The Evil Eyebrow

Something I say a lot is, “Give me context.”  Explain what this number means to me, a person who does not swim in the currents you spend your days in. This happens all the time at my workplace because we mix world-class experts in our staff meetings, all of whom know exactly what they’re talking about and use short-hand ways to convey information between similar experts. These short-hand phrases are time saving, but also gate-keeping for those who are not part of the same expertise pool.

Thus, “Give me context.” 

Context is critical for understanding how the information in question fits into the rest of the world. For example, on December 18, 2024, the Atlanta Journal Constitution published a story about Atlanta’s highest tower, and a new tenant that is moving in (paywall).  Here is a snippet from that article.

My immediate question was, “What is 94,000 square feet in normal-person terms?  How many floors is that?”

I’m not dunking on the AJC reporter in question; they have a demanding job and this article is a standard form of the type. However, it is meaningless to a person who does not know off the top of their head what the square-footage of a typical office building is. Real Estate developers know these numbers intimately. Site designers do, too.  I do not. I’m willing to bet that the majority of people reading this opinion piece don’t either.

(From Google I measured the floor area of the Bank of America tower and it’s about 12,000 square feet. That legal firm is grabbing eight floors of the building. That’s a number I can get my head around!)

What is the point of this essay? Remember that people around you do not necessarily understand your lingo.  Remember to read the room and see if your message, whatever it is, is getting across. At public meetings you need to speak in actual English, not engineerese. And especially remember your junior staff members may be reticent to speak up and ask questions. 

I am famous for asking the “dumb questions” of other engineers when they’re talking about tied-arch bridges or uplift or end-around taxiways.  But I am a long-service white male in middle management; a minority woman who is new to the company has an entirely different perspective. Know your staff and encourage them to ask questions, and most of all, give everyone the context they need to understand the information you are presenting.

An intersection concept we were introduced to in Utrecht was called a priority square. It’s a four-legged intersection that functions a bit like a hybrid between a restricted crossing U-turn (RCUT) and a roundabout, but with less yielding built into it. Below is the Google aerial of the one we looked at in Utrecht (note that the google maps link has old aerial imagery. Use Google Earth and the historical imagery to get the very latest).

Looking at it, the mainline traffic generally maintains priority, but left-turning vehicles have to yield to oncoming traffic, so those movements are not free-flow. From the side streets, drivers can’t just go straight through or turn left in one movement. Instead, they have to enter the median, wait for a gap in oncoming traffic, and then complete the maneuver in a second stage. That makes it operate a lot like an RCUT, but with some roundabout-like behavior in how movements are broken up and how yielding works.

We sat and watched this one for a while, and it functioned fairly well. There were some heavy vehicles moving through, and the design accounted for that with turning aprons for overtracking.

I saw another one on the south side of Utrecht that didn’t operate quite as well. I was biking along the cyclist lanes and stopped to watch it for a bit. From a motor vehicle standpoint, it performed poorly. Gaps for cars were limited, and the median storage area filled up to the point where queues backed into the through lanes, causing congestion.

That said, it worked very well for pedestrians and cyclists. They had clear priority, and their movements were safe and continuous. And all motor vehicles yielded and didn’t try to “shoot the gaps” or push any of the vulnerable road users out of the way!

The main difference comes down to perspective. In the United States, we’d look at that operation and call it a failure based on delay and congestion. In the Netherlands, that same condition is more or less acceptable, because the design is prioritizing safety and comfort for cyclists and pedestrians over vehicle throughput.

Part of why that’s accepted is that delay for motor vehicles is not treated as the primary measure of success. The system is intentionally designed to introduce friction for drivers, slow speeds, and reduce conflict points, which improves overall safety. There’s also an assumption that if driving becomes less convenient in these environments, some trips will shift to walking, biking, or transit. So what we in the U.S. would define as a capacity or level-of-service problem, they tend to view as a normal and even desirable outcome of a multimodal, safety-first network.

I can see uses for this intersection configuration in situations that have restricted right of way along the side streets and would not allow the easy application of a standard roundabout. This intersection also prioritizes pedestrians more than a standard roundabout.

