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NightGyr posted:UPenn has an amazing fiefdom of gentrification going on in West Philadelphia. They basically picked out a certain area of the city and have their security patrol it. You go a few blocks beyond that and you're solidly in lower-income neighborhoods. Fairfield U has done something similar in Bridgeport, which is very impressive if you've ever seen how bad Bridgeport can be. Koesj posted:Do you guys archive your historic AADT figures? I've had some problems comparing congestion in European urban areas, definitions tend to change over time and space. LOS levels are roughly calculable though. We have them, but they're only measured for one day every three years. The latest numbers we have are typically 2006; I'm not sure if they couldn't afford to do them in 2009 and 2012, or perhaps they just haven't digitized them. A day's worth of volumes is hardly something you can get ADT from. You don't know whether that 1500 veh/ln was a LOS D or F, because there's no speed data. You don't know whether there was an accident that day, bad weather, or a special event. Sure, there are hints, but definitely not anything you can draw solid conclusions from.
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Jan 16, 2013 13:13
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Cichlidae posted:I find rails-to-trails projects pretty depressing. You've got a corridor that's perfect for quick, efficient transit, and you shoot yourself in the foot by turning it into a footpath. Heck, most rail lines have some nasty stuff in their ballast. Do you really think that's a good place for your kids to play? From the rail-trails I've been on in CT, the width doesn't seem to be usable for much other than trains though. Sometimes only single-tracked trains. And no one ever builds new train lines.
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Jan 16, 2013 15:48
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smackfu posted:From the rail-trails I've been on in CT, the width doesn't seem to be usable for much other than trains though. Sometimes only single-tracked trains. And no one ever builds new train lines. In Britain, building foot/cycle paths on old railway lines is quite popular and has resulted in Edinburgh having a fairly reasonable network of off-road cycle paths, thanks to its web of old suburban lines. An Edinburgh-Glasgow railway was re-opened recently, and part of the project was re-routing the cycle path that had been built on it, so it wasn't really a problem. I guess a full-blown park would be a different matter though.
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Jan 16, 2013 16:42
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Koesj posted:Do you guys archive your historic AADT figures? I've had some problems comparing congestion in European urban areas, definitions tend to change over time and space. LOS levels are roughly calculable though. Just wondering, I've heard many times from other people that the traffic in Antwerp is absolutely horrible, but I've never seen any hard evidence. Granted, we do seem to have an absurd amount of trucks on our highways because of the harbour.
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Jan 16, 2013 17:10
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NightGyr posted:UPenn has an amazing fiefdom of gentrification going on in West Philadelphia. They basically picked out a certain area of the city and have their security patrol it. You go a few blocks beyond that and you're solidly in lower-income neighborhoods. They've been making a project of that (together with Drexel) for the past 60 years... it started when my Grandfather was going to UPenn, just after UPenn moved out of Center City. smackfu posted:From the rail-trails I've been on in CT, the width doesn't seem to be usable for much other than trains though. Sometimes only single-tracked trains. And no one ever builds new train lines. The width is generally plenty for bikes or pedestrians. And sometimes rail to trails programs do get reactivated for rail service. The whole thing is, if you don't make it into a trail or similar then the right of way often reverts to the owners of land adjacent to it, and ends up sold off for development. And that means 0 chance of service restoration instead of about 5%.
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Jan 16, 2013 17:27
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Cichlidae, if you were able to install traffic volume sensors during regular construction or service without having a big impact on total cost of the project, what kind of value do you think that would provide the DOT? Can you hang a number on it? Say, a continuous, real-time, dynamic reading of current traffic speeds, weights, and volumes every 1/4 mile?
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Jan 16, 2013 20:32
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What 's the hold up on using location records held by service providers collected from mobile devices to help signaling systems accurately accommodate real world traffic?
