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I am so annoyed. Minor rant: I drive my fiancee to work every day. The road her work is on has been scheduled to be repaved for a while, and they finally got around to it at the start of July. (Was supposed to start at the beginning of June, whatever.) They put up announcements at all the local businesses on that road informing them that milling and paving work would be going on from the 8th-12th - milling during the day on the 8th/9th, paving during the night of the 11th/12th. Fast forward to this week, and as of yesterday the road had been milled down for over a week (creating 4-5 inch 'lips' at the entrance to the road and at every single parking lot driveway that had to be carefully driven over) but not a scrap of fresh pavement had been put down. This morning, lo and behold - the road was paved! Hooray! A smooth ride was had, albeit with craptons of loose asphalt pinging off the bottom of my car. Then when I got home, I realized my tires were covered in large patches of tar and not-at-all-cured asphalt. Half a hour later of attempted scraping in 95 degree weather, I'm pretty pissed off and will be calling up my township. Paving isn't supposed to work like that, is it? Side note: Any suggestions for how to remove this crap from my tires? Google is telling me sketchy things like mayonnaise and gasoline.
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Jul 17, 2013 19:05
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Podima posted:Side note: Any suggestions for how to remove this crap from my tires? Google is telling me sketchy things like mayonnaise and gasoline. I'm pretty sure gasoline can be a solvent, so that's probably not crazy although you might be able to get the same effect with mineral spirits. That or just find an empty parking lot to hoon around in 
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Jul 17, 2013 19:22
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The tires are covered in it? Just drive the drat thing, it'll wear off. If the wheels or car itself are covered, that's another thing. Gasoline dissolves asphalt quite effectively. In fact, be very very careful not to drip or spill any on your driveway while using it to clean up the asphalt on the car, because it will melt the asphalt of your driveway and leave soft gooey spots that won't dry up, they'll just fall apart and leave pits in the driveway.
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Jul 17, 2013 20:30
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I found out today that my municipality has posted a map traffic numbers for of larger roads. Here's a small cut-out: The numbers are ADT for both directions (and the dots are thousands separators, not decimal points). I'm wondering about the 3-way intersection in the middle. How can the blue road have 6000 cars a day, while the other two numbers are (much) less than 6000 together? I very much doubt people are making 180 degree turns and going back. Technically there's a small road going North from the blue road (it's a medium gray line on the image), but it's a tiny single lane two-way (!) road and I very much doubt it supports even 100 cars a day. Is it just an effect of statistics / rounding? Or am I missing something obvious related to the fact that the count is for both directions? For reference, here's a Google Street View of the intersection, looking North.
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Jul 17, 2013 20:55
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The google map says there's a "Fuglevad Station" on that road segment, as part of a "Nærum Line". I imagine those people are going to the train station and returning later that day? Seems like the missing 800 or so car trips could be covered by that + anyone living on that segment on road.
Nintendo Kid fucked around with this message at 21:03 on Jul 17, 2013 |
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Jul 17, 2013 21:00
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Install Gentoo posted:The google map says there's a "Fuglevad Station" on that road segment, as part of a "Nærum Line". I imagine those people are going to the train station and returning later that day? It's a small local railway, there is no real parking space by the station. Locals would likely either walk or bike there to take the train, I don't think bikes count in these statistics. More likely, I think, is simply that the numbers might not have been measured during the same period. Edit: Actually it isn't entirely unreasonable that the small branch road could count several hundred cars a day, especially considering that the nature in the area is somewhat of an attraction. nielsm fucked around with this message at 21:10 on Jul 17, 2013 |
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Jul 17, 2013 21:06
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I hadn't thought about the traffic counts being made at different times, that would probably account for it. Except for 3-4 houses at the very west end, no-one actually live on the blue road (it's called Skovbrynet), so I don't think we get hundreds of daily cars there. There's a park to the south and an open air museum to the north. There's no parking on the small side road either, and I think (and hope) people would rather walk or bicycle on it, if they want to see the nature  . There's no street view of it, but here's a picture of the exit: https://ssl.panoramio.com/photo/3470575. Interestingly, there's street view inside the open air museum.
