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Ephphatha posted:Here in Australia we get a few provisions, as long as you aren't travelling significantly faster than other vehicles and you don't have a speedo you're not going to get a ticket for speeding on a bicycle. If you have a GPS or something else mounted that shows speed, or it's obvious you're travelling faster than cars/motorbikes who are travelling the speed limit, you're getting booked. Not true - a cyclist can get fined for speeding regardless of if they have some sort of speedo or not. For instance: http://www.perthnow.com.au/news/western-australia/cyclist-fined-for-riding-56kmh-in-school-zone/story-e6frg13u-1226283944613 Ephphatha posted:Edit: This is actually required by law in NSW but it's never enforced. Some other states don't have laws regarding signalling so it's common to see interstate drivers just blow through without signalling or signal improperly (ie, every time they turn the wheel they activate the turn signal in that direction). Every state has this rule as it's part of the Australian Road Rules (which every state uses), but it's not enforced anywhere but NSW, and even then, almost never.
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Jun 12, 2013 18:36
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SlothfulCobra posted:I've seen someone make plans for a theoretical redesign of Paris where they replaced all the roads with parks and grass, and decided that all transit could take place on subways. So they'll have cargo subways too?? Paris' metro system is actually dense enough in terms of stations that they could almost do this, but it's already over capacity. I would love to see more cities just go hog-wild on transit and make huge chunks of the city private vehicle free. Just have shared roads with peds, bikes, delivery vehicles, and emergency vehicles. Nothing beats trains for medium and long distance transport efficiency and nothing beats peds and bikes for short distance transport density. Cars and their inefficient and expensive infrastructure can gently caress off.
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Jun 12, 2013 18:43
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Get off your high horse. I don't know where you live, might be a hellhole, but there's a place for cars in a healthy modal mix.
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Jun 12, 2013 18:53
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Baronjutter posted:So they'll have cargo subways too?? It has been done before, and was really rather useful: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Tunnel_Company These days most of the tunnels have been reused to carry communications cables or removed due to building of other underground tunnel systems such as for passenger service, but the entire concept is sound, particularly if someone was going to go whole hog and demolish everything at the surface for new build anyway.
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Jun 12, 2013 19:01
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Install Gentoo posted:It has been done before, and was really rather useful: There's been talk that, once the massive investment in renewing everything is finished, it might become feasible to use the London Underground for limited freight transport at night. Of course people would probably complain that they should use it for passengers first, and actually getting it out there efficiently would probably be very annoying without lots of investment, but it's an interesting thought. The obvious first step would be to resurrect the Mail Rail though... e: oh I see it's mentioned in the article. Also this is awesome: quote:The city was largely unaware of the nature of the tunneling, and the first 16 miles (26 km) of tunnel were excavated somewhat covertly, working from the basement of a saloon and carting away the spoil after midnight I wish people still took this proactive approach to rail nowadays! Jonnty fucked around with this message at 19:16 on Jun 12, 2013 |
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Jun 12, 2013 19:14
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How well does blood wash off of roads? Alternately, when I'm driving over maroon-stained asphalt, does it mean someone might have died there? 
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Jun 12, 2013 19:20
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 That is absolutely adorable.
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Jun 12, 2013 19:54
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Jonnty posted:There's been talk that, once the massive investment in renewing everything is finished, it might become feasible to use the London Underground for limited freight transport at night. Of course people would probably complain that they should use it for passengers first, and actually getting it out there efficiently would probably be very annoying without lots of investment, but it's an interesting thought. I think people are more likely to complain about the noise, if they live near the Tube.
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Jun 12, 2013 20:07
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Wouldn't underground cargo handling be quieter than trucks and poo poo?
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Jun 12, 2013 20:15
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I thought that congestion pricing was the modern version of "car-free" cities. It seems pretty effective in Europe, especially if they throttle it way down so that there's not much car traffic at all.
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Jun 12, 2013 20:51
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Federal court says highway sponsors must first study transit, impacts on suburban sprawl http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/kbenfield/federal_court_says_highway_spo.html This is a pretty major victory, so far.
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Jun 12, 2013 20:57
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Baronjutter posted:Wouldn't underground cargo handling be quieter than trucks and poo poo? As always it's inertia to change - if you live near a busy road you always have, but if the railway which is usually quiet at night suddenly becomes noisy, you don't really care that Mr. Busy Road can sleep slightly more soundly. The underground runs to and past midnight and starts up fairly early too, especially taking into account empty stock movements, so it's not like the qualitative nature of the noise would change that much. Plus traffic would probably be very light and concentrated in the mostly underground centre, so I'm not sure this would be THAT much of an issue. Put it this way: if you get to a stage where NIMBY's become your main problem, you're doing pretty bloody well considering.