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Jan 16, 2013 21:50
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Using location data from anything without the consent of the people you're locating is a bit dicey, even if it's anonymised. Plus, operators don't necessarily want it publicised that they've got that data in the first place (along with the governments requiring them to.)
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Jan 16, 2013 22:06
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Jonnty posted:Using location data from anything without the consent of the people you're locating is a bit dicey, even if it's anonymised. Plus, operators don't necessarily want it publicised that they've got that data in the first place (along with the governments requiring them to.) Where do you think traffic info provided in smartphone mapping applications comes from? I'm pretty sure that wireless providers already sell this data. That said, I'm not sure the kind of data ISPs can actually extract is accurate for anything more than rough VPH and speed estimates on major thoroughfares. It's one thing to know that traffic's moving at a crawl (LOS F) on I-95, it's another to provide exact VPH numbers.
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Jan 16, 2013 23:10
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kapinga posted:Where do you think traffic info provided in smartphone mapping applications comes from? I'm pretty sure that wireless providers already sell this data. I've seen speed sensors owned by satnav companies at the side of major roads near me - I assumed it was that. Though from stuff I'm reading, it looks like they do use mobile data. Fair play.
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Jan 16, 2013 23:18
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kapinga posted:Where do you think traffic info provided in smartphone mapping applications comes from? I'm pretty sure that wireless providers already sell this data. Cameras and vehicle detector loops owned by the Department of Transportation: http://www.sunguide.org/sunguide/index.php/services/services/intelligent_transportation_systems/70/its_devices
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Jan 16, 2013 23:33
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They sell it to the police, as well, who use it to figure out where lots of people drive faster than the speed limit. Mobile phone data actually suggested that the 1000km of traffic jams here last Tuesday was actually nearly 4000km, because the 1000km figure only counted the highways.
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Jan 16, 2013 23:34
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Fragrag posted:Just wondering, I've heard many times from other people that the traffic in Antwerp is absolutely horrible, but I've never seen any hard evidence. Granted, we do seem to have an absurd amount of trucks on our highways because of the harbour. INRIX is pretty much the final arbiter in these matters since they are, to my knowledge, the only guys who do a thorough ranking of congestion levels based on common indicators. And, welp, Belgium is the most congested country in the world followed by us Dutchies and Antwerpen as a city is way up there in the top 5 worst cities with such luminaries as Los Angeles and Paris  Then there's the "traffic at any day and any time" tool in the Gmaps traffic layer which can be particularly useful. You'll see that the R1 between Berchem and Antwerpen-West is particularly problematic (the Kennedytunnel is the bottleneck here of course). On an absolute level the R1 near Borgerhout carries almost 200.000 vehicles per day, that's about as much as the busiest stretches of motorway in the UK (M25) or Autobahn in Germany (A100).
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Jan 16, 2013 23:35
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Koesj posted:INRIX is pretty much the final arbiter in these matters since they are, to my knowledge, the only guys who do a thorough ranking of congestion levels based on common indicators. And, welp, Belgium is the most congested country in the world followed by us Dutchies and Antwerpen as a city is way up there in the top 5 worst cities with such luminaries as Los Angeles and Paris Hahahaha, oh man. I got to say, thank god for our very decent public transportation. I was in Los Angeles several months ago and I suffered more traffic then I did in Antwerpen, mainly because I primarily take the tram here while in LA I had to go loving everywhere by car. Would closing the Ring solve anything? As of right now, if you come in north and want to head west, you have to traverse the whole Ring. Of course, you got the huge problem of the harbour blocking any sensible approach aside a huge loving bridge. On a larger scale, am I correct in assuming that we'll always have traffic trouble? I look at the map and I see two very large harbours (Rotterdam and Antwerp) in the vicinity that handle a lot of freight. Also, it seems that we also lie on a sort of crossroads, where pretty much all roads apparently lead to Antwerpen. vvvvvv It's always weird when I'm not driving in the vicinity of the Rotterdam-Antwerp corridor. All those trucks that I'm used to sharing the road with are gone. Fragrag fucked around with this message at 00:11 on Jan 17, 2013 |
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Jan 16, 2013 23:53
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I work somewhere overlooking the A15 from the Rotterdam harbour, and it's pretty much a continuous stream of trucks all day, every day. One every five seconds or so in each direction. I can barely imagine the strain that puts on the asphalt in the right lane.
