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Opinions on Rt. 495 stretching through the Lawrence areas?
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Jan 7, 2012 02:39
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Main interesting parts about I-495 are the double-decker bridge over the Merrimack and the brand new on-ramps they built for it.
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Jan 8, 2012 20:57
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I live in the relatively small town of North Andover, MA. Rt. 114 and Rt. 125 are two major state highways that run through it, but I've got a quick question about the "Old Centre" as it's called. It used to be set up like this: Then, around four years ago, they completely murdered all through traffic and spent a nice six months of SUMMER WEATHER to build this:  Did they do the right thing? Simple curious, I like the way it is now far better but the rotary is so small that if you go anything over 15, your car might flip. I'll admit, it looks really nice aesthetically though.
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Feb 25, 2012 23:17
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I've been curious forever, since I've seen it blocked off since I was a little kid. There's a little stretch of what used to be the old Route 16 in Milton, NH that has been blocked off for ages now, and I wanted to know why/how/what happened. It's the little white line after where 125 ends. I understand that they built the new Route 16 as a faster route, but why'd they block off that one stretch?
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Sep 3, 2012 22:35
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Just curious as to what you think of the new I-93 junction at the Rockingham Mall. I just drove from the mall southbound (towards 213) for the very first time last week and I have to say, as someone who really appreciates driving for what it is, the onramp that swings you right over the entire highway is beautiful. I tend to take Rt. 28 all the way to where it meets up with 213 but the other day I had a change of heart and decided to take the highway.
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Sep 30, 2013 20:42
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Cichlidae posted:Have a map for me? I try to avoid driving anywhere near Boston if I can help it. Surprise, this is near Salem, NH.  The map doesn't really do it justice as to the way it looks in person.
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Oct 2, 2013 20:42
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kefkafloyd posted:I just drove by it this weekend (the I-93 thing), it really is impressive, for a directional wye. Did you drive on the on-ramp itself or just past it? Feels like real life Need for Speed if you're going southbound from the mall.
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Oct 4, 2013 05:03
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A couple pages ago people were talking about a monument in a grassy area in the middle of a road. That doesn't come close to what we used to have in North Andover, MA. We had a loving concrete horse trough from the late 1800s literally in the street freestanding. The Google Maps view is too recent to see it because they moved it after like 25 years this past summer, but here's a picture of where it was (the blacktop is where the base was mounted): And here's what the actual bastard looks like in it's new spot:  I used to wonder how nobody would come flying down that street right into it.
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Oct 26, 2013 17:45
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No reflectors, and no idea. The only thing I can think of is that the building in the background used to be the police station. Maybe people went slow enough by there to not hit it? I have no clue. It WAS insane.
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Oct 27, 2013 00:38
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less than three posted:I wonder when it was re-done, because video games weren't a thing in 1952. 2008, or so says this excerpt from a Complex magazine article about it. article posted:Stockholm's subway system (Tunnelbana) has often been refered to as the world's longest art exhibition with each station featuring unique art from local artists since the 1950's. Back in 2008 the Thorildsplan station recieved a sweeping makeover that took a lot of inspiration from video games. Using colored tiles to recreate familiar pixelart characters, walking through the station feels like walking through an 8-bit dreamland. Also, there were definitely prototype video games like OXO in 1952 (and even some patented as far back as the mid-1940s iirc). But the real bizness admittedly didn't come until Tennis for Two in '58. And on the topic of bike lanes, you could always take the UMass Amherst route and not offer ANY bike lanes on the most heavily traveled road of the campus! Hooray! https://goo.gl/maps/s02BM How do bikes get around? Like everybody else - they weave in and out of foot traffic on the barely 3ft wide sidewalks. Combine that with skateboard traffic, and you've got a lot of lower leg bruises accounted for. Oh UMass, if you could only spend all that construction money on things that actually matter, instead of new sod in places people will never see anyway. barnold fucked around with this message at 22:47 on May 10, 2015 |
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May 10, 2015 18:43
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Maybe this question is too broad, but can anybody succinctly explain why Virginia's roads are just a bunch of clusterfucks? I thought we had strange roads up here in New England but I have never been so blatantly yelling "what the gently caress" as the passing lane on a three-lane highway ends and merges right with less than 250ft notification, or as I pull into a deathtrap U-turn configuration where cars from the other side of the road will drive into you sooner than you'll make the turn.
