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Happy Noodle Boy posted:I must be blind because they look the same but then again I'm not a fonts guy. That said, I'm going to sneak into our city standards that signs should be in comic sans. The main difference I see on the road is that lower case L gets a little tail the way lower case t does in both fonts.
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Jan 27, 2016 23:50
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Happy Noodle Boy posted:I must be blind because they look the same but then again I'm not a fonts guy. That said, I'm going to sneak into our city standards that signs should be in comic sans. The only difference I can see is the letters are more scrunched together which makes it read more like words and less like l e t t e r s, but only by a small margin.
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Jan 28, 2016 00:35
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kefkafloyd posted:This shouldn't have surprised the designer, because this has been coming down the pike for some time. With some DOTs using certain Clearview cuts in unapproved methods (especially negative contrast) and the fact that aside from the early studies which had many flaws no one could conclusively prove that clearview was better, it's been put out of our misery. Phoenix has been putting up black-on-white mixed case street signs in Clearview, and they're way less readable than the old all-caps signs.
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Jan 28, 2016 00:52
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The e's are hella different
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Jan 28, 2016 01:07
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 Note "Highway Gothic" is just an informal name, I don't think it's ever been called that officially, it's just FHWA Type E or D or whatever depending on how condensed it is. Since we know how cash-strapped transport works departments are, why pay license fees for something when you can use the old dependable that still does the job, more or less.In the 90s some guy had a stab at a homage for use in print but basically just gets used in that function. https://www.fontshop.com/families/interstate
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Jan 28, 2016 01:53
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The Deadly Hume posted:In the 90s some guy had a stab at a homage for use in print but basically just gets used in that function. And Citigroup's logo. Had to extrude and optimize the hell out of those drat curvy things for my new Cities Skylines tower.
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Jan 28, 2016 02:20
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Is it normal to have a transit agency complete a rail project only to have cities request for a delay on the opening date? Apparently Metro Los Angeles completed a light rail extension, but three of the cities along the line is requesting a delay because they havn't finished their portion of the for the station. (http://www.sgvtribune.com/general-news/20160114/metro-to-azusa-all-gold-line-stations-will-open-march-5-rejects-request-for-delay)
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Jan 28, 2016 06:40
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Yeah it's pretty normal to have requests for delays if the stations aren't ready yet. It just means the people in charge of the stations worked slower than the rest of the project.
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Jan 28, 2016 17:37
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Google's removing traffic counts and parcel data from Google Earth Pro. That's a real shame; it was pretty useful. Of course, given the amount of traffic data they collect, perhaps Google's working on a traffic count repository, including turning counts, that they could sell to interested parties. Who knows!
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Jan 29, 2016 23:04
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Baronjutter posted:They called me "Justin Trudeau" And this is a bad thing? More seriously, though, I was at this thing in Vancouver yesterday, and it was packed with planners who are totally into the complete streets idea. This included planners from three metro Van municipalities.
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Jan 30, 2016 03:03
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Cichlidae posted:Google's removing traffic counts and parcel data from Google Earth Pro. That's a real shame; it was pretty useful. Of course, given the amount of traffic data they collect, perhaps Google's working on a traffic count repository, including turning counts, that they could sell to interested parties. Who knows! They had parcel data? And I missed it  In Google Earth related topic, I had the opportunity to play with a Space Navigator in order to navigate a 3d flythrough of a corridor in Google Earth. It was tons of fun to play with, and really intuitive. It's like you're directing a movie in realtime.
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Jan 30, 2016 04:23
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Cichlidae posted:Google's removing traffic counts and parcel data from Google Earth Pro. That's a real shame; it was pretty useful. Of course, given the amount of traffic data they collect, perhaps Google's working on a traffic count repository, including turning counts, that they could sell to interested parties. Who knows! This is going to mess me up. I used that all the loving time.
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Jan 30, 2016 21:51
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A mate of mine just said to me "[Australian] speed limits are artificially low to cause more accidents". When I asked him to explain he pulled out the old chestnut about posted speed limits being below the designed speed of roads. I know that this discussion has been had before in this thread but can someone give me a couple of links to help me call him out on his insanity?