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Jan 17, 2013 00:01
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In America, a far larger amount of the traffic into and out of major ports is carried by train instead. Sure there's the same traffic but with cars instead so it's really less wear and tear on the roadways than it would be otherwise.
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Jan 17, 2013 00:39
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John Dough posted:I work somewhere overlooking the A15 from the Rotterdam harbour, and it's pretty much a continuous stream of trucks all day, every day. One every five seconds or so in each direction. I can barely imagine the strain that puts on the asphalt in the right lane. It's situations like this where you wonder why railfreight isn't used more often. It feels like a little investment in rail and a partial lorry ban or tolling system in situations like this could save much more in road repair and upgrade costs. It wouldn't even have to be conveyed that far by rail - although that obviously would be preferable - just as long as it could be taken to a few terminals further away where the traffic would be split up and less of a problem.
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Jan 17, 2013 00:43
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Jonnty posted:It's situations like this where you wonder why railfreight isn't used more often. This is really just a guess, but likely the railways are too occupied by passenger traffic to easily fit more freight, and adding extra tracks is too costly or even impossible.
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Jan 17, 2013 00:55
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nielsm posted:This is really just a guess, but likely the railways are too occupied by passenger traffic to easily fit more freight, and adding extra tracks is too costly or even impossible. That's often the problem, but so often investment goes into roads when the same investment could probably achieve much more on the railway with a bit of effort, or at least that's how it seems here. Take the A9 in the north of Scotland - it's a road that's part single, part dual carriageway. They're spending money to make it dual carriageway throughout, in the bits where it was presumably considered too difficult before, and yet if they fully double-tracked the adjacent railway and designed a good system of freight terminals and roadfreight restrictions they could probably get almost all the lorries off it, which are what seems to cause the problem in the first place.
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Jan 17, 2013 01:19
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Jonnty posted:That's often the problem, but so often investment goes into roads when the same investment could probably achieve much more on the railway with a bit of effort, or at least that's how it seems here. Take the A9 in the north of Scotland - it's a road that's part single, part dual carriageway. They're spending money to make it dual carriageway throughout, in the bits where it was presumably considered too difficult before, and yet if they fully double-tracked the adjacent railway and designed a good system of freight terminals and roadfreight restrictions they could probably get almost all the lorries off it, which are what seems to cause the problem in the first place. Yes, but how far is the freight going? That's the big question. The US and Canada have extensive freight train networks because the freight needs to go very far, where it is then unloaded again and shipped the final mile by truck. I don't know how efficient that would be in Europe, particularly Western Europe, where seemingly everything is close to the water. Why go through the additional delays of having to wait for enough freight for a train to be worthwhile, make the train, have the slower train go to a multi-modal yard, unmake the train, load up the trucks to go the last bit, when you can just have a truck do the whole trip in a fraction of the time? Not to mention that you'd guaranteed be giving way to passenger trains (the opposite is true in NA) when you can just stick it on a truck and be there in half the time? And have the government pay for the infrastructure, but that's besides the point.
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Jan 17, 2013 01:55
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In the end freight by rails is best used for long distances, so in Europe unless the goods needs to be transported across a few borders it as worth it, leading to to the focus on passenger traffic. Even if they double tracked that railway in Scotland to make it suitable, the rest of the network can't cope with much more freight than it currently deals with, so unless there is a massive upgrade along a long distance freight route, beyond the upgrade in Scotland, then there isn't going to be that much scope for expansion. Saying that, there is probably quite a bit of scope for freight to be transported overnight, and in the UK at least there has been some effort in recent years to invest more in rail freight, though mainly because the roads are also full.