It operates similar to a restricted crossing U-turn without the U-turn needs downstream of the intersection. This is both a pro and a con because it reduces the amount of storage available for queuing vehicles.

We’ll see if it can be used on any of my projects in the future.

The trip that I took to the Netherlands last month was one of the most productive uses of both money and vacation time I’ve had in a long time. However, it also developed a loooong list of things for me to do. While the first week was a solid family vacation where we did touristy things like all great tourists, the second week was full of technical insights, site visits, collegiate discussion, and many many notes within my (very analogue) notebook for tasks and things to do. Some of those are more personal, or at least of a more personal opinion, however many are to drive the success and future work of the Georgia Section of ITE, which I will be President of next year. It’s always “fun” when your vacation gives you a lot of homework.

Now that I’ve clubbed some of the work monsters that reared their heads while I was out for two weeks, I’ve been spending some time brainstorming with my notebook in hand, and going over the pictures I took during the trip. An uncurated and abbreviated list of topics that can be discussed at length include:

• General opining on the trip and the things we saw.
• Dutch and American policy differences for infrastructure;
• Maintenance and construction differences;
• Bicyclists not giving a fuck about pedestrian right of way in the Netherlands (but in the politest way);
• How to inch the American city or town toward a more inclusive street system;
• Why don’t the Dutch have an equivalent to the ADA (they do, but it’s scattershot and the number of mobility barriers I saw were astounding!);
• Geez these people are all tall and attractive!
• Need a “W.hat I did on my European Vacation” presentation for ITE.
• Examples of the great infrastructure solutions we saw. Particularly the triple lane roundabout with a three-legged ped/bike bridge over the top of it. Wild!

Stay tuned.

It’s important to feed the internet cat monster. So here’s a cat.

This is Jeska (yes’ kah for all you Americans) of the Dutch Cycling Embassy. She is the project director who helped put together our technical tour. I cannot compliment her and the rest of the Dutch Cycling Embassy enough for how well they assisted us on this trip. I have been on technical tours before, and this has been by far the smoothest and most professional.

The Dutch Cycling Embassy that cycling embassy is a group that helps bring the knowledge and experience of the Netherlands to other interested parties. They describe it much better so I’m just going to quote they’re about us page.

An intermediary between the demand for Dutch cycling expertise and Dutch parties that can deliver. The Dutch Cycling Embassy is a non-profit with a public private network for cycling-friendly cities and regions worldwide. Our network brings together the best of Dutch cycling: knowledge, experience, and experts from private companies, NGOs, research institutions, and national and local governments.

The technical tour group is comprised of 15 people: 12 from the Georgia ITE section one from Lexington, Kentucky, one from Charlotte, North Carolina and one from Mathews North Carolina.  Those of us from the Atlanta region have had many informal breakouts talking about where we could apply the things we see in the locations and counties and municipalities that we are familiar with. One of the things that the Dutch cycling embassy does so well is emphasize the procedures, processes, mindsets, and incremental improvements that can successfully bring about the type of walking and cycling infrastructure that we see here in Utrecht, Rotterdam, Houten, and tomorrow, Amsterdam. 

And while I just referred to walking and bicycling infrastructure, it’s not separate facilities from the motor vehicle infrastructure. They’re all together, providing mobility for all modes in the way that we talk about in the United States, but never quite achieve. Mostly because of our mindset as a car centered nation that happens to provide services to people on foot or on wheels.

One take away from this technical tour is I thought I would have more time and energy to do daily wrap ups but honestly, by the time we get back to the hotel at night I’m so wiped I’ve got nuthin’. So some more detailed discussion and examination of  the things we have seen will probably have to wait until next week or later. 

It’s been a little hectic, and not a lot of time to put together a well written compilation of knowledge learned and ideas I’ve have had. But to substitute for that here are a bunch of pictures.

I am in the Netherlands this week with other members of ITE Georgia Section to see first hand the Dutch way of building and maintaining safe roadway infrastructure. I expect to learn quite a bit, however, the most important lesson is easy. How did the Dutch do it?

