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Cichlidae posted:I just got back from a working vacation in central Texas. They have some FANTASTIC road infrastructure, maybe the best I've ever seen. They even have signs they put up to warn you about damaged guide rail. Up here, as safety-conscious as we are, we still just leave big holes in our guide rail without any kind of warning. As a Texan, I can say that Texas actually does good roads...most of the time. The state is big enough it needs those good highways desperately and knows it. It also helps we don't have road-cracking winters with icy situations being non-existant to maybe 1-2 days of freezing rain a year depending on what part of the state you're in*. And when roads get damaged, or the guardrails as you noticed, TxDOT is very good at repairing them (the damaged guardrail signs will rarely be up for more than a week or two in my experience). And then you get to places like loving Austin. Two over-burdened north-south corridors (Loop 1/Mopac and probably the worst segment of I-35 respectively, made worse by them simultaneously being under construction for desperately needed expansion) and absolutely no east-west corridors in town. 183 goes NW-SE in the extreme north part of town, and 360 makes a 270o arc around the north, west and extreme south of town. But if you want to actually go east-west in the middle of the city you're poo poo out of luck. Gotta take the mostly 2 and 4 lane roads that go east-west. *Don't drive on icy roads in Texas though. The roads will generally be good, especially if salted/sanded. The locals can't drive for poo poo on ice though. 
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Dec 9, 2015 06:07
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Cichlidae posted:I LOVED the 75mph rural roads. It was like being in France again. Sure, you have a ton of head-on fatalities, but I'd be willing to wager that from a cost-benefit perspective, it's not worth widening them and slapping down a median unless the ADT breaks 10,000. Unlike when I was in Nebraska, the part of the state I was in actually had some topography, so you didn't get highway hypnosis as badly. Yeah, if you can keep from suffering highway hypnosis (I don't drive at night for that very reason) the high speed roads are pretty good. TxDOT and the Highway Patrol realize that there's a lot of nothing between point A and B and there's no reason to really linger in between. Of course you do have to watch out for the speed traps that every single small town becomes when that 75mph road becomes said small town's main street. TxDOT knows how to build and maintain roads very well, and it's got the rural stuff down to a science. It's in the big cities that everything gets horrible. I'm not kidding about how bad I-35 through central Austin is, and that was before the construction (as I said it's needed but it's definitely not making things easier in the meantime). But hey, our segment of I-35 at least has wings! That has to count for something...right?  (After all these years I still can't decide if that's a really cool or really stupid way to light a parking lot below an overpass)
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Dec 9, 2015 20:20
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Varance posted:I'll see your wings and raise you faux brick structure. Wow...that's just...pathetic. I guess it does make sense that something that tacky would exist in Florida. fishmech posted:Speaking of road facings, is there a name for this pattern/style of interlocking things, and is there any particular reason it gets used? Probably because it's a cheap, stable tessellating shape. I watched a highway overpass be torn down and rebuilt near my old apartment over a couple years and they had concrete forms (not those shapes but another similar one) sitting out. I'm pretty sure they're just a standard prefab piece that's either made by the city/state themselves or bought from a factory and shipped to site. Varance posted:It's called an MSE (mechanically stabilized earth) or Reinforced Soil structure. The earth fill bears the load, while the precast interlocking wall panels keep the earth in place. what he said.
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Dec 10, 2015 04:37
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Eh, I've seen that shape all over the place in Texas. Though TxDOT seems to be branching out as a lot of the newer panels have fancier ones. Some have Texas states or flags on them, some fit together to form a mural.
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Dec 10, 2015 05:02
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Kaal posted:Options: Step 4 should be relabeled "Steps 4 through Infinity". Honestly I'd say the better option really is trying to goad local bored reporters to harassing the railroads. While there's a good chance that little to nothing would happen, it would at least mean that Grandma and her Bingo Club would start sending letters somewhere besides the local traffic engineers.
