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Cichlidae posted:BOSTON I was nodding angrily throughout this entire post. gently caress Boston's roads and mass transit. gently caress them hard. If I can, I take 95/128 around Boston whenever possible because Jesus Christ that city is a clusterfuck of badly-designed eight-way interchanges one after the other. Edit: Crossposted from the Awful Signs thread because it amused me: 
Der Metzgermeister fucked around with this message at 03:02 on Sep 8, 2009 |
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Sep 8, 2009 02:59
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Tool Maker posted:I was nodding angrily throughout this entire post. gently caress Boston's roads and mass transit. gently caress them hard. This is no new thing, either. Kevin Lynch writes that Boston used to merit its nickname as "hub of the universe," being as successful as NYC. Unfortunately, its center was progressively choked off from the hinterland due to horrible transportation planning, and this cost Boston its top position. quote:Edit: Crossposted from the Awful Signs thread because it amused me: I don't know if that speaks more for Allegheny County's low standards, their incredible precision, or their sense of humor.
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Sep 8, 2009 22:35
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Cichlidae posted:MASS TRANSIT
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Sep 9, 2009 02:30
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nm posted:Shall we walk or do we have time to take the T? I've only taken the T maybe a dozen times in my life, but I've also had it break on me when I was on my way to meet forums member FlyingDoctor. There's nothing like sidling up to a platform at 5 mph to hear the conductor's sultry voice murmur, "this train is no longer in service. Please exit immediately and wait for the next train." That wouldn't be so bad if they had 5- or 10-minute headways, but I was stuck there for some time. I'm sure it's on time and in good shape 90% of the time, but that 10% it's not is a real killer. Most transit systems can manage much better than that. But of course, this is Boston we're talking about.
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Sep 9, 2009 12:16
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Cichlidae posted:I've only taken the T maybe a dozen times in my life, but I've also had it break on me when I was on my way to meet forums member FlyingDoctor. There's nothing like sidling up to a platform at 5 mph to hear the conductor's sultry voice murmur, "this train is no longer in service. Please exit immediately and wait for the next train." That wouldn't be so bad if they had 5- or 10-minute headways, but I was stuck there for some time. I took the T every day for years and regularly participated in the Boston pastime of complaining about it every chance I got, usually rightfully so. It's a poorly managed organization that in many ways is the poster boy for Mass. politics and patronage (I think only the Turnpike Authority is worse in that respect), and while I realize that equipment breaks sometimes, especially on a subway system that's over 100 years old, the MBTA is pretty bad about communicating with you when that happens. They don't do a lot to endear themselves to the customers, and the governor basically just fired the GM so things are probably in chaos over there now, too. That said, I stopped complaining so much when I had to move to the Midwest for grad school where you're basically forced to drive everywhere and if you try to walk it outside of main drags you get stuck in pedestrian-hostile areas (lack of sidewalks, etc.), and I realized how fortunate I was to come from a place that had a functioning subway system that would get me most places I wanted, most of the time, without ever having to get in a car. Columbus is a pretty cool place, there are definitely worse places to be, but the inability to get around without driving makes me insane (and has basically taught me that there are very few places in the US where I could live longterm, since most places basically mandate that you have a car.) I suppose it's kind of sad that my standards have been lowered so much, and in an ideal world I'd demand of Boston something closer to a European metro, but I'll take what I can get these days, especially when you consider that in the US you have to fight to fund public transit projects, fight to keep them honest and well-designed, and on top of all that also fight against the prevailing auto culture. (It's striking to me that you have coworkers who have never even been on a bus, for instance.)
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Sep 9, 2009 15:16
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Cichlidae posted:Thanks for letting me know the statutory limits. You have "end speed limit" signs? I've never seen one of those. Is 55 also the limit for small dead-ends with no posted speed limit because they're so small? It might tempt me to put speed limit signs on tiny streets Pennsylvania loves end XX speed signs. They are the dumbest drat things on earth. I believe in PA that no posted speed limit = 55. The end speed limit X signs piss me off because lets say your going down a road and the posted speed limit is 45. You come to a congested area, and the speed limit drops to 35. You go through the congested area and you see a sign that says End speed limit 35. Is it now 45 which is what it was prior to the 35 zone or 55 since there is no other posted speed limit? I'm sure there is a law somewhere that explains it, but gently caress if I know offhand. Given that there is a speed limit sign telling you that the 35 zone is ending, why can't it just be a sign with the actual speed limit? Drives me insane.
