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Widen the road a bit and install a tram or BRT of some sort leading into the city centre. Replace most of the single family sprawl over time with denser row-houses and the auto-focused retail with a pedestrian focused mixed use and have it all served by a good bus system (paid for by the increased tax base from the increased density). Remove parking requirements from the local code. Create an absolutely enforced urban containment boundary to prevent further sprawl. That's how I'd address traffic issues at that intersection, others might do something drastic like dead-end one of the smaller roads and make it into a basic 4-way.
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Mar 7, 2013 23:32
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Baronjutter posted:Create an absolutely enforced urban containment boundary to prevent further sprawl. Someone will just buy property outside and incorporate a new town. You really can't "enforce" cities to stay within a border as long as property is freely available for purchase or sale.
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Mar 8, 2013 01:01
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Chaos Motor posted:Someone will just buy property outside and incorporate a new town. You really can't "enforce" cities to stay within a border as long as property is freely available for purchase or sale. County and state governments exist...
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Mar 8, 2013 01:11
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Install Gentoo posted:County and state governments exist... Name a county or state in the United States wherein an anti-parking, pro-density measure would pass. I would like it but I would be shocked to see it happen.
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Mar 8, 2013 01:42
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Mandalay posted:Name a county or state in the United States wherein an anti-parking, pro-density measure would pass. I would like it but I would be shocked to see it happen. Dozens of them do and have. It's not exactly some measure that was just thought of now. Not to mention that there's plenty of places in the US where all existing land is already within the borders of a municipality.
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Mar 8, 2013 01:51
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Murgos posted:I have a question about road maintenance. Are you an optimist, or a pessimist? Just click on the one that fits your outlook. PESSIMIST: It's a common practice, but not readily acknowledged, that pavement be purposely deficient. Either it's designed that way in order to spread cash around the maintenance contractors, or done by the contractor so the road will need to be resurfaced again sooner. More potholes could be a result of either one of these. OPTIMIST: Pothole maintenance is primarily dictated by the DOT's budget. If they can't afford to fix potholes when they're small, it'll just waist more money later when they have to patch a larger hole, or pay out settlements to people who pop their tires driving over them. More potholes is a sign of mismanagement and/or someone CUTTING BACK ON FUNDING. The maintenance guys do a ton of driving, so they usually don't need complaints to tell them where they need to patch. Complain, though, and it'll usually get fixed sooner. Zodijackylite posted:Is there any realistic way that this intersection could be improved? The lanes aren't lined up, the intersection is massive because the low-traffic side roads are offset and still need their turn despite the other 3 ways having the majority of traffic. There are businesses at that end of Moritz Pl so I don't think that could be blocked off or made right-turn only.  Baronjutter posted:Widen the road a bit and install a tram or BRT of some sort leading into the city centre. Replace most of the single family sprawl over time with denser row-houses and the auto-focused retail with a pedestrian focused mixed use and have it all served by a good bus system (paid for by the increased tax base from the increased density). Remove parking requirements from the local code. Create an absolutely enforced urban containment boundary to prevent further sprawl. What can I say? I'm a radical.
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Mar 8, 2013 23:49
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I read that a highway near here (4 lanes each direction), in a busy area with multiple highway interchanges needs to be widened in order to reduce traffic jams. However, this is controversial because of the nature reserve next to the highway. Now some traffic design company said that it should be possible to turn the highway into a 2x6 lane one by using the median and also making each lane narrower. The narrower lanes mean that the Vmax should be reduced from 120km/h to 100km/h. Now my question is, doesn't the speed reduction cause jams further back, thereby negating the effect of the extra lanes?
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Mar 9, 2013 16:01
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Carbon dioxide posted:I read that a highway near here (4 lanes each direction), in a busy area with multiple highway interchanges needs to be widened in order to reduce traffic jams. However, this is controversial because of the nature reserve next to the highway. Now some traffic design company said that it should be possible to turn the highway into a 2x6 lane one by using the median and also making each lane narrower. The narrower lanes mean that the Vmax should be reduced from 120km/h to 100km/h. If you're talking about the A27, there's wayyyy much more going on there than just a simple throughput problem.
