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Cycling in Waterloo Region
(03-07-2019, 11:27 PM)danbrotherston Wrote:
(03-07-2019, 07:22 PM)ijmorlan Wrote: Turn lanes definitely should not be removed. It might be OK to remove regular lanes (personally, I would reduce almost all 4-lane roads in the city to 2-lane), but not turn lanes. In fact, in many places the problem is that we have more regular lanes than we need and not enough turn lanes (I’m looking at you, Belmont! And you, Westmount! Don’t make me come over there, Union!).

I totally agree.  Of course you'll find that turn lanes increase safety, where as more through lanes increase throughput.

Guess which one of those things our engineers optimize for.

Except that more through lanes don’t increase throughput if they’re constantly getting jammed up by cars waiting to turn.

So to be perfectly honest I think it’s incompetence, at the basic level where they don’t bother looking at what actually happens on the street.

The order for increasing the capacity of a street should be like this:

1) single lane (laneway)
2) single lane but wide enough for opposing direction vehicles to squeeze past
3) 2 narrow lanes (residential street)
4) 2 normal lanes; turn lanes provisioned at busy intersections
5) 2 normal lanes; turn lanes provisioned at all intersections allowing turns
6) 4 lanes; turn lanes provisioned at all intersections allowing turns
7) 6 lanes; no turns allowed at all except where turn lanes are provisioned (not even to get into a driveway)
8) …

A lot of streets like Belmont where we on this board complain about the waste of resources to build and maintain a 4-lane street don’t really provide the 4-lane capacity. Although we’ve spent the money to lay down 4 lanes of asphalt, the lack of turn lanes means that sometimes there are 0 lanes of capacity at intersections — if people are waiting to turn both left and right, there goes your capacity. So we’ve paid for it, but we’re not getting it. Even people who think the car should be king shouldn’t be happy with that situation.
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There are a number of other head-scratchers elsewhere in the region that really lead you to question traffic engineers' competence. One I regularly use is Frederick between Victoria and Bruce. It is 4-lanes in the middle, but pinches off to two-lanes at either end before the intersections with Bruce and Victoria. Volume along this stretch is nowhere near high enough to justify four lanes. It should be two lanes with turning lanes at Bruce (maybe), River, and Victoria. On-street bike lanes could then continue instead of being cut-off at Bruce.
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(03-08-2019, 07:17 AM)ijmorlan Wrote:
(03-07-2019, 11:27 PM)danbrotherston Wrote: I totally agree.  Of course you'll find that turn lanes increase safety, where as more through lanes increase throughput.

Guess which one of those things our engineers optimize for.

Except that more through lanes don’t increase throughput if they’re constantly getting jammed up by cars waiting to turn.

So to be perfectly honest I think it’s incompetence, at the basic level where they don’t bother looking at what actually happens on the street.

The order for increasing the capacity of a street should be like this:

1) single lane (laneway)
2) single lane but wide enough for opposing direction vehicles to squeeze past
3) 2 narrow lanes (residential street)
4) 2 normal lanes; turn lanes provisioned at busy intersections
5) 2 normal lanes; turn lanes provisioned at all intersections allowing turns
6) 4 lanes; turn lanes provisioned at all intersections allowing turns
7) 6 lanes; no turns allowed at all except where turn lanes are provisioned (not even to get into a driveway)
8) …

A lot of streets like Belmont where we on this board complain about the waste of resources to build and maintain a 4-lane street don’t really provide the 4-lane capacity. Although we’ve spent the money to lay down 4 lanes of asphalt, the lack of turn lanes means that sometimes there are 0 lanes of capacity at intersections — if people are waiting to turn both left and right, there goes your capacity. So we’ve paid for it, but we’re not getting it. Even people who think the car should be king shouldn’t be happy with that situation.

They won't increase throughput if they're constantly jammed up, but they won't ever be "constantly" jammed up, some straight cars will get through, which is why it increases the capacity of the intersection.

This is why our regional engineers saw fit to reconfigure Westmount/Glasgow intersection to four straight lanes no turn lanes from the previous configuration, even though that configuration was used before and was known to be unsafe, because it did in theory and practice carry more cars. Also prioritized over safety in this case is continuing unnecessary access (the intersection could have had turn restrictions) and keeping wealthy property owners happy (the property owners objected to widening the road to put in turn lanes).
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(03-08-2019, 09:13 AM)danbrotherston Wrote: They won't increase throughput if they're constantly jammed up, but they won't ever be "constantly" jammed up, some straight cars will get through, which is why it increases the capacity of the intersection.