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Sep 9, 2009 16:51
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patricius posted:I took the T every day for years and regularly participated in the Boston pastime of complaining about it every chance I got, usually rightfully so. It's a poorly managed organization that in many ways is the poster boy for Mass. politics and patronage (I think only the Turnpike Authority is worse in that respect), and while I realize that equipment breaks sometimes, especially on a subway system that's over 100 years old, the MBTA is pretty bad about communicating with you when that happens. They don't do a lot to endear themselves to the customers, and the governor basically just fired the GM so things are probably in chaos over there now, too. Amen to that. I can't tell you how much I miss the free/cheap buses, fast trains, and pedestrian-friendly cities I lived in over there. It makes me sad to look at even small cities like Providence here and say, "if we were in western Europe, the city would have two tram lines, a high-speed rail hub, and bus stops on nearly every street." Of course, whether or not anyone would use them is anyone's guess. We're building a rather infamous busway between two cities in Connecticut, which supposedly has a huge benefit to cost ratio. Unfortunately, it's also very over budget. Even my boss, who's 100% behind the project, says "instead of paying $150 million to build it, we can just give $1 million to each of the 150 people who would use it to get to work, then they wouldn't need to work anymore."
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Sep 9, 2009 21:24
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jassi007 posted:Pennsylvania loves end XX speed signs. They are the dumbest drat things on earth. I believe in PA that no posted speed limit = 55. The end speed limit X signs piss me off because lets say your going down a road and the posted speed limit is 45. You come to a congested area, and the speed limit drops to 35. You go through the congested area and you see a sign that says End speed limit 35. Is it now 45 which is what it was prior to the 35 zone or 55 since there is no other posted speed limit? I'm sure there is a law somewhere that explains it, but gently caress if I know offhand. Given that there is a speed limit sign telling you that the 35 zone is ending, why can't it just be a sign with the actual speed limit? Drives me insane. If it were up to me, I'd just put up the speed limit sign. Expecting motorists to remember anything beyond 15 seconds is just too much. The sign's the same size, anyway, so it would cost the same. Like you say, there must be a legal reason causing their installation, because it doesn't make too much sense practically.
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Sep 10, 2009 00:37
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patricius posted:[...] I realized how fortunate I was to come from a place that had a functioning subway system that would get me most places I wanted, most of the time, without ever having to get in a car. See, I can understand this, having grown up in the countryside and then spending a number of years here in NYC. Not having to drive everywhere, and being practically catered to as a pedestrian, is an enormous blessing. Unfortunately...I'm living in NYC...so moving almost anywhere else save for maybe Tokyo or London is going to hurt pretty bad transportation-wise. "What do you mean only 4 subway lines?" "What do you mean it's not running at 3am?" So spoiled 
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Sep 10, 2009 02:22
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Cichlidae posted:I've been holding off on this, because it's rather hard to explain (even with pictures), but I think you're ready. Ugh, Eagle EPAC in a NEMA TS-2 cabinet. I would rather shoot myself than deal with an EPAC running coordination. The nice feature that when you change a split, it decides to recalculate the cycle length, which pops it free, which then throws it into transition. I really hate those things. Come over to the ITS world, much more awesome. Awesome thread, signal operations engineer here, Harris County (Houston) TX. Also in response to the double cycle approach, we use harmonic cycle lengths along our arterials, which really helps the progression, but does not impose too much delay on the cross street. Our base cycle lengths are 90,105,120, and 135. The corresponding harmonics are 60,70,80, and 90. The harmonic cycle lengths also work really well for coordination on minor arterials with major arterial crossings. I don't even want to talk about the City of Houston. One consultant (who shall go unnamed) is sleeping with a city engineer, and imposes his will on the city. He pulls cycles out of his rear end for certain areas. Cycle lengths that I saw there were 35,36,45,50,60,65,70,72,75,80,90,96,100,108,120,130,135,144, and 150. Really a mess for the system as a whole. Nexis fucked around with this message at 04:39 on Sep 10, 2009 |
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Sep 10, 2009 04:30
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COORDINATION 102 
