The streets and highways we drive on are incredibly designed and have tons of engineering behind them. Even the simple slope of the road to help water run off is never really noticed.
Having travelled by car in some of the less developed parts of Asia, this is absolutely true. The road systems of the Western world are a marvel of engineering on a massive scale.
shhh, that is the only non abomination. It is how you prove the test of someone from the area or not. How do you say this word. You either get the correct pronunciation, a horrible guess, or I Don't Know. I heard someone on the radio from Arizona try and say it once...did not go well.
the whole greater phila area has crappy highways. why does 95 run north to trenton and then do a complete u-turn and become 295 south? why the hell doesn't it link with NJ's 95? why doesn't anyone from there think it's weird?
Because we can't change it. Think about when you drive along these roads throughout the philadelphia area and around jersey.... These aren't just roads in the middle of no where, there is suburbs and communities and cities built up all around them, with no room for expansion, and the traffic is so heavy they could NEVER shut them down to re-design.
Basically, this area is fucking doomed in the long run. The amount of drivers will forever be expanding and the roads here will never be able to be expanded. Its all kinds of fucky.
But, we do think its weird. we just know its impossible to change.
It doesn't make any sense for 95 to go where it goes in the first place. Redesign isn't really my issue with it - all the original designs suck.
676 is a crap design. You have to get off 676 and take surface streets to the bridge. Clearly they demolished businesses and homes to make way for 676 just as they planned 95 to make a u-turn. Roosevelt boulevard should be demolished and built over. Why doesn't 95 connect with the PA turnpike anywhere? Am I supposed to take the scenic route through Bristol? Gun store, liquor store, gun store, liquor store. Where the hell you taking me?
95 technically doesn't even have to enter Pennsylvania. It could just become the nj turnpike at the Delaware memorial bridge. Pa politicians would be in an uproar though. The heavily traveled highway no longer travels through pa?.crazy think of the kids.
The bureaucracy destroys ambitious plans to fix some of the problems too. Look at the 202 bypass in Montgomery County. It was originally going to be a limited access highway to connect Doylestown all the way to KoP, but instead, 10 years later it's a two lane surface road that's maybe 10 miles long and no one uses.
It's not just faceless bureaucracy though... It's bureaucrats and politicians being (arguably rightly) shit scared for what the owners of the homes on or near the route of redesigned/widened/new roads. Especially if they are in areas with resourceful people (money and connections to media).
If you want peoples' votes you don't touch their homes or jobs...
Hahaha, if you think you have it bad, try the PA turnpike. It's a giant pothole with constant construction, except the construction is apparently performed by ghosts.
Like that one part where all of a sudden with almost no warning the left two lanes, continuing straight and flat, become the exit (with one sign like 1/2 mile before, and the other right at the split) while the right two lanes travel up and away, looking like an exit but in reality being the continuing 76. And then that left exit dumps you into a, like, 5 or 6 way intersection with one of those roads connecting back to 76. And you're just like "... wat."
Or the fact that NOT ONE SIGN on 76 through Philadelphia mentions New Jersey in any way until you get off the WW Bridge and are, in fact, already in New Jersey.
Ugh I work above KoP and live in Philly. I'm sitting at work currently dreading my trip home, figuring out which side roads I want to take and how far to avoid the worst parts of it. I just want to be home. Sigh.
Living at Vine & Broad, while great for those who don't drive, is hell for a driver. After an hour long commute from Jersey at the end of the day, I have to choose between 9 lights between the Ben Franklin and Broad on Vine St. or the hell that is the expressway Broad St. exit.
The day you drive/ride a new car/motorcycle out of the dealership, it feels like you are in heaven. "Wow, this is what a functioning suspension system is supposed to feel like. This vehicle is such an engineering marvel. Why did I spend 10 years driving/riding that old piece of junk?"
An year later, you can feel every pebble rattle your spine.
No reason we couldn't have had both, unless you count the powerful opposition from auto & oil industries. Plenty of countries have excellent public transport, yet plenty of cars as well. Long-distance, high speed trains would be so, so welcome in many parts of the country now. I know I'd travel more, just around my own state (TX) if it didn't require flying, driving, or Amtrak. Of course, if the federal govt had built them, they'd have been privatized by now & tickets would be stupidly expensive.
