Cichlidae posted:

It doesn't help that a significant proportion of the public sees road paving as a waste of money and would rather drive over potholes than raise the gas tax by a couple cents per gallon.

Nibble posted:

I'm going to assume that MA's Poor 2% of roads are entirely in the Worcester area.


I just learn to dodge the potholes and torn-up spots around here
I actually get confused when they fill them in, since I suddenly find myself veering a bit for no reason.

Also, when you get used to them being around, you hardly notice them, yet you do notice the construction crews out there fixing them.
Driving over minor bumps/potholes: ever-so-slight annoyance
That time I was stuck waiting 5+ minutes because they were repaving a part of 22: annoying!

Cichlidae posted:

We haven't had the money to build new freeways in years, because nearly everything we have is going into maintenance and paying off debt.

golfem posted:

The roads in Minnesota are easily some of the worst. Its more of a frogger game dodging the potholes in this state.

Cichlidae posted:

The cities are designated by AASHTO in a quasi-official manner. They have to be major destinations and well known countrywide, but there are no quantitative criteria.

ijustam posted:

What do you think about this (if it's true) ?

http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/dicn0/spill_your_employers_secrets_herein_ie_things_the/c10fdo6

theflyingexecutive posted:

The point I was really making is that nobody would trust [s]drive by wire[/i] automatic navigation cars, no insurance company would insure a company that made them, and no manufacturer would be able to make a completely foolproof system. The ridiculous mental hurdles you have to go through are solely because Americans are so infatuated with cars. Just take a look at car commercials: a single car on a curving road with no other traffic on a beautiful day, a situation that would almost never happen. The exaggerated feeling of freedom that cars give people means that our alternative medium-distance transportation infrastructure (rail, light rail, buses, hell, even carpooling) falls into disuse and people like Cichlidae have to figure out how to crunch every last modicum of efficiency from infrastructure that was planned out half a century ago to accommodate ever-increasing demand because of a stigma surrounding public transportation. Only when car ownership becomes so infeasible as to necessitate expanding higher-capacity transportation do people actually call for it, but by then there's no money, space, or resources to make it happen.

edit: Sorry, I guess I mean automatic navigation

kefkafloyd posted:

I don't see why it wouldn't work in theory, but I don't think you can mix this type of traffic with our current unpredictable system. At that point, you're better off building your standard isolated light rail/subway/tram system. I don't see why you couldn't automate the trackless trollies that run around Cambridge and Watertown, but they go through busy city streets. Think of the chaos they'd have to deal with.

Now, if all these things had electric motors powering every wheel with a kind of advanced brake system and some way to eliminate most of the steering system... you could do this on a normal car.

Cichlidae posted:

Neutrino answered this probably better than I could, but I have a bit to add. Freeways predate the Federal Highway Act by a couple decades, especially in heavily urbanized areas like the Northeast Corridor. Suburbs were already prevalent up here, though they were mostly clustered around streetcar lines. I believe, in the 50s, those streetcar lines were already being replaced with bus lines courtesy of GM. Also keep in mind that a large portion of the Interstates here were actually built before the Highway Act and designated as Interstate later.

So it wasn't completely dependent on the Interstates, at least not in urbanized areas. I'd wager that more rural areas, like Arizona and southern California, would be much less dense than they turned out to be.

Neutrino posted:

The worst potholes I've ever seen in my life were in Minneapolis on the interstate.

GWBBQ posted:

Is traffic light enough there that it's not a problem for someone's driveway to be in an intersection?

I found something under 100k! Only $69,000 for this lovely 45x200 foot piece of vacant lot

Sometimes I hate living in Connecticut, there are houses that rent for $35k a month before taxes.

quote:

This is a vacant land home. It is located at 12 CHESTNUT ST FAIRFIELD , Connecticut. The nearest schools are PUBLIC RECORD, PUBLIC RECORD and PUBLIC RECORD.

Cichlidae posted:

It was absolutely a deliberate move, specifically by General Motors and Al Sloan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_American_streetcar_scandal

"GM was found guilty of violating anti-trust laws, but the penalties imposed were nugatory, even for the time: a $5,000 fine for the company and $1 fines for each convicted executive."

