The Evil Eyebrow

This Week in Traffic: 23 February 2007

Written by

Bill Ruhsam

in

Fines by Fone

In Dubai, UAE, the traffic police will be issuing traffic citations by phone soon. This will teach those crazy people in Lubbock who don’t want to enforce their traffic lights with automatic cameras.

Speaking of Lubbock

My former residence of Lubbock, Texas is having a bruhaha over potential red-light enforcement. The cited article decries camera enforcement prior to engineering improvements such as improved signal timing. I’ll keep in touch with my friends back there and see what happens.

Speaking of Signal Cameras

An article in today’s AJC covers the impact of red-light enforcement in Georgia (free registration req’d).

Charleston Ordinance Doomed to Failure

This ordinance, intended to prevent drivers from cutting through a particular subdivision to avoid traffic, is ultimately going to fail for several reasons (I define “Fail” to be “not satisfy the residents who pushed for the ordinance.”)

  • It will reduce traffic, I’m sure, but when the cops aren’t out there, people will drive through. It’s like speed limits. People will drive where they are comfortable driving
  • It’s illegal, unless the subdivision purchases their streets back from the city.
  • It’s poor design. It may be more expensive to retrofit with roundabouts or other traffic calming devices, but ultimately, that’s the only solution that will work.

    • This particular article touches on several topics of concern to me (personally) including connectivity between neighboring subdivisions in suburbia. But that is for another post.

    Airliner Whoopsie

    ToTheCenter mentions an airliner denied permission for an emergency landing. The pilots went ahead and landed anyway, rather than run out of fuel and crash. At least, that’s what this posting says. I can’t confirm this with news reports from anywhere else. (edit: Here’s a confirmation) However, the inclusion of this quoted line from the link is what makes it worthy of my weekly-ish posting.

    They were forced to take an unmentionable risk, but did make the landing on the other runway

    Is it still unmentionable after you’ve mentioned it?

    Tappan Zee Bridge

    The NY State Thruway Authority is installing gates in the median of the Tappan Zee bridge to allow drivers to turn around and drive off the other direction in case of lane closures. Idea long in coming…

    Santa Cruz in the News

    Santa Cruz pops into my feedreader more often than any other location, including NYC and Los Angeles, etc…

    Kim Rainville on German Transportation

    A blog posting about her travels in Germany. Worth the read.

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