A short treatise on truck impacts for the Nation’s highways.
As mentioned previously, a Maui, HI, citizen group produced an exceptional traffic jam with a simulated Hawaii Superferry arrival. Sitting here in Atlanta, only reading news articles, I don’t think the problems will be as bad as demonstrated, due to bottlenecks coming off the ferry.
In Kahului, HI, citizens who are protesting the new Hawaii Superferry plan to simulate the effects that the offloading of this ferry will have on the local road network. They’re not simulating this using software, though; they’re gathering an equivalent amount of vehicles and pedestrians to do an actual offload, to demonstrate the effects the ferry will bring. This is citizenry in action! Awesome.
News about a potential new commuter rail tunnel. Secretary Mary Peters has been slinging around a lot of money in the last few weeks. She announced here in Atlanta some big amount of money to help study Atlanta Harstfield Jackson Airport in order to determine if further expansion is possible, and to consider a potential second airport.
This man has a point about safe roads being not necessarily “comfortable” roads.
Before anyone gets up in arms about be bashing our faithful brethren in the ITS industry, I must say that I have personal experience to what this man is complaining about. On several occasions here in Atlanta, I’ve checked the traffic status (acceptable) on Georgia Navigator, only to have the inaccuracy forcefully pointed out to me by my stuck-in-traffic wife. There is apparently some lag in the reporting of average speeds around here.
More news about the traffic wardens in England who now have head-cameras.
When you look at this image, what do you see?
I see a spaghetti-tangle of aircraft travel corridors. These are the airports within 30 miles of Atlanta that have instrument landing systems. Hartsfield-Jackson Airport (the southernmost red blob) is, of course, the world’s busiest in terms of takeoff and landings as well as numbers of travelers. The second from the top-left red blob is Dobbins Air Reserve Base, home to a fighter wing, a maintenance facility, a training facility, and Lockheed. The other blobs are airports without commerical airlines, but still plenty of traffic. The skies over Atlanta are rarely free of aircraft.
Transportation Secretary Mary Peters was here last month and announced some federal funds to help study ways to keep Hartsfield-Jackson operating effectively into the future with all the expected growth. One of the options to be considered is a second large commerical airport for the region.
Wow. That is the sort of project to make engineers’ mouths water. Build a large new transportation facility from scratch.
Controversy immediately kicked off. Delta and AirTran, Hartsfield-Jackson’s largest tenants are against any second airport for their own reasons, some of which might make sense, but others of which sound like “don’t make us compete with other carriers.” The City of Atlanta seems to be against it because it would be outside the city (there’s no space large enough inside) therefore no tax base. The various surrounding counties seem to be against it because their large tracts of relatively undeveloped land would make the ideal location for a new airport and its attendant noise, development, etc. In fact, I’m not sure anyone is actually for the project, except for every single airline passenger I’ve spoken with around here, me included.
Most people seem to think that the logical place to put a new airport would be somewhere on the northern side of the city. I agree, if only because it would cut my time to get to an airport by 75% or so. Of course, there’s no telling what airlines would fly into a hypothetical ATL2, but you can bet that the citizens north of I-285 would flock there.
Whatever comes out of this bruhaha, you can bet that we’re still years away from any sort of construction.
Happy 0th birthday to Nathan Schierer!
MacArthur Maze, the freeway interchange ramp in California that had the unfortunate experience of a burning tanker truck full of gasoline, has reopened to traffic less than a month after the incident. Wow.
Vegas pedestrians are renting handicapped scooters.
Unfortunately, this is the first I’ve heard about this issue. I need to go look at this, because the full wording of the bill would be very important.
Traffic Bobbys are getting head cameras to deter outraged motorists. I know that this will be on Cops in a few months time.
Please. Don’t put these up on your house.
Local terrorists are trying to shoot down aircraft in Lexington, KT. Sort of…
No more getting out of speeding tickets because the officer screwed up the make of your car. Now they’ll scan your VIN and off you go.
The movie is made from images found on google image search.
Again, like the title says.
The Master Control Program has it in for humans. Or maybe it’s Skynet. Or maybe WOPR
Whatever diabolical digital entity it is, it’s paring us down using our satellite navigation systems against us.
Thanks to Transport Blog for alerting us to this menace.
This article links to a Disney video depicting the highway of the future. This ranks right up there with Where is my Jetpack.
Want to try something new while getting from A to B? Kristi Keorkunian has a list.
I live in a congested city with numerous resources for tracking that congestion. Do I make use of it? Not as often as I should.
Water main break in Seattle causes large sinkhole.
The interchange in Oakland that was the victim of a burning tanker truck is being worked upon.
Or their goalie did, specifically.
Unfortunately, not all of us can commute by boat.
Don’t smear your sweaty pits on the seats.
This needs a posting all by itself…
As the residents of Gilroy, CA discovered after a wreck closed part of US 101
What is this?
This is shear tearing in roadside guardrail. Caused by a high-speed impact. For more detail, please go to my flickr set where you can learn all about guardrail impalement*
*No persons were impaled here. The term refers to when a guardrail bends and impales the vehicle
Don’t park your alligator illegally.
Oakland residents are complaining about the helicopters hovering over the collapsed freeway bridge. I know where they are coming from, in a limited sense. The Peachtree Road Race is a 10k race in Atlanta, GA every 4th of July. It’s the largest 10k in the world (55,000 runners). When you arrive at the start line, you are treated to 2 hours of droning helicopters. It’s annoying after a while. I think it is the one thing that detracts from the race day.
One person’s opinion about TxDOT.
Cory Lidle, deceased pitcher for the NY Yankees and Tyler Stanger, his pilot instructor, died due to pilot error according to the National Transportation Safety Board.