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Mar 9, 2013 16:12
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Koesj posted:If you're talking about the A27, there's wayyyy much more going on there than just a simple throughput problem. As a matter of fact I am. I didn't want to make things too complicated so I tried to ask the question in a more general sense.
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Mar 9, 2013 18:12
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Doesn't throughput increase when you lower the speed limit (to a certain point)? That is one of the reasons many motorways near cities have been limited to 100 kph (the other is air quality), in a area with a lot of exits and merges a lower speed leads to more efficient merging. I hate those narrower lanes like the ones they have on part of the A12. I understand that it is a great way to skirt the environmental impact analysis but you end up with a road that costs almost as much as a full size road that is extremely unpleasant to drive on. NihilismNow fucked around with this message at 18:18 on Mar 9, 2013 |
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Mar 9, 2013 18:15
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Baronjutter posted:Widen the road a bit and install a tram or BRT of some sort leading into the city centre. Replace most of the single family sprawl over time with denser row-houses and the auto-focused retail with a pedestrian focused mixed use and have it all served by a good bus system (paid for by the increased tax base from the increased density). Remove parking requirements from the local code. Create an absolutely enforced urban containment boundary to prevent further sprawl.
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Mar 10, 2013 00:12
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Carbon dioxide posted:I read that a highway near here (4 lanes each direction), in a busy area with multiple highway interchanges needs to be widened in order to reduce traffic jams. However, this is controversial because of the nature reserve next to the highway. Now some traffic design company said that it should be possible to turn the highway into a 2x6 lane one by using the median and also making each lane narrower. The narrower lanes mean that the Vmax should be reduced from 120km/h to 100km/h. Well, let's take a look! Keep in mind, this is all in imperial units, but it all comes together in the end. What you're looking at is freeflow speed. FFS = FFSbase - Flw - Flc - Fn - Fid. FFSbase isn't going to change. Flw will change probably from 0.0 to 1.9 if the lanes are reduced to 11', or 6.6 if they're reduced to 10'. Flc depends on the lateral clearance, and will probably also increase if they're cutting into the shoulder. If the existing LC is at least 6', the Flc is 0. For the new section, it starts at 0 for 6'+ and increases to 2.4 for 0' lateral clearance. Fn is going to improve from the existing 4.5 (2 lanes) to 3.0 (3 lanes). Fid is based on intersection density and will not change. So we have our new FFS, and we plug that into our flow equations: S = Sf (1-D/Dj). This will give us the speed relative to the density of traffic. Let's look at when the road's at capacity, and density hits 45 passenger cars per lane per mile. Let's assume Dj is about 200 pcplpm. Speed is therefore 77% of the FFS. Flow = speed * density. Old situation: Q = .77 * 74mph * 45pcpmpl * 2 lanes = 5130vph (See? No more imperial units!) New situation: Q = .77 * 62mph * 45pcpmpl * 3 lanes = 6440vph So adding the third lane, even though it will reduce speed, improves capacity by 1310vph in each direction. Not bad at all. (I hope you don't mind the math; I'm studying for my PE and it's fresh in my mind.) NihilismNow posted:Doesn't throughput increase when you lower the speed limit (to a certain point)? That is one of the reasons many motorways near cities have been limited to 100 kph (the other is air quality), in a area with a lot of exits and merges a lower speed leads to more efficient merging. Believe it or not, HCS+ shows an improvement in weaving LOS at higher speeds, probably because the densities are lower overall. I don't doubt it'd be safer at lower speeds, but it's not going to solve weaving issues.
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Mar 10, 2013 04:24
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The big problem with the A27 is weaving inside a depressed section between two major interchanges. I already posted a map of two proposed solutions in this very thread: AADT is already 200k+ so fixing the weaving problem will help tremendously towards alleviating traffic jams. I don't care about the maximum speeds here and neither should anyone else. It's wholly secondary to the hundreds of millions that have to be spent to provide a structural solution.
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Mar 10, 2013 14:41
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What's your view on towns that set ridiculously low speed limits in order to catch people who are passing through? I had a nasty discovery the other day on US 377. Apparently after it goes north past I-35, it expands from one lane to three, and drops from 60 mph to 35. That's a pretty obvious distortion.
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Mar 10, 2013 21:01
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SlothfulCobra posted:What's your view on towns that set ridiculously low speed limits in order to catch people who are passing through? You mean aside from "it's a dick way to raise revenue?"