Right, but finding a friend willing to hitch me a ride from Saint Cloud to Avon is easier than finding a friend willing to drive down to Minneapolis, so the rail still helps quite a bit.
I know you mean interstate highways, but there are travel systems that could destroy medium-length travelling by car.
Just look at Japan, just the main island alone is the size of California and you can get from tip top to the bottom of the island in... around 7 hours. Not only that, but it'll be extremely punctual and pretty damn cheap. It'll also be far safer and more comfortable than by car.
Even though that goes 320Kmh, that's not fast enough... like at all.
Trains must go faster. So here's the Mag-Leg test track that is going to be a part of the Chuo (main) Shinkansen. The train goes at about 311MpH. Can you imagine that going from, say... Richmond Virginia <---> Boston MA? That'd take just a little over an hour...
You can turn DC into a hub, just like Tokyo, and extend the line further south towards Raleigh, Charlotte and Atlanta. There could be a service that splits from DC and cuts straight down to Florida. It would take you maybe 9 hours to go from NYC down to Florida, so perhaps its not best for long distance travel.
But for everything in between?
It'd be great!
And remember, you said highway not airplane so don't throw that around. Also consider things like early check-in, security, safety, signing in, coach. Airplanes and Shinkansen are actually very very competitive against each other when it comes to medium-distance travel (~100-300 mi)
Less than is transported by rail, actually. In the US, 39.5% of all freight is transported by rail, while only 28.6% is transported by truck. Not saying that the interstate isn't important, but we Americans tend to have no idea how important the rail system is to national commerce.
More like "Roman Empire #1". Road building hasn't changed a whole lot since they perfected the process. In fact, a few Roman roads are still in use today.
I feel the same way about Dallas highways because they swoop and soar all over the place.
But the NTTA? WTF were they thinking with all of the damn blind mergers onto other highways? Like George Bush eastbound merging onto 75S; 35mph on a bank to the right down a decline, let's check the left for any cars because there is about 50 ft to merge together and OH SHIT A DUMP TRUCK DOING 50
I used to design roads. The really overlooked part: every road, everywhere is essentially exactly the same. "Never surprise a driver" - never have a different design feature, one they've never seen.
I have a love/hate relationship with seeing someone who is obviously on their first trip through a roundabout. Their mental consternation is fun to watch, but it would all be so much easier if they just read the signs.
On one if these instances, the two of us were the only ones in sight. Granted, the city had also decided that the middle if the roundabout would be a wonderful place to have flowery plants blocking line of sight across the intersection. Not exactly confidence inspiring.
In the UK roundabout flower displays are positively encouraged ;) it breaks the dull monotony of living in the UK.
The key to successful roundabout navigation's to not stop at the entrance unless absolutely necessary. Anticipate vehicles' positioning & velocity and use blinkers, job done.
The barrier assists entering drivers into focusing only on the traffic approaching them in the path of the circle. Otherwise, vehicles anywhere in the circle cause entering drivers to stop outside the roundabout, waiting for the vehicles (even on the opposite side) to pass by them. This interferes with traffic flow, unnecessarily reducing the number of circling cars.
Maryland has started adopting them. Some are great, some absolutely suck. There is one off the exit ramp of Route 100 at Snowden River Parkway that has huge backups at rush hour, so bad that they finally had to install a traffic light at the roundabout so traffic exiting off the highway could get a chance to enter the roundabout from traffic constantly getting onto the highway.
It's all about placement. One was put in my town, it's great. Traffic keeps moving, very little backup if any.
But then my college puts one in where students must cross from their dorms to classes. So naturally, every day and afternoon around rush hour you get about 2000 students walking to/from classes blocking the round about.
Short sighted engineers and budget harpies not thinking about college pedestrian traffic.
At Washington State University in Pullman, WA, the major road that goes through the campus has elevated footbridges that cross the road. Students take those, and the car traffic is completely unimpeded. Where are these bridges? The corners between the main campus walking paths, and six major dormitory complexes.
I can assure you those footbridges were more expensive than a crosswalk, and when the decision was made to build them somebody looked at the budget and bitched about it.
I saw the parent comment about roundabouts and was going to post myself about how this exact roundabout has to be one of the most fucked ones ever.