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Jul 17, 2013 21:27
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Podima posted:I am so annoyed. Minor rant:
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Jul 17, 2013 21:54
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Podima posted:I am so annoyed. Minor rant: You should probably call the township n matter what, just to tell them that they had their paving work done by literal clowns.
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Jul 17, 2013 21:55
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NFX posted:I found out today that my municipality has posted a map traffic numbers for of larger roads. Here's a small cut-out: Counts aren't taken at every point along a road. They're just an approximate, representative sample, taken once every few years, adjusted for seasonal variation, and rounded. Unless they're taken at the intersection, on the same day, they're not going to match up exactly. Heck, if they're within 10%, that's usually good enough for planning work. ----- For anyone in or around Connecticut, if you'd like to have a bigger say in the DOT's operations than I do, here is where you should do it: http://www.transformct.org/ Go make some suggestions or something, but don't dilly-dally, as time's running low. ----- I got to drive the Busway today and check out all the construction sites. There's a pretty big jumble, and a lot of progress has been made, as all the contractors are trying to get as much done as quickly as possible. Meanwhile, we are still constantly revising the plans, even stuff as basic as geometry.
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Jul 17, 2013 23:08
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Cichlidae posted:----- I am having much more fun than I should with this. Also I am extremely depressed at all the people from central CT trying to push a toll at the NY side of 84. 
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Jul 18, 2013 02:29
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If anybody from the Philadelphia area is reading this thread, it looks like you're going to be hearing all types of LOOT RAIL CRIME TRAIN  comments from folks in the near future. I am sorry.quote:Several residents expressed concern about a rail line bringing more "city people" into Upper Merion Township.
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Jul 20, 2013 07:46
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Ah yes the old "those people are gonna steal our tv's and then take the train home" meme. I remember when Atlanta's MARTA was trying to expand into gwinett county and that was the response.
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Jul 20, 2013 20:44
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Peanut President posted:Ah yes the old "those people are gonna steal our tv's and then take the train home" meme. I remember when Atlanta's MARTA was trying to expand into gwinett county and that was the response. After following LA's continuing efforts to make our subway and transit actually go somewhere, it seems that all opposition to plans seems to take this line of reasoning. Especially when they propose bringing subways to Santa Monica or Beverly Hills (think of the children!)
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Jul 20, 2013 21:12
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"My wife will be raped and mugged and you expect me to reasonable!" Dixit some guy talking to Mario Cuomo about the Forest Hill housing project.
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Jul 20, 2013 22:44
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So, one stupid thing has bothered me when reading this thread, and it's that it seems like you must build separate roads/paths for bicycles. What's stopping you from using the excicting sidewalks as a combined bicycle/pedestrian thingie (like we do here in Finland, see example), or is that already in use and I've got the wrong idea because the posts here just happened to be mostly about separate bike lanes? 
JointHorse fucked around with this message at 10:13 on Jul 21, 2013 |
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Jul 21, 2013 10:05
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JointHorse posted:So, one stupid thing has bothered me when reading this thread, and it's that it seems like you must build separate roads/paths for bicycles. What's stopping you from using the excicting sidewalks as a combined bicycle/pedestrian thingie (like we do here in Finland, see example), or is that already in use and I've got the wrong idea because the posts here just happened to be mostly about separate bike lanes? It seriously sucks, for both bikers and pedestrians, to use a combined path. Pedestrians have to watch out for sudden bikes, and bikers have to weave around the pedestrians. I'd rather share the road with cars than share the sidewalk with peds when I'm on bike. For myself, I'll want either grade-separated bike lane or none at all. A lane just marked with paint on either road or sidewalk is no better than no lane at all. Actually, a painted separate bike lane on the sidewalk level is just as bad as shared sidewalk. Please don't do that.
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Jul 21, 2013 10:31
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The reason why you shouldn't combine bike paths and sidewalks is explained here. Please read the explanation below the comic as well.
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Jul 21, 2013 11:28
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The corollary to this is that in the US, auto drivers have an existential hatred of cyclists and don't understand why they would need the road. Part of this is because we teach our children to bicycle on the sidewalks, which isn't as big a deal given how few pedestrians we have for them to hit, and because we'd rather have a bike-ped collision than have our children in the street. It's always dismaying when I hear friends have outbursts about how much they hate cyclists, in the same kind of spittle-froth tone that you'd hear a racist describe their minority of choice. 
