Posted on Tuesday July 7th by Jebediah Reed | 286
- Guess what the total costs imposed on society at large are each time you drive a car in Manhattan. Seriously — guess. The answer? One hundred and sixty smackers, according to this analysis. A must read. (Felix Salmon)
- Americans tend to associate roundabouts with afete European types that we’d like to beat up in a cagefight. But roundabouts can decrease delays at intersections by 20 percent and accidents by 75 percent. And so much more. (Project for Public Spaces)
- On one of those days when we were off in the sunshine drinking rum drinks, Boston’s ailing flagship newspaper published a hit piece on intercity rail by Harvard economist Edward Glaeser. Short version: Americans are too spread out! Ryan Avent steps up and writes a stinging rebuttal over at Streetsblog DC. (Boston Globe)
- The lady commissioner who is trying to make all New Yorkers into bike hippies is known to travel and “fact find” in decadent places like Bogota and Beijing and sometimes non-profit groups offer to assist for travel costs. (NYT)
- The Wall Street Journal perhaps saw Good Magazine’s article on the twilight of Interstate rest stops and decided to do a piece of their own. Either way, many states are closing down the old school variety of rest areas–the ones with lawns and non-commercial spaces–which leaves fast-food plazas and truck stops as the remaining option. (WSJ)
- The Deptment of Energy has $38 billion in stimulus money to spend. How will they do that? $19 billion for nuclear power, $8 billion for clean cars, and so on… (The Green Sheet)
- Smarty pants British magazine Monocle says there is only one US city that’s particularly livable, and that’s Honolulu–which kind of doesn’t count as America anyway. (via Metropolis)
July 7th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
Oakland County has built a few roundabouts not far from me, and they’re fine, except there’s a fair proportion of Michiganians who just don’t get the concept. They come to a complete stop, whether there’s any traffic coming or not, and refuse to budge until the roundabout is completely clear of any traffic whatsoever. Luckily, they also tend to follow the Michigan rule of “when in doubt use the left lane”, so the left lane approaching the roundabout might have a line of ten cars waiting to enter, while the middle lane is clear for me to pause to check traffic and go on my way.
July 7th, 2009 at 2:29 pm
Why do you say Honolulu doesn’t count as an American city?!?!?!
Many Hawaiians who take pride as Americans won’t appreciate your comments.
Honolulu is a very American city I don’t even know why you wrote that last sentence.
July 7th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
K-i-d-d-i-n-g
-j
July 7th, 2009 at 2:33 pm
And why the hell is the DOE investing 19 BILLION in Nuclear Power and 4 BILLION in Clean Coal!!?!?!?
I’d like to see them invest an equal 23 BILLION in Wind and Solar.
And get on with the frikin Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) studies!! Puerto Rico and Hawaii need it!
July 7th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
July 7th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
Regarding highway rest stops: Here in Southern Calif. we had a rest stop on I-10 (San Bernardino Freeway) near Fontana. When I worked night shift in San Bernardino back in 1970 and drove home after midnight, I’d sometimes feel my eyelids heading for the “closed” position and pull off into this rest area for a short nap. Not long after that, I read about it being closed by either Caltrans or the county authorities. It had become a law-enforcement headache with prostitutes and drug dealers finding it an ideal business location. Today there are still traces of this spot, but it’s almost like trying to find the ruins of a lost civilization.
July 7th, 2009 at 7:02 pm
In the same WSJ print edition that had the story about the rest stops along interstates,
there was a story about the Mexican Gulf drug cartel. Both stories were front page, under the fold, right next to each other.
Fitting.
Take a look at the map in this story.
The Gulf cartel is based around the US in cities along a fairly short list of Interstates.
(80, 90, 10, 25, 55, 95 , 94, covers most of it). All of these are wide, high traffic, well served interstates.
A lot of our infrastructure carry severe liabilities of this type. Infrastructure geeks should take note.
July 7th, 2009 at 7:09 pm
Omri,
Excellent point. And I really do miss reading print editions.
JR
July 7th, 2009 at 10:36 pm
Berkeley is thinking about roundabouts.
July 8th, 2009 at 12:07 am
We’ve utilized roundabouts in a number of intersections in my city, including either side of a large freeway interchange. The only downside seems to be that when they back up, they back up all legs creating a sort of self-sustaining gridlock.
So yes, they do save money, save time, and do a better job protecting pedestrians, but make sure they don’t hit capacity as they seem to do a worse job than traditional intersections in those situations.
We’ve discovered they work best in intersections where traffic is roughly equal from each direction. Heavy volume from one direction makes it harder for other legs to enter the roundabout.
By the way, as a result of the future failing of the freeway interchange roundabouts we’ll be removing them eventually and replacing with a SPUI.
July 8th, 2009 at 10:07 am
I find it a bit hard to believe that increasing traffic speed could make an intersection more pedestrian-friendly.
In my experience, the result is the opposite. I’d much rather have a crossing signal than have to rely on drivers yielding to me.
Here is what my region says about pedestrians and roundabouts. (e.g., “The appropriate gap in traffic is something that you can create by your behaviour, not just something that will eventually occur if you wait long enough.”)
Even if roundabouts are safer for pedestrians, they are still unpleasant to use, and this is something that needs to be considered if you want to encourage pedestrianism.
July 8th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
You need to take a peek at the videos of the traffic circles done in Holland by Hans Monderman, who made it extremely safe for pedestrians and cyclists and vehicles all while increasing throughput. They are on youtube. His test of pedestrian safety was to walk backwards blindfolded into a roundabout intersection.
I am seeing/envisioning more and more intersections when I drive around that would be better as roundabouts. Our roads have gotten so fat because we have to have holding areas for cars to wait to get through intersections. With increased throughput I suspect we could put many of our roads on a diet with little effect to throughput.
July 8th, 2009 at 5:50 pm
As all readers of FT Weekend know too well, Tyler Brûlé is full of merde. And he’s Canadian, so of course Montreal and Vancouver are on that Monocle list.
July 16th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
Omri,
From my experiences here in west Texas, you can’t leave El Paso on any interstate or back road without running into boarder patrol checkpoints. They have fences across portions of the dessert and border patrol agents on side roads near the checkpoints to watch for people trying to evade them.
No matter who you are or what your driving you must stop and talk to them. Even when I ride my motorcycle I get stopped and asked if I’m an American citizen.
El Paso area is quite safe, and we’ve stopped many smugglers from getting over the boarder. Now the cartels are fighting even more over Mexican territory since its become so much harder to get over the border. The fence seems to have really helped this too. The new one is years ahead of the old chain link one that had gaps in parts of it.
January 14th, 2010 at 7:31 pm
Roundabouts are ideal when you have old streets which intersect in a manner *more complicated* than just a 90 degree angle. I really haven’t seen anything else which handles a significant amount of traffic coming from 5 directions, or six, or seven.