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Nexis posted:Ugh, Eagle EPAC in a NEMA TS-2 cabinet. I would rather shoot myself than deal with an EPAC running coordination. The nice feature that when you change a split, it decides to recalculate the cycle length, which pops it free, which then throws it into transition. I really hate those things. Come over to the ITS world, much more awesome. Awesome, you can really appreciate this story, then. There's currently a project at the base of a freeway off-ramp. The consultant decided the project specifications weren't terribly important and cut the loops right at the beginning, electing to set all the phases to min recall, which meant the ramp backed up every peak. We pestered them to put in loops, but they put it off for months, until they finally agreed to put in microwave detectors. Well, microwave detectors mounted on span wires really suck, and the detection zone was so close to the stop bar that slow-moving cars weren't tripping it. I went out in the field with a coworker to fix it. When we got there, it was obvious that the detectors weren't working properly. Looking at the signal controller, it was an old one we'd both never seen before, but we figured out a few things pretty quickly: * The timings were in no way similar to what was shown on the plan. * The contractor had added an extra phase for no discernible reason. * The min time was 25, and the max time was 15. * Only one approach was actuated. We deleted the extra phase, fixed the timings, and made sure the microwave detector was working decently. However, no matter what we tried, the main street wouldn't gap out. It even went beyond its max time by about 30 seconds on each cycle. Now here's the part I'm ashamed of: it took us nearly 15 minutes until I realized the signal was coordinated on a 120-second cycle. The ramp used about 15 seconds and the other 105 went to the artery's split.  quote:Also in response to the double cycle approach, we use harmonic cycle lengths along our arterials, which really helps the progression, but does not impose too much delay on the cross street. I can guess why that is. He probably just sets Synchro to optimize timings and copies whatever it spits out into the controller. You hear that, consultants? "Engineering judgment" isn't just some buzzword! I've never used harmonic cycle lengths, probably because I have yet to do a closed-loop coordinated system in a congested area. All of my coordination projects have just been 2 or 3 signals in a suburban area that are coordinated to minimize queues. There are hardly any peds and no ped phase, so double cycling isn't even a remote concern.
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Sep 10, 2009 17:18
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bitprophet posted:See, I can understand this, having grown up in the countryside and then spending a number of years here in NYC. Not having to drive everywhere, and being practically catered to as a pedestrian, is an enormous blessing.
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Sep 10, 2009 20:06
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I've heard that bike paths actually make biking less safe, which seems counterintuitive to me. Do you know if there is there actually anything to this? (The bike path in question would be in a fairly undeveloped sort of area with only one major road that is pretty much 100% residential -- vacation kind of place)
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Sep 10, 2009 20:50
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semicolonsrock posted:I've heard that bike paths actually make biking less safe, which seems counterintuitive to me. Do you know if there is there actually anything to this? (The bike path in question would be in a fairly undeveloped sort of area with only one major road that is pretty much 100% residential -- vacation kind of place) Here in Copenhagen you're as a pedestrian more likely to get into an accident with a bike than a car because of the sheer volume of biking, so separation is completely warranted. There is no danger of anyone forgetting them.
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Sep 10, 2009 21:30
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Gail Wynand posted:Move to Paris or Berlin: 2 redundant train networks (regular subway, and express suburban trains) and, in case that wasn't enough, a decent tram network to boot. One tiny complaint about that, though, is that Paris' Métro doesn't run all night long. There are a couple hours where you'd need to take the night bus. semicolonsrock posted:I've heard that bike paths actually make biking less safe, which seems counterintuitive to me. Do you know if there is there actually anything to this? (The bike path in question would be in a fairly undeveloped sort of area with only one major road that is pretty much 100% residential -- vacation kind of place) Like Nesnej says, a visible bicyclist is a safe bicyclist. However, as long as the road crossings are designed well, it shouldn't be any less safe. We've been putting special beacons at our crossings, which are yellow lights that flash when a bicyclist/pedestrian presses the button. Those should get enough attention to keep motorists wary. Another thing to consider is that a bike path will tend to draw more bicyclists than a wide shoulder, especially inexperienced users like children. This could also explain higher accident rates.