Crackpipe posted:

I didn't forget! Los Angeles and the Automobile: The Making of the Modern City


Boston has an library devoted entirely to mass transit. It's open to the public 5 days a week, and very few people know it's there.

less than three posted:

Yeah!

When I visited New York, I didn't end up visiting any of the touristy stuff (Statue of Liberty, Empire State, etc.) but gently caress I didn't miss the chance to go to the transit museum.

1/4 of the photos from my trip are in that museum.

noblergt posted:

When I visited New york I'm pretty sure the museum was in Brooklyn!

nm posted:

You don't have to go out and buy a bunch of trains. You don't need to hire drivers and mechanics for different vehicles. And they're more flexible, you don't have the grade restrictions (which is why SF uses busses pretty much only) and the bus can leave the busway.
I prefer trains, but the buses have merits.

Silver95280 posted:

Has anybody heard of an Offset Single Point Interchange? It's basically a diamond/SPUI jammed onto one side of the freeway. Minnesota's getting its first, but I've never seen one anywhere else.

Skyworks posted:

At one point or another we all wake up and understand that people who make your commute easier are actually worthwhile.

http://www.southmetroconnect.com.au/60100953-215J-RD-SKT-0010%20Layout-5Mb.pdf?id=160

Right there... That little one, yeah. That is Australia's first Diverging Diamond Interchange... We have the money and we have the ability come over for a couple of years and sell it.

gently caress off to Europe later, convince pensioners that that it is safe for them to drive on the wrong side (right, heathens) just for a little bit. You could even be the next Minister for Transport!

E: Realising, of course that that sinuous (because it encourages you to slow down) wonder of 60's planning is that *holds fingers together slightly apart* close to happening... You need to come here, mate.

E: Also know that that thing is going to continue east then turn north as per the 1960's plan in several more stages. Realise that being a horrible socialist shithole we payed people out for this. The people who are bitching now are the people who picked this stuff up cheap and provided political pressure to try to stop it. Feel free to level anything they have put there.

The Environmental impact report is back and it says " No issues". It also says: "Ignore the people in neighboring suburbs who brought cheap knowing that this poo poo was going in and have now become conservationists." I would suggest a three story high highway that is as noisy as gently caress and has minimal environmental impact. They brought under the flight line of the airport with the highest flight movement in the southern hemisphere, kill them with highway noise.

I sound as bitter as gently caress... If you buy cheap, cheap because you are under the southern hemispheres busiest flight line and are going to be next to a loving highway, and you knew it because they legally have to tell you this you think...

I am suddenly a conservationist for the wanky bullshit treefrog

NihilismNow posted:

I don't get where you get rage from. I'm a bicyclist myself. Most bicyclist don't give a gently caress about traffic laws and will do illegal things all the time (so do pedestrians). It's good to train drivers to expect this.

edit: I explained why above, the car driver has more responsibility because he is more capable of doing damage and a colission is less likely to damage him.

Jasper Tin Neck posted:

Have another one of my graphs!*

Most of you probably already know that transportation demand tends to be pretty cyclical with peaks during the morning and evening rush hours when people go to and come from work. What might come as a surprise is that about 40% of all traffic is leisure-related. The convenience of a given mode of transportation during our free time is usually what determines what mode of transport we favour. If the trains only ran during rush hour, most people with a social life would say: "Screw it, I'm getting a car/motorcycle/scooter!" And when people have made such an investment, they tend to use their vehicle when going to work too. Hence it often pays off to run public transit seemingly in excess of demand during slow hours.

In addition to this, the reason why cities tend to run a seemingly excessive train fleet during slow hours is that taking trains or individual carriages offline is a fairly laborious process which requires exiting the mainline and entering a depot. Since labour costs are a fairly large part of the operating costs of any western transportation system, you want to avoid unnecessary entry/exit operations, especially during the day when slow hours only last some 5-6 h anyway. Running a constant number of vehicle during the day also makes personnel rostering much easier.
*_{(for educational purposes only)}

This is perfectly true. It's even been shown that (contrary to what people will say if asked) for the average full-time employed person, the cost of tickets is a fairly insignificant factor in deciding whether to use public transport or not. Safety, comfort, reliability, availability of route and schedule information, shelter facilities and many more have a far larger impact on transportation decisions than fare prices.