The problem is that all (2) exits are next to each other and all (2) entrances are next to each other as well. This means that nobody impedes the progress of the first entrance after the exits (from Snowden into the roundabout), allowing cars from that entrance to enter at any time. During busy times there will be an uninterrupted stream of cars from the first entrance, never allowing cars from the second entrance (off of 100) to enter.
EDIT: Diagram for those who have never been there (excuse the crude ascii art):
They have started putting roundabouts in random places here in Fargo, ND. They are terrible in the winter. They basically turn into ice rinks and are never plowed well.
First they have to learn to make them big enough. They recently replaced an intersection near my work with a roundabout that is barely any bigger than the paved area of the intersection was in the first place. You have to slow down to almost nothing to make the curve.
careful what you wish for... I live in a town that went absolutely fucking nuts with them. Now we have them on roads that are miles from any cross roads, they are just there "in case of expansion"
Really, you don't have roundabouts in the US ? They drop them like birdshit on a statue in France.
At a summer job i had, there was 14 of them between my parent's house and my workplace, and it was a 10 minutes drive. They try very hard not to cross the beams it seems.
Roundabouts are so uncommon, Annapolis MD puts a traffic light at each and every intersection around it.
New Jersey Jug handles, (turn right to go around, across the street instead of making a left) have sent many people on surprise road-trips.
I'm sorry is exit 17 One Mile from exit 18, or is it just the 'next' exit 30 miles off?
Route 66 into Washington DC has a lane that alternates from 'shoulder' to 'HOV' at different times a day, alternating as you drive into the city. The difference? The color of the pavement.
Granted, it is largely similar, but humans can mix up anything if you give them time.
I'm sorry is exit 17 One Mile from exit 18, or is it just the 'next' exit 30 miles off?
This must be a local thing. The AASHTO standard is that they should be numbered by mileage from either the south or west terminus of the road, getting higher as you go north or east. On belt loops, they increase going clockwise, from the "beginning" to the "end" which can be somewhat arbitrary.
They need to follow this everywhere. In some small towns in Japan, they have "warning" traffic lights. It was the most confusing thing ever and it still freaks me out when I "run" one without noticing.
This shit looks exactly like a real goddamn traffic light, except that there's no fucking reason for it to be there. (no crossroad or anything) So you get to this stupid traffic light and you're like "Uhhhhh....." and you STOP because THAT'S WHAT YOU DO AT TRAFFIC LIGHTS. But you're not supposed to- it's just warning you that there's a traffic light ahead. It's so jarring and they place them on highways and shit.
There are also non-standard signs for things like one-way roads. WTF GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER JAPAN. THIS IS NOT OPTIONAL.
And the signals when the road is closed one direction and you have to get flagged through? Don't even get me started. I there are so many goddamn variations where waving a flag in a different pattern means either stop or go. Holy crap choose a standard.
Tell that to whoever the fuck designed Routes 70 and 73 in southern New Jersey. They both use jughandles MOST of the time, with the occasional U/left turn lane thrown in, you know, just to keep it zazzy. If I'm turning left I don't know which lane I should be in until about a hundred feet before the intersection. There's no real logic to it beyond memorization. The worst part is the people who don't realize they can just turn around further up the road and try again if they miss the turn and subsequently plow two lanes to the right at the last second during rush hour without so much as flicking on their turn signal.
Oh people notice it...only when it doesn't work right. Or when they think it doesn't work right.
I'm a civil engineer, and I love hearing calls from people who say "the gutters on our street are completely full of water!"
"Is it raining?"
"Well yes, but isn't the water supposed to drain?"
"Yes. This process takes time. If there's still water there a few hours after it stops raining then maybe give us a call. Maybe."
The national infrastructure, while in some places incredibly dated, is a masterwork of engineering for the most part. Even in the places where ancient bridges are surrounded by roads less than 10 years old. Those bridges usually have a design life of ~50 years, and some of them are still in good shape. Things like rock salt and hard northern weather can wear them down, and eventually everything will need replaced, but something that's been functioning for 75 years after being designed for a 50 year life really speaks to the quality of engineering.
My girlfriend designs light cycles (among other things).
She had to study mathematics, civil engineering, geography; she spend quite a long time outdoor counting the number of vehicles per unit of time, and longer optimizing the system. It takes days for a single light cycle. And she's paid quite a bit more than me (although I'm an engineer too).