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Feb 3, 2016 13:29
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cheese-cube posted:A mate of mine just said to me "[Australian] speed limits are artificially low to cause more accidents". When I asked him to explain he pulled out the old chestnut about posted speed limits being below the designed speed of roads. I know that this discussion has been had before in this thread but can someone give me a couple of links to help me call him out on his insanity? He's probably an idiot but there's a nugget of truth to what he's saying. A lot of roads are signed "artificially low", often for political reasons. A road will get built that, from an engineering perspective, can easily handle 60k safely, but locals don't like the speed and lobby to get it reduced to 40. The problem is, without brutal aggressive enforcement, 1/3 of the people end up doing 40, 1/3 50, and 1/3 keep doing 60+. Each group thinks they're being reasonable, but the differences in speed can make things dangerous. Specially when the people who want to ho 60+ get road-ragey over the people following the 40 limit. The best way to lower speed limits is to actually change the road so that the average driver wants to drive the posted limit because that's what feels safe/reasonable.
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Feb 3, 2016 20:18
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cheese-cube posted:A mate of mine just said to me "[Australian] speed limits are artificially low to cause more accidents". When I asked him to explain he pulled out the old chestnut about posted speed limits being below the designed speed of roads. I know that this discussion has been had before in this thread but can someone give me a couple of links to help me call him out on his insanity? Roads are often designed with the idea that emergency vehicles will be able to safely navigate them at high speeds when (rarely) necessary. I recall that the US Interstate system had a design point of 115 mph for the sake of ambulances and police. Actual speed limits are set for a variety of arbitrary reasons. What actually causes accidents is large speed differentials between the cars, as Baronjutter pointed out. Someone doing 100 when everyone else is doing 50 is just as dangerous as someone doing 50 when everyone else is doing 100. In the US, the minimum speed is 45 mph on Interstates, and the roads are restricted to vehicles that can properly maintain an appropriate speed.
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Feb 3, 2016 21:13
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Interstates aren't designed for the sake of emergency vehicles. It's just a side benefit that if you're following the standard guidelines, the design speed of the road is well over 100 mph. The Interstate design guidelines, outside of how to handle exits/interchanges, are mostly descended from how the Pennsylvania Turnpike was designed, which was itself descended mostly from how railroads had to be designed for the limitations of something traveling on tracks - and there were ads then for taking it instead of surface roads that said "you need to slow down to 90 for the curves". And that's with 1940s cars.
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Feb 3, 2016 21:43
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cheese-cube posted:A mate of mine just said to me "[Australian] speed limits are artificially low to cause more accidents". When I asked him to explain he pulled out the old chestnut about posted speed limits being below the designed speed of roads. I know that this discussion has been had before in this thread but can someone give me a couple of links to help me call him out on his insanity? He's probably correct to an extent. If there is a big speed difference between the "follow the speed limit all the time" people and the "doing a safe speed (85 percentile)" people, you will see more accidents because speed differences are a huge factor. Also, speed limits in inhabited australia seemed stupidly low when I was there, so I suspect he is correct about that as well.
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Feb 3, 2016 22:20
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cheese-cube posted:A mate of mine just said to me "[Australian] speed limits are artificially low to cause more accidents". When I asked him to explain he pulled out the old chestnut about posted speed limits being below the designed speed of roads. I know that this discussion has been had before in this thread but can someone give me a couple of links to help me call him out on his insanity? Tell him if he's in such a loving hurry all the time he should leave earlier.
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Feb 3, 2016 22:32
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It does happen, lawmakers do set speed limits artificially low for political or revenue reasons. It's just not the ONLY reason or explanation. The new US Route 3 in Massachusetts is a lovely highway designed for 70 MPH traffic and it's still signed at 55 from the NMSL days when it was a four lane highway. The only souls who drive 55 are grandmas and people in Priuses; almost every other day thousands of commuters break the law on that highway. But that's just one road; there's plenty of roads signed 55 where it is appropriate to be 55 (say, US 5 in West Springfield).
