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Or just sheer incompetence on the construction crew's part. This has happened more than once over here: 
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Nov 25, 2013 13:57
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Jeoh posted:Or just sheer incompetence on the construction crew's part. This has happened more than once over here: Lamp posts belong to a utility, though, surely coordinating with them is the responsibility of the traffic engineering office, not the road crew.
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Nov 25, 2013 14:28
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Volmarias posted:I have the feeling that this is "insert square peg into round hole" politics, where bicycle lanes are now mandated for some reason, but there's no place to put them, so this will have to make do. I doubt an engineer had a hand in this, unless it was one particular finger responding to the request. Yeah, I suspect the councils needed so many KM of lanes to meet a standard.
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Nov 25, 2013 19:40
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Hippie Hedgehog posted:Lamp posts belong to a utility, though, surely coordinating with them is the responsibility of the traffic engineering office, not the road crew. Actually in the Netherlands they are owned by the municipality. Since the municipality is also responsible for planning that parking the blame is completely on the municipal traffic engineering office (or construction crews, in which case i assume they will be fixing it for free). My guess is a combination of wanting to boast X miles of bicycle path and dividing the work up among too many crews/subcontractors with weak central coordination. So one day they finished one of those tracks and it was fine, then the next contractor came along and put bollard/a fence in the middle of it because hey that is what the work order says. NihilismNow fucked around with this message at 20:03 on Nov 25, 2013 |
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Nov 25, 2013 19:59
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Yeah my old boss and I facilitated a 'clear the air' session for a 75k pop Dutch municipal traffic office once (a decent enough size), and they had less than 10 people for their work on every road, greenery, and waterway project in the entire area. Local governments here have come under all kinds of strains personnel-wise over the last three decades, through cost-cutting and 'efficiency' measures, I imagine it's no different in other places where the neoliberal consensus got a hold over the narrative of wastefulness.
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Nov 25, 2013 20:12
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The Atlantic has some nifty GPS traces of various intersections, courtesy of OSM/Mapbox.
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Nov 26, 2013 05:56
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phongn posted:The Atlantic has some nifty GPS traces of various intersections, courtesy of OSM/Mapbox. That's freakin' amazing! I love how the Place de l'Etoile still looks like a total mess.
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Nov 26, 2013 13:28
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phongn posted:The Atlantic has some nifty GPS traces of various intersections, courtesy of OSM/Mapbox. Wow, makes my commute (past O'Hare, 4th pic in the article) look like a work of art!
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Nov 26, 2013 15:32
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So, I got to drive through this last weekend: http://goo.gl/maps/teIpD What's going on here? It seems like they're adding weaving and two extra intersections where they don't need them.
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Nov 29, 2013 14:19
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Very likely there used to be a toll booth in between where the ramps enter and exit. The Kentucky parkways were all built as toll roads with the tolls being removed when the original bonds were paid off.
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Nov 29, 2013 14:44
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Driving around southwest Florida is always a change from New England. Traffic engineers must love having ask these grids and huge right of ways
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Nov 29, 2013 15:13
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Dominus Vobiscum posted:Very likely there used to be a toll booth in between where the ramps enter and exit. The Kentucky parkways were all built as toll roads with the tolls being removed when the original bonds were paid off. Wait, that actually happened somewhere? I mean they say that all the time, but I always figured there would be some Hollywood-style accounting in play from there on out to make sure the toll booths live forever.
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Nov 29, 2013 17:39
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wolrah posted:Wait, that actually happened somewhere? I mean they say that all the time, but I always figured there would be some Hollywood-style accounting in play from there on out to make sure the toll booths live forever. CT used to have tolls too - can't direct link from my phone, but check out the Tolls section of this page: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connecticut_Turnpike
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Nov 29, 2013 18:28
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Yeah we(CT) got rid of them after there was some terrible accident at one of the toll booth. There's been some debate about bringing them back since we're cash strapped and the surrounding states collect tolls. It's unsurprisingly not a popular idea though.