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Jul 21, 2013 17:37
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Here in Holland it's actually illegal to cycle on the sidewalk for anyone over 8 years old. The penalty is something like 50 euros if they decide to catch you (which is more likely in the big cities, I guess).
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Jul 21, 2013 18:12
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I was clipped by a dude on a bike riding on the sidewalk the other day. A sidewalk next to a bike lane, on a not at all busy road... what the gently caress dude?? He just continued down the sidewalk parallel to the bike lane. In berlin though I saw many bike lanes as part of the sidewalk, seemed to work ok except when idiot tourists would not be paying attention and stray into the bike lane and get dinged and honked at by the bikes (sorry berlin!)
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Jul 21, 2013 21:24
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Okan170 posted:After following LA's continuing efforts to make our subway and transit actually go somewhere, it seems that all opposition to plans seems to take this line of reasoning. Especially when they propose bringing subways to Santa Monica or Beverly Hills (think of the children!) Yeah, because it totally didnt happen this last week.
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Jul 22, 2013 05:45
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What is the cost difference between this and a full tunnel?
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Jul 22, 2013 06:01
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sincx fucked around with this message at 06:32 on Mar 23, 2021 |
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Jul 22, 2013 07:32
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sincx posted:This is to be expected though. To an average motorist, a bicyclist is almost always an inconvenience. They often appear to slower the driver down tremendously. The benefit of bikes to motorists comes from congestion reduction on a city-wide scale, which is not visible from an individual driver's point of view. This is only when you look at commuting cyclists. I live in a suburban area with heavily travelled two lane sub-par roads that are also frequently traveled by exercising bicyclists (http://goo.gl/maps/bSGmD). This past Saturday, I tried to make a 20 minute trip, it took closer to half an hour because I had to play dodge the cyclists who swerve around every time they turn their head while also avoiding potholes and other cars trying to get past the cyclists (some riding 2 abreast uphill). I don't have a problem with people who are obviously riding their bike to get to work, or on some form of errand. They're usually much more considerate of vehicles and work harder to stay out of the way. It's the wannabe Lance Armstrongs that dress up in their spandex every weekend and go out running stopsigns and blocking roads that cause the anger to start forming. On a semi related note, what act of god would it take to get roads on county lines stripped and the roadbed improved before them being repaved? Some of the roads here they're just dumping asphalt on when it gets really bad, and it's just making the situation even worse.
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Jul 22, 2013 12:11
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mamosodiumku posted:What is the cost difference between this and a full tunnel? That would be ball-shrinkingly terrifying to drive through when it has a snow load, and a full tunnel would not?
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Jul 22, 2013 12:29
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grnberet2b posted:I don't have a problem with people who are obviously riding their bike to get to work, or on some form of errand. They're usually much more considerate of vehicles and work harder to stay out of the way. It's the wannabe Lance Armstrongs that dress up in their spandex every weekend and go out running stopsigns and blocking roads that cause the anger to start forming. The cars on the road are not all commuters or people running errands either, that doesn't mean they aren't allowed to be there. But if there were good bike paths, that would get them off the roads mostly
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Jul 22, 2013 16:08
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mamosodiumku posted:What is the cost difference between this and a full tunnel? Not a clue. We don't have anything remotely like that in Connecticut. grnberet2b posted:On a semi related note, what act of god would it take to get roads on county lines stripped and the roadbed improved before them being repaved? Some of the roads here they're just dumping asphalt on when it gets really bad, and it's just making the situation even worse. It really depends on how competent your local government is. We do periodic full-depth resurfacing here in CT, but I know in RI, many of the roads just kept getting potholes and frost heaves, and the sub-base was never redone. That was partially because of corruption, of course.
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Jul 23, 2013 01:48
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Ron Pauls Friend posted:Yeah, because it totally didnt happen this last week. What happened now?
