The Evil Eyebrow

Category: Transportation

  • This Monday in Traffic: 15 Jan 2007

    Public Meetings

    This is the kind of public meeting that makes people go home and drink. My sister lives in Santa Cruz and I can imagine some of her neighbors at this meeting.

    Cellphone Congestion Avoidance

    A new product announced at the 2007 Consumer Electronics Showin Las Vegas, NV. Here is a link to the manufacturer’s site.

    Congestion Mitigation in Montréal

    A look at congestion mitigation in Montréal.

    Traffic Safety Week in India

    Traffic safety includes getting your eyes checked to see if you can see.

    Photography

    Here is a time-lapse image of traffic passing under a bridge, by Donncha O Caoimh, one of the guys behind WordPress, under which this blog operates. I seem to be running into a lot of Irish sites recently.

  • Poor use of Logo

    I was popped into the Safe Roads.org website today, looking for some traffic safety data. I found this logo.
    Logo for Advocates In Action
    My very first thought was, “What is ‘dvocates in ction?’”

    I like the A-on-a-warning-sign logo, but I don’t think using it for a letter in a word is appropriate. If we’re training drivers to see and obey signs, we shouldn’t be training to interpret them as letters in other environments.

    That’s my ten cents.

  • This Week in Traffic: 12 Jan 2007

    Infrastructure Multitasking

    Scottsdale, AZ is using traffic signals for cell towers.

    Problems with Centralization

    Los Angeles city employees allegedly snarled up traffic from the traffic management center for reasons related to a union action. They’ve pleaded not guilty.

    Traffic Food Signals

    Traffic signals aren’t just for Traffic, you know.

    Port of Miami Terrorist Scare

    The port of Miami shut down container movement within the port due to some suspicious activity. This sort of thing can directly impact the price of the food you buy if you live in the southeast U.S.

    Stop Sign Additives

    Stop! Hammer time! I in no way advocate the defacement of stop signs, “but if I did, this is how I would do it.”

    Interstate 3

    I-3 is a proposed interstate highway linking Savannah, GA with Knoxville, TN. It would follow the route of the Savannah River Parkway from Savannah to Augusta, GA, then continue over undesignated routes to Knoxville.

    I oppose this Interstate for two reasons: One, it goes right through the middle of the Chattahoochee National Forest and the Smoky Mountain National Park. Two, it’s named incorrectly! I-3 is designated as such to honor the 3rd Infantry Division based in Georgia. But, I-3 should be in California! The Origin of the interstate system is in the southwest and the numbers march upwards as you go farther east and north. There are some notable exceptions, but this one would take the cake. What if California needs a new number between the coast and I-5?

    De-cluttering the Georgia State Map

    Many small towns have been removed from the latest edition of the Georgia State Highway Map. You might imagine that this has raised an uproar. Even Governer Perdue has weighed in (well, maybe I should say, “especially Governor Perdue”). GDOT has since reversed their decision, and will be restoring the communities to the next year’s map.

    Transportation Disasters

    This (poorly written) article from Forbes discusses the increasing potential of transportation disasters due to growing capacities per vehicle. It’s easier to have a disaster if an Airbus A380 crashes than a DC-9. There! I’ve summed it up; you don’t need to read it. If you do read it, you will notice that near the bottom the author passes through the mantra that “speeding is death!” and quotes Bill Graves, the President and CEO of the American Trucking Association.

    “There is a need to slow down traffic,” says Bill Graves, president and CEO of the American Trucking Association. “The trucking industry is trying to do its part with this initiative. No vehicle should be capable of operating at excessive speeds on our nation’s highways.”

    Of course, what is “excessive speed?” And trying to raise or lower motorist speed has been futile in the past. It also hasn’t been shown that raising or lowering the speed limit (which I acknowledge isn’t the same as what is in the quote) doesn’t affect crash rates (sic).

  • Irish Switching Sides?

    Of the road, that is…

    This popped into my feedreader today. Normally, I would include it in my weekly traffic posting, but I believe that it (potentially) deserves its own entry.

    According to grandad, Ireland will be switching from left-side driving to right-side this summer. Unfortunately, a search for some official statement or speech to this effect turns up nothing. I’ve asked for a reference, or at least a confirmation that this is a joke. Once that is supplied, I’ll pop it in here.

    But, I’m inclined to think that this is a joke because of this:

    Initially, all buses and articulated vehicles will move to the right to allow for a period of adjustment. Car owners may opt to make the switch themselves on an individual basis, depending on their level of confidence.

    Call me small-minded, but I don’t see a transition period working so well. In the spirit of jokingness, it would be quite funny, but in the spirit of seriousness, it would be ridiculous not to mention dangerous.

