that road will probably be heavily congested for a while, especially around school times.

# ¿ Nov 2, 2019 22:19

Lobsterpillar: Feb 4, 2014

Devor posted:

When a jurisdiction is doing work on a road, it's typically the responsibility of the roadway's owner to ensure that they're mitigating traffic correctly - say, that closing the right lane for 8 months isn't going to make delays blow up during the morning rush.

It's not the contractor's responsibility to do traffic analysis and know whether everything is going to hell when he implements the Maintenance of Traffic plans that was designed. That work should happen during design, being done by someone under the oversight of the roadway owner, so that impacts can be avoided or mitigated in some other way.

But let's say it does slip through the cracks - the local Transit Authority is building new bus stops, and the ongoing lane closure makes everyone in a 2-mile radius drive on sidewalks. The roadway owner (county or state) would tell the contractor to pull the lane closure and re-open to traffic, which he would have to do - and then the contractor would have a delay claim against the Transit Authority while they figure out what to do. Then when they say it all has to be nightwork - he gets to claim extra money to pay for the lights and higher costs for running crews at night.

If you had advertised the job as a design-build project (typically larger projects, from $10M to billion-dollar mega projects) it's possible that the contractor would be responsible for maintaining certain levels of service during construction. But more typically, the contractor would have certain limits set (you can do a single-lane closure between X AM and Y PM, you can do double-lane closures on weekends) - and if those restrictions make traffic too bad, the owner would either use the contract as an excuse to ignore the problem and let folks find new ways to get to work, or negotiate the change with the contractor.

Oh, I didn't mean to imply that the contractor should have predicted it: the road controlling authority should have predicted it, and if they didn't, then when they become aware of it they can take steps to mitigate, which may (should, in my opinion but some may differ) include having the contractor extend their traffic management plan to include the affected school area or to signpost an alternative detour (or as you say: cease operation and reopen the road during peak times and do night works, if that's possible).

quote:

And yet our system manages to function even without punishing people for things they did not do and were not present for. Funny.

Is a system where people are still being killed by behavior which there is functionally no legal consequence for really "working"?

# ¿ Nov 4, 2019 00:26

Lobsterpillar: Feb 4, 2014

Peanut President posted:

no i'm referring to the part where he says "if everyone is speeding raise the speed limit". there's a reason a school zone is 20 mph

That statement may be too general, but it's going in the right direction. I would restate it as "if everyone is speeding, then the current speed limit isn't appropriate for the road as it currently exists. Change the road environment to suit the speed limit you've set it at, or change the speed limit".

Remember that in some countries (many? Almost all?) the speed limits are set by politicians, and sometimes they set the speed limit wrong. Also, traffic patterns change and cities develop, and a lower speed limit through an urban area doesn't make much sense when all the houses have been demolished due to a natural disaster and nobody lives there anymore.

# ¿ Nov 5, 2019 06:51

Lobsterpillar: Feb 4, 2014

Entropist posted:

In the Netherlands we have more or less standard designs for roads. For example, 60 km/h roads outside towns are optically narrowed by not having a line in the middle, while 100 km/h roads have a very wide line in the middle for safety, and 30 km/h roads have pretty much nothing except sometimes bike lanes, perhaps to make them seem more part of the rest of the public space. I don't think there are fixed widths for roads but they aren't so wide as the American roads seem in the photos. They are wider than many British countryside roads though...

Some examples that seem standard to me:
30 in town: https://www.google.com/maps/@52.9922307,6.5596677,3a,75y,91.13h,81.25t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1soRgLLwohhO7BzRwCDjuKDA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 (this used to be a bigger road, so it's like this intentionally)
50 in town: https://goo.gl/maps/4GVVsrDtCFVXHy1s8
70 in town: https://www.google.com/maps/@52.4922198,6.1171907,3a,75y,134.06h,84.98t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sTZ94VhPf37wPUFHLxgJOCg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
60 km/h outside town: https://www.google.com/maps/@53.0844557,6.3315456,3a,75y,266.17h,87.9t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sOMKBj7Fl1G_jkk812kBIrQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
80 km/h outside town: https://www.google.com/maps/@52.7680255,5.8323871,3a,75y,211.85h,86.68t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sA4EpSQWL9nHYOB3X7olByQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
100 km/h outside town: https://www.google.com/maps/@52.9719621,6.2303489,3a,75y,273.25h,91.06t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1ssb076soF7P5xlRnNZVEdkA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
120/130: https://goo.gl/maps/MpXyUpaXxcJWu8Rc8

Not really anything like the picture above. And big swathes of asphalt with more than two lanes through towns seem less common here than in other places.

e: And a random road in front of a school:
https://www.google.com/maps/@52.2662222,6.807646,3a,75y,64.58h,75.36t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sEs89DtjjRYzRTpEI-EYzYw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

Those colourful signs are more or less standard, used everywhere. There's no special speed limit there, just 50, I guess that's why they have the elaborate crossing and fences along the road.