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Feb 3, 2016 22:49
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My understanding from talking to my grandfather (retired civil engineer in New England) is that before the oil crisis of 1973, no one really cared about speed limits. Once local and state govts got that source of revenue, they never gave it back up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_95_in_Maine#Speed_limits quote:The Maine Turnpike had a posted speed limit of 70 mph in the early 1970s, but as Maine then had no law against traveling less than 10 mph over the posted speed, the de facto speed limit was 79 mph. In 1974, as part of a federal mandate, the speed limit was reduced to 55 mph, with a new law including a "less than 10 over" violation. Separately, his first project as a civil engineer in the mid- 1950s after he graduated from college was the upgrade of 128 in MA from 2 to 3 lanes and they built the bridges for adding a fourth lane.... ~60 years later, 128 is still waiting for the fourth lane https://goo.gl/maps/NSCpDKCYRZp Here's the original road layout of 128 in 1955...Look at how short the acceleration and deceleration lanes are and the extremely tight leaves of the clover. http://historicaerials.com?layer=1955&zoom=17&lat=42.503324317738524&lon=-71.10277533531189 Vs 1965 http://historicaerials.com?layer=1965&zoom=17&lat=42.503324317738524&lon=-71.10277533531189 Another pretty amazing time lapse is the construction of I-93 in somerville/medford... half of a neighborhood is simply wiped out http://historicaerials.com?layer=1955&zoom=16&lat=42.388346121836626&lon=-71.08040571212769 When the I-93 viaduct needs to be replaced I would expect that to turn into a Big Dig Part II. Does anyone know the life expectancy of that structure?
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Feb 4, 2016 01:00
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Remember also that modern cars turn and stop way, way better than cars made even 20-30 years ago. A modern toyota camry is a better vehicle in raw performance than a 1970s ferrari. Modern tire technology is also goddamn amazing. This should result in speed limits going up, not down if road conditon and volume stays the same (which admittedly it isn't in many areas).
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Feb 4, 2016 01:47
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nm posted:Remember also that modern cars turn and stop way, way better than cars made even 20-30 years ago. A modern toyota camry is a better vehicle in raw performance than a 1970s ferrari. A good driver in a modern car can drive roads MUCH faster than the design speed. This doesn't mean that normal drivers can do so safely or comfortably. And giving the young invincibles license to go nuts just increases the speed differentials compared to the old fogeys who don't like having their passengers pressed against the outside window without a steering wheel to grip onto.
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Feb 4, 2016 01:55
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Devor posted:A good driver in a modern car can drive roads MUCH faster than the design speed. This doesn't mean that normal drivers can do so safely or comfortably. And giving the young invincibles license to go nuts just increases the speed differentials compared to the old fogeys who don't like having their passengers pressed against the outside window without a steering wheel to grip onto. The great thing about 85 percentile speeds is that they deal with the outlier that might raise the limit too high. 85 percentile is not the "fastest safe speed." It will go up though because people (rightly) feel safer driving a new car at 70mph compare to something 30 years old.
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Feb 4, 2016 02:00
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Kahta posted:Separately, his first project as a civil engineer in the mid- 1950s after he graduated from college was the upgrade of 128 in MA from 2 to 3 lanes and they built the bridges for adding a fourth lane.... ~60 years later, 128 is still waiting for the fourth lane Your grandfather would be a great guy to talk to. As far as four-lane 128 goes, to say it's still waiting for the fourth lane is only partly true. it's had large portions of four-lane since the sixties (which is the bit he worked on). But the real holdup has been the section from 95 to route 9 in Needham. Over the past decade the state has been doing an add-a-lane from Canton to Needham. The very last segment of add-a-lane is finishing up with Needham starting this spring. There's only a few miles of three-lane left south of route 9 now, unlike ten years ago. Once it's finished, 128 will be four lanes from 95 in Canton to 93 in Woburn. The main issue was that 128 was a patchwork project. The oldest six-lane section is also the last one to be upgraded. The three-lane section south of route 9 wasn't built with four lane bridges (unlike the sections north of Needham) so the past ten years they've been replacing every one. quote:Another pretty amazing time lapse is the construction of I-93 in somerville/medford... half of a neighborhood is simply wiped out The three mile double deck Somerville section, specifically, opened in 1973. It probably has 20 years of serviceable life left in it before a major reconstruction, and they already did a lot of work on it during the Big Dig (along with some of the Charlestown section being replaced entirely by a new concrete structure). I doubt it will be torn down due to how the Zakim and Tobin bridges interact with it. It will be expensive to reconstruct it, but I don't see that as particularly difficult from an engineering standpoint.