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Jul 23, 2013 02:04
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mamosodiumku posted:What is the cost difference between this and a full tunnel? They're not really comparable. A snow shed's purpose is merely to protect a road from avalanches while a tunnel's purpose is to go through something you can't easily go around. Here's a discussion of a local project. Washington state decided that building bridges rather than a snowshed would save $37M in maintenance and operational costs over the lifetime of the structure. The actual construction costs are tricky to compare due to the way that they were determined. There are some significant rail tunnels under the Cascades, but those have as much to do with minimizing grades as anything else.
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Jul 23, 2013 03:33
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So after living in santa clara county for a while I can't help but notice that our freeways are a nightmare but our expressways are actually not at all stressful to drive on. Which makes me wonder: Is there a way you can implement controlled merging on an interstate without jeopardizing your federal funding? Like it seems like the most obvious way to solve these merging issues would be to install traffic lights that stay off until the road becomes congested. Ramp meters for onramps are allowed but to really solve the problem you would also need meters on the freeway itself.
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Jul 23, 2013 09:16
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Also, look at the strip of US 101 between the interchange with CA 85 and the dumbarton bridge. For context: there are a LOT of employers along this strip (lockheed martin, NASA, the military, facebook, stanford university, the list goes on) and many of their workers come from far away in every direction, the traffic jam in this area fucks up rush hour for all of santa clara and san mateo counties. I'm not a traffic engineer, but it seems like a dumb idea that the 85-101 merge is immediately followed by FOUR offramps in the space of one mile. I can see they fixed the shoreline blvd exit to make this a bit less painful, but if you look at google's traffic data that merge backs traffic up down 85 and 101 for quite a distance. Central Expressway is under-utilized, not only because it comes to an unceremonious end at san antonio rd, but also because there's no easy way to get onto it from northbound 85 (look at that interchange, isn't it ridiculous?) 101 has perfectly good frontage roads from university avenue all the way to san antonio, but doesn't use them as service roads, as I would assume they would be used. It really seems like the freeways in this area were designed in an era when people thought "Free-flowing is awesome! No more traffic lights! loop ramps for everyone!", before they realized that when traffic gets congested, most people would rather deal with traffic lights than people who don't know how to merge. Where I come from (long island) that whole strip of 101 would just have service roads alongside it that hit all of those roads at regular intersections.
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Jul 23, 2013 09:31
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That reminds me. Stanford had that rewards program for off peak commuting. http://transportation.stanford.edu/alt_transportation/capri.shtml
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Jul 24, 2013 01:50
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Socket Ryanist posted:So after living in santa clara county for a while I can't help but notice that our freeways are a nightmare but our expressways are actually not at all stressful to drive on. I would not put signals on freeways. You open yourself up to the risk of high speed rear-end collisions, and frequent ones, at that. Ramp metering is decent, but it can only do so much. It'll also tend to push traffic onto local roads, which will get a lot of pushback from those communities. If you're not going to do geometric improvements to reduce bottlenecks (removing those closely spaced ramps and putting in frontage roads, for example), you will need to do demand management. There are a few ways to do that. Reducing overall demand is one, asking people to cut back on trips. When gas prices go up, this happens by itself. Unfortunately, that mostly cuts down on off-peak travel, as people aren't going to stop commuting to work. Another way is to get people over to higher occupancy, whether it's carpools or buses. This is a bit trickier, but it can be done. A third way is spreading out those peaks by encouraging businesses to adopt more flexible starting and ending times. Number four is shifting people over to other modes, and that's the hardest way, because Americans are loth to leave their cars behind. It also requires people to move en masse, or a tremendous amount of money to be spent for new infrastructure (light rail, for example.)