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Aug 3, 2015 02:58
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like most of my questions in this thread, I am trying to figure out how the gently caress anyone thought this was a good idea. this is the I-93 South/MA-213 East connector. Looks okay right? Except that since 213 connects I-93 and I-495, everyone coming southbound on I-93 needs to get onto MA-213 East. Conversely, people coming west from I-495 needs to get onto I-95 South. Zoom and enhance on the pure fuckery.  Red line is I-93 -> 213, blue line is 213 -> I-93. That's 250ft of weaving. Navigating this thing between 3pm and 7pm is a guaranteed shitshow. Why would anyone do this???
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Aug 20, 2016 05:08
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kefkafloyd posted:The Loop Connector was not originally built to connect to 495, those ramps are a 1950-s designed "good enough to get traffic in and out of Methuen to the Northern Expressway" finished in 1962. Nobody thought to redesign the ramps when it was connected to the newly-built 495 a few years later because the assumption was that Route 213 would be extended to Lowell and the interchange would be reconfigured at that time. Hmm, I never knew this! Growing up around the time just before it was officially designated the Loop Connector, I always figured it was just an easy way to get to I-93 from I-495 and vice versa. Thinking about how life would be without 213, it seems miserable. I think 213 is probably the second most important highway to me, as most of my commutes to work are in the Manchester/Concord area
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Aug 20, 2016 17:16
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kefkafloyd posted:Here's some light afternoon reading then! This website is great, thanks for the link. Got anything like this for other state highways? Living in the Merrimack Valley, I'd love to read some stuff about 114, 125, or 133. Have I mentioned how awesome it is to have a bunch of posters in this thread from the New England area? Sorry, non-NE goons. 
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Aug 21, 2016 16:03
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kefkafloyd posted:It is not that unlike I-495 to I-95 in Amesbury, Mass. I love the flyover going northbound through there, makes me feel like I'm playing real life Need For Speed. So does the ramp to NH-38 in Salem from I-95 that goes around the Rockingham Mall. They did some cool and good things. EDIT: Can someone please explain why England thinks these are good? I can think of probably a hundred different ways to achieve what I presume is speed control through residential areas that aren't the biggest road hazard I think I've ever seen.  I love that 8 foot bike lane too. What a loving treat that must be. barnold fucked around with this message at 20:39 on Aug 28, 2016 |
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Aug 28, 2016 20:33
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Jonnty posted:We're pretty used to them, and in practice you're going pretty slowly (or should be) in a well-lit area so they're not particularly dangerous. (If you think they are, then I guess we should ban all parking on two-lane residential roads!) except cars parked on two-lane residential roads don't block an entire lane of traffic and also i've seen enough dashcam videos where people slam through those islands to say that they're not always in well-lit areas or properly signed. imho anything that artificially blocks a lane as permanent traffic control is wildly reckless, even if you put enough reflectors on it to send a light beam straight to mars
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Aug 31, 2016 01:31
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Lead out in cuffs posted:Reducing reckless driving is wildly reckless. Got it. Reducing hazards by adding more hazards is a pretty stupid idea in most disciplines, yeah. Also this: fishmech posted:If people are capable of repeatedly "slamming through" a speed bump, the problem is that the installation of it was hosed up.
