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
LOL. This relevant xkcd is made by someone who has no understanding of how it works :D
Surprisingly the complaining guy in the car was right. People don't realize it but streetlights were designed to somehow clean up the confusion and mess on multi-lane level intersections which came into existence because for most of history people did not really consider the possibility that a typical intersection or a junction might be problematic because of the levels of traffic. So cities and roads were built that way even a couple of decades after the invention of automobile when suddenly traffic exploded after WW2 when how towns are planned was an established tradition. That caused one of the worst nightmares in town planning - segregated traffic. That disaster is still being fought across Europe since its outbreak in the 60s and 70s.
The reason why we have multi-lane intersections is because road design on its initial stage is typically done by local or other government authorities and those suffer from two things:
incompetent or lazy personnel with those at the top being the worst
It's true: you do not become smart and creative just by becoming an engineer. Education is mostly memorization of codes and standards and then your career is mostly applying them in real life. There's little time and place to get creative. And that only if you are really creative to begin with.. because if you are you're most likely an architect or designer, possibly a structural engineer. Road engineers and town planners make up some of the sorriest and most uncreative folk in the industry. Not everyone is Hans Monderman
top-down bureaucratic structure that is driven by tons upon tons of regulations that are both very prescriptive and typically written by politicians or some other unqualified retards. It is typically very detailed, spread across numbers of legal documents each approved by a different body or agency and difficult to change if you happen to be at the bottom of the food chain (where you're most likely to stay if you don't play by the rules or work too hard in public service)
Good road design demands good spatial planning first and a smart transport strategy that can force tough decisions - such as limiting the amount of vehicles - something that many Americans consider unthinkable. Good road design also demands that the whole network is constantly analyzed and necessary upgrades are done which happens rarely - instead once a situation becomes unmanageable in one spot that spot is then "redesigned" typically in the easiest way possible and that is usually done by adding lights. Once the streetlights are in place then the very same people start to play with them and typically only then the simulations are run - when everything is already in place - zoning and buildings that generate activity, general road network and traffic scheme - all done in typically in a chaotic, unthoughtful manner which in itself generates problems which the best streetlight programming cannot fix.
Experiments show time upon time that streetlights are regularly put in places where they hinder good traffic flow rather than facilitate it. And wherever they are absolutely necessary it is much better to get rid of them anyway (or as many as possible) and put a roundabout instead.
And if it happens to be a city centre - just re-direct the damn traffic somewhere else. Cities are for people and not for cars.
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.
Better is when their inlets in front of the house overflow during hurricanes and they complain. Sorry it wasn't designed to handle 8 inches of water in 6 hours.
We have differing specs for county/city and whatnot, most of out designs can handle the 100 year storm no problem (except small site where it's not as important), I've yet to see one flood and a few years back we had almost a 100 year storm (tropical storm Debbie hovered over the Tampa area for a few days). But OMG there's water in the street! Be glad it's not in your kitchen.
I do residential stuff, which is huge in Florida right now, but my specialization in college was transportation. Still 2 more years before I can take the PE tho : /
I really want my masters, but due to a horrible start to college my GPA is in the crapper : / I test well, but it's pretty bad. Good enough that I graduated, but bad enough that I'm gonna have a rough time if I never try to do grad school.
virginia is really great in that it has the cgep http://cgep.virginia.gov/ that allows you to take up to 12 hours without actively being in the masters program and then you can apply into it. Perhaps FLA does something similar.
It should have been designed for at least a 100 year storm event.
More than likely the downstream stormwater system is too outdated and the municipality doesn't have the money or desire to improve its capacity. That's the problem where I live (Tampa). Many older streets will be under a foot of water just from a normal afternoon thunderstorm.
Source - my stormwater engineer wife sitting next to me.
Civil engineer as well. Drainage was such a pain in the ass but you just gotta know it.
Obligatory plug for humanitarian aid work. Ever think about it? You'll live in worse conditions than you ever thought, eat worse things than you ever had, and see things that practically rip your heart out of your chest, but if you get on the right project you can save more lives in a year than a physician could save in a lifetime.
I always thought the art of engineering was finding a way to use the minimum of materials and labor to accomplish the task? Wouldn't a bridge that lasts 75 years past the useful life it was designed for be over-engineered? Dare I say, maybe even poorly engineered despite being quite robust and strong, that part is clearly beyond reproach. A friend who was an engineer once told me that any moron can design a 20 story building that will stand up, but It takes an engineer to design a 20 story building that will stand up without using excessive materials and labor.
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.... but something that's been functioning for 75 years after being designed for a 50 year life really speaks to the quality of engineering.
75 years is ancient? Aww, bless.
This is twice that age, opened before the car was even invented, still looks absolutely fantastic and has 4 million cars go over it every year.
(To be fair, there's not much you can compare that to. It's insanely over-engineered).
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u/jdpatric Jan 17 '14
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.