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Feb 4, 2016 02:52
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Deteriorata posted:Roads are often designed with the idea that emergency vehicles will be able to safely navigate them at high speeds when (rarely) necessary. I recall that the US Interstate system had a design point of 115 mph for the sake of ambulances and police. The design speed on the Interstates is typically 70mph, but that's for trucks on bald tires with bad drivers. 1950s trucks, in fact, which don't even exist anymore. Police cars and ambulances can certainly go faster, but they have a few factors on their side: they're highly visible, they have a better power-to-weight ratio than a loaded semi, they (in theory) have professional drivers with short reaction times, and they have the legal ability to drive in shoulders or in opposing lanes as needed. Normal drivers are a bit less capable, but I'd wager that a typical driver could go 15mph above the design speed with minimal additional hazard. The tricky part is getting everyone to go the SAME speed. I love the way RI set its minimum speed just 10mph below the maximum, and I wish it were enforced better. Just today, it was raining heavily, gusty, windstrewn clouds of mist everywhere and there was a guy in the middle lane on I-91 going 20 under the limit with his lights off. What's someone like that even doing on the road? Blah blah insert the usual paragraph-long rant about the quality of driver's education and license exams in the US blah blah
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Feb 4, 2016 03:12
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Cichlidae posted:The design speed on the Interstates is typically 70mph, but that's for trucks on bald tires with bad drivers. 1950s trucks, in fact, which don't even exist anymore. Police cars and ambulances can certainly go faster, but they have a few factors on their side: they're highly visible, they have a better power-to-weight ratio than a loaded semi, they (in theory) have professional drivers with short reaction times, and they have the legal ability to drive in shoulders or in opposing lanes as needed. Normal drivers are a bit less capable, but I'd wager that a typical driver could go 15mph above the design speed with minimal additional hazard. The 115 mph thing came from my drivers' ed teacher 40 years ago, so I don't swear by it. His point was that the people who need to drive that fast are professionals in vehicles equipped to handle it. We (the students) and our cars are not that good and the posted limit is set where it is for a reason - most people don't feel comfortable driving much faster than that. So follow the speed limits. It's very possible he just made it up to make a point.
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Feb 4, 2016 03:24
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Deteriorata posted:The 115 mph thing came from my drivers' ed teacher 40 years ago, so I don't swear by it. His point was that the people who need to drive that fast are professionals in vehicles equipped to handle it. We (the students) and our cars are not that good and the posted limit is set where it is for a reason - most people don't feel comfortable driving much faster than that. So follow the speed limits. He was just getting things backwards, sorta. It's not designed so that the emergency vehicles can go 115 mph as the goal, that emergency vehicles can go 115 mph is just a result of designing a safe road according to the standards. The standards originate from upgrading the standards the PA Turnpike was built under (again, particularly improving the standards for interchanges, because those weren't really good), and those standards follow from operating on the common rules for building a railroad that old steam locomotives could safely operate on at high speed. So what was originally meant around safely running a train at the heady speed of 50 mph, results in today's roads where, if there was no traffic and it was nice and sunny and dry, you could safely do 120.
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Feb 4, 2016 03:34
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nm posted:Remember also that modern cars turn and stop way, way better than cars made even 20-30 years ago. A modern toyota camry is a better vehicle in raw performance than a 1970s ferrari. Speed limits are not going to go up. Lower speed limits are safer for vulnerable road users and are better for creating livelier neighborhoods and districts (because neighborhoods with high speed roads are unlivable). There are already political pushes for lowering speed limits in all sorts of places and that will continue as mode share for transit/bicycling/pedestrians increases and automobile users become less dominant.