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Aug 31, 2016 19:20
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i don't know if I've asked this in this thread before, but what in the holy gently caress is going on Rt. 2 in Leominster? these "on-ramps" and "off-ramps" are like 50 feet long and terminate in 90 degree three way turns onto (usually) busy roads. also - how in the gently caress do houses get built like this right on exit ramps? isn't it not only obnoxious to live literally on top of a pretty major highway, but hard to drive to your own house? just like, what in the holy gently caress is this? people probably die at this intersection 
barnold fucked around with this message at 01:13 on Apr 24, 2017 |
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Apr 24, 2017 01:08
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kefkafloyd posted:The "Ramps" are actually just the road that was already there split in half and attached to the highway. I wish I was joking.  quote:Very little traffic is making the turn from 2A west to 2 east there (or 2 West to 2A east, for that matter); the vast majority is going straight through, or getting off of 2 East to 2A east via the slip ramp. More people get in accidents from crossing over the double yellow going further down route 2 proper. This makes a lot of sense. At the time I was driving by there, there happened to be a lot of traffic, and just driving past it eastbound made me say "what the gently caress" out loud. It didn't occur to me at the time that most traffic probably didn't move in that direction, I think I was too distracted by how confusing the whole layout of Rt2/2a is
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Apr 25, 2017 01:52
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sleepy.eyes posted:Why is it necessary to have a huge reflective sign with arrows pointing out that you only should choose A or B? fog or a snowstorm or even a particularly heavy rainstorm can easily obscure your view of the road, and you have to account for people who don't live in the area and know exactly how the layout of every road is.
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Apr 25, 2017 19:30
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mamosodiumku posted:While were on this subject, what's the explanation for this Tesla only on ramp? these frontage roads or whatever the gently caress they're called that run literally parallel to highways are the craziest poo poo ever and the states that build them are loving insane. there are a few I see frequently near colleges in Boston and I often wonder how more pedestrians don't get slammed by people taking exits through these roads. like this:  at night there are like 300 billion cars parked along the street and college kids are everywhere and they all walk in the street. cars making a right hand turn to go through to the one way street, which at first glance looks like a Do Not Enter but is actually only a timed Do Not Enter, slam their brakes all the time because they can't see people walking until they walk right out into the road. it's loving stupid. what a dumb thing barnold fucked around with this message at 00:45 on Apr 26, 2017 |
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Apr 26, 2017 00:41
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GWBBQ posted:The put the big signs and flashing arrows here after a bunch of people died. lol this totally reminds me of the end of the Lowell Connector. whenever a multiple lane highway ends abruptly, poo poo is about to go wrong constantly quote:Check out this whole interchange. Completely hosed, and I think it's the most dangerous one in CT. oh my loving god please don't tell me people trying to continue onto Creeping Hemlock Dr enter the 40B onramp....and then cross-over the 40B off-ramp to get to the residential area. this might be the worst thing I've ever seen in this thread. it definitely has got to be up there. that's mindblowing.
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Apr 26, 2017 01:47
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Well lads, I've gone and ordered a dashcam. Excited to start capturing videos of the dumb poo poo people in Massachusetts do behind the wheel on our crazy rear end roads.
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May 9, 2017 19:03
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kefkafloyd posted:What one did you buy? I've been interested in one. I went with the Rexing V1. I put a couple hours into researching cameras online, a lot of people seemed really happy with the Rexing. People seemed to be split between the V1 and the VIOFO A119, but ultimately the GPS mount for the VIOFO seemed really fiddly on YouTube and the reports of grainy video and hot pixels at night was enough to turn me off. I actually ordered it a couple days ago, and it just came today. I'm such a chucklefuck that I put the mount on my windshield backwards and ruined the adhesive, so now I've got to wait another day for an extra adhesive pad. I could have gone to Staples and bought a roll of tape, but the 3M stuff is pretty expensive for a roll and I need to make sure it's the good poo poo because I can imagine summer heat melting the gently caress out of bad adhesive. So far, I've been impressed with the image quality and how easy it was to flash a firmware update so that I get better GPS location with the dongle. I'm looking forward to getting out there and seeing how it does when I'm not stationary, though. EDIT: Oh, and if it matters at all, my budget sweetspot was right around $100. The camera itself was $99 and with the separate GPS dongle (and extra adhesive) it came to a little over $125. The GPS dongle isn't required, but I like the speed monitoring and how playing back the file in the Rexing player brings up a map that shows my route. I don't necessarily plan on becoming an Uber driver or anything, but the functionality is nice to have and will probably be useful if I ever get in an accident or see an accident happen right in front of me. barnold fucked around with this message at 21:49 on May 9, 2017 |
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May 9, 2017 20:36
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Update: extremely happy with the Rexing V1. Definitely get the GPS dongle if you make the plunge.