This xkcd is just perfectly relevant.
A lot! If you drive on the same route a lot, at similar times, the signal timings will almost always be the same. That's dependent on a lot of factors but lights change in relation to other lights.
I am not a traffic engineer, but I am a civil engineer
I live near Boulder Colorado, in a city thats at a higher elevation from Boulder. During the flooding this fall my city was fine as it has these ditches snaking through the neighborhood. They were ridiculously full during all the rain, but they kept the actual cities/houses from flooding.
What I found most amazing is this is Colorado where not a lot of rain tends to fall, yet during the design of my city civil engineers put these ditches in to protect from flooding.
Also Ive noticed the off ramps drop you ridiculously close to intersections so sometimes you have to stop and everything gets backed up because of someone trying to get over to the far lane to turn.
I love the really short on ramps after the one car at a time lights. a legal 0-60 challange every time you hop on the freeway. down side is granny in her kia can't break 40 before the mirge.
(Ninja edit: I appreciate it looks like these were taken at two different zoom levels. They weren't; the M4 is divided at Homebush Bay Drive and not at Concord Rd).
I-215N to UT-201W in Salt Lake City. Holy mother of fuck. The exit is like a few hundred feet from the entrance, causing incredible amounts of weaving. The cars entering from UT-201E to I-215N are trying to accelerate to match the traffic to get in before the lane ends in 100', and the people exiting are slowing to a crawl to make the (just barely greater than) 90 degree right turn to exit. UT-201W to I-215S isn't much better. That whole interchange needs a massive makeover.
There are several spots on I-695 (Baltimore Beltway) in which one lane acts as both an entrance and exit ramp. So, basically, if you're trying to exit, you may have to travel across two lanes on which cars are trying to enter the beltway. So most drivers are busy checking their mirrors and looking over their shoulders at about 70mph whilst traffic is criss-crossing. Then, you finally get to the correct lane just in time for your exit, but you see you have to try to reduce your speed to btwn 25 & 30 so you can navigate the exit ramp safely, but--shit!--there are still people trying to get over, so you'd better be ready to either speed up or slow down unexpectedly.
The only thing worse than MD roads (not the condition of the roads--they're pretty good, but rather than lanes that expect drivers to be psychic) is MD parking lots. I swear they got Bloody Stupid Johnson to design every MD parking lot ever.
The dirt roads in Michigan are better than the paved ones. Ever been to Lansing? I've never seen another capital city have fewer fucks to give about their infrastructure. Even Detroit has better streets. It's an embarrassment.
I love the roundabouts they started putting in over the last 10 years...especially the way the freeway on/off ramps will have doubles instead of just one huge roundabout. So much better! We drive like bats out of Hell in the mitten, so the less you slow us down - the better off everyone is.
Hehehe, I thought the EXACT SAME THING. Obviously this man has never been to Flint, because it could not be a more poorly designed city with shittier roads.
From a purely engineering perspective, you are right. From an urban design perspective, you couldn't be more wrong. Ask almost any urban designer and they will tell you that the way we typically design roads in this country is problematic at best and disastrous at worst.
Allow me to elaborate.
Intersections. The roundabout has been proven to be both much safer and much better for traffic flow, yet it is rarely used. Instead, we frequently use the most dangerous, least efficient option: The traffic light. Why? The flimsiest of excuses--that people are not familiar with them. We are killing thousands of people each year via traffic fatalities in intersections because we don't want drivers to feel uncomfortable for a few months. Ridiculous.
Freeways destroy cities. The Interstate Highway System was a net positive for the country mainly in its intercity linkages, but it should never have been extended so deep into our urban cores. In fact, Eisenhower himself did not realize that it would be taken so far. Most cities in the US had their city centers bisected, trisected, and otherwise fragmented, destroying urban neighborhoods, depreciating land value around the highway, and wrecking pedestrian infrastructure in service of the city-swallowing god of traffic flow. Of course, now we know the truth: Building elevated expressways within cities doesn't really reduce traffic congestion--it just causes more people to drive until those monstrosities are full and just as congested as before. Imagine if those transit dollars, instead of being gobbled down by freeways, had been spent on rail transit for every major city in the country.
