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Cichlidae posted:Because I love you all so much, I made a little animation of what a typical work zone 25 years ago looked like. Dear lord. So, I think we've all seen the statistics in which flaggers and highway workers tend to have the highest mortality rate on the job. Has that figure dropped any since we started using cones, drums, barriers, etc., or has the increase in traffic offset that?
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Jan 14, 2010 06:46
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excitebike1 posted:Can you describe what conditions would warrant a separate "truck" speed limit? Oregon's freeways have a max speed of 55 for semi trucks or, really, anything pulling anything. 65 for anything else. As far as I can tell, it mostly serves to try to keep trucks in the right lane. The only time it really becomes an issue, at least in experience, is when a truck going 56 MPH tries to pass one going 55 MPH and backs up the small vehicle traffic, or when a truck utterly ignores the speed limit and blasts down the the freeway at 70 MPH - most drivers aren't used to a semi gaining on them in Oregon. In any particularly hazardous situations, the speed limits tend to end up with a lower and equal limit for both. For example, 55 on the Banfield going through Portland, or 45 on curves on Cabbage Hill outside of Pendleton.
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Apr 18, 2011 03:47
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 So, I noticed these pop up on Oregon's 217 a while back, and found them to be pretty strange. Not only does it seem overkill to have the highway number on a mileage marker, but I've never seen a non-whole mileage marker (only fractionals on distance-to signs). The only reason I can guess is that, because 217 is relatively short at eight miles, and having them every half-mile provides better information for emergency services and the like? Same goes for having the highway number on them for out-of-towners?
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Aug 9, 2011 02:19
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Chaos Motor posted:Our mile markers are at every 1/5th of a mile. I think we have the white reflectors every 1/(?????) of a mile in Oregon, but they aren't labeled.
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Aug 9, 2011 03:38
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Dutch Engineer posted:Lol, Belgium I'm not exactly up-to-date on European traffic signs, but is that supposed to be a two-lane road? I'm seeing signs that look like it's indicating bidirectional traffic.
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Oct 23, 2011 02:31
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Grand Fromage posted:Not sure about NYC, but Seoul did. They took out a major highway to restore a stream, and not only did traffic not get worse, it decreased. Plus the stream is nice and improved the quality of life in the surrounding neighborhoods. Portland, OR did a similar thing back in the 70s with Harbor Drive. It's now a park that spans much of the length of the waterfront downtown. Really, it was due to a conflux of anti-freeway sentiment and the completion of I-5 and I-405 which provided alternate (and more direct) routes. Of course, now the city is overrun with a bunch of idiot bicyclists. Now, I know that there are plenty of responsible bicyclists in the city too, which is what makes the rest of them all the worse. On Friday, a guy went the wrong way up Broadway and blew through a red light, meaning I almost hit the rear end in a top hat as I came up Alder. When I honked, he gave me a look like I was the prick. There's a Portlandia sketch that features the guy riding around the city on a bike screaming about how he's on a bike. It's easily the most accurate sketch on that show.
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Nov 13, 2011 19:10
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Cichlidae posted:Very little. It doesn't single out any one font as better than another. However, those letters should still be in upper case! And since when does Tennessee count as "East Coast"? Same deal with street signs? On public roads around the Nike World Campus in Beaverton, OR, they've got custom typefaces: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=nike+...urce=gplus-ogsb
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Mar 6, 2012 03:54
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Airconswitch posted:I think I've discovered the reason behind the failure of public transit in the US: horrible advertising jingles.
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Jul 31, 2012 04:23
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 From this thread. Basically, a gas line explosion wiped out a chunk of freeway in West Virginia. According to the thread, WV got it repaved and reopened in a matter of days, which seems pretty impressive, especially considering it's taken ODOT over a year to fully repave a quarter-mile portion of an onramp onto OR-26 that was damaged by a mudslide. What would be involved in such a project?
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Dec 15, 2012 20:00
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will_colorado posted:Here's something hideous to envision. A massive ugly looking highway that cuts right through the middle of downtown Denver. How did urban planners and engineers from the mid 20th century create such hosed up ideas like this? Portland had aspirations for something similar:  Red are current freeways, green was what they were hoping for (and it doesn't emphasize the presence of Harbor Drive, depicted as a thin black line like surface streets in the image, which was basically a freeway on the west side of the river - it was one of the first freeways removed without plans to replace it, and is now currently a park). Basically, the plans for the centerpiece freeway, the Mt. Hood Freeway, ended up sparking some class warfare, as it would destroy lower-income inner city to provide a freeway that would largely be of benefit to the middle-upper class surburbanites in Gresham. The resulting failure of these freeway plans to gain traction resulted in a comical number of ramp stubs and odd traffic flow decisions in the currently-existing freeways in the Portland Metro area. However, Portland's lofty aspirations ended up working out pretty well, especially with Interstate 205. They bought up enough land for a busway, and ended up extending the MAX lightrail along the land they had purchased, which would link the city center to the airport and continue lightrail service into an area of the city that was largely reliant on an aging bus fleet for public transit. As it often does, Wikipedia has an embarrassing amount of information about Portland's attempts to lay out highways like an eight year old in SimCity 2000: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Hood_Freeway http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harbor_Drive http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_revolts#Oregon And a somewhat over-the-top take on the subject from the local alt weekly: http://www.wweek.com/portland/article-4212-highway_to_hell.html
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Apr 24, 2013 01:17
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Hedera Helix posted:It also resulted in the south side of Powell from 52nd to 82nd being torn down, and then turned into parking lots once the ROW was sold off... I never made the connection - I had always found those strips of parking strange, but I figured it was some urban planning experiment gone awry.
