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Long time listener, first time caller. First off, as a resident of Tucson for the past 10 years, I feel I must defend the HAWK. It's a great solution, at least here, because of the long distance between signalled intersections on 6-lane divided arterials. On a particular section of road I drive often, there are actually a combination of HAWKs and regular RYG lights that are solely for pedestrian use. The HAWKs are better for both the peds, and the drivers. The RYG lights, as one might expect, are green all the time unless the button is pressed. The problem is that these lights, because they can't have a short ped signal for granny, are timed in with the rest of the lights on the street, so you might end up waiting as a ped for up to a minute before the light changes, and as a driver, even if it's a cyclist who's gone across quickly, you get to sit at a red light for nothing. The HAWKs on the other hand, stand alone. A press immediately activates it, and so there's only a small delay during the yellow phase. As a driver, it's great because the sold red changes to flashing red after about 10 seconds, so it's now a standard stop, and if the pedestrian has cleared the intersection, you can go through. Only the flashing red phase waits for the full granny duration. It's a pretty great solution that inconveniences both users less than a regular light. That's not the primary reason I wanted to jump in though. I'm here because after 15 years, AZ-210 will finally connect to I-10. Sort of. But let me start at the beginning. Here in Tucson, at least from the perspective of those up north, we're completely anti-freeway. That's only partially true. What we're really against is the continuity breaks that a freeway creates in a city. Tossing up a raised freeway to connect A->B at the expense of a continuous central urban area is a poor compromise. Most of the proposals that ADOT has made over the years have been way-oversized. One from the 70s had a freeway a stone's throw from anywhere in town practically. What's the point of getting to a place, if once you get there, all you find is more ways to get other places. Dallas/Ft. Worth metroplex is the best (worst) example of so many ways to get nowhere. Here's a map of Tucson, as it is now.  Click here for the full 964x707 image. There are two major freeways, I-10 and I-19. In 1995, ADOT built AZ-210, the "Aviation Parkway" highlighted in red. It was supposed to connect from I-10 to DM AFB. The alignment from just east of downtown to DM was easy-- get some railroad right of way, use the bridges that already existed for the rail, and bam. Freeway connection to DM, and Golf Links road. (which is practically a parkway, and a major E-W route). The problem was downtown. Here's the red area, as it is now, and was when 210 was built.  Click here for the full 1101x563 image. You can see the end of 210 in the lower left, where it dumps onto broadway/toole. Here's what ADOT had it doing:  Click here for the full 1101x563 image. 3 lanes either direction, as a combination raised/lowered freeway that was going to wipe out significant swaths of historic neighborhood to the north of the railway, as well as reduce connection to the north to a few major streets, as the alignment closest to the freeway diverges from the train track and cuts of even more streets than the railway does on its own. Tucson overwhelmingly rejected this proposal and told the state to stop 210 just east of downtown, and the city would finish it. We passed a sales tax specifically for it, and after years of debate about which buildings are worth saving and which aren't, we have this:  Click here for the full 1599x942 image. A 4-lane, parkway style connection, with some connections to local neighborhoods. The route minimizes impact to historic areas, opens up a new swath of developable land where the alignment curves above 6th street, and although signalled in 3 places and set at 30mph, is far more efficient than taking 6th or Congress as it is though the heart of downtown. In addition, it will include a bike path, and shaded walkway. I think it's a far better solution than a straight freeway connection. That's an incredibly long lead in to ask, what do you think? Given that 210's east endpoint is another parkway-style road, I think it fits the bill nicely, even at the expense of throughput.
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Nov 12, 2010 20:59
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IOwnCalculus posted:Really, I'd settle for a way to get across town roughly aligned with Speedway, just not doing an average of 10-15mph in traffic. For reference, Speedway is signed around 35-45 most of the time. So would the rest of us. Assuming the RTA money holds out, by 2013 ( edit: this is only for the grant/oracle area, the whole project is slated to finish in the early 2020s ) you'll be able to get cross-town via the result of the  Grant Road Improvement Plan Grant road is going to be widened to 3 lanes where it's not already, along with the addition of making it more bike and ped friendly.  3-laning it the whole way won't make that much of a difference on its own, that's why most of the major intersections will be indirect left only, negating the need for the trailing left arrow, and giving more green time to both directions.  Bonus Signal Timing Porn:  I think the smartest thing about the plan is that they're clearing enough ROW to add streetcars / light rail at some point in the future without having to tear the whole thing up again. Qwijib0 fucked around with this message at 03:00 on Nov 13, 2010 |
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Nov 12, 2010 23:15
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Choadmaster posted:As the most vocal anti-HAWK guy in the thread I feel I must rebut you. The normal signal head would require a full cycle for the pedestrian phase, and thus must be timed to match the other signals. A HAWK allows traffic to proceed during the pedestrian phase when it is safe to do so, and can be immediately actuated. I'm not sure how the HAWK is confusing. Yellow = slow. Red = Stop. Flash Red = Stop Sign. The signage accompanying all of them say CROSSWALK. If there is no light at a crosswalk and there's nobody in the road, then you just drive on through.
