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jeoh-kun posted:
Rotterdam is quite a relaxed city to drive in, traffic isn't that bad except on a few roads like the s'gravendijksewal which should obviously be a tunnel along the entire length and the Coolsingel where cars should not be allowed period. Also city traffic engineers should probably stop making the green light cycles extra short to discourage car use (they actually admit they do this). Also i was under the impression that at least in the city center they didn't return to the old street plans which is why everything is on a much larger scale than other Dutch cities.
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Oct 8, 2010 18:40
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grover posted:I'd rather drive 2x as far (or carpool 4x as far) in a hybrid on a well designed and congestion-free freeway system, and also be able to carry a week's worth of groceries home with me, too. Is there any developed country with a congestion free freeway system?
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Oct 23, 2010 20:07
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Entropist posted:New neighbourhoods will often have their street names centered around a theme here. Historical place/people names, professions, bird or tree names... New cities have lots of this. This has been going for at least a century, there a neighbourhoods from the 1920's with their names centered around a theme (like "islands" or "poets")
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Oct 27, 2010 20:07
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Speaking of LED we have new LED streetlight on some streets here and they are really great. You can see actual colours, the contrast seems much better as well. Cichlidae, do you know if LED streetlighting makes sense from a economic point of view? Also any safety effects because of the improved lighting conditions? I really want all HIDs to be replaced by LED tommorow.
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Nov 19, 2010 20:06
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grover posted:Even 15-20 minute delays is still pretty horrible from a commuter POV, as is having to drive 30 minutes out of your way to avoid them. You're a government servant; if the public demands a plan B, you might need to go to plan B. Then again having the bridge collapse under me is also pretty horrible. From what i get from the article there is no reasonable plan B. Bitching about the unavoidable is just childish. And i agree with GWBBQ, anyone in a high traffic area would gladly pay to have only 15 minutes of delay on their commute. edit: Come to think of it, how much capacity could a ferry have over the distance of a bridge span? I assume renting a ferry + temporary dock is cheaper than a temporary bridge. Unless of course there is a lot of shipping on the river. NihilismNow fucked around with this message at 19:44 on Jan 21, 2011 |
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Jan 21, 2011 19:38
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Over here the biggest factor is noise. Pretty much all new roads are paved with ZOAB (Very open asphalt concrete). It is much more expensive than concrete or even regular asphalt and only lasts 7 years but it has quite a a extreme reduction on the ammount of noise. Last week i drove on a concrete road and i can't imagine driving on those everyday, even for just a few kilometers the noise was maddening.
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Mar 24, 2011 18:56
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Nesnej posted:How often do people from your department go out to check whether as road has been opened? As far as I could understand (google translate isn't working and my Dutch is pretty rusty) it resulted from the ministry thinking the road was already open while the agency waited for the ministry to process the necessary paperwork. A lack of mutual trust in the competence of the other party goes a long way. It also helps that situations like this are fairly common, finished roads that cannot be used for some reason. The tunnels in the A2 by Utrecht Leidsche Rijn have been done for quite some time but won't open until 2012. The Schwalbe tunnel in the A73 has been open/closed/open/closed again and again. And driving through the country there are a lot of pieces of road that seem to be waiting for the permit open. So i can imagine everyone assumed it was another piece of finished road waiting for a permit.
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Apr 2, 2011 10:18
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modig posted:Then they plan to build a permanant bridge and tear down the temporary one. Isn't that a giant waste of time and money? Why not just build a new permanent bridge? Are you sure they are going to demolish the old bridge? When they built the Scheldt storm surge barrier they had a very long temporary workbridge, when work was done the bridge was sold and shipped to Hong Kong.
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Jul 4, 2011 10:27
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Bumming Your Scene posted:You could use a different surface instead of painting. That is the default colour and material for bicycle paths in the Netherlands.
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Jul 8, 2011 16:27
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Silver Falcon posted:What do we do? Bring back Zeppelins? They were basically like flying trains... Sure they were slow, but they were comfortable.
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Aug 20, 2011 18:45
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ack! posted:Slightly off topic, but traffic related, what do folks think about the standard work day of 5 eight hour days turning more to 4 tens? It would save a day of commuting for people, but I don't know how productivity in certain jobs would be affected. Perhaps congestion wouldn't change too much as industries vary so much in regard to hours of operation and workplace population. Some of the major large industries here (primarily Boeing) seriously affect traffic when shift change comes around. This is fairly common in the Netherlands. Except we only work 4x9 because we're lazy communists. I read it only takes a 10-20% reduction in traffic volume to completely eliminate traffic jams (at least that is the situation here). You can really notice Monday and Friday are not as busy any more because most people prefer a long weekend. Tuesday and Thursday are the busiest days.