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Sep 10, 2009 21:43
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Cichlidae posted:We've been putting special beacons at our crossings, which are yellow lights that flash when a bicyclist/pedestrian presses the button. Those should get enough attention to keep motorists wary. This reminds me of something I meant to post a while back. The town next door has a wide and often busy main thoroughfare (2 lanes in each direction) that is like magic for making drivers even stupider and assholical* than they already are. Around here drivers are normally pretty good about stopping once you set foot in the crosswalk, but on this street all of a sudden almost nobody will, ever. To compound this issue, despite this being a busy part of town the street goes blocks without any traffic lights (!), so there are some ugly uncontrolled crosswalks. There's one crosswalk in particular turned into a peoplegrinder with multiple deaths within a few months (a few years back). This is a list of their "solutions" as the years have passed since then: quote:1) Put up big yellow [icon of man walking] signs with big arrow pointing at crosswalk. Didn't work. So what we have is a "walk" button, which activates giant alternately-flashing yellow lights on top of a huge CROSSWALK sign that also has small blinking yellow lights embedded in it, and is pointing at a crosswalk that is outlined by blinking yellow lights on the street surface, all the while some recorded voice is shouting at you to fear for your life. Now, here's what they do in my town when there's a crosswalk issue like this: 1) Install a "walk" button connected to a standard traffic signal. Push button, light goes red, pedestrians cross, light turns green. No ambiguity and no bullshit. It works. If you're going to install all the lights and wiring anyway, why not use a real signal rather than something that says "You cars should be stopping now, but I suppose you don't have to if you really don't want to..."? * Ask me about being an adjective engineer Choadmaster fucked around with this message at 22:50 on Sep 10, 2009 |
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Sep 10, 2009 22:43
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Choadmaster posted:This reminds me of something I meant to post a while back. Cost is probably the biggest factor there. Putting up mast arms or span poles and hanging signal heads is measured in the tens of thousands of dollars. Really, if it were me, I'd recommend a pedestrian overpass. It may be more expensive, but that way there's almost no danger of a collision. Four-lane roads are tough for pedestrians, doubly so in your case because there are so few other crossings. Even at a light, it's scary to cross. I used to get honked at while I was absolutely sprinting across the intersection, dodging turning side-street traffic all the way. One of my coworkers even said, if he ever saw me in the road, he'd try to run me down because he hates pedestrians so much.
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Sep 10, 2009 23:21
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Cichlidae posted:Even at a light, it's scary to cross. I used to get honked at while I was absolutely sprinting across the intersection, dodging turning side-street traffic all the way. That's the weird thing... Like I said, people around here are generally polite to pedestrians - it's just this one stretch of road that is out of character. This is also the only place I've ever seen where pedestrians will regularly stop at a red light and wait for the green, even when there's not a single car in sight. Cichlidae posted:Cost is probably the biggest factor there. Putting up mast arms or span poles and hanging signal heads is measured in the tens of thousands of dollars. Really, if it were me, I'd recommend a pedestrian overpass. It may be more expensive, but that way there's almost no danger of a collision. That'd never happen, it would have to be conspicuously huge (nothing but 1 story buildings on that street) not to mention ugly as sin. Come to think of it, the only pedestrian overpasses I've ever seen anywhere span freeways (we have 2 of those here). Never seen one on a plain old street. (Okay, there's the newer part of the Strip in Las Vegas, but that hardly counts, it's just a way to funnel pedestrians through each casino.) How common are those?
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Sep 11, 2009 08:07
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Cichlidae posted:One tiny complaint about that, though, is that Paris' Métro doesn't run all night long. There are a couple hours where you'd need to take the night bus. London too. I swear public transportation networks are trying to support DWIs.