This is why our regional engineers saw fit to reconfigure Westmount/Glasgow intersection to four straight lanes no turn lanes from the previous configuration, even though that configuration was used before and was known to be unsafe, because it did in theory and practice carry more cars. Also prioritized over safety in this case is continuing unnecessary access (the intersection could have had turn restrictions) and keeping wealthy property owners happy (the property owners objected to widening the road to put in turn lanes).

I’m saying throughput is lower, in particular at Westmount/Glasgow but also in other locations, then it would be with 2-lane roads with turn lanes. If Westmount near Glasgow was changed to 2 lanes with turning lanes, the intersection would be the same width on either side of Glasgow (from right to left the four lanes would be: right turn, straight through, left turn, opposite direction), just offset by one lane. Elsewhere it would obviously be much narrower, being only a 2-lane road.

Have they actually measured it to carry more cars? I doubt it. I’ve been stuck northbound on Westmount with multiple people trying to turn left — so the left turn lane has a capacity of approximately 0. Meanwhile, the right lane doesn’t even have a full lane’s capacity, because every time somebody tries to turn right at the same time that people are walking across Glasgow, the car waiting to turn right holds up traffic on Westmount. Sometimes there will be people trying to turn left in both directions; but neither can see whether there is any straight through traffic, so they both just end up waiting. It’s an appalling design, and I’m not even talking about the impact on pedestrians (although I care about that too): it’s shockingly bad for vehicular traffic. If we’re going to have only a single lane’s capacity, we might as well save the money and only build a single lane.
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(03-08-2019, 11:21 AM)ijmorlan Wrote:
(03-08-2019, 09:13 AM)danbrotherston Wrote: They won't increase throughput if they're constantly jammed up, but they won't ever be "constantly" jammed up, some straight cars will get through, which is why it increases the capacity of the intersection.

This is why our regional engineers saw fit to reconfigure Westmount/Glasgow intersection to four straight lanes no turn lanes from the previous configuration, even though that configuration was used before and was known to be unsafe, because it did in theory and practice carry more cars. Also prioritized over safety in this case is continuing unnecessary access (the intersection could have had turn restrictions) and keeping wealthy property owners happy (the property owners objected to widening the road to put in turn lanes).

I’m saying throughput is lower, in particular at Westmount/Glasgow but also in other locations, then it would be with 2-lane roads with turn lanes. If Westmount near Glasgow was changed to 2 lanes with turning lanes, the intersection would be the same width on either side of Glasgow (from right to left the four lanes would be: right turn, straight through, left turn, opposite direction), just offset by one lane. Elsewhere it would obviously be much narrower, being only a 2-lane road.

Have they actually measured it to carry more cars? I doubt it. I’ve been stuck northbound on Westmount with multiple people trying to turn left — so the left turn lane has a capacity of approximately 0. Meanwhile, the right lane doesn’t even have a full lane’s capacity, because every time somebody tries to turn right at the same time that people are walking across Glasgow, the car waiting to turn right holds up traffic on Westmount. Sometimes there will be people trying to turn left in both directions; but neither can see whether there is any straight through traffic, so they both just end up waiting. It’s an appalling design, and I’m not even talking about the impact on pedestrians (although I care about that too): it’s shockingly bad for vehicular traffic. If we’re going to have only a single lane’s capacity, we might as well save the money and only build a single lane.

Well, their models show it carries more traffic.  The roads aren't really capacity limited most of the time, so it's very hard to know for sure if theoretical capacity is increasing or decreasing.  They go by intersection performance, which looks at backups at rush hour compared with non-rush hour, and that metric *has* improved, but there are so many confounding factors, it's hard to know why.

Ironically, intersection performance was the reason they made this change, yet they acknowledged that LRT construction at the time probably had a big impact.

I do suspect that intersection has become less safe, I've personally witnessed two collisions and many many close calls.
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(03-08-2019, 11:21 AM)ijmorlan Wrote: Have they actually measured it to carry more cars? I doubt it. 

Miovision does have an installation at Westmount and Glasgow, it was brought up in a twitter thread about that intersection in December: https://twitter.com/RichBettridge/status...8647763968. The data in this thread suggests that the intersection throughput is not optimized.

Whether or not the City is using that data is an entirely other question, but there is some measurement being done.
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(03-08-2019, 11:29 AM)robdrimmie Wrote:
(03-08-2019, 11:21 AM)ijmorlan Wrote: Have they actually measured it to carry more cars? I doubt it. 

