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Dutch Engineer posted:I think they'll leave the road surrounding the buildings intact, but it's not shown on any of the drawings, so I'm not 100% sure. I also just heard that the engineers forgot to include the bike paths in the new design. Brilliant. Kinderporno!  I have some more aerial photos of the Arrigoni Bridge, if anyone's interested. Additionally, I'd like to share a hellish little slice of the Busway. Stay tuned!
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Oct 13, 2011 12:27
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Cichlidae posted:Kinderporno! Yes, more Busway news please. You guys might enjoy the map-based freeway art I just saw on this artist's webpage: http://mattcusick.com/paintings-collage/map-works
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Oct 13, 2011 19:13
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Another CT question: what drives the electronic alert signs that show delays? Are they timer based or speed sensor based or is someone actively monitoring cameras? I ask because the I-84 ones in Waterbury tend to be about 50/50 correct, the rest of the time saying there is a 2 mile delay when there is no traffic, or being blank when there is a 2 mile delay. In fact, I've learned to just ignore them, because the delays aren't that bad (usually due to the three to two lane merge at Exit 25) and the surface streets are way slower. Not as good as your Arrigoni bridge website, that's for sure.
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Oct 13, 2011 20:19
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Mandalay posted:You guys might enjoy the map-based freeway art I just saw on this artist's webpage: http://mattcusick.com/paintings-collage/map-works Those are amazing and beautiful; I wish there were more detailed pictures available online. smackfu posted:Another CT question: what drives the electronic alert signs that show delays? Are they timer based or speed sensor based or is someone actively monitoring cameras? I ask because the I-84 ones in Waterbury tend to be about 50/50 correct, the rest of the time saying there is a 2 mile delay when there is no traffic, or being blank when there is a 2 mile delay. They're very approximate, and I really don't like the way they display. The Operations center didn't have speed sensors in the past, so they couldn't provide delay times. Now, they do, but they feel that people are too set in their ways and would be upset if we went to time-based delays. They're so adamant about this, that they forced us to change the Arrigoni boards on Route 9 to exit-based delays. Anyway, here's some Busway stuff. These signal plans were inserted a few days before the project went out to bid. They were awful, so we marked them up and sent them back to the consultant, Baker. Baker sent them back as Addendum 2, somewhat improved, and we marked up the remaining issues (a hundred or so of them) for another revision. If they'd incorporated our mark-ups, the signal would have been just about perfect. Instead, we got this.  You don't need to know anything about signals to see how horrible this is.  7 phases, and I know you can't see it here, but there are only two sets of detectors in the whole area. Most of the phases are apparently just for show. Normally, I just mark up the plan, but since it was SO much worse than the previous incarnation, and they didn't seem to pay any attention to the previous mark-ups, I just re-did the whole thing for them on a blank sheet.   It took me half a day to do the signal from start to finish, coming up with a design that not only works, but works WELL. We've paid them tens of millions to design these signals. This is a project that's been out to bid for months, went through 10 years of design, and they STILL can't figure out how arrows work. Never hire Baker to do traffic engineering work.
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Oct 13, 2011 22:37
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I'm suddenly a lot happier with my choice to not major in Planning back in college..
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Oct 13, 2011 23:34
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Mandalay posted:I'm suddenly a lot happier with my choice to not major in Planning back in college.. To be fair, designing signals isn't nearly as complicated as it looks. Sure, there are equations you can use for everything, but we mostly just ignore those and go by rules of thumb or past experience. That half-day I spent designing the signal was probably half an hour design and three and a half drafting.
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Oct 14, 2011 02:14
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Am I reading this right? The intersection NB/SB are offset with a signal between them? I would guess aligning them would be impossible due to property owners? Anyways, it looks like the consultant had the right idea, just couldn't put it all together with the logical movement of traffic. Probably a poor EIT struggling along his first signal design. With ped. movements only happening on phase 3, will it take 2cycles for walkers to cross the intersection? Also, how rigid do you follow the shown signal timing? It's been my experience that the DOT sets it in the field and ignores what ever is on the plans.