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Sep 11, 2009 09:53
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Choadmaster posted:That's the weird thing... Like I said, people around here are generally polite to pedestrians - it's just this one stretch of road that is out of character. This is also the only place I've ever seen where pedestrians will regularly stop at a red light and wait for the green, even when there's not a single car in sight. They're rather rare; it was just an example of something that would fix the problem. That doesn't mean it has to be ugly, though! There are so many beautiful pedestrian bridges, and you have but to search for their French name to find them. Functional structures need not look so utilitarian!
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Sep 11, 2009 21:18
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Opensourcepirate posted:Great thread. Voted 5 and went hog wild. Haha, I'm a Canadian living in Somerville, MA and never noticed the lack of flashing green (we call them "advance green" in Ontario) around here. On the subject of left turns, my biggest pet peeve is not knowing how far out from Boston the Boston Left ("Pittsburgh Left") is respected. In Boston proper, you better believe people will take that left turn. In Somerville, maybe 25% of the time. So it leads to confusion.
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Sep 11, 2009 21:31
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How do you feel about places with no right on red? I know Quebec has this but I can't think of anywhere else, and its rather annoying whenever I drive there.
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Sep 11, 2009 23:42
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How about putting an island in the middle of the road with a sign on it, or putting in rumble strips a little bit before the crosswalk on either side? That's what europeans would do.
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Sep 12, 2009 00:11
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Socket Ryanist posted:How about putting an island in the middle of the road with a sign on it, or putting in rumble strips a little bit before the crosswalk on either side? That's what europeans would do. If the road is wide enough for a pedestrian shelter (which itself has to be ADA compliant) you have to install more ped signals and a push button. Its usually cheaper to cross someone the entire width of the road. When cars don't yield to peds (usually permissive left turners at t-intersections are the worst) we have the option to have a ped which holds the light red until the ped signal starts to flash don't walk. It really helps seeing the person in the crosswalk as opposed to the crosswalk being empty. Rumble strips are a great idea on paper until a) you have to maintain one more thing with an already stretched budget and b) you have residents that live near the crossing. They really are a tool of the politicians, they can say "Look what I did", but they really annoy everyone else. And motorists don't really understand them anyway.
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Sep 12, 2009 00:29
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Dooey posted:How do you feel about places with no right on red? I know Quebec has this but I can't think of anywhere else, and its rather annoying whenever I drive there. In and around Houston it is exclusively about sight restrictions, unless you are on the Alabama Reversible Lane, which is because of turning radius. We ONLY put them up where there is an accident history from people not being able to see when turning off a street. Generally these are intersections located on a curve where you can't see a speeding car until they are right on top of you. On W. Alabama the restriction was put in because of the reversible lane. The road had the reverse lane shoe-horned in during construction of US-59. When you try and make a right turn off of a cross street, especially when the center lane operating as a through lane, your car swings out into the center lane. They recently relaxed the restriction from NO RIGHT TURN ON RED (always) to NO RIGHT (from 6am-9am for South to West rights and from 3:30-6:30 for North to East rights).
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Sep 12, 2009 00:38
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Sgs-Cruz posted:Haha, I'm a Canadian living in Somerville, MA and never noticed the lack of flashing green (we call them "advance green" in Ontario) around here. Hesitate for half a second and the oncoming car won't know to yield. You're probably best off gunning it as soon as the light turns green and hoping there are no cops around! Dooey posted:How do you feel about places with no right on red? I know Quebec has this but I can't think of anywhere else, and its rather annoying whenever I drive there. Maybe this is just because I'm a bad driver (shock!), but I don't even RTOR half the time, because I forget I'm allowed to do so. The other half of the time, I'm frantically looking around the intersection to see if there's an NTOR sign, wondering if that sign I just passed was NTOR or just something else. I guess that's our fault, though. I mount all my NTOR on the signal span so it's visible from all over, but some engineers put them on the curb. Fact is, RTOR will get you a few dozen more cars moving through that right turn per hour. That number climbs into the hundreds with a dedicated right turn lane. Places with NTOR are usually because of sightline restrictions, but from what you're implying, you can't RTOR anywhere in Québec. I'd probably get used to it, but it seems rather unnecessary and frustrating.