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Dec 15, 2015 00:39
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Koesj posted:Speaking of leftist-thirdworldist infrastructural solutions being adopted in the US: roundabouts seem to be coming on strong in a decent number of places. Indeed! Now we're just waiting for drivers to figure out how to drive on them.
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Dec 23, 2015 08:25
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Lead out in cuffs posted:To get away from D&D and onto something (maybe) less contentious, do any of the Florida traffic engineers have any idea of the state's long-term plans for dealing with tidal flooding of roads? Considering that large chunks of the Florida government wants to ignore climate change/rising sea levels, I think the part that does have to deal with it or wants to plan ahead has "cry tears of frustration into alcoholic beverage of choice" penned into their calendars at least once a week for the foreseeable future.
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Dec 27, 2015 02:25
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As a car driver (and not a bicyclist) the speed bumps that really irritate me are the ones that have gaps in the middle of them. I can understand having gaps for water, or gaps near the curb/in the bike lane for bikes but these are a series of 5-7 humps across the road (often in a "square" shape with flat tops in my experience). They always seem spaced just wide enough apart that I can never get across them comfortably. Any way I hit them it just feels weird as my car drives over at an angle.
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Feb 13, 2016 03:36
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jyrka posted:Yeah, that's the one. I've seen them a lot in rural Texas. The passing lane generally is put on an uphill slope so that smaller cars can pass a slower cargo-laden truck that's struggling to get up the hill. The road will then narrow back down to a 2 lane road afterwards and you'll see a sign saying "Next pass zone in X miles". Honestly despite having to wait forever behind some big slow truck (or some local granny going 40 mph from the farm to the church on the highway) I far prefer the roads that forbid swerving into oncoming traffic to pass and instead have a passing lane like that. Yes you'll often get stuck behind someone going a bit slow over 4-5 miles but it's far safer and people tend to drive a lot calmer when they know "Okay, I can pass this person in a couple of minutes." Alkydere fucked around with this message at 15:12 on Mar 21, 2016 |
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Mar 21, 2016 15:08
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nm posted:They're great until because the road has widened out (and is now probably straight) the slowpoke starts speeding and then slows down when the passing lane ends. I find normally people are reasonably aware about that, especially since here in Texas the passing lanes have signs announcing them. Normally. You can't fix some people.
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Mar 22, 2016 06:02
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Cichlidae posted:Block numbering is a strange and foreign concept to those of us in New England. As a former pizza delivery driver...the idea of a city without block numbers terrifies me. In the days before conveniently having maps on my phone I was able to easily figure out where a house was within seconds once I knew the block # and where the street was. Not to mention if it was on the north/south, east/west side depending on if it was an odd or even number.
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May 19, 2016 06:12
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smackfu posted:That seems like it would be terrifying to drive under. Not much clearance. Honestly I imagine after a while you'd get used to it. The big issue (besides of course how big a mess any wreck with one will be) is: Guy Axlerod posted:Doesn't look like trucks or buses could fit. Also, only 60 km/h? This basically. Basically take the old "too-tall truck hits a too-low bridge" scenario and now make the bridge a moving part. Thankfully it looks like the bus travels the same direction as traffic so in most cases the bus will likely be able to just follow behind the truck. But it only takes one operator goofing up to end up with one riding up on the back of a truck, or a truck rear-ending it, and maybe even derailing the bus-o-rail in the process.
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Aug 4, 2016 16:29
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Dear cyclists, wear the loving helmet (and wear one that actually provides protection). If you're in an accident there's a good chance your head will hit the ground anyways. And there are far more hazards on the road than simply cars that may or may not be magnetically attracted to said helmet: loose gravel, debris, small territorial yappy dogs, tourists, your own impaired sense of balance because your head is stuffed up due to allergies. All of these and much, much more can cause accidents, and if you fall off a bike hitting the ground tends to be a common denominator. So wear the loving helmet. It's there to protect your valuable brain gelatin from the ground.