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Oct 14, 2011 19:10
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Cichlidae posted:To be fair, designing signals isn't nearly as complicated as it looks. Sure, there are equations you can use for everything, but we mostly just ignore those and go by rules of thumb or past experience. That half-day I spent designing the signal was probably half an hour design and three and a half drafting. The signals look fine, it's being stuck with incompetent contractors/government officials with no recourse and large amounts of waste.
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Oct 14, 2011 19:18
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fishhooked posted:Am I reading this right? The intersection NB/SB are offset with a signal between them? I would guess aligning them would be impossible due to property owners? It's in downtown Hartford, so there are 3-story row houses on both sides of the street. Kibbe Street has extremely low volumes, and really shouldn't be signalized at all. We told the consultant as much, but they decided to ignore that comment. fishhooked posted:Anyways, it looks like the consultant had the right idea, just couldn't put it all together with the logical movement of traffic. Probably a poor EIT struggling along his first signal design. It goes much deeper than that. This is the fifth addendum, after preliminary, semi-final, and final design reviews. And it's a PE designing it, in fact, down in Texas at Baker's signal HQ. He's never been out to visit the actual site, so he keeps missing terribly obvious things, like the fact that one particular signal hadn't been signalized in years, or a major driveway at an intersection adjacent to the train tracks that required a MAJOR redesign of the signal once I pointed it out at a meeting. These guys get paid more the more mistakes they make. They are perfectly competent engineers, but they have no motivation to design a working signal. fishhooked posted:With ped. movements only happening on phase 3, will it take 2cycles for walkers to cross the intersection? Also, how rigid do you follow the shown signal timing? It's been my experience that the DOT sets it in the field and ignores what ever is on the plans. It will only take one cycle. Despite the offset, peds can cross the intersection the same as any 4-way intersection. If they're crossing diagonally, since it's a dedicated phase, they can just cut right through the middle. How rigid? It's more a guideline than anything. I don't really care unless something's egregiously wrong, especially considering it's a city-owned signal. But the consultant got the red clearance timings wrong (after we told him to fix it with each submission). Hartford can go ahead and tweak the max and min timings (it's a computerized signal, so they can do it remotely) within the parameters we set.
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Oct 15, 2011 15:12
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While watching the local news about a week or so ago I saw a report on a potential upgrade on the 84/291/Buckland Mall area. Knowing this would not be a quick fix, how would you fix this area up which cam be a drat clusterfuck around the holidays.
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Oct 15, 2011 15:58
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Why is a contractor even doing this stuff if you or you coworkers could do it (and do a better job even )? Edit: Totally unrelated to traffic engineering, but it just occurred to me that you might know the answer to this anyway: is there any official source that'll tell me the funding any particular public school in Connecticut gets? (Here in CA, every school is required to publicly post a yearly "School Accountability Report Card", which includes poo poo like per-pupil funding, test scores, etc.) Choadmaster fucked around with this message at 17:40 on Oct 15, 2011 |
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Oct 15, 2011 17:33
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Lobstaman posted:While watching the local news about a week or so ago I saw a report on a potential upgrade on the 84/291/Buckland Mall area. Knowing this would not be a quick fix, how would you fix this area up which cam be a drat clusterfuck around the holidays. I like the study's recommendations: add another interchange for direct mall access, punch another road across I-84, and upgrade the intersection of Buckland Hills Drive and Buckland Street if the volumes are still high. Choadmaster posted:Why is a contractor even doing this stuff if you or you coworkers could do it (and do a better job even )? Because of corruption. The former Governor, who was later thrown in jail for corruption, was famous for putting a lot of money into projects that his friends would bid super low on, and then pump up the costs later. The parking lots at the airport are a good example of this. Baker managed to get the Busway, and even though we could have done it much more easily and faster, the whole point of the project was to dump money into the private sector and to John Rowland's friends, so that's how it was scoped. Choadmaster posted:Edit: Totally unrelated to traffic engineering, but it just occurred to me that you might know the answer to this anyway: is there any official source that'll tell me the funding any particular public school in Connecticut gets? (Here in CA, every school is required to publicly post a yearly "School Accountability Report Card", which includes poo poo like per-pupil funding, test scores, etc.) Honestly, I have no idea.