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Nov 13, 2010 01:08
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Choadmaster posted:No, a normal signal head can be set up to do whatever your city drat well pleases. It is perfectly possible for a normal signal head to actuate immediately, stay red for five-ten seconds, then blink red for another ten. It's just a bunch of lights wired to a controller; there's zero need to come up with a completely different signal head configuration to alter how the lights are controlled. I guess I didn't get what you were getting at-- you mean that there should be a standard RYG head that operates as a hawk, but with a green ball in it's default phase, then yellow, solid red, flash red, then green? I think the flashing red->green transition would be more unusual to see, and be more confusing (same light geometry, different usage). One of the benefits of the HAWK over the implementation above is that the light configuration is different. In the same way that the yellow-green signs are more noticeable because they're new so is a HAWK. Once a driver reads the sign once, he can then remember the hawk geometry and usage for future reference-- and the flashing lights will continue to get his attention. The other benefit is that you're not burning the green light all the time. There are some TOUCAN crossings where the greens are out because they're never off.
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Nov 13, 2010 02:55
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M_Gargantua posted:Drivers are stupid and doing anything that could cause confusion is a terrible terrible idea. Ergo HAWK is a bad idea. FHA Study posted:The before-after evaluation results were as follows: Maybe drivers aren't all as bad as we assume?
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Nov 13, 2010 03:24
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Cichlidae posted:Third, pre-emptively before it's brought up, there's a new type of pedestrian beacon, rapid-flashing rectangular yellow. They go on the side of the road, and basically act as a strobe when the button is pushed. In studies done in Florida, DC, and (IIRC) Chicago, they were shown to have an obedience rate tenfold higher than standard ped beacons, and that rate even lasted over time, which shows that it has some staying power. We're installing one soon to test them out, and if that works, I'll heartily recommend them over any other kind of ped beacon. Choadmaster posted:The real question is then: what kind of reduction would you get with a normal signal head there? It would probably be exactly the same - and if you included the initial 2 month "learning period" that your cited study didn't cover, I bet normal signals would do better. Since these HAWK studies never seem to be properly comprehensive I don't know if we'll ever know that for sure though. The key to ped safety may just be some very high-visibility way to signal drivers that "hey, this crosswalk is actually in use right now"-- Whether that's a standard signal, HAWK, or strobing beacon. A hawk does that with two red lights, and the strobe is much brighter than its surroundings. It's an interesting evolution-- a HAWK has good compliance rate, and it's less than a signal, and the strobe appears to do well and it's less than a HAWK. In the end, the most cost-effective (both in install, and accident) way to accomplish the same task as well is the right one. The strobe needs a good bird name though  FINCH Flashing Intense Notifier of Crosswalk Happenings
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Nov 13, 2010 16:26
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Interesting destruction porn, US-89 in northern Arizona just experienced an unknown "geologic event". I guess they'll reroute the road somewhat instead of trying to shore it up?
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Feb 21, 2013 22:41
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I don't think ADOT is _quite_ that industrous 
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Feb 22, 2013 01:17
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Lead out in cuffs posted:Interestingly, in an earlier version of that manual, the "perimeter method" was called the "Copenhagen method". I guess this is why. the right-turn-with-bent-left-arm and the left arm down for stopping are identical to car signals (since you very well can't stick your right arm out the passenger window. I was told to think of it as pointing over the vehicle to the right, and while a bicycle is a very thin vehicle, it still makes some sense-- especially since bicycles are considered vehicles.
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Jun 6, 2013 17:49
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Cichlidae posted:Q: What takes two weeks to make and looks awesome? it's so... graphy and chartey 
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Aug 8, 2013 22:45
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FISHMANPET posted:Where do you ride the bikes? on the sidewalk
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Aug 14, 2013 17:39
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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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Cichlidae posted: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'd find it unsettling to not see reverse direction traffic at least once every half mile or so, especially on an unfamiliar road. Reassurance that yes, there is a way back is comforting, both for returning from a destination or needing to backtrack because of a mistake.