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Sep 6, 2011 23:04
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KozmoNaut posted:Priority to the right works perfectly well, the only problem I've ever encountered is that bicyclists falsely think it doesn't apply to them and yield to traffic from the left. But they're excused since there's no formal bicyclist's training. Bicyclist think no traffic rule applies to them. It is really hard to be held liable for a accident as a bicyclist. Even while pulling a illegal manouveur if a car hits them it is fairly likely the car driver will be held liable. He should have expected the cyclist was insane and going to pull some suicide move and adjusted his speed to that. I'm not bullshitting, if you can read Dutch here is a example of a case where a bicyclist made a illegal dick move and the tram driver that hit him was still held liable. The idea is that the guy piloting 1+ ton of steel has a heavier responsibility to other road users.
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Sep 18, 2011 13:36
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Jasper Tin Neck posted:But I'm glad you got that piece of bicycle rage off your chest. I don't get where you get rage from. I'm a bicyclist myself. Most bicyclist don't give a gently caress about traffic laws and will do illegal things all the time (so do pedestrians). It's good to train drivers to expect this. edit: I explained why above, the car driver has more responsibility because he is more capable of doing damage and a colission is less likely to damage him.
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Sep 18, 2011 22:17
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Last winter after the government ran out of salt some municipalities resorted to bath salts. I can't imagine that was very good for the environment though it sure smelled nice. (they also opened a salt mine that was supposed to stay closed due to environmental effects and basically told them "Produce to the limit!", when people can't drive many things become possible) NihilismNow fucked around with this message at 21:03 on Dec 23, 2011 |
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Dec 23, 2011 20:59
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Koesj posted:Multilane uncontrolled conventional roundabouts are stupid anyway. Yeah. Even a 2 lane roundabout is so much more difficult to navigate than a single lane or turbo roundabout. If there was a 3 lane roundabout anywhere around here i'd probably avoid it. In busy traffic it can be very difficult if not impossible to merge back in to the outer lane once you take the inside lane.
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Mar 22, 2012 08:36
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Isn't the point of speed bumps to improve safety? Seems like such a drastic system would cause more accidents, injuries and possibly deaths than it will ever save. Most people who speed do not in fact crash. Things are different when they hit a 6inch high steel plate on the other hand. Seems like at best hundreds of dollars worth of damage and at worst death is a bit of a stiff penalty for speeding.
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Mar 26, 2012 17:54
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Elendil004 posted:I want to visit that miniature wonderland thing in Germany or Amsterdam or whatever. Miniatur Wonderland is in Hamburg, Madurodam (outdoor miniature country) is in Scheveningen. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6m83jir3Io&feature=relmfu Both are pretty impressive as far as miniature stuff goes.
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Apr 6, 2012 10:42
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Varance posted:Induction lights use 1/3 the power of sodium lamps and go about ~10 years before needing a replacement bulb. Not as efficient as LED, but the light they put out is almost the same as daylight, doesn't degenerate over time and doesn't have that subtle "shining" effect you get from LED lamps. Until some of the kinks involved with LED lighting are worked out (dimming, voltage flux burnout), Induction is the best product on the market. I haven't seen induction here anywhere but LED is going up all over the place. A lot of tunnels have LED lighting now that consist of 3-4 strips op LED running along the roof, the dimming issue is solved by just turning on or off more strips. I think this picture was already posted in this thread but since it is relevant to the current topic here it is again: A44, old and new lighting side by side. [img]http://i.imgur.com/X3ezp.jpg][/img]. I've never seen induction but i love LED lighting and from current trends it seems like it is going to win.
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May 16, 2012 11:28
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Do variabele toll rates (like the one in the picture where the toll changes from day to day) work? I can understand a peak usage rate, like during rush hour toll is higher than off hours. But if i am on my way to work or a customer and i see the toll rate has doubled (especially if it is on the order of cents) i am not going to turn around. Even if for some reason it was suddenly $10 i'd still keep going. Now if you made it $10 every day during rush hour i'd probably look into other ways to get to work.