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Jan 17, 2013 02:01
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Jonnty posted:It's situations like this where you wonder why railfreight isn't used more often. It feels like a little investment in rail and a partial lorry ban or tolling system in situations like this could save much more in road repair and upgrade costs. It wouldn't even have to be conveyed that far by rail - although that obviously would be preferable - just as long as it could be taken to a few terminals further away where the traffic would be split up and less of a problem. European nations have prioritized passenger rail over freight rail. This has changed over time too. In the 1950s European freight was being moved by rail at the same percentage as American freight. Now it's far less. While some of the gap in share between US and Europe is covered by a higher usage of waterborne transport (mainly river and canal) most of the difference is being made up in Europe with extra trucks and frankly extra trucks is always a bad idea. Freight rail is just really a shitload more efficient, and intermodal shipping practices are great for allowing you to use trucks less while still playing to the strengths.  This one is 1996 data:  But it helps show the differences. Of course, the United States and Canada (and Russia and China for that matter) also have some extra advantages for freight rail working well. All of them tend to have much wider loading gauges and higher clearances on their rail networks than most European countries have on most routes. Most of the European freight rail network is incapable of taking double-stacked shipping container trains due to hroizontal and vertical clearance issues while in the US nearly all of it has no issue. Minister Robathan posted:Yes, but how far is the freight going? That's the big question. The US and Canada have extensive freight train networks because the freight needs to go very far, where it is then unloaded again and shipped the final mile by truck. I don't know how efficient that would be in Europe, particularly Western Europe, where seemingly everything is close to the water. A ton of the stuff getting unloaded in Antwerp for example is not staying around Antwerp or even in Belgium, it's heading all over the continent. Antwerp is the second busiest freight port in all of Europe. No port ever sticks with goods only for local use in the modern post-containerization world. Also "waiting for enough freight to make a train".. that's kinda not a thing that happens in anywhere remotely busy. Simply hauling out all the incoming freight to a sorting and distribution intermodal hub located outside the core of development would solve a lot of the issue and would save tons of wear and tear on the roadways. Containerization has happened already, and it makes intermodal transport a whole lot faster than you might think. Making and splitting freight consists in America is quite fast. Gat posted:In the end freight by rails is best used for long distances, so in Europe unless the goods needs to be transported across a few borders it as worth it, leading to to the focus on passenger traffic. Even if they double tracked that railway in Scotland to make it suitable, the rest of the network can't cope with much more freight than it currently deals with, so unless there is a massive upgrade along a long distance freight route, beyond the upgrade in Scotland, then there isn't going to be that much scope for expansion. Saying that, there is probably quite a bit of scope for freight to be transported overnight, and in the UK at least there has been some effort in recent years to invest more in rail freight, though mainly because the roads are also full. Incorrect, freight by rail is also great for hauling stuff out of a congested port area to some place where it can be better staged for delivery by truck. There's a whole lot of rail freight in America that doesn't go more than 50 miles by train before being transferred to truck. And each of those miles is saving a shitload of wear and tear on the roads, not to mention reducing pollution and fuel usage in transport heavily! Nintendo Kid fucked around with this message at 02:07 on Jan 17, 2013 |
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Jan 17, 2013 02:04
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I think the university campus 'De Uithof' in Utrecht has a kind of interesting, but typically Dutch road design. http://goo.gl/maps/IHOOi This streetview link shows a photo made from the bus road. On this road only public transport buses and taxis (with a blue license plate) are allowed. Not Google Streetview cars. :P Anyway, the red two-lane road at the right side? Yep, that's a bicycle path. Most of the bicycle paths on the campus are similar to that one, although the one in the picture is exceptionally wide. Somewhat further along we have this situation: http://goo.gl/maps/EaWQI The sign at the left side says something like "Bike street, cars allowed". It is a short street with some stores and fastfood places. Delivery trucks are allowed on that street, but they have to drive slowly and give bikes complete right of way. Regular car users should park in the main street or in the parking garage and walk there. One problem is that around rush hour, the road from the highway exit at the North tends to get completely clogged up. The highways around the city get jammed too. At the same time, bikes are trying to get through the traffic and cross car roads at a lot of places, often ignoring traffic lights. Things can get a bit scary for both cars and bikes. I bring this up because a random prof who commutes by bike wrote a piece for the university newspaper. He says that the campus is very dangerous for cyclists, especially those who aren't used to Dutch traffic. He proposes to make the campus itself free of cars and build a ring road around it. Read the article here, it's written in a quite funny way. I don't know. I think it works okay the way it is now, and it might be bad to exclude cars completely. Even now, car drivers sometimes have to walk quite far because of full parking areas. However, making the campus 'greener' is a nice idea as well.