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Apr 26, 2013 05:32
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Meat Mitts posted:My biggest complaint t about cyclists is I'm never certain how to define them. Are they considered another vehicle that have to obey the rules of the road or are they considered a pedestrian? Some cyclists act like vehicles, using hand signals to turn or getting in line for the left turn arrow. Others ride on the sidewalk or on the shoulder and behave like pedestrians, waiting for cross walk signals, etc. And then there's the type of cyclist that I hate that behaves like a vehicle and a pedestrian, switching whenever it helps them get through an intersection quicker. It might be state-by-state in the US, but at least in Oregon, they are to act as vehicles. As such, technically speaking, riding on sidewalks, unsignaled turns, and ignoring signals are verboten. To be treated as a pedestrian, you have to dismount and walk the bike. Now, obviously, there's some wiggle room there - a bicyclist's not going to get a citation for riding under the speed limit unless they are actively trying to disrupt the flow of traffic, for example, and there are paths that are obviously acceptable for bikes that are not acceptable for cars, motorcycles, etc. It's actually one of my biggest complaints about living in Portland, really. There are so many bicyclists here, and there are so many wonderful, law-abiding, completely perfect examples of bicyclists here. But that makes the bad ones stand out all the more. I've been sideswiped by a bicyclist riding on the sidewalk going the wrong way down a one-way street. Another time, one yelled "BICYCLIST" as he almost hit me as I was getting something out of my car (i.e. he had plenty of warning and time to adjust, it's not like I opened the door on him). I've seen a man cruising along with a baby strapped to his chest, and a woman flip off a vehicle for slowly pulling out of a driveway and blocking her path on the sidewalk. Now, I can remember all those incidents clear as day, but when thinking of good cycling behavior, I just get some general fuzzy memories of bicyclists obeying the light and signaling. People are always going to remember the negative over the positive, and that is always a disadvantage to the minority.
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Jun 6, 2013 05:37
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Varance posted:Utilities in general tend to be dicks about this sort of stuff and do things on their own schedule. It gets worse when you have other utilities that have to do stuff before the first utility can do their job. On one hand, I really understand the pragmatic need for the pseudo-monopolistic position utilities hold in our society, but on the other...they're really good at abusing it sometimes.
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Jun 30, 2013 23:19
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Hedera Helix posted:A long-proposed project to replace the I-5 bridge between Portland and Vancouver, Washington was officially canceled today. It faced ferocious opposition from Washington Republicans due to its accompanying light-rail extension. I've started and given up on a reply on this development a dozen times. All I can say is that I'm in full agreement with you. Disappointing as hell.
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Jul 2, 2013 07:13
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 http://goo.gl/maps/AfgRJ I drive through this garbage every day to work. It's not as bad from arial, but from the ground, you're looking across a giant expanse of pavement that is little better than a 10-way intersection. I can only see eminent domaining the entire drat thing and straightening everything out, but for obvious reasons, that won't work. Any ideas?
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Nov 13, 2013 05:37
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Baronjutter posted:"CRC opponents in Clark County, who hated the planned light-rail connection into downtown Vancouver, were thrilled at the news. David Madore, the Clark County tech entrepreneur instrumental in mobilizing the opposition, said the CRC’s death was a “rare instance where a community actually had a victory over the light-rail forces.” Trimet and Friends are dealing with the same tinfoil hat nonsense in Oregon right now. Opponents of public transit in Tigard have managed to get something on the ballot that, if approved by voters, would require the City of Tigard to rebuff any plans to add dedicated bus lanes, light rail, or commuter rail until it was approved by popular vote and send letters annually to public officials stating that they are not interested in such projects. Supposedly backed by conservative groups, which means that it's unlikely to pass around here, but Washington doesn't have a monopoly on this kind of crazy.