What are the arrows between the centerlines in the 80 outside of town picture? Do they indicate that this is a location that you can overtake?

And what is the green stuff between the centerlines in the 100? Some sort of rumble strip?

# ¿ Nov 6, 2019 09:33

Lobsterpillar: Feb 4, 2014

Colostomy Bag posted:

Dear OP, would you (or would want to) take a look at a set of engineering plans that involve drainage issues while combining bike trails along busy roads and things of that nature?

I mean seriously, I consider myself somewhat of a learned man but holy gently caress it looks like the schematics to the Space Shuttle.

Reason I ask is I'm looking for an informed opinion and not getting smoke blasted up my rear end by the city when our board makes a decision. If this kind of thing is not in your wheelhouse, no big deal just thought I'd ask.

Post the plans, if you can, but do you have a specific issue with them? Are you concerned about drainage/flooding and water flow paths, traffic capacity and flow, traffic safety, cyclist safety or something else? And do you know which of the above factors are the designers priorities?

# ¿ Feb 4, 2020 10:13

Lobsterpillar: Feb 4, 2014

Alpine Mustache posted:

In many suburban areas, many times not all kids are eligible for bus rides, depending on how close to the school they are.

That's true, funding and eligibility certainly would come into, but don't underestimate the stigma that some people have against buses. Parents will want what they see as best for their children, and to many parents that means a personalized taxi service.

# ¿ Mar 6, 2020 00:48

Lobsterpillar: Feb 4, 2014

Pile Of Garbage posted:

Today on my walking commute home through the Perth CBD (West Australia) all the traffic signals with pedestrian crossing had big stickers on them above the buttons stating that the City of Perth Council and Main Roads WA had switched all the intersections to automatic traffic/pedestrian cycling between 7AM-7PM. This means you don't have to press the button for pedestrian crossing (Some of the intersections definitely required that outside of peak transit times).

A good idea IMO to prevent roni transmission, anyone heard of other cities implementing it? Honestly for some main intersections like St Georges Tce/William St it was probably unnecessary as that already cycled between pedestrian and traffic all the time but the big stickers they put up on the poles are extremely good.

It's a pretty trivial change to make (in many city CBDs that will already be there case during peak times), assuming there city doesn't have incredibly outdated signals hardware/software, or the city isn't incredibly hostile towards pedestrians.

# ¿ Mar 31, 2020 19:45

Lobsterpillar: Feb 4, 2014

What happened to that person who was going to post the plans for their cities cycleway? I'm curious to see what it was

# ¿ May 8, 2020 08:21

Lobsterpillar: Feb 4, 2014

The way I look at it, "who legally has priority" just means "who is at fault if a crash occurs and how severe a penalty you'll get in court".

Sure, a zebra crossing gives you legal priority, but that doesn't help you much when you've got a broken leg and spinal injuries (except in the US where it'll probably help you sue them).

People do seem to think zebra crossing are safer, and they're good when in the right location and designed right, but a badly designed zebra crossing (whether it was a legacy or for political reasons) can be worse than nothing.

# ¿ Aug 17, 2020 09:00

Lobsterpillar: Feb 4, 2014

Chris Knight posted:

One cool thing I've noticed being rolled out in Toronto is that the walk lights at some intersections go on before the green for traffic.

An early start, we call it here. Not sure what US traffic engineers call it. It's a fairly low cost improvement as it shouldn't need physical changes, just software changes. Unless the infrastructure is ancient.

# ¿ Mar 11, 2021 03:40

Lobsterpillar: Feb 4, 2014

Devor posted:

Leading pedestrian phase

And the cost is traffic throughput! There's a handful at high accident locations in my city, though.

Another way to put that is that the cost is that car drivers take marginally longer to get to their destination.

# ¿ Mar 11, 2021 09:55

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# ¿ May 13, 2024 16:53

Lobsterpillar: Feb 4, 2014

There's already solid obstacles by the road: that whole row of power poles are likely to result in serious injury in the event of a runaway vehicle. They don't look particularly frangible. Ideally they'd all be set back further.

At a guess that big fencing might be privacy screening and a noise barrier - it can't be particularly quiet next to that road, and there may even be requirements for soundproofing from the local authority, depending on the nature of the development.

# ¿ Apr 9, 2021 09:11

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