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Sep 12, 2009 01:18
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Socket Ryanist posted:How about putting an island in the middle of the road with a sign on it, or putting in rumble strips a little bit before the crosswalk on either side? That's what europeans would do. Nexis posted:If the road is wide enough for a pedestrian shelter (which itself has to be ADA compliant) you have to install more ped signals and a push button. Its usually cheaper to cross someone the entire width of the road. When cars don't yield to peds (usually permissive left turners at t-intersections are the worst) we have the option to have a ped which holds the light red until the ped signal starts to flash don't walk. It really helps seeing the person in the crosswalk as opposed to the crosswalk being empty. We actually do put in a decent number of pedestrian refuge islands, but they're intended more as a traffic calming measure than as a crossing aide. It wouldn't do very much at all in a four-lane road, unfortunately, because the right lanes might not even see it. As to rumble strips, like Nexis says, there's no way to put them in residential areas without getting loads and loads of complaints. Try living near one and you'll see what I mean. Rumble strips will keep you awake at night in a big way. They're cheap to install, sure, but they tend to turn into puddles and maintenance hates them. Heck, maintenance hates islands, too. They smash up plows and are a pain in the rear end to keep looking pretty. Just imagine you're the poor sod assigned to re-paint the diagonal lines before and after the island in the taper area. You're standing between two lanes of traffic with minimal protection, doing everything manually because the striping truck won't fit.
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Sep 12, 2009 01:25
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Cichlidae posted:Fact is, RTOR will get you a few dozen more cars moving through that right turn per hour. That number climbs into the hundreds with a dedicated right turn lane. Places with NTOR are usually because of sightline restrictions, but from what you're implying, you can't RTOR anywhere in Québec. I'd probably get used to it, but it seems rather unnecessary and frustrating. According to Wikipedia, right-turn-on-red has been legal in Quebec since 2003. Except in Montreal, where it's still totally banned. It's legal here in MA, which seems to only have the effect that every street corner has a NO TURN ON RED sign. I quite often do it anyway (9 years of driving in Ontario, it's almost muscle memory at this point), it's only a matter of time before I get a ticket for it. Anyway, I'll stop derailing the thread.
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Sep 12, 2009 02:03
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Choadmaster posted:My car does 0-60 in 14 seconds (ouch) and in none of those situations did stopping seem necessary. It just sticks you in the even uglier situation of starting from a stop with only 20% of the ramp left. There are a few short offramps around here and what we do is floor it and expect people on the freeway to slow down/make room for us to merge - which they do, because the other option is for them to be a massive rear end in a top hat AND likely get into an accident Sorry, but this is pretty loving dumb. Flooring it onto a highway with little visibility into lots of traffic is a really good way to get many people killed. Especially when there is a huge curve in the road about 100 yards ahead. Take for example: Exit (From your Life) 6 Thanks to this thread, I now know the problem is this is a half-cloverleaf ramp with a huge weaving problem. What the picture doesn't convey is the traffic problems. At peak hours, there is almost bumper to bumper traffic going about 75 in the fast lane and 60 in the slow lane, slowing by about 10-15 as you move around the curve. However, you also have the tons of people who want to use the exit because it is the only way to sensibly reach the next town over (Goffstown if you care) from any freeway. I had to physically stop because of the volume of traffic going southbound last winter a few times. The real kicker though, is that peak traffic is about 5:30-6, and in winter it is completely BLACK out during this time. So, you have night, winter, traffic, and huge weaving problems. Add this to the low visibility, along with the fact that I had to stick my head out the window of my car to actually see the cars in the merging lane, and you have a very unhappy intersection. OP, can you think of anything to fix or improve this small and very personal piece of driving hell?
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Sep 12, 2009 02:06
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nm posted:London too. Automation is really the way to go for 24/7 transit. Too bad it's often met with a "them machines took are jerbs"-reaction and the moronic "What if the computer breaks down, people will die!!!"