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Jun 12, 2013 21:28
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Mandalay posted:How well does blood wash off of roads? Typically not. With blood, it's considered a biohazard and gets cleaned up immediately. Also, dried blood is brown. Sorry I've been so busy lately. Lots of work at work, lots of Animal Crossing at home. You guys are doing quite well keeping the discussion going, though 
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Jun 13, 2013 01:10
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DogGunn posted:Not true - a cyclist can get fined for speeding regardless of if they have some sort of speedo or not. For instance: DogGunn posted:Every state has this rule as it's part of the Australian Road Rules (which every state uses), but it's not enforced anywhere but NSW, and even then, almost never.  .
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Jun 13, 2013 01:46
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Cichlidae posted:Sorry I've been so busy lately. Lots of work at work, lots of Animal Crossing at home. You guys are doing quite well keeping the discussion going, though  Also, does that include moose? I heard that Sweden had quite the problem with moose fatalities back in the 70s. (This) Varance fucked around with this message at 02:32 on Jun 13, 2013 |
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Jun 13, 2013 02:13
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Install Gentoo posted:It has been done before, and was really rather useful: Couple those with high-capacity cargo bikes and you might actually have a solution. (I know one of the guys who started that company. They can carry about 500lbs on the back of one of those things. They have an electric assist, but they still use the pedals, and they are a whole heck of a lot quieter and safer than big trucks.) Koesj posted:Get off your high horse. I don't know where you live, might be a hellhole, but there's a place for cars in a healthy modal mix. Get off your high horse. This is total woolgathering -- nobody seriously believes that cars are going to be eliminated from the modal mix, but that isn't stopping you getting incredibly defensive. smackfu posted:I thought that congestion pricing was the modern version of "car-free" cities. It seems pretty effective in Europe, especially if they throttle it way down so that there's not much car traffic at all. Have you seen the traffic in daytime central London lately?
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Jun 13, 2013 03:43
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Mandalay posted:How well does blood wash off of roads? Red stains are generally transmission fluid or something similar.
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Jun 13, 2013 04:30
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Lead out in cuffs posted:Couple those with high-capacity cargo bikes and you might actually have a solution. (I know one of the guys who started that company. They can carry about 500lbs on the back of one of those things. They have an electric assist, but they still use the pedals, and they are a whole heck of a lot quieter and safer than big trucks.) To be fair at 500lbs you should not be comparing them to a big truck but a small car. I'm sure there is a niche for those and i see comparable vehicles on the road here. But it takes 10 of those to replace 1 medium delivery van in capacity. I am pretty sure that ammount of trips and labour involved in making those trips is not economical at all and would actually increase congestion in a busy city center.
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Jun 13, 2013 10:47
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Lead out in cuffs posted:Get off your high horse. This is total woolgathering -- nobody seriously believes that cars are going to be eliminated from the modal mix, but that isn't stopping you getting incredibly defensive. Sorry, didn't mean to get defensive! Cars' 'inefficient and expensive' infrastructure sometimes isn't, though. Transport solutions can be very context sensitive and if anything, some places aren't... burdened by the past mistakes this thread seems to love to dredge up. Also, freight trams have been tried in Amsterdam but they didn't get a positive cost/benefit ratio out of them. Digging tunnels for underground cargo handling... yeah if you had slave labor to both excavate and operate maybe.
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Jun 13, 2013 12:39
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Volkswagen uses freight streetcars for transport between two facilities in Dresden. It looks identical to what was used in Amsterdam. I guess the issue with streetcar cargo delivery is whether the deliveries are regular enough to warrant rail. In Dresden, the trams act as an extension of a conveyor belt from one place to another.
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Jun 13, 2013 15:01
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Lead out in cuffs posted:Have you seen the traffic in daytime central London lately? Is traffic bad? I imagine that there is more than one input into prices than "demand". I still think an increase in gas prices or electronic tolling is THE FUTURE because (driving) freedom isn't free. 