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Jul 2, 2012 07:43
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wolrah posted:Seriously though, Toledo, OH put in cameras while I was there for college. My apartment backed almost right up to one of the camera'd intersections. I never once saw a T-bone crash there, but after the cameras went up there was a rear-ender at least once a week as people who were trying to clear a yellow slammed on the brakes and caught following drivers by surprise. If you rear end the guy in front of you at a stop light because you didn't anticipate he could stop (for a traffic light, who would have guessed?) you were going way to fast anyway or didn't keep enough distance and are a bad driver. These cameras will probably educate people in Toledo on properly anticipating traffic.
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Jul 7, 2012 19:39
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John Dough posted:The Netherlands has started using section control on the A2. Cars are photographed when passing under a portal entering the section of highway, and is photographed again exiting it. If the time in between is less than the distance divided by the maximum speed, then you have speeded and get fined. A2 wasn't the first to get it. The (previously) 80km/h part of the A13 has it as well as well as the A12, A4 and Zeeland bridge. It is especially annoying on the A13 where speed just drops to 10kph below the limit and people feel it is now OK to keep a 2 meter distance between cars. 70kph isn't very fast but those few kilometers are still the most uncomfortable to drive in the entire country for my money. On the A2 it is just ridiculous because it is the widest road in the country with 5 lanes each way, less than 50% filled to capacity and now limited to 100kph. edit: Good thing is that speeding doesn't have any real consequences other than money. Anything up to a 30kph violation after correction (for inaccurate measurement, usually a few percent) or 40kph on the motorway is a administrative sanction. Cost you money but no points on your license. You could be ticketed doing 40kph over the limit twice a day and nothing would happen other than loads of fines. NihilismNow fucked around with this message at 08:32 on Jul 29, 2012 |
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Jul 29, 2012 08:24
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Cichlidae posted:Unless radio transmitters are massively cheaper than signs (which they may very well be on freeways, where a lot of the signs are made useless by GPS anyway), we'd keep signs up until it was 100% automated drivers. But a lot of people don't use GPS. I am one of them. I prefer to know how the road network is laid out and use the signs a lot. I don't think more than half the people on the road are using GPS yet. Are there any figures on this?
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Aug 12, 2012 19:32
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My point was that even though i have a cellphone with Sygic GPS navigation on it i prefer not to use it. I know things the GPS doesn't for example that friday night is not a good night to use the A4 southbound. Some navigation software tries to integrate this information but by all accounts it is still lacking. Also turn by turn navigation sucks down a entire battery charge in 2 hours flat. A lot of people have cheap android smartphones but never bothered to buy navigation software or even a 3G connection. Or they may be like me and just don't use the navigation. I just hope traffic engineers don't feel good signage on motorways is redundant. Won't someone think of me and my fellow luddites!
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Aug 13, 2012 08:01
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Jonnty posted:Looks like a half-hearted mini-roundabout to me. If you they were actually a "thing" in the US it probably wouldn't be a problem. My driving instructor took me (and i assume other students as well) over this mini roundabout that was constructed as a mini roundabout but the city hadn't put up the roundabout signs so technically it was a 4 way crossing. He made me treat it as a 4 way crossing because no sign, no roundabout. Really funny when half the people consider it to be a roundabout and half treat it as a 4 way crossing. A few years later the city put in the roundabout signs.
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Aug 19, 2012 12:48
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There is a regular crosswalk here in town with just a sign and the zebra striping. a few weeks ago they removed the zebra striping but left the signs (i guess just for maintenance or something) and people didn't stop at the crosswalk anymore. They put in the zebra striping again and now people stop again. Personally i also wouldn't stop for some bright flashing light and a dude in workman gear by the road (not making any indication he wants to cross), i would probably just assume "construction ahead". As a driver if part of the road markings are missing i am going to ignore the confusing or half finished signs you put up. Shouldn't you disable the strobes until the crosswalk can be finished to spec?
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Sep 1, 2012 12:05
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Doesn't throughput increase when you lower the speed limit (to a certain point)? That is one of the reasons many motorways near cities have been limited to 100 kph (the other is air quality), in a area with a lot of exits and merges a lower speed leads to more efficient merging. I hate those narrower lanes like the ones they have on part of the A12. I understand that it is a great way to skirt the environmental impact analysis but you end up with a road that costs almost as much as a full size road that is extremely unpleasant to drive on. NihilismNow fucked around with this message at 18:18 on Mar 9, 2013 |
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Mar 9, 2013 18:15
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edit: Remove because of derail.
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Apr 16, 2013 21:00
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They mark roadside cameras for measuring traffic flow and air quality as such here to prevent people from panic braking and also to prevent them going up in flames. They aren't as hardened as actual traffic cameras (though even those sometimes need cameras to watch the camera). Maybe vandalism is less of a problem than i think and it is just really sticks in the mind when you see a torched speed cam or one that has been pulled over so it photographs the sky.