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Nov 29, 2013 20:05
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Amused to Death posted:Yeah we(CT) got rid of them after there was some terrible accident at one of the toll booth. There's been some debate about bringing them back since we're cash strapped and the surrounding states collect tolls. It's unsurprisingly not a popular idea though. Popularity has never stopped a politician from supporting rent seeking before, why should it now?
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Nov 29, 2013 20:27
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Because toll booths are highly visible and get people riled up unlike say a .35% increase in the sales tax which people read about in a news article, get mad, then forget about has it just gets submerged into a receipt somewhere.
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Nov 29, 2013 21:17
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Amused to Death posted:Because toll booths are highly visible and get people riled up unlike say a .35% increase in the sales tax which people read about in a news article, get mad, then forget about has it just gets submerged into a receipt somewhere. And then they get elected anyway, since Rob Ford had taught us that people really just care about the rhetoric and the little letter next to someone's name on TV, and that you can get a sandwich elected if its speechwriters and advertisers use the right code words.
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Nov 29, 2013 21:51
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Some of the traffic lights here (sw Florida) have blue leds hanging below them. Not every light, and not even every signal at a set of lights. Any idea what they are? Looks like they're on mainly during a red.
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Nov 29, 2013 23:29
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Elendil004 posted:Some of the traffic lights here (sw Florida) have blue leds hanging below them. Not every light, and not even every signal at a set of lights. Any idea what they are? Looks like they're on mainly during a red. Those are "rat lights" which are used so cops sitting at an intersection can tell if someone ran a red light. They're all over Florida. They come on depending on which leg of the intersection has the red signal.
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Nov 30, 2013 01:23
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Dominus Vobiscum posted:Those are "rat lights" which are used so cops sitting at an intersection can tell if someone ran a red light. They're all over Florida. They come on depending on which leg of the intersection has the red signal. To expand on this: Since traffic confirmation/red-signal enforcement lights aren't considered traffic control fixtures, the MUTCD doesn't apply and colors/placement have no standardization. Most Florida rats are blue and mounted above the signal, though Tampa Bay counties use white below-signal aspects for their TCLs. Some areas mount them on the back of signal heads or inbetween signals on mast arms. There are a few red-colored rat lights, but those are very rare. Also, most rat light intersections also have red light cameras now. It's even harder to dispute a picture if the rat is visible. Varance fucked around with this message at 06:57 on Nov 30, 2013 |
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Nov 30, 2013 03:35
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My new job begins in a week. I'm really excited, but I'm going to miss all my insider information, and I'll have to be a bit more careful about what I say in here. A quick Google search shows that this thread has spread far and wide across the Internet. That's awesome, and I'm glad I could help so many people, but it also makes me glad to be starting a new job! I don't have to worry anymore about my bosses finding out what I do after work. Any retrospective questions about my time at the DOT?
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Dec 1, 2013 18:15
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Cichlidae posted:My new job begins in a week. I'm really excited, but I'm going to miss all my insider information, and I'll have to be a bit more careful about what I say in here. A quick Google search shows that this thread has spread far and wide across the Internet. That's awesome, and I'm glad I could help so many people, but it also makes me glad to be starting a new job! I don't have to worry anymore about my bosses finding out what I do after work. Where is your new job?
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Dec 1, 2013 19:06
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Volmarias posted:Where is your new job? Still in Connecticut.
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Dec 1, 2013 20:23
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Still doing something transport related?
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Dec 2, 2013 07:23
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Cichlidae posted:Any retrospective questions about my time at the DOT? Are there any stories you wanted to share that you now can, because you're (or you will be) no longer an employee of the DOT?
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Dec 2, 2013 10:24
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Good luck with the new job. Going to miss all your field reports from around the state.