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Jun 13, 2013 17:28
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NihilismNow posted:To be fair at 500lbs you should not be comparing them to a big truck but a small car. I'm sure there is a niche for those and i see comparable vehicles on the road here. But it takes 10 of those to replace 1 medium delivery van in capacity. I am pretty sure that ammount of trips and labour involved in making those trips is not economical at all and would actually increase congestion in a busy city center. What I wonder about (rather than freight trams or underground freightways), is whether you couldn't just use old fashioned freight rail to a warehouse, so your final delivery vehicles only have a short (1-5km) trip to make. But yes, there is the issue of capacity. Apparently one of the aspects of the City of Vancouver's long-term transportation plan is more big trucks. Koesj posted:Sorry, didn't mean to get defensive! No worries.  Mandalay posted:Is traffic bad? I imagine that there is more than one input into prices than "demand". I still think an increase in gas prices or electronic tolling is THE FUTURE because (driving) freedom isn't free. When my wife and I visited last year, she insisted that we take a cab from Liverpool Street Station to our hotel near Earl's Court, rather than the Underground. The journey was about 7 miles, and took an hour. This was at 2 in the afternoon, so hardly peak time. For gently caress's sake, we've both lived in London before, and should have known better, but neither of us had taken a cab during the daytime before, and in the evening traffic flows smoothly enough that they work pretty well. For what it's worth I was sceptical of the cab idea before we even got in. Most of that traffic was delivery vans and cabs. I'm sure the congestion charge has helped somewhat, but London daytime traffic remains a mess.
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Jun 13, 2013 18:00
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Mandalay posted:I still think an increase in gas prices or electronic tolling is THE FUTURE because (driving) freedom isn't free. Good luck, driving is more than twice as expensive here by any metric and growth only leveled off after a shitload of people lost their jobs in the crisis. Lead out in cuffs posted:No worries. Can't help but feel that 'freight trams!' and other marginal solutions are just a sop though. Does anyone here honestly feel that there's a way out of the total path-dependency wrt automotive traffic?
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Jun 13, 2013 18:39
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Koesj posted:Good luck, driving is more than twice as expensive here by any metric and growth only leveled off after a shitload of people lost their jobs in the crisis. Drones!
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Jun 13, 2013 18:54
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Honestly, for that last mile problem, I think smaller cargo trains or trams to small localized cargo depots, then go the last little bit in electric delivery trucks. Underground cargo trains are a pipe dream unless we're living in megacities with 200 story skyscrapers or something like that, for most other cases there's still going to be roads and loading docks and places for the UPS driver to stop and bring his poo poo.
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Jun 13, 2013 19:54
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How would smaller trains/trams work? Eligible Rail networks which I'm familiar with in Europe are heavily utilized and couldn't cope with much more traffic. And if you'd have to add infrastructure, the last couple of miles (kilometers  ) are probably the hardest. Freight rail is great for bulk traffic and large shipments but both the time and money cost of transporting parceled/containerized goods over rail is probably insurmountable.
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Jun 13, 2013 20:58
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I think it would require a pretty drastic reimaginging of how a city works, to be fair. I think I actually read about an idea a while ago which is perhaps where I got the idea, the packages would be brought to the depot at night when traffic was light, and then the electric trucks would do the local deliveries during the day. So in that scheme you could have cargo trams on existing tram tracks. UPS is pretty good at sorting the hell out of packages. I bet you could do something where packages are brought to a central location (like the airport) and sorted into crates based on what their final delivery location would be, then those crates are taken to city depot and directly attached to the trucks and so no actual package handling happens at the local depot.
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Jun 13, 2013 21:34
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This reminds me of a short documentary I saw about a relatively young company in Brussels. Apparently, Brussels was designed for cars. For a small volume of cars. It can't cope with the current amount, so it horrible to drive through. It's not very bike-friendly either, but if you're a competent cyclist you can get through quite well. Anyway, this company is a very simple city delivery company. You can call them to get your package and to get it delivered to any other place in the city. According to the documentary, customers simply couldn't believe that it was possible at all to get a package to the other side of the city that fast. They thought they were getting pranked. Bikes can be real useful in congested cities. You can watch the documentary right here: https://vimeo.com/41982043 E: If you watch it in large, you can read the subtitles whenever someone is not speaking English. Edit 2: They also talk about how municipal traffic control (and politics) affects the gridlock problem. A previous mayor of Copenhagen is giving a bunch of very interesting suggestions to improve Brussels and similar cities. If you're interested in that kind of stuff, you might want to watch the documentary as well. Carbon dioxide fucked around with this message at 22:30 on Jun 13, 2013 |
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Jun 13, 2013 22:06
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Stumbled into this video today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GA-5KJS88AE A previously closed rail line was re-opened two years ago, the video covers the economic aspects of it, and also gives a brief tour of the construction work and how it also affected some road reconstruction. Also Scottish 
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Jun 13, 2013 22:47
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nielsm posted:Stumbled into this video today: And we're doing it again.