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Sep 30, 2016 16:41
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sleepy.eyes posted:When you are at a stoplight there are three options: Because it's necessary. Sadly the sign moves too fast for the people who really need it. About a week or so ago someone "ran" a T interesection near my house going fast enough that not only did it total a parked car, but it literally caused part of the condo on the opposite of the T to collapse onto the (now no longer speeding) car. Thankfully cars are built well enough to protect the passenger that the driver didn't die. And the apartment that collapsed onto the car was unoccupied and used for storage.
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Apr 25, 2017 03:51
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Hippie Hedgehog posted:Are you assuming that self-driving cars will not be able to automatically find a workshop and drive there while the owner is at work, whenever there is a problem? Car drives owner to work. Owner finally has the money to fix car, tells it to head to a repair shop while he's busy working. Car scans list of certified shops, ends up finding a shop on the far side of the city first instead of the one three blocks down due to shoddy search prioritization. Car gets on highway only for the transmission to fall out because the Check Engine lite has been on for over a month before owner could finally scrape the money together to pay for maintenance. Dead car and loose transmission on highway cause congestion at best, an accident at worst due to other autonomous vehicles not knowing how to deal with the sudden obstruction in the middle of a high-speed freeway.
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May 12, 2017 16:13
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Okay, drove a bit down on the Texas Gulf Coast a few days ago and something piqued my curiosity. Does anyone know why the roads around Houston and Galveston are primarily concrete instead of asphalt? I'm assuming there has to be a reason...besides the fact that it's loud as gently caress below your tires?
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May 22, 2017 05:19
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Varance posted:There's a long-running battle between the asphalt and concrete industries as to what roads should be paved with. Early local roads were paved with brick. Long haul roads were paved with concrete, as the US Highway and later Interstate Highway systems were designed with national defense in mind and were expected to bear the weight of tanks and other heavy vehicles. Asphalt came on the scene third, first introducing "asphalt bricks" as a local alternative, then layer-based asphalt as new techniques emerged to pave roads faster. Asphalt had the upper hand for a long time because of cheap oil. During the energy crisis of the 1970s, concrete became more competitive because of the fuel shortage, so you'll see a lot of 1970s-era roads in the US paved with concrete. Same with roads built in the early 2000s, when oil was at an all-time high. Delivery McGee posted:Comedy option: concrete is more resistant to weathering, and given that Galveston is scoured off the face of the earth by a hurricane every hundred years or so... Fair enough. Thought it was something like that to be honest. All I really noticed is that the stuff is loud as gently caress under my tires at highway speed (Tires emit a constant howling of the damned that I eventually tune out) and that there were concrete splatters everywhere (Assuming it's just a little bit spilling out of the cement truck here and there and then the cement just fuses to the road in a way it wouldn't do to asphalt). dupersaurus posted:Concrete's more expensive but it'd also be expected to last longer. So if you've got a road that you can lay down and forget (no weather to tear the surface up, don't need to expand or upgrade within a few asphalt lifetimes, etc) it may be more cost-effective in the long run to do concrete. I thought one of the big draws for Asphalt over Concrete was the poo poo is hella recyclable. Sure it takes more oil, but you only lose 10-15% of that oil when you rip it up and remix it. That and it doesn't really have to wait to dry, you can drive on it in a few minutes after the resurfacing truck drives by. I'm guessing that it really just depends on where you are and what sort of environment you're dealing with.
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May 22, 2017 16:03
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Hippie Hedgehog posted:The psychopath solution to transport problems. Lovely. Think of it as a Public Works program with, uh, "explosive" potential.
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Oct 28, 2017 18:32
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Varance posted:Those look to be twice as thick as standard bollards. Probably an element of price gouging in here as well, since it's a rush order. I mean...it looks like they'll at least keep the normal road as-is once it's done so it's not the worst idea even if it really should be 2 lanes each way. It at least siphons the through-traffic off of the road so the local traffic has less to contend with...at least until someone goes full Florida-Man and blocks one or both directions with a wreck and you now have people stranded 30 feet up in their cars
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Nov 3, 2017 10:08
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Varance posted:The I-4/Selmon connector has the same setup, and has similar problems. It's our answer to the time-tested question of "How can we make Malfunction Junction worse?" (I-4/I-275 interchange) I mean, could be worse. Could be underground instead of above ground.