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Dec 2, 2013 11:25
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Baronjutter posted:Still doing something transport related? Hell yes I am - just in a much more specific area of the field. I'll probably have a lot fewer stories to tell, unfortunately, but them's the breaks. Grundulum posted:Are there any stories you wanted to share that you now can, because you're (or you will be) no longer an employee of the DOT? I can tell you that just about everyone at the DOT is crazy. Some of them, you can tell just by looking at them: nervous twitching, totally baffling attire, or they just won't make eye contact. They're fine, because everyone knows they're not right. They often make really good engineers since they're so withdrawn and detail-oriented. But anyone you think is mentally fit is REALLY goddamn crazy; you just have to get to know them better for it to become apparent. One of my closest friends and coworkers thinks that telephones are literally magical and that every minor breach of the legal code should be punished by summary execution. We had a secretary who was so hopped up on something that she freaked out and undressed in the bathroom stall. There's a guy who seems pretty nice, but there's a big sheet of plywood mounted to the back of his Corolla that says "YOU WILL DIE." There's the maintenance worker who stalks his teenage daughter's friends every morning in the state truck. I don't know if it's a 'state employment' thing or an 'engineers in general' thing, but the more sane people tend to leave as soon as they get the chance. Consequently, the older engineers are concentrated insanity. porkfriedrice posted:Good luck with the new job. Going to miss all your field reports from around the state. Yeah, me too. That's probably what I'll miss most about this job.
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Dec 3, 2013 00:00
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Will you still love make red light?
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Dec 3, 2013 00:09
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Jeoh posted:Will you still love make red light? ALWAYS.
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Dec 3, 2013 01:39
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So if everyone had a crazy quirk, what was yours? 
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Dec 3, 2013 15:05
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Cichlidae posted:I can tell you that just about everyone at the DOT is crazy. Some of them, you can tell just by looking at them: nervous twitching, totally baffling attire, or they just won't make eye contact. They're fine, because everyone knows they're not right. They often make really good engineers since they're so withdrawn and detail-oriented. Probably state employment thing. DOT is on an entirely other level when it comes to baffling plan commentary and obtuse and pointless requirements.
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Dec 3, 2013 15:57
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Opals25 posted:So if everyone had a crazy quirk, what was yours? I'm the guy who walked around the building with a diving weight belt on in order to get mad swole thighs.
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Dec 3, 2013 22:40
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Cichlidae, does that appear to be ghost ramps for a stack interchange here? https://maps.google.com/?ll=39.834015,-104.747772&spn=0.009821,0.016394&t=h&z=16
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Dec 4, 2013 05:20
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will_colorado posted:Cichlidae, does that appear to be ghost ramps for a stack interchange here? I think those two "extra" ramps inside are added so that you can separate the weaving movements from the southbound 470 traffic. You'll notice that you can actually make the weave from the west side of the cloverleaf to/from southbound 470. Edit: Ditto for those internal ramps on EB Pena
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Dec 4, 2013 05:29
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I think it's the groundworks which we're supposed to be looking at. And yes it looks like they had an upgrade to a stack in mind.
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Dec 4, 2013 05:37
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Koesj posted:I think it's the groundworks which we're supposed to be looking at. And yes it looks like they had an upgrade to a stack in mind. Certainly seems that way. Otherwise, they'd have had no reason to split the C/D ramps from the mainline like that.
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Dec 4, 2013 13:06
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 http://goo.gl/maps/AB0vk Encountered this intersection a little while back. I posted a similar situation a few weeks ago, but I had to share this one since it was in a much more heavily used intersection. It seems like this approach to turn lanes has to be in some guidebook for the area since this is in a different city than the last intersection I posted (though only a few miles away.) It seems like doing it that way might save a little space on the east-west street, but I'm not sure that's worth having drivers deal with having cars on both sides of them going the other direction. Or is this a radical new innvoation the rest of the world hasn't caught on to yet? Here's a top-down view: 
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Dec 4, 2013 17:12
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Woah I've never seen anything like that before.
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Dec 4, 2013 17:46
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I take it people don't pull halfway into the intersection before turning left there, otherwise that would completely block the side street left turns.
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Dec 5, 2013 03:11
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Welp, I'm all settled in my new job. The benefits are lousy, but the pay's good, so I guess I'll make do. I guess I can share with you one of the things I've never been able to figure out: in the Green Book, they say that, on a freeway, you should be able to see the other travel direction from time to time. Like, if you're going northbound, there have to be regular breaks in the trees or narrowing of the median so you can catch a glimpse of southbound cars. I don't know why that's the case. I think they say it's reassuring, but honestly, I don't see anything wrong with the alternative. Ideas?
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Dec 10, 2013 23:23
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