I also found this 1 year later news story which said it had been all fixed but some councilmembers and the current mayor want it rolled back to 4 lanes (th-cam.com/video/iG--u1gw_-Q/w-d-xo.html)
I just drove down the street today. The zig zags are still there but way more gradual and not really noteworthy or interesting as they were before. They also removed the bollards and from the wear on the white lines you can tell people just go straight and don't even really follow the curves.
Huge respect to the mayor for not only having a cool idea but also about being open with talking about it so the public can understand what's going on.
The gangs have taken over though --if you look up the definition of a gang in Black's law dictionary? Find me one tiny little shred of definition that does not perfectly describe every Police department in America. Go on, I'll wait.
this "street" is so wide that you could shrink it twice the size, increase the sidewalk, give a proper bicycle path, and maybe even add a business or two on the sides.
I think this will also work much better once the plastic barrier sticks are in place, because they make the roadway seem narrower (in a similar fashion to decorative trees or parked cars), which usually reduces drivers' speed.
@@TommyJonesProductions of course they do, in fact a median with grass and trees is better at protecting cyclists than these silly flex posts. Flex posts are only visual indicators, slightly better than lines. They are completely useless as actual barriers.
Australian here. As soon as I saw the lines I thought I knew exactly what the intention was. We use many 'traffic calming' measures over here, but for slightly different reasons. Sometimes, it's similar and it's just to slow traffic down through a section. But often it's used as the coralley to induced demand. If there's a street being used by people to rat-race through a neighbourhood, they'll add these measures to make it less convenient and more annoying to use. That annoyance drives people to use arterial roads away from children etc.
In a similar fashion. Going around curves means 1) lower speeds, 2) slghtly higher distance and 3) less comfort. Another thing to keep in mind is the fact that autonomous vehicles are going to be programmed to follow speed limits hopefully.
There are a lot of road/traffic safety designs that Europe and other countries use that I would absolutely love to see in the US. Particularly protected bike lanes.
Except there is literally nothing to stop anybody from just driving straight down the road and ignore the lines. You'd have to be one hell of an npc to actually turn your steering wheel and follow the lines.
It's missing crosshatches or medians. It's typically the residents that speed through their own neighborhoods. That's why it's common to see speed humps even in neighborhoods that only have 1 entrance and exit. If they want people to slow down, they should place trees or objects to make the road look more narrow than it is to make drivers think they are driving faster than they are.
Psychology backs that up. Some paint or a bollard artificially narrowing and slowing a street annoys drivers and makes them feel oppressed, but a proper kerb, trees or plants, or benches on them, and grass and stuff, and it feels natural to slow down and drive more carefully, even if they're only installed to do the same thing as paint and bollards.
I have no idea why the video didn't bring up the idea of median in the middle of the road, despite even depicting some sort of dual-median design at one point. The storm drains are a problem because they're on the outside of the road, and narrowing the road by removing those lanes will always be a problem. Removing the interior two lanes would be comparatively cheap.
in the UK this problem has been solved using a kind of barrier that is spaced at regular intervals. The barriers are just gates made by bringing the curb in suddenly and adding an island between the 2 lanes to create a very tight space to drive through. This way drivers have to approach it very slowly to avoid a collision. But you don’t have to do any complex manoeuvres and you can still pass through it comfortably at around 20mph
One of the biggest issues with this is that it's just lines. If it had actual obstacles like tree planters, curbs, parked cars, barriers and so on then it wouldn't be as weird, because then the drivers would only have the driving line visible to them and not all the other bits outside of the lane that confuses them. Then again the change in directions of the narrowing are also too close together and abrupt (for this road) so that doesn't help either.
Exactly, paint is not infrasture, you see many of the drivers ignoring the paint and just drving striaght through it. I wish they exactly went about narrowing the street and putting physicals barriers between cycles and by doing so you couldc also widen the sidewalk. But they did mention the storm drain and other existing infrasture that would be costly to relocate. It sad this road is built this wide in first place to accomodate so much cars and leave scraps over for cyclists and pedestrians. I hope in implement a more effective road diet with physical traffic calming measures that protect vulnerable users
To be fair, they did mention that budget was a concern. Paint's better than nothing, and cheaper than trees. The little stick barriers will help some. As the area gets more lively and safe for pedestrians and cyclists, and property values start increasing, I think this mayor and his engineers will be supportive of more permanent solutions. The concept needs to prove itself, and the money needs to get there. One step at a time.
Just pour larger sidewalks. Designate a portion of that for bikes. As a pedestrian, id rather be hit by a cyclist than a car. And as a cyclist, id rather not piss off the 2000lb walls moving towards me. The fact that cyclist and foot traffic cant share the sidewalk is the true apalling issue. Cyclist in my coty dont fallow road laws, and cops womt enforce them. The city is also narrowing roads and slowing traffic, for an almost non existant cyclist community. Its just causing drivers to get irritated, which leads to more accidents all around.