    Posted elsewhere is a reference to this wikipedia article covering a similar transition in 1967 in Sweden.

    My skeptical nature comes rampantly to the fore when I read blog entries like this with no citations. But, I will apologize in advance to grandad if my googling skill is merely inadequate to the task of producing the necessary citations on my own.

    Edit 10:25: As noted in the comments, this was indeed a joke by grandad. Make sure you take a look at his potential impacts during the period of transition…

  • This week in Traffic

    Someone is going to have to download this game and let me know how it is. I don’t have a device to load it on.

    It’s amazing what ends up on the roads sometimes.

    As if we didn’t know that breathing smog was bad for us.

    How did the romans build their roads? Here is a general outline. Remember, if you can get the water off the road, it will last. Just ask John McAdam.

    Break a traffic law? Take home a plant and nurture it.

    More commentary on removing traffic signals in favor of rules-of-the-road navigation.

  • The Week in Traffic

  • Pac-Man is eating dots on Minnesotta Highways. Another story featuring the same item, with more detail but less video. Pac-man should have been painted in an elongated fashion like the striped words you see on streets, for better visibility by the driver. These dots are apparently supposed to deter tailgating and inform drivers what the proper safe following distance is. According to the various cited articles, they want to maintain a headway distance of 3 seconds between vehicles. That’s a long way and if the roadway in question grows toward its capacity, it probably won’t hold up. I will be interested to see the results of their before/after study
  • Capt. Fogg’s article of Tuesday December 26th illustrates what I consider to be an extreme opinion about directed traffic enforcement. Roadblocks for drunk-driving checks do not violate the Bill of Rights because people are not “their persons, houses, papers, and effects” on public-access roadways. Safety enforcement is not an unreasonable search or seizure.
  • There are a lot of websites devoted to talking about congestion shock waves. This one does it more entertainingly than most.
  • Lastly, this post talks about freeing up congestion and reducing delay by removing the forced regulation of roadways (i.e. Traffic Signals). The post cites an article that mentions Drachten, Holland, mentioned earlier on this blog. I think this will work, but not everywhere. You need both lightly regulated local roads for access (perhaps business districts, too) and more controlled arterials. That’s how a roadway network works.

  • "Oh What Fun, it is to drive…"

    In case you’re new to me or this blog, I am a traffic engineer. Better yet, I’m a certified traffic engineer: a Pee-Toe (PTOE, Professional Traffic Operations Engineer). This involves doing several different things like studying how new construction will effect affect existing traffic patterns. Typically, we look at the current year, whatever year the construction will occur, than then some arbitrary horizon year, like 20 years out.

    One of our tools is called Corsim CORSIM, and leaving out all the niggly details, we get pretty simulations like this:

    Corsim Simulation of a mess at an interchange.

    Argh. What a mess. Methinks I need to work on how the signals are timed at the intersections you see.

    1311 Update: What a terrible job I did writing this. Look at all those grammar errors…

  • Traffic Camera = Doh!

    I got this off of Fark.com. Apparently, there is a citation-issuing speed camera in Wales that has been causing serious traffic congestion due to drivers slamming on their brakes to avoid being over 50 MPH (says the article).

    First question: 50 MPH? Not 80 KPH?

    Second question: (more of a comment really) “heh heh heh HAHAHAHAHAHA!”

    As a traffic engineer, I’m heartily amused by this situation. Oh, in hindsight this makes perfect sense. And (also in hindsight) they should never have placed a speed camera where they did. However, the article goes on to mention that:

    “Being so close to a junction it causes a lot of congestion where there is not a history of accidents,” Assembly Member Alun Cairns told the BBC. “Westbound congestion of a Friday evening regularly tails back in excess of five miles because people brake through instinct on observing the camera even when they are traveling within the speed limit.”

    The Welsh Assembly Government will not consider raising the speed limit or removing nearby speed cameras.

    It seems that the congestion is relegated almost entirely to the area of this interchange. I would think that there would be some congestion at every single one of the mentioned cameras, not just the one at the interchange. Given that many studies have shown that drivers will not respect a speed limit they regard as too low, I would expect to see a series of pulse-congestion as the free-flowing vehicles hit each of the well-known speed camera locations.

    I’ll have to look into this and see how well it’s operating. Mainland Europe treats their speed controls much more sanely. They raise and lower the speeds dynamically to ensure maximum efficiency of travel, not to enforce some arbitrary speed limit.

  • Driving without Regulation!

    Gacked from Matt Rosenberg’s Geography Blog is a story of traffic regulation by non-regulation.