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Dec 10, 2013 23:33
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Opals25 posted:Why does it do this? It seems pointless to build the bridges over each other when each side of the road could just stay on that side of the divide? Usually has to do with alignment issues when upgrading the capacity of a road. Arizona has a similar situation with the Beeline-- they needed more lanes and there was no room, and the only solution was to cross the lanes over in the mountains. It's awesome to drive too-- speed limit is 75 but I don't think it had to conform to interstate grades (granfathered?, state highway?) so there are awesome hills and turns one can take at speed. https://www.google.com/maps/preview...!4d-111.3221751 
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Dec 11, 2013 19:03
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Peanut President posted:Hahah you wanna see dumb pedestrians? Here in Evansville we have a casino on a boat in the river. The company (Tropicana now but Aztar before) has a hotel across Riverside Drive, a four lane boulevard. So they built a bridge that goes between the hotel and the riverboat, to make it easier on people to get to it. As far as I know you can just walk from the parking garage to the bridge without having to rent a room. Everytime I'm down there I see at least 1, usually 4 or more, people walking right in the middle of the road, DIRECTLY UNDERNEATH the pedestrian bridge. I am a dumb pedestrian. I crossed jersey barriers in las vegas rather than use the pedestrian bridges, because I didn't want to take the time to climb the stairs. I am definitely more likely to use a tunnel beneath a road, I guess the psychology of going down first makes it an 'easier than waiting or jaywalking' choice than going up first to a bridge.
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Dec 18, 2013 00:45
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Devor posted:Pedestrian bridges are notoriously hard to get people to utilize. The AASHTO Pedestrian Guide has a graph of empirical data of utilization rate vs. time savings - basically unless you get *significant* time savings, people won't use them. And once you factor in how far out of your way you have to go, bridges can become infeasible pretty quickly. Weirdly, tunnels get used at higher rates for the same time savings. hah, I admitted to the tunnel behavior before reading this post-- one more data point I guess.
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Dec 18, 2013 00:46
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Did a lot of highway driving this past weekend and wondered about the placement of passing zones. There are some places along the route (winding through mountains) I took where a no passing zone ceased to exist for only what seemed like a hundred feet or so, and at 55 mph it went by in a blink. What is the metric for allowing passing? Is it N number of seconds of visibility at posted speed?, and since it would be real hard to pass within the zone only, is that metric from the end or the start of the zone?
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Dec 30, 2013 17:41
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Devor posted:Bike trays! that looks like effort https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7j1PgmMbug8
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Jan 1, 2014 00:12
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Cichlidae posted:Working on the most realistic VISSIM model New England has ever seen. Are those unused ramp stubs, or intentional cop lying-in-wait places?
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Jan 7, 2014 22:59
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Some car buyer is about to be upset with preemption and 'smart' traffic lights that don't hold to a set pattern. http://www.autoblog.com/2014/01/09/audi-traffic-light-assist-ces-2014/ quote:Smart City Traffic Light Assistance system relies on local data sources about traffic light patterns and timing (beamed to your vehicle over Wi-Fi) instead of a camera scanning the horizon for upcoming stop lights. I don't see how this could be reliable enough to be useful without getting fed from an actual traffic mainframe, unless it is as one of the sources?
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Jan 10, 2014 23:01
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This is creativity at its best from a DOT
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Jan 13, 2014 16:00
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thehustler posted:What do people mean when they say "grid system" Loops are the "easiest" way to get past 500 because you hit each station at what would be the end of the lines more frequently. They are a pain in the arse to redraw though 
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Mar 12, 2014 14:53
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Here's some pretty great freehand road painting. https://vimeo.com/36167291
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Mar 28, 2014 23:38
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Phoenix's street grid oddity: When expanding northward, the city hired a surveyor from california, who forgot to adjust for the difference in magnetic north offset from where he was from, and by the time they realized it, it would have been too expensive to fix it. So they added a curve.
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Apr 3, 2014 00:16
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Varance posted:If you're going to do symbol units, just use a portion of the large symbol instead of the little symbols ... Much easier to understand.