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May 10, 2017 20:18
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fishmech posted:It's also straight up legal to drive without a seat belt even in cars with the belts in, in New Hampshire (because they're dumb). For posture, New Hampshire also allows motorcycle riders to ride without a helmet. Live free or die savagely in a horrible accident, I guess.
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May 12, 2017 05:24
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fishmech posted:So you don't live in a city with a very strong "pedestrian culture". The two are not mutually exclusive, pal.
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Jun 17, 2017 23:59
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Quick question: what is the purpose of "STATE HIGHWAY ENDS" signs? I see them all the time on Route 114 in MA at places where the highway definitely doesn't end. Do these signs just indicate that you're driving on local roads for a short stretch? Here's an example of what I'm talking about. This is MA-114 West going through the center of Middleton: https://goo.gl/maps/REMrTRNvic62
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Sep 19, 2017 18:03
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Metal Geir Skogul posted:Semi trucks used to take it, at 25MPH, because it rises a thousand feet or something absurd. Entire thing is like 7%+ grade. One lane each way, baby. actually, about half of it is an aymmetrical three lane road 
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Dec 1, 2017 21:42
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So I was working on one of my larger cities in C:S (obviously) when I noticed that my poor planning led to this disaster of a midtown intersection right in the heart of the city:   (showing the origin/destination of those 6-lane roads, they're the three major arteries in and out of the city)I tried to fix it as best I could utilizing lane assignments, but that made me think - how do cities work around complex intersections with more than four entry/exit points? I found a couple neat diagrams of a rotary they built somewhere in Maine with five points, but Maine also isn't necessarily the most urban environment. How would a real traffic engineer handle a meeting of multiple major arterial roads in a confined area like this? Big rotary? Double rotary? Magic roundabout? Or just really really carefully timed light cycles to give each road its own protected cycle? barnold fucked around with this message at 18:19 on Jul 17, 2018 |
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Jul 17, 2018 18:11
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Volmarias posted:And how would C:S handle it, because cars won't change lanes to handle additional traffic? Actually, with Traffic Manager, you can turn on dynamic lane changing AI and crank it up to max, which solves a lot of problems with how the AI vehicles change lanes. It's not a perfect fix, but it's a hell of a lot better than vanilla. EDIT: I took some inspiration from a little further up on this page.    it's heinous.....but it actually works really well for some reason. also that's a third party four-lane zoneable road so that's why it looks a little wonky rendered in CSL barnold fucked around with this message at 22:46 on Jul 17, 2018 |
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Jul 17, 2018 21:41
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Volmarias posted:Is that recent? I don't remember seeing that at all! I'm not sure how recent it is, but load a game with the mod open, hit Escape to bring up the menu, go to options, click on Traffic Manager on the sidebar, and in one of the tabs you should be able to set "Advanced Lane Changing AI" (or whatever it's actually called) to varying degrees. It's not in the actual TM overlay, where you'd go for manually assigning lanes or removing traffic lights from an intersection, so it's a little hidden. I didn't know about it until I saw someone post about it in the C:S Facebook community recently.