    Basically it boils down to this: There are too many signs on the roads and most are not seen, respected, or understood by drivers*. It would be safer to remove all regulatory signs from the roadways and allow drivers to navigate under looser constraints.

    The theory says that if drivers need to pay more attention to where they are going, and how they will get there, they will process more stimuli than if they depend on striping and signage. This should lead to fewer collisions due to heightened awareness. So far, according to the linked article, it seems to be working in some european locations.

    But wait! Transportation isn’t only about safety. If you wanted to be perfectly safe on the road, you’d stay home and never enter your vehicle. To quote the Texas Department of Transportation’s mission statement, they invest in “providing safe, effective and efficient movement of people and goods.” Transportation is necessary for commerce, and the amount of commerce is directly related to the amount of “stuff” that gets moved around. Providing an unregulated driving environment may reduce collisions (it has) but it will probably also reduce the amount of stuff that can be moved through that unregulated zone.

    I don’t see this being some sort of panacea. Under certain circumstances it will work, I’m sure, but it must be carefully coordinated with community planning and with the design of the transportation network. High-speed, high-capacity routes like the interstate system in America, which are designed for high throughput “of people and goods” require specific regulation. Lower-speed, lower-capacity collectors and local roads would be much more appropriate for this experiment. Some sort of “small town America” would be ideal, but only if you don’t have a US 1 running through the center of town. Of course, if you live in a subdivision, you may already experience what is going on here. I’ve been in many with no stop signs or striping, merely the understanding that you’re not supposed to t-bone your neighbor at 50 mph on the way to work.

    Also, journalism as usual isn’t quite hitting the mark with what is written. I don’t think the linked story details the rules behind this no-rules approach. For example, the picture in the article shows Drachten, Netherlands, which is converting its remaining signalized intersections to roundabouts, which have very definitive rules of travel, if you want them to work correctly. Striping is key, and I don’t think people would take kindly to you going around backwards. The article also mentions that Drachten has scrapped “more than half” of their signs. Well, I could probably go out today and scrap 50% of the signs on the roads in Cobb County Georgia without affecting a single black-and-white regulatory sign. Pay attention on your next drive and see how many signs are littered along the roads. And don’t include the ones that are put up by private concerns, just the highway signs. There are hundreds, and it would be easy to get rid of a number of them immediately.

    Bottom line: There are many ways of doing things with respect to transportation infrastructure. No one solution works everywhere. The “waves and nods” approach might work in Drachten but it might be a disaster in Los Angeles, California. Careful consideration of the impacts a transportation project or initiative might have is necessary to avoid costly mistakes. Be involved in the transportation project development in your neck of the woods and you might push your muncipality/county/state into doing something a bt more in line with what your community wants.

    *This is FACT! If you don’t believe me, tell me what this sign means. OM3 Sign from Roadways in the US If you get it right (and I haven’t already told you and you’re not in the transportation field, I’ll give you a prize. Like your very own blog entry or something…) Many research studies have shown that drivers will ignore signs they feel are unnecessary, like absurdly low speed limits or unwarranted stop signs. Also, in dense environments with numerous regulatory signs, guidesigns, advertisements, roads, lane changes, pedestrians, and other stimuli needing the driver’s attention, the most important signs (such as STOP) are not necessarily the ones a driver will “see”. Unfamiliar drivers will tend to make late decisions in these areas, leading to inappropriate responses such as lane-crossing and sudden stops.

  • Interactive Urbanization History

    The BBC has published an interactive online map to demonstrate urbanization trends of the past 50 years. Rolling their cursor back and forth to watch the asian urbanized centers pop up and grow, then shrink back to nothing, is curiously fascinating. The feature shows N.America as (2005 numbers) 80% Urban population. That makes me wonder what qualifies as “urban.” A quick look around the website and some BBC stories did not net me that information.

    As any good engineer knows, the true understanding of a topic comes at that topic’s edges, i.e., at the boundary of what is considered Urban or Rural (is there a suburban category? I do not know). This philosophy applies everywhere in my life, and it probably applies to people other than engineers, but I can not attest to that very thoroughly. An example of this is the problems regarding gravity and quantum physics. Or, from my field, at the boundaries between where a roadway is operating at an acceptable level, and where it is not (a surprisingly narrow window of travel demand). But I digress…

    This comes from a weekly email I get from about.com featuring geographist (is that a word?) Matt Rosenberg. His missives contain geography tests that I rarely get entirely correct, and I’m usually guessing on half the answers. For example, I only got a 60% on this one. I need to read National Geographic more thoroughly.

    Of course, my opinion regarding “geographic knowledge” is already a matter of public record.