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Jan 17, 2013 10:58
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Chaos Motor posted:Cichlidae, if you were able to install traffic volume sensors during regular construction or service without having a big impact on total cost of the project, what kind of value do you think that would provide the DOT? Can you hang a number on it? Hmm, the benefit is not easily quantified, but there are other sources for real-time volume data. Anything cheaper than them would be cost-effective. grillster posted:What 's the hold up on using location records held by service providers collected from mobile devices to help signaling systems accurately accommodate real world traffic? Currently, we do this on a per-project basis when we need origin-destination pairs. This isn't real-time, though. You can't tell where people are going until they've arrived. And if you're just looking for real-time volume data, there are systems which use loop detectors for that purpose. Oh, by the way! The going cost for a signal controller (not the cabinet or signal itself)? A hair over $30,000. For a piece of hardware you could probably make with $200 of RadioShack parts. Hell, you could make a much more capable controller with a $200 ITX computer. I've got to go to work now, so I'll catch up with the rest of the posts afterward.
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Jan 17, 2013 13:31
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Install Gentoo posted:European nations have prioritized passenger rail over freight rail. This has changed over time too. In the 1950s European freight was being moved by rail at the same percentage as American freight. Now it's far less. Laying down new tracks or even expanding existing ones is a nightmare in Belgium - population density of around 300/km². It's enormously costly, there's loads of NIMBY involved, no politician likes evicting people... Also, there's still a bit of an economic competition between Belgium (Antwerp harbor) and the Netherlands (Rotterdam harbor) - for example, despite the tracks already laying there, there is no train traffic through the Netherlands between Belgium and Germany - all existing train traffic has to move via the Liège-Aachen line, instead of via the so-called Iron Rhine.
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Jan 17, 2013 14:16
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The train network in the Netherlands (and probably Belgium) is also one of the busiest in the world, with full schedules for passenger trains that are still barely enough to handle the demand. And yeah, it is difficult to build more rail, this year they opened a new section of railway for the first time since like 1988, and it mostly cuts through reclaimed land which probably has less NIMBY issues than areas with a big history.
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Jan 17, 2013 15:13
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Agricola Frigidus posted:Laying down new tracks or even expanding existing ones is a nightmare in Belgium - population density of around 300/km². It's enormously costly, there's loads of NIMBY involved, no politician likes evicting people... Also, there's still a bit of an economic competition between Belgium (Antwerp harbor) and the Netherlands (Rotterdam harbor) - for example, despite the tracks already laying there, there is no train traffic through the Netherlands between Belgium and Germany - all existing train traffic has to move via the Liège-Aachen line, instead of via the so-called Iron Rhine. I live in a state with a density of 459/km² - the trick is we built all almost all of our freight and passenger lines before the 1920s and very little new road after the 1980s.