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Mar 10, 2013 22:40
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SlothfulCobra posted:What's your view on towns that set ridiculously low speed limits in order to catch people who are passing through? Speed limits are meant to be set to the 85th percentile speed. There's no way around it (barring some solid engineering judgment), and anywhere the speed limit is lower should not be enforceable. The MUTCD even beats you over the head with it.
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Mar 10, 2013 23:13
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I want to know why more roads can't have those little reflective things that stick up out of the pavement, I think they are made out of fabric with reflective coating. Holy mother of balls it makes driving in the rain so much easier. And more stuff like this on the roads.  
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Mar 11, 2013 11:54
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b0nes posted:I want to know why more roads can't have those little reflective things that stick up out of the pavement, I think they are made out of fabric with reflective coating. Holy mother of balls it makes driving in the rain so much easier. They're called Botts' Dots.
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Mar 11, 2013 12:20
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MrYenko posted:They're called Botts' Dots. They're not reflective apaprently - reflective ones are, at least in the UK, called cat's eyes.
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Mar 11, 2013 12:45
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In any place with enough snow to plow, you can't really have anything protrude from the road or the plows will scrape it right off.
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Mar 11, 2013 12:51
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smackfu posted:In any place with enough snow to plow, you can't really have anything protrude from the road or the plows will scrape it right off. Fortunately, these reflective markers can be recessed. They've been installed in plenty of snow-heavy places, in fact. Unfortunately, you won't see any in CT until someone in a high place retires.
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Mar 11, 2013 20:23
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Jonnty posted:They're not reflective apaprently - reflective ones are, at least in the UK, called cat's eyes. Yeah, in the UK they're installed on virtually every road with more than a single lane, including multicoloured ones on motorways to show exits and lane dividers. They're amazing in low light conditions and I'm not sure how I'd survive without them, although I do wonder sometimes if they're doing any damage to my tyres.
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Mar 11, 2013 20:33
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MrYenko posted:They're called Botts' Dots. No. These aren't dots. These are little strips of fabric, that is coated with reflective stuff. They stick up out of the ground so when your headlights hit them they reflect back into your face. If you run over them they flip back up. I used to only see them when crews were repairing roads. I'm starting to see them in other places now. Maybe they are just temporary.
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Mar 12, 2013 01:01
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b0nes posted:No. These aren't dots. These are little strips of fabric, that is coated with reflective stuff. They stick up out of the ground so when your headlights hit them they reflect back into your face. If you run over them they flip back up. I used to only see them when crews were repairing roads. I'm starting to see them in other places now. Maybe they are just temporary.  You'll typically see them on major resurfacing projects where it will be months between installation of new base and surface courses (IE repaving 10-20 miles of a 6+ lane roadway on a lane by lane basis), but they're occasionally used in more creative applications as either safety tests or for cost-sensitive applications. Varance fucked around with this message at 01:39 on Mar 12, 2013 |
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Mar 12, 2013 01:29
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SlothfulCobra posted:What's your view on towns that set ridiculously low speed limits in order to catch people who are passing through? Oh that's just Denton's search-the-college-student's-car game.
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Mar 12, 2013 04:18
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Varance posted:The professional term for them is either temporary raised pavement marker (TRPM) or temporary chip seal marker. They're typically a piece of aluminum that bends back in place, with reflective tape on one or both sides of the marker. They don't last long (a couple months tops), but they're the most economical form of temporary road stud. Cool thanks. I though they were temporary. Someone needs to make them permanent.
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Mar 12, 2013 06:17
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Re cats eyes:Wikipedia posted:Safety Ouch. 
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Mar 12, 2013 15:01
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In case anyone was looking forward to the new SimCity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcEaHT9mt-Y v  v
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Mar 12, 2013 16:39
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Entropist posted:In case anyone was looking forward to the new SimCity: They obviously are all using GPS to find their destination, and have it set to shortest distance instead of shortest time.
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Mar 12, 2013 16:52
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thehustler posted:Re cats eyes: Yeah I didn't know about that until I saw the article myself. Mental. Doesn't sound like it's ever happened since, fortunately so I'm guessing they've saved vastly more lives than they've taken.