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Feb 4, 2016 05:07
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Lower speed limits in cities are a great idea, but trying to implement them simply through signage is not a good idea. You need to do actual traffic calming and improve pedestrian/cycling infrastructure.
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Feb 4, 2016 05:09
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Baronjutter posted:Lower speed limits in cities are a great idea, but trying to implement them simply through signage is not a good idea. You need to do actual traffic calming and improve pedestrian/cycling infrastructure. This, but a huge portion of american roads are not in built up areas and are where speed limits should be going up. I'm generally talking controlled access, not some residental street.
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Feb 4, 2016 05:12
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Proposition Joe posted:Speed limits are not going to go up. Lower speed limits are safer for vulnerable road users and are better for creating livelier neighborhoods and districts (because neighborhoods with high speed roads are unlivable). There are already political pushes for lowering speed limits in all sorts of places and that will continue as mode share for transit/bicycling/pedestrians increases and automobile users become less dominant. He's talking about freeways and high spec surface roads out in nowhere, not streets people live on. Ain't any vulnerable road users allowed on freeways.
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Feb 4, 2016 05:13
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Deteriorata posted:We (the students) and our cars are not that good Cop cars aren't particularly special. Chemmy fucked around with this message at 07:51 on Feb 4, 2016 |
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Feb 4, 2016 07:45
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This came up in the Chicago thread but it hits a lot of themes of this thread: traffic management, the inability of anyone to plan for the conditions 30-40 years from now, non-existant pieces of highway systems leading to current gridlock, and traffic flows. How do the reversible lanes on Chicago's Kennedy Expressway work? The article has a bonus video on how IDOT actually triggers the lane reversals. My first thought is always pandemonium. There are, of course, smarter people than I to think about these things.
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Feb 4, 2016 21:38
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kefkafloyd posted:Your grandfather would be a great guy to talk to. Yeah. He isn't around anymore, but he was heavily involved with the design of the Inner Belt and most major highway projects across the northeast, including the Cross Bronx Expressway. He was probably one of the most anti-govt people I've ever met because of his experience with inept politicians. One time the bricklayers in NYC needed work during a critical election year, so someone intervened and added a two foot thick brick facade to the retaining walls on a highway. I believe that it was the Cross-Bronx that had this intervention occur. Another time, someone on his job complained about a Massachusetts State trooper who was parking his cruiser in the woods and sleeping during details, so he showed up at the construction trailer and threatened to arrest whoever complained on fabricated evidence. kefkafloyd posted:As far as four-lane 128 goes, to say it's still waiting for the fourth lane is only partly true. it's had large portions of four-lane since the sixties (which is the bit he worked on). But the real holdup has been the section from 95 to route 9 in Needham. Over the past decade the state has been doing an add-a-lane from Canton to Needham. The very last segment of add-a-lane is finishing up with Needham starting this spring. There's only a few miles of three-lane left south of route 9 now, unlike ten years ago. Once it's finished, 128 will be four lanes from 95 in Canton to 93 in Woburn. Yeah, I believe that portion was originally scheduled to get a fourth lane in the 70s and I believe that the funding was turned in to fund mass transit and the breakdown lane was opened for rush hour traffic. The idea was that by simply not funding highways, people wouldn't drive... at around the same time, very restrictive zoning laws were passed that made new large scale developments impossible.
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Feb 5, 2016 01:32
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Chemmy posted:Cop cars aren't particularly special. The maintenance standards are (generally) pretty good, and police cars in the US general have decent tires on them. Outside of that, the myth of the "specialness" of police cars is just that.