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Jan 17, 2013 15:27
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Cichlidae posted:Hmm, the benefit is not easily quantified, but there are other sources for real-time volume data. Anything cheaper than them would be cost-effective. In the theoretical system I'm describing, the infrastructure owner would own the sensing equipment, so the data would be "free" (less equipment, install, & maintenance costs, of course) to the owner, and the data generated could be re-sold to other parties, so it should not only be cheaper, but it could itself be an income source to the owner. Chaos Motor fucked around with this message at 17:04 on Jan 17, 2013 |
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Jan 17, 2013 16:13
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Agricola Frigidus posted:Laying down new tracks or even expanding existing ones is a nightmare in Belgium - population density of around 300/km². It's enormously costly, there's loads of NIMBY involved, no politician likes evicting people... Also, there's still a bit of an economic competition between Belgium (Antwerp harbor) and the Netherlands (Rotterdam harbor) - for example, despite the tracks already laying there, there is no train traffic through the Netherlands between Belgium and Germany - all existing train traffic has to move via the Liège-Aachen line, instead of via the so-called Iron Rhine. I thought an agreement was reached a few years ago to re-open the Iron Rhine route? Did that fall through after all?
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Jan 17, 2013 16:56
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Install Gentoo posted:Incorrect, freight by rail is also great for hauling stuff out of a congested port area to some place where it can be better staged for delivery by truck. There's a whole lot of rail freight in America that doesn't go more than 50 miles by train before being transferred to truck. And each of those miles is saving a shitload of wear and tear on the roads, not to mention reducing pollution and fuel usage in transport heavily! This is kind of my point - I'm aware of all the weaknesses of European (and British) railfreight, and the reasons why it's not popular. But if you're a central authority and you've set dealing with a lorry problem on a road one of your policy objectives, then it's surely reasonable to consider roadfreight restrictions/tolling a point-to-point freight service to a more central location(s) to get rid of the bottleneck. Even if it requires subsidy, it might end up much cheaper than an upgrade of the road along with, as you say, saving on wear and tear, which people forget so often - although governments shy away from this as they apparently find subsidising the road network much more palatable than subsidising the rail network. Of course, getting cars off the road with better passenger trains is another option, and one I support too. However, I suspect restricting freight would be much more easier politically than restricting cars - fairly reasonable, as the welfare of freight is clearly less important than that of passengers, and it's fairly easy to argue that there a lot more "legitimate" car journeys than there are "legitimate" lorry journeys. Of course, there's always hitches with all of this, and local circumstances which render it difficult - but I refuse to believe this approach is always unsuitable. I suppose the lorry charging/restrictions is very politically difficult. If I ruled the world...
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Jan 17, 2013 20:12
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Jonnty posted:This is kind of my point - I'm aware of all the weaknesses of European (and British) railfreight, and the reasons why it's not popular. But if you're a central authority and you've set dealing with a lorry problem on a road one of your policy objectives, then it's surely reasonable to consider roadfreight restrictions/tolling a point-to-point freight service to a more central location(s) to get rid of the bottleneck. Even if it requires subsidy, it might end up much cheaper than an upgrade of the road along with, as you say, saving on wear and tear, which people forget so often - although governments shy away from this as they apparently find subsidising the road network much more palatable than subsidising the rail network. Transporting things from one place to another is actually a pretty decent chunk of the Dutch economy, and restricting freight trucks might cause them to go to Antwerp or Hamburg instead.
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Jan 17, 2013 21:53
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John Dough posted:I thought an agreement was reached a few years ago to re-open the Iron Rhine route? Did that fall through after all? In the end, an agreement was reached, but then it stalled due to budgetary and ecologic concerns? Not to mention local Belgian politics - there is a railway connection between Antwerp and Germany through Lüttich, and the connection between Antwerp and Germany through Belgian and Dutch Limburg would perhaps destroy a few jobs in Lüttich. Also, NIMBY; also, the Antwerp-Neerpelt route it would take through Belgium is completely unelectrified; the Dutch portion is completely unelectrified... It's not worth the cost, according to some studies. Install Gentoo posted:I live in a state with a density of 459/km² - the trick is we built all almost all of our freight and passenger lines before the 1920s and very little new road after the 1980s. Laying new tracks is not too much of a problem - there's a recent bypass near Löwen, an improved connection between Lüttich and Aachen, and a new connection between Löwen and the biggest airport further north to Mechelen; once we talk about crossing borders, now there's a problem.