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Nov 3, 2017 19:40
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The Deadly Hume posted:I should point out that that's Cities Skylines (which has a, shall we say, quirky traffic pathfinding model by default though there are better ones in mods) but that's a really cool compilation. Yeah, the "standard roundabout" made it painfully obvious it was CS. CS does not handle roundabouts well (it makes the people on the circle stop/yield) unless you either highway roads or mods. Which is why it had an 8 car-per-minute rate.
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Dec 17, 2017 16:32
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I believe the developers are Scandinavian. It's still a really cool city builder/traffic sim though you do have to realize that the traffic simulation is wonky (cars will find the shortest path from point A to point B, factoring in road speed limit. They will not take any other route, regardless of traffic conditions. Admittedly this is done to be easier on older computers.) but there are work-arounds and mods for that. Just make sure you get the mod that kills all seagulls: every one of them takes up a space that could be used for a car and eventually your city finds itself unable to expand because there's not enough models to assign to delivery trucks or emergency services. Alkydere fucked around with this message at 16:43 on Dec 17, 2017 |
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Dec 17, 2017 16:40
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Yeah, as far as I know the green car would yield 100% of the time (or...should, there's no accounting for stupid) simply because it's on the smaller road. The larger road has priority, doubly so since it doesn't stop itself. This priority would generally be further reinforced by the dozens of vehicles flying by and not stopping for the smaller feeder road the green car is on.
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Jan 22, 2018 16:57
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Opals25 posted:I have to imagine building infrastructure in China is about like in Sim City. There's nothing to stop you from doing it and then it happens over night... Their population means they can throw an absolutely absurd amount of workers at a project. It likely helped that all the rail beds were already there so they could basically take the old stuff up/plop the new stuff down with minimal hassle. Still the amount of prep work needed to make such a feat possible, making sure everything is in the right place at the right time, is mind-boggling.
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Jan 26, 2018 14:30
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Hippie Hedgehog posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuJ3NDq4AlA oh hey, a new Dahir Insaat. You'll notice that the entire thing's CGI, they didn't make anything. They're just a patent trolling company based in the mid-east (forget which country). That being said, this machine is actually almost reasonable compared to the other stuff they come up with. Everything from DEATH BEDS to machines to clear out cholesteral in arteries to quadcopters with enough firepower to level a military base (they really, really like quadcopters). Also, I love how they cherry pick Moscow. Moscow's far enough north that I'm fairly sure the issue with potholes isn't so much the standard Russian corruption (though it probably doesn't help) but instead the old issue of water freezing to make potholes. Potholes which generally aren't worth properly patching until the weather warms up again. Edit: For your education since you likely didn't know about Dahir Insaat, have a collection of SA's own Slowbeef mocking their stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wgSicSbkI8 Alkydere fucked around with this message at 22:16 on Apr 29, 2018 |
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Apr 29, 2018 22:08
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Baronjutter posted:The most terrifying thing american highways seem to have are insanely dangerous on-ramps. Like instead of having a nice acceleration lane and a merge you've got maybe 50' of lane to some how safely get up to freeway speeds from a stop and merge in, while american drivers also seem to see letting people merge as a sign of weakness or something and will actively close gaps to stop you from changing lanes. I deal with this near my work which makes me glad I recently got a new car with better acceleration: tiny rear end little on-ramp (and it's a merger one instead of a weave lane) has me putting the pedal to the metal in hopes not to get plastered by some big semi cruising along I-35 every time I head home. Considering I work at an Amazon Fulfillment Center I can only imagine how much it sucks for the people driving the semis picking up deliveries there too, those suckers don't exactly accelerate like rockets. fishmech posted:Do you really believe this is some special American thing? And yeah I doubt it's an issue for ONLY American cities.
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Jul 18, 2018 19:48
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