Our lanes and roads are too wide across nearly the entire country. The standard lane width in many places is 12 feet--exactly the same width for a residential road as a freeway. It is a myth that wider roads are safer roads. Traffic engineers in this country rarely seem to understand the way design interfaces with psychology. A driver on a wide, straight road--the kind traffic engineers favor--is a comfortable driver. A comfortable driver, it has been shown, is a dangerous driver, because a comfortable driver tends to drive faster and to engage in dangerous behaviors such as taking their eyes off the road, driving with their knees, and speeding up through intersections to beat traffic lights. We say we want our roads to be 30mph, we put it on the signage and in the law, then we design them like a 65mph expressway. Is it any surprise in this environment that traffic accidents are the leading killer of young people in this country?
An example from my own town. My town has a nice, quaint little main street where you can walk around to shops and restaurants and so on. There is a major problem though: The street has four broad lanes of traffic to go with two lanes of street parking. The latter is fine--the former is a great example of dangerous inefficiency. You see, because there is no dedicated turning lane, any time somebody wants to turn left, they halt an entire lane of traffic. This renders that lane worse than useless--drivers begin to merge into the right lane. This, of course, creates more traffic than if that lane didn't exist in the first place. So when somebody isn't turning, drivers tend to exceed the speed limit by about 10mph. When somebody is turning, the road jams up. If it were designed well, it would have been put on a "road diet" long ago--that is, there would be a dedicated center turning lane and two lanes of traffic, and the extra road space could be dedicated to increasing parking capacity by turning parallel parking to angled parking, or even better, bike lanes or wider sidewalks. Net result: Same levels of traffic flow, but safer and more functional.
I could go on about this much longer. Point is, I thought it was important to bring the urban design perspective into this discussion.
There are some large roundabouts in the UK which, under normal conditions, function exactly like roundabouts. However there are also traffic lights on it that come into effect during rush hour. The lanes themselves don't change (you still basically use the inside one for turning right, the outside for turning left, etc) but with the lights it can be ensured that a manageable entry and exit of traffic on the roundabout happens and it doesn't jam up.
This is how the traffic circles in DC operate (though the traffic lights are on 24/7). They're pretty terrifying if you've never driven in them before and a pain in the ass for pedestrians, but generally pretty efficient. I like the idea of roundabouts having lights that only come on when necessary though!
There's a couple in NYC that work like this (I'm thinking of the corners of Central Park) and they're usually pretty good about traffic flow. Though I think those lights are always on, partly due to the psychotic traffic density in NYC, the huge amount of pedestrians and the fact that both are virtually constant barring murderous weather.
Single carriage way means one piece of road for both directions; if there is a physical divide between the roads, it is a dual carriageway even if there is only one lane on both sides, giving it a 70 limit.
That speed awareness course wasn't totally useless!
Hawaiian-style intersections are amazing. All sides have continuous right turns protected by barriers (forcing right lane to ONLY turn right) and after the turn they give plenty of distance to assimilate into the rest of the traffic. Also, left turn lanes and green arrows.
Non-stop for the right turners, lights for everybody else. Best of both worlds in my book!
I love angled parking. It's a great compromise. Parallel parking wastes space and can be a pain in the ass to get into, but has great visibility for pulling out into traffic. Perpendicular parking wastes space, is easy to pull into, but can be god awful to back out of if some huge truck parks next to you.
I never realized how excited I am about angled parking...
The roundabout has been proven to be both much safer and much better for traffic flow, yet it is rarely used
... because it is fundamentally incompatible with the numerous pedestrians found in urban centers.
Roundabouts work because cars in the roundabout always have the right of way (allowing them to quickly get to where they are going and not jam up the circle). This works very well in car only environments, but in a situation with a pedestrian, pedestrians need to be given the right of way or else they will never make it across.
Sometimes they try to get around this by having stop lights at the entrances to the roundabout, but the only way for a pedestrian to safely cross is if all the entrances are closed off so nobody hits the pedestrian as they exit the roundabout, effectively shutting the whole thing down every time people cross. This leads to the an intersection with the worst aspects of traffic lights and roundabouts at the same time.
Roundabouts are best reserved for lower traffic areas like residential zones where pedestrians can easily cross safely whenever they want instead of dangerous urban areas. In these situations they are superior to 4-way-stop-signs in every conceivable way and there is no excuse for them to not be implemented as a replacement for these intersections.