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Jan 17, 2013 23:13
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Ah yes, we don't have these problems of having different countries on the same landmass. Yet.
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Jan 17, 2013 23:48
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Agricola Frigidus posted:In the end, an agreement was reached, but then it stalled due to budgetary and ecologic concerns? Not to mention local Belgian politics - there is a railway connection between Antwerp and Germany through Lüttich, and the connection between Antwerp and Germany through Belgian and Dutch Limburg would perhaps destroy a few jobs in Lüttich. Also, NIMBY; also, the Antwerp-Neerpelt route it would take through Belgium is completely unelectrified; the Dutch portion is completely unelectrified... It's not worth the cost, according to some studies. Dude are you from Eupen or something? I get which places you mean but the non-lowlanders reading this thread might not 
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Jan 18, 2013 00:04
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Koesj posted:Dude are you from Eupen or something? I get which places you mean but the non-lowlanders reading this thread might not The general gist of it is, we got 3 very important transport areas (Rotterdam, Antwerp and the Ruhr), each in a separate country with their own gently caress ups.
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Jan 18, 2013 01:47
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Koesj posted:INRIX is pretty much the final arbiter in these matters since they are, to my knowledge, the only guys who do a thorough ranking of congestion levels based on common indicators. And, welp, Belgium is the most congested country in the world followed by us Dutchies and Antwerpen as a city is way up there in the top 5 worst cities with such luminaries as Los Angeles and Paris My boss is quite smitten with INRIX, but I've never used it. He mentioned that, as a DOT employee, I can access some more detailed data, but I'm not sure how I'd go about doing that. Looking at the scorecard now, it appears that volumes have been on the decline over the past two years, which makes a good deal of sense. Congestion in the US has dropped by 27%, presumably from declining volumes. Fragrag posted:On a larger scale, am I correct in assuming that we'll always have traffic trouble? I look at the map and I see two very large harbours (Rotterdam and Antwerp) in the vicinity that handle a lot of freight. Also, it seems that we also lie on a sort of crossroads, where pretty much all roads apparently lead to Antwerpen. Unless you've absolutely hit the limit of population density, and your population is decreasing, you will always have traffic trouble. Adding capacity increases demand, and adding demand requires more capacity. The trick is establishing an acceptable threshold of congestion and trying to achieve it. Carbon dioxide posted:I think the university campus 'De Uithof' in Utrecht has a kind of interesting, but typically Dutch road design. Focused on the woman scratching her butt, eh? I have to note, I love that architecture. Beautiful stuff. Carbon dioxide posted:I don't know. I think it works okay the way it is now, and it might be bad to exclude cars completely. Even now, car drivers sometimes have to walk quite far because of full parking areas. However, making the campus 'greener' is a nice idea as well. Placing parking lots around the periphery, offering bicycles for rent, and improving pedestrian facilities would be lovely. You'd want to maintain roads for deliveries and handicapped people, but make the other 99% walk it. Chaos Motor posted:In the theoretical system I'm describing, the infrastructure owner would own the sensing equipment, so the data would be "free" (less equipment, install, & maintenance costs, of course) to the owner, and the data generated could be re-sold to other parties, so it should not only be cheaper, but it could itself be an income source to the owner. I really don't know how much we pay for that information. I imagine we have a state-wide subscription, so unless we were able to re-pave a large portion at once (say, a corridor), the benefits would be rather small, since we wouldn't be able to cancel our current subscription.