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Jun 13, 2013 23:06
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Incidentally, urban planning academic John Pucher is giving a talk about urban planning for increasing walking and cycling, tomorrow (Friday) evening in Vancouver at 7pm. It'll be webcast if anyone's interested in tuning in. http://www.sfu.ca/continuing-studies/events/2013/06/how-to-increase-cycling-and-walking.html
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Jun 14, 2013 07:37
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http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/safety/roundabouts/benefits.htm Roundabouts are good for you, USA!
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Jun 14, 2013 19:50
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Are there rules for how a utility should repave a road after they dig it up? The quality of the repaving seems to vary drastically. There's one spot where there are tire marks on the section of road they filled in.
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Jun 15, 2013 00:20
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Cichlidae hey, so thanks to work, I had to go down to Groton, and my GPS apparently hates your state, because I manged to find, roads that go nowhere/stop suddenly. (Ct route 11, ironically ConDot memorial highway, I thought you might get a kick out of it. I have a question, do you know why Rt 11 just seems to stop where it does, and why some of the internal CT routes seem to be covered in rust/roads that are borderline falling apart. Also, thanks again for the thread, because now that I've seen Ct from a driver's POV.. it feels like 1930. (not a bad thing, but still interesting to know).
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Jun 15, 2013 15:45
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mamosodiumku posted:Are there rules for how a utility should repave a road after they dig it up? The quality of the repaving seems to vary drastically. There's one spot where there are tire marks on the section of road they filled in. The contractor generally has a set of specifications that he is required to perform the work in accordance with - these outline the materials, compaction requirements, durability, etc. for the patching. If the utility patch is rutting, he probably didn't do it right. Report it to the entity that owns and maintains the road (State, County, local). If it's soon enough after the work was done, they may force the contractor to fix it at his own cost - otherwise they may just fix it themselves. If you're unsure what entity owns the road, I would report it to the higher one - they'll probably be best about telling you "no, this is a County road".
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Jun 15, 2013 15:56
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Ryand-Smith posted:Cichlidae hey, so thanks to work, I had to go down to Groton, and my GPS apparently hates your state, because I manged to find, roads that go nowhere/stop suddenly. (Ct route 11, ironically ConDot memorial highway, I thought you might get a kick out of it. The Route 11 project ran out of money back in 1972, and it's been sitting that way ever since. I'm pretty sure the Legislature named it after us as a cruel joke. We still don't have the cash to finish it; it'd take around a billion dollars. As for the patchy roads, drive through Rhode Island sometime. Route 165 looks like utter poo poo, 138 on the Island is awful, Route 1 used to feel like driving over railroad tracks every fifty feet...
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Jun 15, 2013 20:22
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So does the US have any good examples of urban planning? If not what would be a good example? In terms of both safety and minimzing environmental impact. I've often heard it said that roads up north in CT and New England in general are much worse than down in the south. Is that because of the colder temperatures, or is there a budgeting difference that leads to slower replacement?
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Jun 16, 2013 02:47
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December Octopodes posted:So does the US have any good examples of urban planning? If not what would be a good example? In terms of both safety and minimzing environmental impact. Its the weather mostly. Ice constantly freezing and thawing in the cracks damages the roads, while in the south, it barely ever freezes and it just isn't a problem.
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Jun 16, 2013 04:08
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On a similar note, I live on Prince Edward Island where roads are worse than I've ever seen in all of Canada. Potholes appear out of no where overnight, and a road a year old will be in the same condition as it was before the renewal. The excuse I hear is the soil is has a lot of red clay in it and washes out easier. How realistic is this? Could there be measures taken place to mitigate the soil conditions? Roadwork is at a point where you start to think everything is done at a minimum to keep the roadwork contractor busy, the owner of which happens to be a relative of transportation minister. At the same time, there are spring thaw weight restrictions that get put in place.
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Jun 16, 2013 04:34
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mamosodiumku posted:Are there rules for how a utility should repave a road after they dig it up? The quality of the repaving seems to vary drastically. There's one spot where there are tire marks on the section of road they filled in. No idea on rules, but the way it comes out really depends on the quality of the work. If they don't properly compact the soil while filling the hole in, it'll end up either concave or as a mound in the road depending on whether they decided to not put it all back in or not. If they didn't put it all back in, and/or didn't put the right materials in the right layers, it'll rut, sink, and generally turn into a mess... e: Those vibrating compactor sled things are awesome, I never used to see those being used years ago and most of the patches on the street I grew up on were bumpy as poo poo as a result. Now it seems like they're always used as the hole is being filled (put down a pile of dirt, pack it in, repeat as needed) and patches seem to come out a lot better.
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