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Sep 12, 2009 02:10
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Sgs-Cruz posted:According to Wikipedia, right-turn-on-red has been legal in Quebec since 2003. Except in Montreal, where it's still totally banned. It's not a derail; it's quite relevant. Like I said, NTOR is mostly put there for your own safety. If you feel like it's safe to go, by all means, give it a shot. Just keep in mind you could get a ticket or collide with someone. Our sight distances are calculated from the stop bar, where a driver's head would be. If you can't see far enough down the side road to spot a car coming at you, then NTOR is posted. However, there are a lot of assumptions that go into that. - The gap you need. If you have a lead foot and don't mind some stiff acceleration or cutting someone off, you could do with a shorter distance. - Lots of people pull up past the stop bar anyway, onto the crosswalk or even into the intersection. This drastically increases sight distance. - Although it's difficult to be sure, if you think the street you're turning onto is on its left turn phase, you'd only have to watch out for U-turning traffic. You never know, however, if someone's going to blow the light or if the left turn phase is just ending. - Maybe you have X-ray vision. Wouldn't that be cool?
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Sep 12, 2009 02:24
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Legendary Ptarmigan posted:Sorry, but this is pretty loving dumb. Flooring it onto a highway with little visibility into lots of traffic is a really good way to get many people killed. Especially when there is a huge curve in the road about 100 yards ahead. Take for example: I chose a very cheap, easy solution. Removing the existing off-ramp eliminates the weaving issue, and it can be moved a half-mile north as shown.  The jughandle is to provide access to and from Front Street without risking wrong-way entry onto the freeway. With the weave eliminated, there's room for a full acceleration lane from the on-ramp. If I had the money available, I'd tidy up the mess of one-way streets as well. They just look so counterintuitive and circuitous that I see no reason to hold onto them.
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Sep 12, 2009 02:38
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Nesnej posted:It's more a question of finding drivers. Believe it or not, drivers are also people and they'd rather sleep than haul your smelly, loud, drunk rear end home. The costs of operating all night long would easily become astronomical if you'd just try forking out cash until you found all the drivers you needed for the job. Hence few lines run at night. I've got high hopes for automated transit. The CDGVAL works very well, and it would be a cinch to scale such technology upward to city-wide networks. There are a few duties traditionally though of as necessitating a human: closing the doors, controlling speed, handling emergencies. With improving technology, the former two could easily be computerized, and emergency management could be done from a centralized location rather than on a per-train basis. As to the luddite's "them machines took are jerbs" argument, attrition is a big factor. Automate the trains, but keep current drivers employed in a supervisory measure until they retire.
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Sep 12, 2009 02:51
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Nesnej posted:It's more a question of finding drivers. Believe it or not, drivers are also people and they'd rather sleep than haul your smelly, loud, drunk rear end home. The costs of operating all night long would easily become astronomical if you'd just try forking out cash until you found all the drivers you needed for the job. Hence few lines run at night. Don't forget the maintenance issue. As metro systems of the world go, I believe the NYC one is able to operate 24/7 primarily because the number of tracks allows them to do maintenance and trackwork while still being able to run trains. This is not the case in Boston, for instance, and I imagine it's the same in Paris, London, and the other metros that don't run 24/7 (the vast majority). That three- to five-hour window between the late night shutdown and the start of the AM commute is the only time many of these systems have to do maintenance work that allows unfettered access to the tracks, and I don't think automation would necessarily solve that problem. That's not to say there aren't solutions (honestly I think keeping lines open later on weekend nights for systems that currently shut down before last call would be a huge step forward, both in terms of service and in terms of public safety by keeping would-be drunk or exhausted drivers off the road), but I assume the demand simply isn't there to justify the cost and extra complication that that would entail. So, to try and bring things back from the mass transit derail I seem to have started... Cichlidae, the RTOR stuff is interesting. I have the same problem with forgetting that I have RTOR available as an option to me sometimes. I've noticed in Columbus that there are a lot of "NTOR during (some stretch of time, usually starting at AM rush hour and ending at PM rush hour)" intersections. These are usually high-volume intersections, so, is volume alone reason enough to declare an intersection NTOR? You mention visibility as an issue, but I assume if visibility were that bad it would be NTOR across the board rather than NTOR during a specified time frame.