Unfortunately some cities just aren't built to operate a good mass transit system because of the way they are designed, no matter how nice the facilities. Usually bus stops are assumed to have a catchment radius of 300m, while train stations have a catchment radius of 600-1000m. If there aren't enough homes, businesses or entertainment venues within that radius to provide an adequate ridership, it doesn't make sense economically to operate mass transit, no matter how bad traffic gets. Park-and-ride schemes might offer a solution to this problem, but the evidence of their efficiency is still inconclusive.

KozmoNaut posted:

Getting stuck in erratic stop-and-go traffic can really sour you, too.

Jasper Tin Neck posted:

Add to that the fact that train stations tend to have better shelters and facilities than bus stops and that air conditioning is more reliable on trains and you already have a pretty good list of reasons why people rather ride the train. But like I said, these are pretty difficult to model.

Mandalay posted:

Would you elaborate? Irvine regularly makes Top Suburban Suburbias in America lists (e.g. http://finance.yahoo.com/real-estate/article/113529/americas-best-cities-2011-businessweek).

Cichlidae posted:

That's exactly the question, and if the decision is up to me, I wouldn't implement congestion pricing. I'd rather pump up mass transit so everyone benefits. Letting single drivers pay to use the HOV lane will make its level of service worse for carpoolers and transit.

In other news, our state banned weathering steel guiderail today. Would you like to see some photos that explain why?

CGameProgrammer posted:

Then there's this.

Cichlidae posted:

I believe the best hope to reduce distracted driving is to create a social stigma.

Chaos Motor posted:

You can make those arguments in court without special legislation. I've nearly had my life taken from me by gross negligence simply from another driver not checking their mirror when changing lanes or merging a hundred million times, I don't see why "texting" is a different class of negligence than any other "not paying attention" behavior. Whether they are texting or picking their nose isn't the point.

less than three posted:

We even have a server to play on!

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3434247

nielsm posted:

I'll mention Simutrans again, it's heavily inspired by Transport Tycoon but still a quite different game. I suppose it is somewhat comparable to CiM in that everything has a set destination and they will make transfers to get there.
Its weakness would be that it doesn't model pedestrians, and private cars are rather limited. It also works at a macro scale.

Actually, the best game I can think of where working with traffic flow is a core element is SimTower.

Volmarias posted:

On the subject of traffic flow, is there a good game on the subject? I've got "Cities in Motion," but it really feels like it ought to be called "Unprofitable Mass Transit Systems blocking Traffic Because Drivers are Dummies"

Airconswitch posted:

Millstone posted:

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=a52_1329075692

skaboomizzy posted:

Some months ago I talked about my nephew with Asperger's who was fixated on highways and intersections. Someone here suggested Transportation Tycoon for him to play. My sister got it for him and he LOVES it. So thank you, SA Forums!

Cichlidae posted:

First off, you definitely want a concrete curb, not asphalt. Asphalt will get pulverized immediately. A chunk of concrete pavement is a great idea; if it's a bus pull-out, where normal cars don't travel, stamped concrete sets the area aside so people won't try to park there.

If you're just talking about the curb itself, a 4" sloped concrete curb should be fine. It's enough to hold water, but not high enough to cause damage to wheels. Make sure you stick a handicap ramp in there, too.

Install Gentoo posted:

There's absolutely no need to increase density along the corridor for LRT to work, so long as there's sufficient bike access and parking for cars, and, ideally, connecting bus service to the stations.

An example of a light rail that works really good despite not going through particularly dense areas:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Line_%28New_Jersey_Transit%29

Install Gentoo posted:

The twin cities has more leeway in what they can do, I think.

Down there we have this:


The track's been in the center of Broad Street since 1832. and if you tried to double track there it'd be hard to accommodate the old housing as well as through traffic. And during 10 pm to 6 am everyday the same track is used for heavy freight (which coincidentally has picked up in amount shipped since the light rail started, despite being cut back to 8 hour running a day instead of being able to run at any time).

If this was just a passenger light rail situation, they could easily run it in tracks in the roadway all trolley like and be fine, but the DOT has said it wouldn't be safe for the freights that have to come this way too.