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Oct 16, 2011 05:20
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Are timings on traffic lights manipulated by sensor data from other lights? For example five intersections exist with one in the middle, and the four others down the street from its four forks. The timings of the middle intersection could be adjusted to the amount of traffic flow detected through the other intersections(you would obviously have to control for regular traffic patterns and distances between the intersections, and possibly other variables depending on their magnitude of effect). I think a system like this would have far increased benefits from a larger network of intersections. If not, do you think the increase in efficiency of the signal timings would warrant the complexity of such a system? If so, how high would you say the probability of such a system being implemented is?
gtech fucked around with this message at 22:49 on Oct 16, 2011 |
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Oct 16, 2011 22:41
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Choadmaster posted:Edit: Totally unrelated to traffic engineering, but it just occurred to me that you might know the answer to this anyway: is there any official source that'll tell me the funding any particular public school in Connecticut gets? (Here in CA, every school is required to publicly post a yearly "School Accountability Report Card", which includes poo poo like per-pupil funding, test scores, etc.)
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Oct 17, 2011 01:13
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Cichlidae posted:I like the study's recommendations: add another interchange for direct mall access, punch another road across I-84, and upgrade the intersection of Buckland Hills Drive and Buckland Street if the volumes are still high. I vote for a gigantic flyover that skips the hell of Dening St. and Hale Rd., and dumps you directly into the
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Oct 17, 2011 02:38
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gtech posted:Are timings on traffic lights manipulated by sensor data from other lights? For example five intersections exist with one in the middle, and the four others down the street from its four forks. The timings of the middle intersection could be adjusted to the amount of traffic flow detected through the other intersections(you would obviously have to control for regular traffic patterns and distances between the intersections, and possibly other variables depending on their magnitude of effect). I think a system like this would have far increased benefits from a larger network of intersections. If not, do you think the increase in efficiency of the signal timings would warrant the complexity of such a system? If so, how high would you say the probability of such a system being implemented is? Systems like that are implemented to various extents around the world, with England and Australia being pioneers in the technology. Around here, such a system wouldn't be particularly easy to implement, if only because of how much legacy technology there is and how often loop detectors break. The increase in efficiency is certainly worth the work, provided you have ample detection and regularly spaced intersections; we don't really have either around Connecticut, unfortunately.
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Oct 17, 2011 03:25
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Hey Cichlidae, I've got a road surface question. What factors into how much noise a road produces? I imagine different surfaces (asphalt, concrete, old asphalt, cracking and failing asphalt, rubble, etc) produce various amounts of noise, but is that ever a concern? Or do you mostly pay attention to wear and cost?
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Oct 17, 2011 23:48
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Quiet Pavement (obviously funded by the Asphalt Pavement Alliance but it is true.)
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Oct 17, 2011 23:59
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Neutrino posted:Quiet Pavement (obviously funded by the Asphalt Pavement Alliance but it is true.) If any of you are coming into Canada (Niagara) sometime soon, take the Queenston-Lewiston bridge, and Hwy 405 on this side of the border has a section of quiet pavement for a mile or so that you can test out.
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Oct 18, 2011 02:21
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The pavement on the street outside my house used to be a pretty good testament to the problem with using asphalt. We're on a hill, and our building gets deliveries from large trucks about a dozen times a week. the last few yards of pavement right before the stop bar (going downhill) had some serious washboard action going until they redid it recently (I'm talking 2' high bumps).
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Oct 18, 2011 03:20
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Arcturas posted:Hey Cichlidae, I've got a road surface question. What factors into how much noise a road produces? I imagine different surfaces (asphalt, concrete, old asphalt, cracking and failing asphalt, rubble, etc) produce various amounts of noise, but is that ever a concern? Or do you mostly pay attention to wear and cost? First off, noise is not a concern here when we're designing roads. A little callous, sure, but we don't have standards for acceptable road noise levels, and when noises are clearly high, we just put up a sound wall. The pavement design doesn't change. So, factors that change pavement noise: - Roughness. New, smooth pavement will be quieter than old stuff, because the intact asphalt binder provides a smoother surface. - Aggregate size. Goes along with roughness. - Concrete vs. asphalt. Concrete is historically seen as louder, though if you talk to the ACPA, they have their own ideas about this issue. - Mix design. Adding crumb rubber or using an open-graded design will make a quieter road. Unfortunately, there are maintenance concerns with this in snowy areas, due to the sanding and plowing. - Build quality. Depends on the contractor.