I am a big believer in using landscaping and physical features to tell the driver how fast to drive. There's one street in particular in my small city that is almost wide enough for 4 lanes (although it is marked for 2), then on the side there is 10 feet of grass, a sidewalk, and another 20 feet of grass before you reach the backyard fences of the neighbourhood. The speed limit is 50 km/h (30 mph) but it feels like I should be going 80. On another portion of the same street, it is split into 4 lanes, the sidewalks and houses are closer to the road, and there are trees planted on both sides and the median. The speed limit is the same 50 km/h, but there's never been any issues with speeding on that stretch.
@@josephhoward4697 If they screwed up that badly where I live, during the winter months those homes would have a lot of guest if they kept within the lines at even half the posted speed lol.
He's one of the few TH-camrs I've seen on the topic who seems to believe you can actually design a road to serve all three at the same time. Most people like to argue for prioritizing one over the other, but he presents a balanced take where the goal is getting everyone using the road safely.
@Moon Shine out of curiosity what do you want bike lanes for? Bikes seem impractical for transportation since you show up at your destination sweaty and gross, and for recreational purposes bike trails seem far safer as well as prettier.
I live in New Brunswick, NJ, and they recently finished a re-striping project on the street I live on. When I first moved in, the street had two lanes in each direction and people were flying down it. What they ended up doing was re-striping it to have one car lane in each direction, a turning lane between them, and a bike lane on each side of the road.
This is a really good vid. Thanks for addressing important issues that people often take for granted if it benefits them or ignore if it's not something they themselves are suffering from.
Rob, you delivered again! And it was so cool to see you got the actual Mayor of Hollister involved! What would be really interesting would be to cover those mid section (between yellow) with t-based median strips to reduce heat and make it safer for pedestrians.
Throw a few trees (in pots) in these spots. Adds some shade and avoids drivers choosing to ignore the lines. And they don't have to be expensive either (unlike medians or the like)
Why doesn't someone make some "indestructible" (perhaps plastic) trees/bushes that could line the road - separate the bicycles from the cars - but emergency vehicles could drive over if needed. Oh, and if a family car hit one it would just fold over. This would give the perception of speed and cost less than ripping up the street. The heights and sizes could be varied to look natural and smaller ones could be used in high wind areas.
Would be more effective if they used raised medians and curbsides with e.g. plants and actually slowed down traffic by the way they are arranged; Might sometimes be a bit annoying, but it helps. They can be set up to slow down car traffic and still handle the size of full-size trucks Just look at the width of that road, it's ridiculous!
Exactly, it's really the giant open which is simply marked with lines that causes the problem. If it has curbs and planters the lines wouldn't be visible so there wouldn't be anything to confuse the drivers.
That road is ridiculously wide and they can definitely can narrow it too add protected cycling infrasture, street trees and planting strip. It's insane that they build this road wide in a neighbourhood and near a school and wonder why they have a speeding problem. That design of road further enforces the perception that cities have lets roads be more forgiving and proctecting car drivers at the expense of being a hostile environment for pedestrians and cyclists
How about a speed meter that controls a traffic light? If they are going 10+mph over the limit the traffic lights down the road will intentionally turn red to stop them?
As someone from a place that has snow on the ground several months of the year, and plenty of roads that need to be repainted, I don't like any road where I can't tell about where the lanes are without paint. Even without those issues, it sometimes still takes too much focus to figure out what the intent of the paint is, which makes you look at the paint more than the other cars and pedestrians. Hopefully they put enough structure around the road that their planned fix feels natural to the drivers.
Lines are stupid. Give the space back to the other users. Makes the side walks wider, plant trees, make separated cycling path (not just painted lines) so that you end up with single lane for each direction. People will slow down.
I started watching your videos out of curiosity for street design and urban planning but am sticking around thanks to your friendly demeanor! Always a joy to watch.
@@snoopyloopy I'm not sure they're trying to go for the absolute most effective way at reducing speed, they just want to reduce the speed to a certain amount
Nice report, Rob. I would love to see a collaboration between you and Not Just Bikes. many moments in this video I found myself thinking "What the Dutch would have done is....."
Great video as always Rob, I hope people recognize how rare it is that a youtuber puts this much effort in to make their channel both highly entertaining and informative. Going on site to so many places and getting irl interviews with the people involved in the projects is amazing. Keep it up!!
They should actually use a median with trees and plants, or at least some bollards. That will definitely calm traffic while also making the road a lot more pleasant!
the thing about these solutions is that they rely on drivers to adjust accordingly to the road conditions. Given that chicanes (which, as stated, originate from racing) are going to be used, the potential carnage that could result from various different kinds of collisions is frightening to me, compared to a straight road. Chicanes are normally meant to have only one direction of traffic, so in order for CEs to remove the possibility of head-on collisions, there needs to be a crash barrier in the median. Otherwise, I'd be terrified of an oncoming collision
They should put there mobile trees in containers. So it would be more green, more obsticles and it can be removed if there is no success. Also a good thing i have just introduced to: the traffic light which is green by default, but turns red if someone is speeding.