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Sep 12, 2009 03:55
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patricius posted:So, to try and bring things back from the mass transit derail I seem to have started... Cichlidae, the RTOR stuff is interesting. I have the same problem with forgetting that I have RTOR available as an option to me sometimes. I've noticed in Columbus that there are a lot of "NTOR during (some stretch of time, usually starting at AM rush hour and ending at PM rush hour)" intersections. These are usually high-volume intersections, so, is volume alone reason enough to declare an intersection NTOR? You mention visibility as an issue, but I assume if visibility were that bad it would be NTOR across the board rather than NTOR during a specified time frame. Time-restricted NTOR isn't something I've dealt with, but there are a couple justifications for it. One mentioned earlier was a reversible lane, though that situation is quite rare. Another is coordination. When we coordinate signals, we assume that platoons move along at a fixed speed. Right turners can cause them to have to brake, or arrive at the downstream signal while it's red, forming a queue that slows down the platoon. Other times, the road's just at capacity, and you wouldn't be able to RTOR even if it were allowed. You're better off waiting for the green so you don't have to inch out into the intersection.
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Sep 12, 2009 15:50
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Nesnej posted:It's more a question of finding drivers. Believe it or not, drivers are also people and they'd rather sleep than haul your smelly, loud, drunk rear end home. The costs of operating all night long would easily become astronomical if you'd just try forking out cash until you found all the drivers you needed for the job. Hence few lines run at night. As already said, it's a matter of maintenance. London already has a mostly-automated light railway system that has to close at night for maintenance purposes. Cichlidae, you mentioned roundabouts and their traffic-calming effects. I bring you Harlow. Roundabout after roundabout after roundabout after roundabout. I also bring a question. Why is this:  The pictogram for a motorway in the UK? Obviously nothing to do with you, but perhaps your highly trained eye can see something other than a perfectly good looking road with a bloody great hurdle in the middle of it.
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Sep 12, 2009 17:27
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TokenBrit posted:As already said, it's a matter of maintenance. London already has a mostly-automated light railway system that has to close at night for maintenance purposes. Wow, that's a tremendous lot of roundabouts! I have to say, I like it. Roundabouts, like tropical fish, are at their best when they're numerous. quote:I also bring a question. Why is this: France has a similar sign that makes it a bit more obvious that it's an overpass, not a hurdle. It represents the fact that a motorway is access-controlled and has no at-grade intersections. 
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Sep 12, 2009 17:59
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There is a stretch of freeway near my old house in Oakland that has something that I have never seen anywhere else in the country. See this exit from 580 onto MacArthur Blvd? Maybe a quarter mile or so before the exit, around the overpass you can see if you track the freeway a little bit to the west, there is a sign that indicates that during rush hours (I think it's 4-6pm), you are allowed to drive on the shoulder. Shortly before the offramp, the shoulder traffic is instructed to either merge back to the left or to exit the freeway. Why was this done? The freeway is already four lanes - why put in this ersatz one for a few hundred feet? Is this a common practice? It's a pretty substantial shoulder, and I used to take advantage of this sign all the time, but it still seems strange.
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Sep 12, 2009 18:08
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Bold Robot posted:There is a stretch of freeway near my old house in Oakland that has something that I have never seen anywhere else in the country. If there's a heavy exiting volume there, especially during certain hours, the use of the shoulder keeps exiting traffic out of the through lanes and gives exiting vehicles more space to decelerate without slowing everyone behind them. The practice seems to be rare, as this is the first I've head of it, but it makes a lot of sense. As to the number of lanes, remember that, no matter how big you build a freeway, it can still get congested. By marking it as a shoulder instead of a lane, it can still be used by disabled vehicles at least 22 hours a day.
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Sep 12, 2009 18:24
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Bold Robot posted:There is a stretch of freeway near my old house in Oakland that has something that I have never seen anywhere else in the country. There's an area of the 215 in Riverside County where everyone exiting stays on the shoulder and out of the regular traffic lanes. There's no signs for it or anything; it just seems it's something everyone there does.
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Sep 12, 2009 20:57
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