General Road and Highway Discussion

[ijmorlan]

Also, include data.

I read a bunch of what you guys claim on this forum as absolute fact and am often pretty skeptical (although in this case, I think you're probably right).  Ideally, if you're claiming a lane is unnecessary you'd have both traffic/usage data and cost data to back that up.  I realize its not often possible, but in most cases you're making claims about extra capacity based on overall (24/7) cost/benefit of the road to people that mostly use the road at peak times.  So they're skeptical of your claim because it doesn't match up with their anecdotal evidence.

Good points. Part of what is annoying about this is that obtaining and using the data is what the planners are supposed to be paid to do. Wouldn’t it be nice if, instead of a bunch of part time volunteers, we had a professional group of people who were paid to determine appropriate configurations for roads?

One thing I would say is that there is a big difference between intersections and the parts of roads between intersections. For example, Belmont southbound at Gage should probably have left turn, straight through, and right turn lanes for a total of 3 southbound lanes; but away from the intersection, I’m pretty sure a single through lane would be fine. So if I were redesigning the street it’s actually possible some intersections would end up bigger than they are, but we would save in between those intersections. Poor intersection design causes poor traffic flow, even when the total amount of pavement is quite excessive.