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Apr 25, 2013 19:08
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Carbon dioxide posted:Unless they fixed those, many of those problems are found around the Belgian big cities. I think someone touched upon it a few pages back but the A59 is really a "special" road what with a missing interchange with the A27 (stoplights in the middle of the motorway) and a lot of short to very short merge lanes.
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May 16, 2013 18:57
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Sovy Kurosei posted:Saying that a lot of people would buy little electric cars for their commute. Cost of food would skyrocket though. That would be a huge problem. It is a lot cheaper to buy a 2 cylinder gas car and draft behind a truck at 85 kph. We would probably see people drive a lot slower. The past few years i see more and more people who are not driving at the speed limit or even slightly below it. 110 kph vs 130 makes a big difference, my car seems to be most efficient from 70-90 kph where ~3.5L per 100km is possible, at 130 kph this increases to ~6.5L per 100km.
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May 29, 2013 17:20
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Lead out in cuffs posted:Couple those with high-capacity cargo bikes and you might actually have a solution. (I know one of the guys who started that company. They can carry about 500lbs on the back of one of those things. They have an electric assist, but they still use the pedals, and they are a whole heck of a lot quieter and safer than big trucks.) To be fair at 500lbs you should not be comparing them to a big truck but a small car. I'm sure there is a niche for those and i see comparable vehicles on the road here. But it takes 10 of those to replace 1 medium delivery van in capacity. I am pretty sure that ammount of trips and labour involved in making those trips is not economical at all and would actually increase congestion in a busy city center.
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Jun 13, 2013 10:47
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grover posted:Oh good; that measure seemed a bit ridiculous and extreme, even by european standards. The stupid "you're speeding" chime is bad enough. YES, I KNOW. The only GPS enabled speed warnings I want to see are the ones that tell me I'm getting close to a speed camera. Even if they ever really tried look forward to having it shot down by the German auto industry.
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Sep 2, 2013 18:43
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My experience with average speed controls is that they are the worst part of my trip when i encounter then even if i am not speeding. Everyone sets their car to cruise control "their" 5kph under the speed limit. But because everyone's speedo is calibrated different this also seems to turn people into tailgating assholes. So you end up doing 125kph with a car 5 meters behind of you and 5 meters in front of you while people also feel they can now overtake on the right because gently caress you i am doing the speed limit. Or during more quiet times you end up doing 133kph and are one of the lucky 2000 people per day (per controlled section) who gets to pay their €47 extra taxes. Especially on the A2 which has a design speed of 160kph but a speed limit of 100kph. Probably not so bad with self driving cars but with regular people it is horrible and has nothing to do with safety and everything to do with revenue.
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Sep 7, 2013 12:18
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Baronjutter posted:Why do people do this? I don't understand the psychology of a driver who missed their turn or are in the wrong lane and instead of just going with it, keeping calm and keeping traffic moving and just looping around, they'll STOP or suddenly try to make some ridiculously dangerous/illegal turn or maneuver that ends up not really saving them much time and fucks/stresses out everyone around them. It's not like being on a highway where missing your off-ramp can mean a 20 min drive to get back. It is really simple, they don't give a gently caress about anyone else. I want THIS left turn, NOW. Not in 5 minutes NOW. It doesn't matter if i block 50 cars from moving on this cycle, i want this turn. It is the same with people stuck in the left lane going 10mph below the speed limit. There is no malice there, they just don't give enough of a gently caress about other people to be inconvenienced by moving 5 meters to the right. I have my car set on cruise control and i guess i am going to have to move to the left again in a few miles so why not stay in the left lane and dedicate spare brain cycles to whatsapp. No my commute wasn't frustrating at all today, why do you ask? Edit: I really need to rig up some dashboard cam to get shots of people tailgating each other at ~5 meters and 100kph in the left lane while the right lane is completely clear for hundred of meters or more. NihilismNow fucked around with this message at 16:24 on Oct 17, 2013 |
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Oct 17, 2013 16:18
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grover posted:
How would you ever enforce this? For one most bicycles aren't even equipped with a speedo. Even if it has one it is not calibrated. Enforcement would be hell, most police departments do not have equipment for enforcing such rules, even if they had it the calibration would probably not be valid at such low speeds. Since your suggestion specifically mentions a difference in speed we not only need to laser/radar the bicycle but also the pedestrian, at exactly the same time. Sidestepping the question if moving bicycles to the sidewalk is desireable it is clearly not practical. The only real goal of such a law could be to throw up as many barriers to entry for cyclists as possible. 35mph is not that fast, fastest roads you are expected to share with cars in the Netherlands is 60kph (37mph) (often not even with a painted bike lane). Perfectly safe if drivers are well educated. I personally don't feel unsafe biking on a 37 mph road without a helmet. edit: Not that your rule would help for these roads, these are mostly country roads and farm acces roads, they don't have a sidewalk either. My solution for your suburban scenario is to reduce the speed limit of the road to 35 or 40 mph, narrow the lanes and put in a painted (not fully segregated) bicycle lane. Should cost no more than repainting the road surface. NihilismNow fucked around with this message at 19:56 on Nov 5, 2013 |
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Nov 5, 2013 19:49
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Install Windows posted:People get ticketed for speeding on bikes in New York City (the speed limits are set identical for cars and bikes, and it's easy to tell if you're on a bike and easily outpacing free flowing traffic). Plus your average police-issue rader equipment in the states is more than capable of reading down to 10 mph and working against bikes - the cops in my hometown used to let kids do speed-tested races with the cops announcing winners based on the radar gun results and that even worked for like 8 year old kids running on their own. It is not just a question of can it read down to 5 or 10 mph but what is the margin of error at those speeds? I've only had tickets with hard proof before because for a cop to actually write a ticket based on eyeballing or pacing you you need to be speeding a lot. Even if this is common practice in the US does anyone really believe a cop can look at a pedestrian, look at a bicycle passing the pedestrian at the same time and accurately estimate the difference in speed? This seems very incredible. Especially since the difference between a correct speed and speeding 50% is only ~3 mph. edit: a fixed 10mph speed limit would be enforceable, but i don't see how you can enforce the 5mph difference rule. How would you write a speed ticket for a bike anyway, not like they have license plates. Chase down and stop every single person speeding? That seems kind of expensive. NihilismNow fucked around with this message at 20:39 on Nov 5, 2013 |
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Nov 5, 2013 20:35
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Install Windows posted:Pedestrians are walking, a dude booking it on a bike is fast. It's not hard. The intention of the 10 mph limit would be that reckless bikers are going to do significantly more than that. But you know a cop is just going to park near a busy sidewalk and just ticket every single biker. So why not keep the law as it is (bikes don't get to use the sidewalk)? Since appearently "From a distance of 400 yards and a angle of 30 degrees i estimated you were doing 10 mph and the person you were passing was doing 3 mph, here is your ticket" is sufficient proof. The solution to people using a healthy environmentally method of transportation that don't have a place to go on the road is not to make that method of transportation less appealing by restricting their speed and making them subject to arbitrary fines and require them to purchase additional equipment (a speedometer). Why not let them continue to use the road? Just because it annoys some drivers? They will get used to it. edit: As someone who drives a car motorcycles annoy me, i'm not lobbying to have them moved to the sidewalk or bicycle path and restricted to 20mph. And i don't think anyone is going to argue motorcycles are way more dangerous than either bicycles or cars. NihilismNow fucked around with this message at 21:18 on Nov 5, 2013 |
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Nov 5, 2013 21:15
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Install Windows posted:They do it in NYC against people biking above the 25 and 30 mph car speed limits... Is that downhill or during a sprint or something? Either that or you have a lot of pro level cyclists in New York. 30mph is around TdF time trials speed.
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Nov 5, 2013 21:41
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As part of the urban renewal program for the Bijlmer they actually lowered a bunch of those raised "dreef" roads in the Bijlmer. It was found that the lack of (car) traffic along some roads lowered the feelings of safety. Bijlmer was sort of a urban planning experiment that didn't work so well. Amsterdam has been reconstructing and rebranding it for a few decades now. They demolished a lot of the huge high rise appartment blocks (think banlieu style blocks with similar social problems) and have been transforming the road grid to a more traditional system. Also they don't call it Bijlmer anymore but rebranded it to Zuid-Oost (South-East).
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Nov 9, 2013 11:27
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John Dough posted:You don't need parking in front of your store to be accessible. In the Netherlands you park at the edge of the city center and walk the rest, or park somewhere on the outskirts and take public transport into the city center. You can park in the city center in any city. Amsterdam, the Hague, Utrecht. It just isn't very cheap, up to €7 a hour in Amsterdam. For big purchases it does help if your shop is car accessible.
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Nov 10, 2013 20:36
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