The traffic light would have to be in a sensible location (e.g at a crosswalk or intersection), otherwise it would look strange and people could just ignore it. A red light camera should also be installed.
I'm willing to bet that making the lanes curve slightly so that they kiss in the middle of the road would fail to cause anyone to slow down and likely cause more accidents.
My home town renovated the main street a few years ago. It used to be an almost straight 2 lane street with no traffic lights or any other features to force drivers to slow down. It's not too wide and has parking spaces along the sides but I don't remember drivers driving under the speed limit, which is 50 km/h (31 mph). They added traffic islands to some of the pedestrian crossings that doubles as traffic calming devices and it works surprisingly well. The speed limit hasn't changed but drivers now often drive at 40 km/h (25 mph) or even slower.
See, around here I'm fairly sure they'd consider that a hazard... and so change the speed limit signs accordingly. Because the claim that people pay no attention to speed limit signs isn't actually quite correct. The thing is though, 'driving to the conditions' includes 'not driving at a substantually different speed form the other vehicles around you' if you don't want to cause significant accidents. So all it takes is for Enough people to regularly ignore the speed limit signs and then no one else can safely follow them. In places where the culture is to stick to the speed limit? Basically everyone sticks to the speed limit! This only changes on roads with very light traffic. And even then, if the signs are sufficiently prominant, and standardized, people will generally stay fairly Close to the limit.
@@laurencefraser I didn't mention but you can still easily drive at the speed limit, it's not dangerous to drive around the traffic islands at normal speed. I personally find it a bit annoying to be stuck behind someone going slower, but I wouldn't consider it a hazard until that car doesn't change speed erratically.
If somebody misread the plans, please explain away the cat-tracking. If you look closely you'll see little white paint marks between the yellow strips and in person you can see them elsewhere. Cat-tracking is used by the striping contractor to get approval of where the striping goes. The city inspector reviews the cat-tracking and either approves it or asks for changes. Was the city inspector derelict in his duties? Has he been fired? Or...could it be that this is just part of the sweeping hair-brained city planning implementations that are cursing this city lately? For instance Hollister has invented a new form of roundabout that doesn't have yield signs...just a normal intersection with a raised rubber circle in it. Instead of bicycle lanes some streets get a no-mans-land center lane useful to no one that pushes traffic closer to the sidewalk and parked cars.
I find myself wondering if the contractor "messed up" this job on purpose, to make either the city or the idea itself look stupid, even knowing the city would probably make them re-do it.
One burning question, Rob. Could they not simply rip out the section of the road in the center and make that into a median with trees and shrubs planted? I think that would have both beautified the road, created extra green space, and achieve the intended traffic calming.
It would be cheaper than going to the intended long term solution of 2 immediately adjacent lanes (because the curb, drains and all the asphalt that you want to retain for your traffic calmed configuration would remain in place). But it would also mean that once you are ready to re-build it into the best configuration, (which has the advantage of leaving plenty of space for buffers to the cycle lanes, wide sidewalks, and whatever else they'd want to put onto the street), you'd have to re-add the asphalt of those center lanes, making that step more expensive. I do however think that just putting some planters on that dead space between the double yellow lines (instead of turning it into a full-on median) could be a good way to beautify the street and make it visually narrower.
Crazy how much thought goes into things everyone uses everyday. Never thought of a road system as more than just a line you lay down to get you from a to b.
Palm Desert and Encinitas in California did very similar retrofits which includes some of all of the above. Additionally there is art work and appropriate drought tolerant plantings which serve to h soften these once very hardscaped through-ways. All contribute to causing drivers to go slower and actually visually interact with the surroundings. It doesn’t only slow traffic but beautifies the neighborhood.
We have a street by me people easily would go 50 on, it’s wide and there’s no light for a mile. They made it 1 lane each way, added bike lanes, and lots of trees in the middle. Going over 35 on it feels way too fast now. I actually like it 🤔
Yeah that's great :) With the added benefits of making cycling an option (less traffic, more exercise) and lessening the heat island effect and air pollution with the trees.
Great video! It's so refreshing to see an infrastructure TH-cam channel that isn't overly preachy and binary: cars bad; trains good. And despite some groups that think cars shouldn't exist and that everyone should just hop on a train or walk, the reality in the vastness of the U.S. is that cars are pretty much a necessity, and it can be a good thing if done well -- as your channel tries to illustrate. Keep it up!