They decided to do it.

Fundamentally, the role of the automobile in the United States is set by entrenched policy decisions, including the methods of zoning which leads to suburban sprawl and the resistance to reducing existing motor vehicle lanes to provide for other modes of travel such as pedestrians, bikes, dedicated bus lanes, etc.

The thing to remember is that the reason we have the transportation network we have is because of decisions that have been made in the past. But those decisions do not need to control our future. If we want a transit centered, bicycle friendly, walkable neighborhood, we can have it. We just have to decide to do it and acknowledge that it will take time and resources. It’s about choices. And right now all of the choices we are making say that the Car is King.

Over the course of this week, I’ll be throwing out several thoughts. A lot of these will be less well formed because I will be preparing them nightly after a day full of activities, but I hope to come back to them and add more detail. The way we treat our infrastructure in the United States is really important because it lasts for a long time. Decisions made today will echo for 20 to 50 years or longer. 

Jennifer, Griffin and I spent a week in the Netherlands, mostly Amsterdam, enjoying ourselves and doing all the touristy things. We’re here because next week I’m participating in a technical tour in Utrecht with a bunch of my Georgia ITE colleagues. You’ll see a bunch of posts about infrastructure and roads, but for now here’s some photos and commentary from our trip.

Unsurprising, I’m sure, but there are an awful lot of bicycles in Amsterdam. Moving around the city center is fast, convenient, and relatively safe because everyone yields to everyone else. I think I heard a car honk twice over the course of the week. 

Whenever we travel, we always dine at good restaurants. We don’t regard it as splurging so much as participating in the food economy. We dined one night at Rijks, a one star Michelin restaurant. We all had the tasting course and Jennifer and I had the wine pairing after which Griffin was irritated because we had had too much to drink.

If you go to Amsterdam, you have to visit the Rijksmuseum. It is the national art museum and well worth the trip. It’s like visiting the Met in New York; you can’t do it all, so pick a couple things to go see and don’t worry if you don’t see all the others.

We visited Amsterdam in the middle of tulip season so we had to visit Keukenhof, an easy 40 minute bus ride from Amsterdam. And it’s only 40 minutes because of the traffic jams due to all the people going to Keukenhof. It was packed with people, but it honestly wasn’t that big a deal. We got plenty of time to look at the flowers.

Rather than heading straight back to Amsterdam after our tulip visit at Keukenhof, we spent the night in Noordvijk to be at the beach, see the sunset, and go to the ESA Space Expo. We could’ve continue to participate in the wonderful transit system in the Netherlands and taken a bus but honestly, we decided to get a rideshare to save us some time.

We spent three more days in Amsterdam and did a lot more tourist things such as walking a lot, went shopping, had a high tea at the Duchess, went to the Van Loon museum, visited the KattenKabinet, and generally had a good time as a family.

Today I am in the Hague for solo touristing after sending Griffin and Jenn home. Tomorrow I will be in Utrecht where we will start our technical tour and I’ll have some commentary about what we see and what we learn. Throughout it all Baby Foxy will be learning with me. She’s been to more countries than I have!

I flew out to San Jose, CA last Sunday and was picked up by my sister and brother in law. They very generously provided me with a spare bedroom and a desk from which I could sleep and work during the day (mostly on an East Cost schedule) while hanging out with my Dad in the afternoons and evenings. We’ve lost several relatives this year and it is important that I got to spend this time with him (and of course my sister and brother in law to whom I am extremely grateful for feeding and hosting me this week).

My dad and I hung out in the evenings, working on a puzzle and watching football.

My sister took Dad and I to Fremont Peak, which is something I had not been to before. Great views from the top of Monterey Bay and all the land leading up to it.

While I was here we needed to do some standard Santa Cruz things such as visit the “frozen surfer” (reference to Han Solo frozen in carbonite) with the surfer memorial bench next to it.

I’l be heading home tomorrow, back to good ‘ol Georgia. It’s been a great visit but I’m ready to go home.