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Feb 5, 2016 03:31
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Kahta posted:Yeah. He isn't around anymore, but he was heavily involved with the design of the Inner Belt and most major highway projects across the northeast, including the Cross Bronx Expressway. He was probably one of the most anti-govt people I've ever met because of his experience with inept politicians. One time the bricklayers in NYC needed work during a critical election year, so someone intervened and added a two foot thick brick facade to the retaining walls on a highway. I believe that it was the Cross-Bronx that had this intervention occur. Another time, someone on his job complained about a Massachusetts State trooper who was parking his cruiser in the woods and sleeping during details, so he showed up at the construction trailer and threatened to arrest whoever complained on fabricated evidence. Man, I would have loved to have picked his brain. Talk about rad stories. I don't think the subject of the Massachusetts freeway revolts has ever come up in this thread, but the necessity of the Big Dig is directly due to several knock-on effects of Governor Sargent putting the moratorium up in 1972. No highways inside route 128. On the other hand, the Inner Belt would have destroyed a lot of what is now prime real estate, even though it and the missing links of the Southwest and Northwest expressways would have both major positive and negative effects if they were built. The state of both highway and transit infrastructure is a tale of half-finished broken promises.
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Feb 5, 2016 04:17
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MrYenko posted:The maintenance standards are (generally) pretty good, and police cars in the US general have decent tires on them. Outside of that, the myth of the "specialness" of police cars is just that. They do have fantastically loud sirens and blinkenlights, though. Those are pretty effective at getting people out of your way. And as I mentioned before, just having someone who's middle-aged and has a decent reaction time goes a long way. But perhaps I'm assuming too much about cops... kefkafloyd posted:Man, I would have loved to have picked his brain. Talk about rad stories. No kidding :/ I get really depressed when I think about how hosed up and dysfunctional things are. Crushingly depressed. So much goddamn waste, so many missed opportunities, so many short-sighted, greedy people loving things up for everyone. I feel like things are always getting worse and there's no way to fix anything long-term. Ughhhh I need to bump up my prescriptions and get a job as a freelance floral arranger or something. Cichlidae fucked around with this message at 05:07 on Feb 5, 2016 |
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Feb 5, 2016 04:47
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Cichlidae posted:They do have fantastically loud sirens and blinkenlights, though. Those are pretty effective at getting people out of your way. And as I mentioned before, just having someone who's middle-aged and has a decent reaction time goes a long way. But perhaps I'm assuming too much about cops... Cop packages do have some significant enhancements over the stock models. The classic old Crown Vics had a higher rear end ratio, an oil cooler, dual exhaust, and significantly stiffer shocks and springs. Of course, they also had to haul a couple hundred pounds of stuff in the trunk. The amount and value of the upgrades would of course vary from model to model, but the "police package" was (and is) a real thing.
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Feb 5, 2016 05:39
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Just make sure you steer clear of Illinois nazis in them.
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Feb 5, 2016 05:54
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nm posted:He's probably correct to an extent. If there is a big speed difference between the "follow the speed limit all the time" people and the "doing a safe speed (85 percentile)" people, you will see more accidents because speed differences are a huge factor. There's a good portion of the Hume Freeway with a large number of at-grade intersections with low traffic roads, the oldest parts of the freeway around Seymour and Euroa that were built in the 70s could do with an upgrade, at least the Beveridge and Kalkallo sections have been or will be upgraded. The NSW stretch is a lot better, now the whole thing is dual carriageway. There's still a few at-grade intersections that should given a look over, like the Sturt Hwy and Lachlan Valley Way turnoffs, but the priority ought to be the junction with the Federal Hwy, there's one flyover for the Canberra to Sydney section but if you're coming from the west and need to turn back towards Canberra you have to move to the middle of the freeway, do a U-turn, and rejoin the flow from the middle, which includes all the Sydney-Melbourne traffic and all the Sydney-Canberra traffic. https://www.google.com.au/maps/@-34.8001187,149.6143496,2173m/data=!3m1!1e3 Melbourne-Canberra traffic usually takes the Barton Hwy, but still, that's still closest to the dumbest intersection on the whole 31. (My username has a fairly long story, but yeah, it ultimately stems from what a goat track the Hume used to be in the 70s. A fair proportion of the Pacific Highway between Sydney and Brisbane is still like that, so that's where the federal priority is concentrated for now.
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Feb 5, 2016 06:31
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