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Jan 18, 2013 02:40
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For a long time I thought this sounded like the worlds most boring thread, how wrong I was! I'm still catching up though and I apologise if I ask anything that's already awsked or answered.Cichlidae posted:As for individual costs, keep in mind this varies depending on where you are. CT has one of the highest costs of living of any state. I live in the southeast UK and there's a steam railway* that is rebuilding a line that was closed in the 60s, I think they've laid just over 1.1 miles of track, including quite a bit of excavation to restore a cutting for £600k however a lot of labour would be volunteers I think. How much do you think it would have cost to turn that into a bike track, and are your figures for a metalled surface? Where other railways lines have been converted, it's normally some form of aggregate used for the surface. I doubt I could persuade them but... since it's an old railway, one end is where two bike tracks meet and the old line was two tracks wide now it's just 1, from your traffic engineer point of view would it make sense to have the half that isn't trainline used as a bike track? quote:1 policeman directing traffic, per hour: $75 So just get traffic engineers to do everything right? I realised I've a ton more questions but they're probably answered in the thread so I'll ask em later. * It's the bluebell railway, their 1999 styled website http://www.bluebell-railway.co.uk/
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Jan 18, 2013 07:05
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Cichlidae posted:Focused on the woman scratching her butt, eh? I have to note, I love that architecture. Beautiful stuff. Okay, I had not noticed that woman. Uithof architecture is an interesting mix. When they started building the place, they put down a bunch of boring 'concrete blocks' buildings. They were named Trans 1, Trans 2, and so on, from 'transitory'. Those ugly 'transitory' buildings are still there, but got new names. Since then, they hired kinda famous architects to design newer buildings. The black building with glass to the right is the university library. It has lots of open spaces inside, each floor is laid out differently, and from the main hall you can see all the way to the top of the building. There is also a building which had a pond inside, on the 2nd (top) floor. Rain water from the roof falls through drains into the pond, and as far as I understand it, the rain water was then used to flush the toilets. A few years ago they got problems, though. The thing started leaking, and someone decided that a leaking pond right above a bunch of computer rooms might be a bad idea. So they closed off the drains, emptied the pond, and last year they decided to put lounge chairs there. There's other interesting buildings too. The result of all this is that if you're quietly studying in the library, people that are doing a local architecture tour come storming in and start taking pictures of everything. Oh well. Carbon dioxide fucked around with this message at 11:05 on Jan 18, 2013 |
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Jan 18, 2013 11:02
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Crankit posted:For a long time I thought this sounded like the worlds most boring thread, how wrong I was! I'm still catching up though and I apologise if I ask anything that's already awsked or answered. It's not straightforward to build a bikepath adjacent to an active rail line. First off, you've got to worry about the "dynamic envelope," which is the maximum space the train might occupy. When you have two adjacent train tracks, you can go right up to the edge of the DE. When it's a bike path, instead, you need some buffer space. You'll also need a wall and/or fence to keep people off the tracks. That takes at least a couple feet of width. Then, you need a place to put your signs, which will typically be about a meter wide. Finally, you need to worry about maintenance. The track plows will be shooting snow over the fence, onto the bikepath. The bikepath plows will need to keep it moving in that direction, rather than back onto the tracks. Essentially, you're best off if you don't even touch the track ballast. Carbon dioxide posted:Okay, I had not noticed that woman. When I was studying in France, I was at the Université de Technologie de Compiègne, which has some impressively brutalist 70s architecture. Windows? Who needs windows? Edit: More Connecticut-roads-related comix: 
Cichlidae fucked around with this message at 23:23 on Jan 18, 2013 |
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Jan 18, 2013 23:11
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Still catching up, but I went to college with you! Donnerwetter!  Do you know why Jamestown, RI has one traffic light on the entire island and it's just a four-way flashing red on an intersection with a four-way stop sign? It always seemed kind of redundant to me.
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Jan 18, 2013 23:39
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