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Jul 18, 2018 16:03
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shame on an IGA posted:Pennsylvania is really fond of putting motherfucking stop signs at the top of their onramps Same deal on most of the interchanges on Rt. 1 in MA. loving nobody pays attention to them. If you're not blowing those signs, you're just not going to merge onto the highway without making some fuckass ride your bumper and slam the horn
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Jul 22, 2018 01:54
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traffic calming? more like traffic horse tranquilizing if you ask me
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Jul 22, 2018 03:38
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:Do state and local departments of transportation have any authority to direct traffic enforcement? Like if there are particular behavioral issues that are impacting safety or throughput on a particular piece of road, and a solution like reconfiguring the roads is cost prohibitive, can traffic enforcement be used to incentivize drivers to make better choices? I know that in my (comparably limited) experience in parking enforcement and traffic control that local police department can and will make temporary changes to traffic flow/traffic enforcement on certain streets, typically with cones or plastic bollards. Not sure if the directive necessarily comes from the DoT themselves or whether the police utilize those abilities to unilaterally aid in traffic control for the sake of safety. The key phrase is "for the sake of safety" there, and that's almost always interpreted in the eyes of LEOs....so their definition of "road safety" may not necessarily line up with the DoT's idea of "safety" one hundred percent.
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Aug 7, 2018 03:38
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as someone who lives in a town similarly populated to Paradise that was also forced to evacuate recently, our main highway was narrowed years ago and yet we still had orderly traffic flow thanks to proper planning and emergency procedures. in fact, some of the traffic lights on that highway weren't turned back around after they re-opened it to two-way traffic, making getting through intersections AFTER the evacuation more difficult than it was DURING the evacuation
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Nov 30, 2018 17:39
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doubleposting three weeks later but I had a question about this weird bizness going on along I-95 just south of Augusta, ME. it looks like this was a recently removed interchange but I looked on Google Earth and it looks like the right of way has pretty much always been cleared but never actually paved with ramps. And as a bonus for doubleposting here's my best attempt at recreating the Maine Turnpike Approach (I-95/I-295 near Portland) in Cities: Skylines  I had to skip the entire 701 interchange because I misjudged how much land I would need, so it just terminates directly to Route 1 after the 295 ramps lol barnold fucked around with this message at 07:10 on Dec 18, 2018 |
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Dec 18, 2018 07:02
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Javid posted:I'd wager a guess that, since that looks like bumfuck nowhere, the land was cheap at some point and got grabbed up, but there's not enough traffic yet to make it worth dropping the bigger bucks on actually building the thing. The lack of so much as traffic lights at either of the exit ramps with that surface road seems to also suggest it doesn't see significant volume. I would consider most of Maine to be bumfuck nowhere. You've got Portland and.....that's pretty much it. My first thought was that 295 ended at that plaza, and the tollbooth was there to get cars entering/exiting I-95 at that point. I still wonder what has made them maintain a groomed right of way for those ramps for over 20 years now. The earliest satellite image Google Earth has is from 1992 and they're still cleared, still groomed, but unpaved. barnold fucked around with this message at 17:41 on Dec 18, 2018 |
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Dec 18, 2018 17:35
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kefkafloyd posted:There's plenty of abandoned ROWs/unfinished things in New England if you know where to look. My personal favorite is the stub of I-95 in Revere, where there's still unused bridges that go over the rotary, and the mile or so of graded reservation in the marsh. Still ghost ramps at US 3/128 in Burlington. The old double-switchback on the Mohawk trail. The end of the Turnpike in West Stockbridge. Unbuilt I-92 in parts of Vermont and New Hampshire. My favorite is probably the 93 ramp stub that was supposed to begin the Inner Belt, or the stretch of old Route 16 near Rochester, NH (that has now, for the most part, been redesignated as 125)
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Dec 18, 2018 18:59
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 15:23 |
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Really esoteric MUTCD question time! The other day I saw a picture of a through road in a subdivision that some town had hacked up to prevent drivers from cutting through. The dinky mound of dirt was signed on either side with a sign I'd never seen before, a red diamond - the OM-4 End of Roadway sign, as I learned. Here in MA, I don't know if I know any place that uses the OM-4 as a signal. Dead ends are either marked with your usual yellow diamond, or with an extra sign affixed under the street name that says "NO OUTLET" with no additional signage at the end of the roadway. Are there reasons why certain areas would do this? Are there tangible differences in the context of end of roadway markers?
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Mar 13, 2019 15:41
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