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Jul 3, 2014 01:07
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Just got back from Dallas, and was in awe at the massive construction project I drove through, the LBJ Express. It's adding demand-pricing toll lanes to an existing interstate, but to add all the lanes they needed more width than existed so it's a huge excavation that will end up creating a half-decked roadway for several miles between IH-35E and US-75 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfcn2WZBvM0 It also intersects the High Five Interchange adding more miles of concrete to an already impressive structure. 
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Jul 24, 2014 00:01
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Carbon dioxide posted:I looked it up on Wikipedia and apparently the USA used to have the French type. It was officially known as a 'suicide lane'. Phoenix still has 'em  https://www.google.com/maps/@33.5259548,-112.082411,3a,75y,150.29h,80.2t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sGYBO_Kykn4-AOf_yYVFHPw!2e0 Better hope your clock is set right! In my experience, most people avoid the lane altogether +/- 10 minutes from the lane switchover.
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Sep 15, 2014 16:13
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Baronjutter posted:Is there a north american version of this sign? We've got these in Tucson 
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Sep 20, 2014 01:11
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Baronjutter posted:He needs 1000 cars a day to break even. I don't know the traffic stats on that road but that seems a bit optimistic. the landslide it bypassed is on the shortest route between bristol and bath https://www.google.com/maps/@51.3960846,-2.4197633,17z Found an article that says he's going to break even by mid november-- so the last couple weeks before Christmas before it's set to open will be profitable! http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/road-and-rail-transport/11149220/Entrepreneurs-private-toll-road-welcomes-100000th-vehicle.html
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Oct 9, 2014 03:35
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Cichlidae posted:a gigantic orange cone monster that gets moved around to different construction sites to scare the crap out of inattentive drivers. My favorite 'act of vandalism' 
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Nov 6, 2014 15:21
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Cichlidae posted:I spent the holiday weekend in Phoenix, and god help me, I was actually impressed. They've been keeping up with congestion by building more bypasses around the city, while simultaneously improving the downtown to be a lot more ped-friendly and more comfortable in general. They're pretty much MUTCD compliant. The interstates use AASHTO E modified, and the state-maintained freeways use Clearview. Their new freeways are built with expansions in mind. ADOT in general has their poo poo together despite all the funding cuts.
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Dec 2, 2014 01:45
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Devor posted:Also, people hate going out of their way to use a pedestrian bridge. Yeah, I am this pedestrian. Until they finished the jersey barrier on both sides of las vegas boulevard near intersections I would just jump the one and run across cause
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Feb 3, 2015 01:22
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Kakairo posted:
If you do not own this book yet you should http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tiles-Unexpected-Underground-Douglas-Rose/dp/1854143107
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May 7, 2015 23:25
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Dominus Vobiscum posted:How much non-recreational bicycle travel does Strava pick up? It seems pretty self-selecting to me, not that there's much better data out there. I know strava sells data to municipalities, and as one more datapoint, I use strava for my commute.
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Jun 14, 2015 23:06
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Spacman posted:I'm just going to leave this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSBS8gpOxqg here... Arizona has a legit Elk Crossswalk that tries to guide elk to a specific spot, then detect them and activate lights when they are crossing. http://www.azgfd.gov/w_c/StateRoute_260_Elk_Crosswalk.shtml 
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Jul 17, 2015 15:54
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NihilismNow posted:A 2 meter long chain without a chain guard seems like it would have you arriving with dirty pants at work for half of the year (the wet part). what's "wet"?
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Aug 1, 2015 16:13
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Cicero posted:Is there a book that's basically Babby's Guide to Traffic Engineering/Urban Design? I don't have a recommendation for this, but if you want to know about user interaction with said roads, this book is great. http://www.amazon.com/Traffic-Drive-What-Says-About/dp/0307277194
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Aug 19, 2015 04:49
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Javid posted:If gas taxes jumped to where they "should" be, though, a lot of people would just be hosed. Not if you did it now, the concept of $3 gas isn't as unreasonable or as unplannable as it used to be.
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Oct 26, 2015 03:26
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Question on lane closures. Why are lanes closed like this: Instead of like this:  It would seem like the second arrangement would prevent one lane from having the de-facto right of way so that using both lanes to the point of the merge isn't seen as "cheating" the through lane, and since nobody has to not merge, maybe the zipper would go more smoothly.
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Oct 27, 2015 20:35
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Javid posted:The first method is only bad if you're one of the people who waits till the last possible microsecond to get over. But you should be doing that to fully use both lanes?
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Oct 28, 2015 00:27
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