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Mar 8, 2014 09:04
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Hedera Helix posted:It passed. I'd like to say I'm surprised, but really, I guess I'm not. It was drat close - there was a 220 vote spread. The joys of 34% voter turnout. Thinking back on it, I can recall a number of times over the last few years where the Tigard City Council has been criticized for acting somewhat capriciously in pursuing city goals - the most recent examples I can think of include green space, pedestrian/bike paths, and paying for a chunk of Lake Oswego's upgraded water facilities in exchange for a share of the water they produce (I recall that getting a lot of people riled up, but it seemed to be the definition of being stuck between a rock and a hard place; Tigard wasn't going to get more water cheaply no matter what option they picked - there was even a substantial rate hike that wasn't even part of the expansion plan - and at least they have a stake in something with the Lake Oswego plan). To be entirely honest, though, I don't know how they'd expand lightrail into Tigard. They'd either have to approach from downtown Portland (along which the only option is Barbur Boulevard/I-5, both of which being severely space-limited) or from Beaverton (which they might be able to do if they extended it down the WES commuter rail corridor in some fashion, but that's shared with industrial rail use and doesn't have a lot of applicable stops along the way, plus it'd further neuter WES' raison d'être.). Once they got there, they wouldn't have many ways to go without some pretty serious land purchase, eminent domain, or reduction of traffic capacity along Highway 99, and good luck there. They might be able to provide service to the Tigard Triangle and downtown "proper" Tigard, but that'd be about as in-depth as I think it could go, and those aren't really the areas people necessarily need the stops.
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Mar 14, 2014 10:34
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Downtown Portland is bisected on the east-west axis by Burnside street. Might be vaguely apocryphal, but to the south of Burnside, the north-south street axis is aligned to true north, and to the north, the north-south street axis is aligned to magnetic north. Results in some fun intersections.
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Apr 2, 2014 07:48
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Baronjutter posted:What is rejected energy? Just energy lost to heat ? Rejected Energy goes on to post on Energy Rights Advocates subreddits and complain to their friends how they're really Nice Energy, but those stupid picky-yet-slutty Energy Services won't put out.
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Jun 5, 2014 03:50
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virtual256 posted:I recently found this proposal: http://timandjeni.com/blog/forget-red-light-cameras-we-need-yellow-light-lines/ It seems like it relies pretty heavily on people driving the speed limit, which I don't think can be as much of a given as the author intends. For example, say you were accelerating as you had been stopped at the light previously - that line only works if you're going at least the speed limit at the moment you cross the line and at all points throughout the remainder of the intersection. What if the cars were stopped shortly after the intersection, maybe giving you one or two cars' length of space - you'll have to apply the brakes in the intersection, in that case. In short, I think it works for one very specific scenario - drivers approaching an intersection at-speed with no other real traffic in their direction of travel. I think enforcing a standard yellow length would probably do more to limit people entering the intersection when they shouldn't than anything.
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Nov 17, 2014 00:20
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nielsm posted:I think I saw a quote from some paper recently, that claimed electric cars produced more pollution from the vehicle itself than modern gasoline cars, simply because the EVs weigh more due to batteries, while modern gas engines are very efficient and compact. And the extra weight causes more particles to be released from tires and road surface. What I had read (I think in the bastion of questionable science and layout choices Wired) back when Priuses started becoming popular was that the battery production at the time was not terribly environmentally friendly. The production facility poisoned the surroundings enough to be used for NASA rover tests, and they had to be shipped across the ocean to be added to the cars, then shipped back across the ocean to be sold to the consumer in America (which was made worse due to their added weight that normal imports do not incur). Has that changed in the last decade and a half? Almost certainly. But, at least for a time, something of an argument could probably be made that hybrid vehicles weren't really the environmentally friendly option they were sold as.
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Apr 4, 2017 04:54
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“I Can’t Drive 100” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
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Nov 12, 2019 19:55
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Carbon dioxide posted:How would you handle the signals in combination with right on red in this case? Well, you’d recognize that you’re in Cupertino, and know that residents would probably claim that a separated bike lane would somehow lower their property values and then elect a crazy person as mayor to ensure it’s never built in the first place. Serious answer - per CA law, the signals in that picture already do that, as you’re not allowed to right-on-red against a red arrow, only a solid red. Of course, that’s not standard across the US, and it’s very much approaching “driver’s test esoterica” because they’re so rare in the first place. In my unprofessional opinion, it seems like it’s tempting fate to have a stopped lane of traffic surrounded by moving lanes of traffic anyway.
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Jun 6, 2020 19:45
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Carbon dioxide posted:These grade-separated bike lanes are the standard here in the Netherlands and they usually* have separate traffic light phases. In this case, turning right on red would never work for cars. Yeah, I wouldn’t be opposed to that setup with wholly separate phases. And bike boxes are becoming more common in bike-friendly municipalities in the US - I remember a lot of them in Portland, OR.
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Jun 6, 2020 21:11
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 “This is a place designed for human scale,” says the narrator as he depicts a sidewalk in which someone in a wheelchair will fall off the curb trying to get around the garbage cans.
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May 18, 2021 22:07
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Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:i agree with you that free or reduced fares are good! the problem is that its not as simple as dragging the 'fees charged" slider all the way to the left while dragging the "transit service level" slider farther to the right 
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Sep 29, 2022 00:51
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Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:the american federal government can get around the 10th amendment in some ways but in other ways its a big obstacle. IIRC, transportation funding was actually how we got the drinking age set to 21 in the US - the federal government basically said that states were ineligible for certain federal transportation funding if they didn’t set the drinking age to 21.
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Dec 11, 2022 18:34
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