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Oct 18, 2011 12:37
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I ate some tilapia earlier today and thought of this thread 
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Oct 18, 2011 13:12
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Socket Ryanist posted:I ate some tilapia earlier today and thought of this thread You monster! 
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Oct 19, 2011 04:04
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Lol, Belgium - 5 km road renewal - 250 traffic signs - Bollards in all shapes and sizes everywhere - Near-zero visibility of incoming traffic in curves - Concrete blocks to slow down traffic Perhaps there is something as too much safety measures? And to top it all off, the entire Tour de France will use this road in 2012. That should make for an interesting leg.
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Oct 21, 2011 14:52
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Ok, I got to 38 pages before I gave up. You win, Cichlidae. You are the king of signals.
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Oct 22, 2011 03:10
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Dutch Engineer posted:Lol, Belgium Wow, someone in Wallonie has a serious hard-on for traffic calming. You didn't mention that it'll be closed in Winter and that it's the sole access for an industrial center. Volmarias posted:Ok, I got to 38 pages before I gave up. You win, Cichlidae. You are the king of signals. Hell yes I am. I wear a jeweled signal louver as my crown.
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Oct 22, 2011 05:09
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Dutch Engineer posted:Lol, Belgium  I'm seriously interested in the Belgian design process now. How the hell do you even task a designer with creating something like that?
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Oct 22, 2011 11:02
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Jasper Tin Neck posted:
 "Give the contract to my cousin Guido." "His design looks like it was done by a five-year-old." "He *has* the mental age of a five-year-old. He's still getting the contract." "Yes sir, right away sir."
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Oct 22, 2011 13:40
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Dutch Engineer posted:Lol, Belgium ! This truly is Belgium's greatest shame.
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Oct 23, 2011 01:57
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Dutch Engineer posted:Lol, Belgium I'm not exactly up-to-date on European traffic signs, but is that supposed to be a two-lane road? I'm seeing signs that look like it's indicating bidirectional traffic.
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Oct 23, 2011 02:31
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Blue Moonlight posted:I'm not exactly up-to-date on European traffic signs, but is that supposed to be a two-lane road? I'm seeing signs that look like it's indicating bidirectional traffic. Those signs with the red and white arrows tell you which lane has right-of-way through the narrowed-down parts of the road. It's a traffic-calming device, but you never see that many of them so close together. Not in any sane country anyway. The Belgians are a bit... Odd.
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Oct 23, 2011 09:40
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I'm surprised the road looks like it's in fairly decent condition. For Belgian standards, anyway.
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Oct 23, 2011 10:44
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Thel posted:
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Oct 23, 2011 14:51
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Jasper Tin Neck posted:It's just that everywhere else Guido would just construct it really badly and with massive administrative cost overruns. The fact that it's built fairly decently but designed to be both expensive and pretty much useless is just a combination I've never seen before. Honestly, I kind of want to apply for a job there now. If they're willing to go forward with something this crazy, then maybe I could get some of my more "exotic" designs built.
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Oct 23, 2011 15:54
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Cichlidae posted:then maybe I could get some of my more "exotic" designs built. Such as?
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Oct 23, 2011 17:43
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Chaos Motor posted:Such as? Yeah xkcd, but: http://xkcd.com/253/
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Oct 23, 2011 18:20
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Dutch Engineer posted:Lol, Belgium
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Oct 23, 2011 18:31
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Chaos Motor posted:Such as? My triaxial interchange 
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Oct 23, 2011 21:28
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Mother of God...
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Oct 24, 2011 13:44
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Cichlidae posted:My triaxial interchange Yeah, ok, WHATEVER. Make it work with 7 roads all intersecting at the same place, hotshot.
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Oct 24, 2011 14:41
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