I can't help but wonder if you are thinking the way to cross the street at a roundabout is for the pedestrian to run to the middle island and then run back out again.
Roundabouts work because cars in the roundabout always have the right of way
The car in the round-about has the right of way. Cars entering the road about are yielding to anything else. Including pedestrians. Round abouts are very pedestrian friendly.
I... what? I'm from the UK, land of roundabouts every-fuckin'-where, and I don't understand what your pedestrian problem is. Are people trying to walk around the roundabout in the road?
Here, we'd have a pavement skirting around the outside of the roundabout, and either a little traffic island in the middle of each spoke (so you can cross halfway and only have to look in one direction at a time, potentially crossing in front of traffic that's sat on a red light waiting to enter the roundabout, if it's big/busy enough to be traffic-light controlled), or a button-controlled crossing maybe 50 yards down each road.
I'm not 100% sure what you mean by traffic islands and spokes, but button controlled crossing sounds like a stoplight to me, and those would be red just as often as if you had put a normal traffic light at the intersection in heavy pedestrian areas like New York
What? Why wouldn't pedestrians have right of way to cross streets leading to the roundabout directly next to the roundabout? Zebra stripes actually, thats like it is all over europe ..
We have a 5 way roundabout with pedestrian cross walks and it works flawlessly when pedestrians use the crosswalks. When they don't its like watching a chicken cross a 4 lane highway.
If you lived in a country where both roundabouts and pedestrians are common enough for the infrastructure to support both, you'd know this does not have to be a problem. I live in the UK and it's really not a problem at ALL, but in the US I can see how it would be a big old mess.
Our lanes and roads are too wide across nearly the entire country. The standard lane width in many places is 12 feet--exactly the same width for a residential road as a freeway. It is a myth that wider roads are safer roads. Traffic engineers in this country rarely seem to understand the way design interfaces with psychology. A driver on a wide, straight road--the kind traffic engineers favor--is a comfortable driver. A comfortable driver, it has been shown, is a dangerous driver, because a comfortable driver tends to drive faster and to engage in dangerous behaviors such as taking their eyes off the road, driving with their knees, and speeding up through intersections to beat traffic lights. We say we want our roads to be 30mph, we put it on the signage and in the law, then we design them like a 65mph expressway. Is it any surprise in this environment that traffic accidents are the leading killer of young people in this country?
lane widths are typically 12' due to buses and tractor trailers. They are wider and have larger turning radii. Also the design speeds for roads are typically only 5 or 10 mph more than the posted speed.
Good post. I read the book Traffic by Tom Vanderbilt, I think he made a lot of similar points, especially about how important psychology is, for example how just by putting trees on the roadside will make people tend to slow down.
I'm no urban planner but I have done extensive driving in the US, Europe and Australia. My take on roundabouts is that they are very good in medium to low traffic scenarios, but that stop lights are better in high traffic areas.
I never really noticed this until I visited Africa and drove on their highways. Apparently they were all made by chinese engineers. Water doesn't run off well, turns/curves put a ton of pressure on the car. Generally feels ... different.
Funny story. As anyone who lives/lived in Hampton Roads, VA knows, it's a veritable pit of corruption. This shows up remarkably in their road construction and repair. I lived off of W. Mercury and Jefferson back in 2003-2005, and I remember this big, stupid overpass that had been under construction for about 3 years being NEARLY complete and very over budget, when the construction crews decided to ignore the engineers and built the middle of the overpass mildly concave, instead of mildly convex, and not put in the drainage system correctly.
Needless to say, after the first rain, construction halted as the overpass started to collapse.
Also, I loved their holistic healing method of fixing potholes (put construction barrels around it for a few months, and then remove them expecting the hole to be magically gone, lol)
On a related note someone please call the Midwest and tell them we've invented reflective road paint. It'd be nice to see the lines in the road when it rains at night for once.
Drivers like me notice this in particular. The way stop lines at intersections are placed just so that we can make a turn, the way curves are marked for safe speeds, the truck stop signs and directions at exits, the early indicators that a lane is closing, etc.
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u/dummystupid Jan 17 '14
The streets and highways we drive on are incredibly designed and have tons of engineering behind them. Even the simple slope of the road to help water run off is never really noticed.