Miovision does have an installation at Westmount and Glasgow, it was brought up in a twitter thread about that intersection in December: https://twitter.com/RichBettridge/status...8647763968. The data in this thread suggests that the intersection throughput is not optimized.

Whether or not the City is using that data is an entirely other question, but there is some measurement being done.

That's interesting, I did not know miovision had an installation there.

I think the question is moot anyway, or at least, I don't really care...we should be focused on safety, we know the design is unsafe, but we chose to use it anyway and the motivation is better throughput. Engineers who make these choices should lose their professional designations. A structural engineer who designs a bridge to fall down sometimes to improve throughput would lose theirs. Certainly there are fuzzy lines (delays have costs too) but this one isn't...this intersection had this configuration before, and it was changed to 1 through 1 turn lane because it had an excess number of collisions.
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About questioning “engineer’s competence” - keep in mind that designers and engineers have people above their heads directing them or denying them the ability to carry out their best intentions.

There are constraints (financial, political, corporate, etc.) that you don’t know about.

So can we please drop this “engineers are assholes” attitude?

Thank you.
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(03-08-2019, 01:48 PM)Canard Wrote: About questioning “engineer’s competence” - keep in mind that designers and engineers have people above their heads directing them or denying them the ability to carry out their best intentions.

There are constraints (financial, political, corporate, etc.) that you don’t know about.

So can we please drop this “engineers are assholes” attitude?

Thank you.

I do understand that, but those cost and political constraints exist above the heads of structural engineers as well, and if city council told a structural engineer to compromise the structural integrity of a bridge to increase traffic or decrease costs, it is very likely they would be unable to find an engineer willing to do this or at least would have to look far and wide for it.

For traffic engineering, pols don't have to ask twice, engineers publicly state it would be inconvenient to build safe infra. And I very much believe this is a violation of their professional ethics.

I am not saying that individual traffic engineers are immoral or bad people, it is a systemic issue. They all do it because they've always all done it.  Broadly systemic issues are hard because good people contribute to them.
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I think we should all publicly state what we do for a living before we criticize others.
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(03-08-2019, 06:36 PM)Canard Wrote: I think we should all publicly state what we do for a living before we criticize others.

I'm not sure what that has to do with anything.  I'm not criticizing individuals. But for what it's worth, I'm a software developer, which is the top dog of industries with ethical dilemmas which we don't handle well.

I'm well aware that my industry does not have it's house in order, and generally I support efforts to improve that situation.  I challenge myself to think about what impacts my software could have, but I fully know that I can't necessarily see every effect it could have.  The key to me feeling that I'm doing right is to do the best I can, but also be open to it being pointed out where and how I'm doing something harmful, and to try to change that. For example, I never used to think AI algorithms could be harmful, but I'm beginning to realize they absolutely can be.

Ironically, outside of some obvious exceptions (self driving cars anyone), what my industry builds ends up with far more subtle harmful effects, but with the opportunity for them to be extremely broad--nobody at Facebook ever expected they'd be used to impact the election of US President.
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Reminds me of a quote I once read, "Every snowflake in an avalanche pleads not guilty."
...K
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(03-08-2019, 06:36 PM)Canard Wrote: I think we should all publicly state what we do for a living before we criticize others.

Criticism should stand on its own. If the criticism is accurate its source is not terribly relevant. If you have disagreements with the criticism, focus on those and if you believe the source isn't worth your time, don't give it to them.

Criticism is issued with agendas, certainly, and understanding the biases of the critic is helpful but ignoring criticism because of where it originates is foolish at best because you might miss out on good ideas, and a tool for systematic oppression at worst.
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Oh man, if someone starts attacking sandwich artists I'm going to have a meltdown...
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(12-28-2017, 09:24 PM)Canard Wrote: I've come up with a pretty good little routine for brushing off the snow and then cleaning my chain, maybe I'll make a little video.  This is the little device I bought for cleaning my chain - it's super easy to use, and it only takes about 2 minutes to clean the chain, dry it off, and re-lube after each ride.

[Image: 5043705-GRN00.jpg?w=500&h=500&auto=forma...ill&bg=FFF]

I can't recommend this device anymore. I've gone through two now and both have the same failure mode - the plastic cracks around the handle, leaking the fluid out all over.

MEC's stopped selling them in their stores, so I suspect I'm not the only one who's had issues. I picked up MEC's knock-off version today, and hope it's more robust. The plastic seems much stronger - I'll be using it without the handle!
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