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Jul 28, 2013 14:33
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misguided rage posted:As less than three mentioned, 4th avenue a couple blocks down is a much larger road and is where that traffic is meant to be going. Pretty sure those smaller side streets have traffic calming measures in place already, traffic spilling over into them shouldn't be an issue. Point Grey Road was not intended to carry that much traffic and right now it's absolutely terrible to travel along it by any means; even if you never had a single bike on that road it would still be awful with the way it's set up now. Gah -- I've been travelling, so haven't been checking this thread. For reference, all of the planning documents for the project are online here. In terms of traffic re-routing, they have done some analysis, which can be found in this document. To summarise what they said, the traffic would be re-routed to neighbouring arterials, which would bring their traffic flow to levels similar to arterials elsewhere in the city. Interestingly, they made a decision not to try to traffic calm Cornwall Avenue itself (at least until we have real rapid transit in the area), as this would divert too much traffic. That's a little sad, as Cornwall is where the majority of the accidents are happening (and is likely what Baronjutter mainly experienced). Anyway, the improvements to the Burrard Street offramp, coupled with setting up York Avenue as a bike route, should ease that significantly. Cichlidae posted:Bike boulevards are great and all, but putting a cul-de-sac in the middle of a through street is going to severely increase your response times from emergency providers. The typical solution in these kinds of situations (in Vancouver) seems to be to install short plastic bollards that would stop the average driver but could easily pass under a fire truck. For example: this. Although infrastructure more similar to what they're proposing on Point Grey seems not to have that provision (e.g. this), that second example is on a less busy street, and in a less dense area, so I guess it makes sense to completely close it to emergency vehicles. I suspect that along Point Grey they would go with the plastic bollard solution. grover posted:Would it not be better to turn 1st or 2nd ave into one-way only with a bike lane than to divert all the point grey road traffic onto them? Seems like it's the bikes causing all the problems; remove the bikes, remove the problem. No, it would not. Both 1st and 2nd are discontinuous between Balsam and Alma. There is an existing bike route along 3rd, but to get to this from the seaside area around Cornwall requires going up a steep hill along Trafalgar. There really is no other option than Point Grey. sincx posted:Well, democracies do lead to the tyranny of the majority, and there's a lot more drivers than cyclists. We'll see, though. Vancouver is known for being the North American city that refused to build a freeway through its downtown core back in the 1960s when the car was king in urban planning. I think a lot of people realise that expansion of car mode share is not the future. ================= As an aside, and to update everyone on this particular issue, the council meeting to decide on this is in progress. It started last Tuesday, with more than 200 speakers registered, each allocated 5 minutes. They'll be reconvening for the fourth time tomorrow, although I think they're getting close to the 200 mark, so that may be the last. I haven't followed too much of it (the 40 or so hours of meeting can all be viewed online at that link  ), but reports seem to suggest that it's a mix of people speaking for and against.
Lead out in cuffs fucked around with this message at 01:47 on Jul 29, 2013 |
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Jul 29, 2013 01:30
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There's a plan to develop this plot of land in Stamford. http://goo.gl/maps/L9XRO Setting aside the political fuckery (office building on land zoned for maritime use, the property manager selling the land without telling the owners of the boat yard that was there that it was for sale, claiming it's in the public interest despite overwhelming opposition, etc,) and construction concerns (waiving flood plain restrictions as long as they build retaining walls,) doesn't that seem like an awful place to put an office building with a 3000 car garage?
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Jul 29, 2013 16:33
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GWBBQ posted:doesn't that seem like an awful place to put an office building with a 3000 car garage? Kinda. Guess they're gonna have to squeeze all that traffic through Washington Bvd.
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Jul 29, 2013 22:05
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3000 spots in the garage? That's going to be a massive building. They expecting like 10,000 people to work there or something?
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Jul 29, 2013 22:10
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Baronjutter posted:3000 spots in the garage? That's going to be a massive building. They expecting like 10,000 people to work there or something? "Smith now says she’s since been persuaded otherwise, after seeing actual plans for the eight-story, nearly million-square foot building. They are certainly elaborate. Parking for 3,000 cars will be underground. The office complex itself consists of two linear buildings, joined by bridges and paths across exterior courtyards. A helipad, recreational barge, and public access walkway along the water are all planned. And, the land will be raised as much as 15 feet higher above the flood zone." http://www.theatlanticcities.com/politics/2013/02/building-multimillion-dollar-project-connecticuts-waterfront-really-such-good-idea/4749/
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Jul 29, 2013 22:16
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Thought you guys would like this: The history and future of highways... as seen in 1958 by Walt Disney: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0q_oP9TPD4
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Jul 30, 2013 01:49
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