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Mar 12, 2013 17:37
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uapyro posted:They obviously are all using GPS to find their destination, and have it set to shortest distance instead of shortest time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-d0b41H-Lnk
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Mar 12, 2013 18:10
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Cichlidae posted:Fortunately, these reflective markers can be recessed. They've been installed in plenty of snow-heavy places, in fact. Unfortunately, you won't see any in CT until someone in a high place retires. We never get to have anything cool minus the infinite money busway and New Haven's corridor of death.Question, with the busway approaching $1 billion, do you have any ballpark idea on how much it would've cost to just build a rail line between Waterbury and Hartford instead. Or say, build a new railway bridge(Specifically, the Old Saybrook bridge that holds up full Shore Line East traffic from going further east)
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Mar 12, 2013 18:35
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Jonnty posted:They're not reflective apaprently - reflective ones are, at least in the UK, called cat's eyes. Retroreflective! The light returns in the same direction it came from - otherwise your headlights would just be lighting up other things that aren't your eyeballs. And as a neat fact, many (all?) jurisdictions, as they paint roadway lines, they drop a layer of glass beads into the wet paint. The tiny half-submerged spheres are retro-reflective, so when your headlights hit them, extra light bounces straight back towards you (making it visible to you) instead of just bouncing off down the road away from you. Properly maintained road signs are also retroreflective - which is why new ones can seem so blinding when your headlights hit them. As they fade over time, patches of them lose their retroreflectivity, and you get weird patterns of darkness on signs.
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Mar 12, 2013 20:45
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Amused to Death posted:We never get to have anything cool The rail line was already there, but was basically abandoned. Hell, there used to be a direct line between Waterbury and Danbury. You'd have to buy back all that property. The infrastructure itself would cost about as much as the ROW. $5-10 Billion? As for the bridge over the Connecticut River, it could probably be done for $200M or so, if replaced in kind. Building a nice high-level crossing would cost significantly more, since you'd have to chase the grade back down both directions. ----- So disappointed with what I've seen so far of SimCity. I guess I'll just wait for the inevitable expansion pack.
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Mar 12, 2013 23:11
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Jeoh posted:People are already protesting! Please tell me the garbage man eventually gets sick of waiting and either plows through the people, or gets out of his truck, sets it on fire, and walks off.
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Mar 12, 2013 23:17
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Entropist posted:In case anyone was looking forward to the new SimCity: I noticed another issue. The AI will only wait so long in line on a road. If things take too long, they will pull a u-turn at the intersection, blocking people behind then as they wait to turn. Guess what happens when both directions are heavily congested?
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Mar 12, 2013 23:20
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Not sure if this is a good place to ask, but I'm wondering about multiple left turn lanes and where you're supposed to go. Generally, I know that you turn to the leftmost lane that matches the lane you started in. I occasionally have to navigate an intersection that has 2 turn lanes that turn on to a main road. The trick here is that the main road is 2 lanes + a left turn lane. The turn lane is throwing me off. I don't know if it counts as a lane or not. Here's a couple pictures with the options: Option A:  Option B:  If you can't tell, the turn originates from the top middle and ends up bottom left. The cars lined up in the bottom middle are in the turn lane that's causing me confusion. So which is correct? I've seen people do both options, so I usually hang out in the right-most left turn lane so I avoid any problems. However, sometimes people turn in to the middle lane and I need to get in to that lane very shortly after this intersection, so I occasionally have to battle soccer moms to get where I need to go. edit: there are no lines on the pavement to indicate which path to follow. I've seen them in places where it's completely obvious, but here it seems like it's not obvious and they decide to not give you any indication of where you should go.
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Mar 12, 2013 23:45
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I've never seen a multi-lane left that didn't have "cat tracks" to help keep you in your lane.
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Mar 12, 2013 23:47
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DaveSauce posted:Not sure if this is a good place to ask, but I'm wondering about multiple left turn lanes and where you're supposed to go. Baronjutter posted:I've never seen a multi-lane left that didn't have "cat tracks" to help keep you in your lane.  (Google Maps) The roads are concrete, due to overwhelming semi traffic coming out of the port. Varance fucked around with this message at 00:24 on Mar 13, 2013 |
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Mar 12, 2013 23:56
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Yeah, Option B definitely looks like the correct one.
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Mar 13, 2013 00:34
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.