The problem is largely sprawl in our city development not the spacing between cities. Large distances between cities is more an argument for airplanes and high speed trains, not for slower cars. The goal isn't to eliminate cars, it's to provide another option for people where transit is possible to reduce congestion and improve travel times for everyone.
I've stopped watching most infrastructure, transit, and urban planning channels for this exact reason. A lot of the more popular channels don't even seem to have a technical understanding of what they're talking about. They just repeat "Stroads bad" and "Replace it with a train" endlessly. It's all very dogmatic. I'm all for more and better transit, but it's not the answer to everything.
the cars are a necessity in the USA almost entirely because your governement keeps spending much more than rail would cost on ever more counterproductive roads and highways (that they don't even maintain properly) rather than building the proper rail and pedestrian infrastructure that would render most of them unnecessary. Yes, you still need roads, but when you're not trying to make them do everything else's job, badly, at much higher cost when you don't ignore half the numbers (roads are subsidized a Lot, drivers pay more for their cars purchase, upkeep, and fuel than they would in ticket prices (and also more than the transit company would have to pay per rider for Their vehicles even if they don't cheat somehow), and so on and so forth), you need a lot less of them, at a lot smaller scale, that are a lot safer and more pleasant to use... Basically, properly built and run public transit makes Roads better too. Yes, yes, cars are still needed in specific use cases, it's rarely practical to properly serve farms via passenger rail, you still need last mile delivery vans, and so on. Doesn't change the fact that they are massively over used and in many places (especially in the USA) the infrastructure needed to support them is well and truely excessive. Oh, and people say 'replace it with a train' endlessly because, well, each mode of transit has situations where it works very well and situations it's not so good at... and the USA Keeps Building Roads for situations where road vehicles are Shit and they should be using Rail! Much like you don't build high-speed rail where a local tram is all that is needed, and don't try to use a VW bug for jobs that require one of those mega mining trucks, and don't take a passenger ferry from New York to California, there are situatons where rail is ideal and personal road vehicles and/or trucks are just DUMB. Pretty much Anywhere you get gridlocked highways? It's because the vast majority of that traffic SHOULD have been going by rail.
Not a fan of traffic calming circles at least how they are implemented in my county. Should just be roundabouts. Interesting hearing the issues of speed bumps. My city installed a bunch of tall raised crosswalks on multi-lane high traffic roads with no other forms of traffic calming or addition of lighting and signaling. Said roads happen to also fan out from the local hospital. The speed limits remain unchanged while traffic usually cuts 15-20 MPH to go over the bumps to just zoom right back up.
I argued the point of continuing to allow street parking with our neighborhood board years ago. They said in a nutshell our condo complex had too many cars and made the property values and neighborhood of single family homes across the street seem "less desireable". Now they comolain about speeding and nightly street racing down the same street. But they don't want cars parked there, don't want to spring for remarking and putting up barriers for a bike lane. Even though biking through there is popular and dangerous now. Oh, and the cars parked on the main street that didn't see much traffic? Our condo comolex residents now just park on the side steets in the single family home neighborhoods to make a point. They don't want to eliminate street parking on their portion of the development, just ours.
Great video Rob! You have some mad editing skills, some of the stuff you did takes forever to edit! It is unfortunate so many cities overbuilt and continue to overbuild their infrastructure. It is both more expensive in the short and long term and less safe. What cities need to understand is as Strong Towns suggests that a capital cost is also an ongoing operational cost. Every street and road will need to be maintained and rebuilt at some point. Also, though developers build the wider roads, cities typically have to pay or reimburse for widening beyond the needs of a project through impact fees or some other method depending on where you live. Hollister looks like they understand the speeding issues in their town and are trying to do something about it, which is great. Cities all around the country need to start understanding and adopting a safe systems approach as the FHWA is now finally supporting (though looking to the Dutch Sustainable Safety policy would provide some clarification). A big problem with safety on the arterial roads is the speeds are still too fast, that combined with all the access they allow, they are some of the most deadly in the US. The design of those have to change as well. As suggested in the video, if it is actually safe to walk and bike places, more people will do so and a city may actually help their traffic issues. The most important thing to get right to encourage more walking and biking is a city’s road plan. When roads are calmed and safer, then they aren’t such big deterrents or barriers to walking and biking.
This specific neighborhood road near me had its residents complaining to the city that people were going too fast on it so they painted sharp turning zig zag lines to try to slow people down. They ended up removing that pretty quick and just replacing it with speed bumps.
since i started watching your channel, around a year or so ago, now. I really think about the planning that went into a lot of roads that i drive on and that it really isnt as simple as ''need road, build road''. theres a lot more that goes into it.
Hey Rob, love your videos, recently the engineers here in Madison Wisconsin redesigned the Beltline (a major highway that goes through the city and has major problems with congestion) so that people can use the shoulder during peak traffic - they call them 'Flex lanes'. Wtf were they thinking??? Isn't it only a matter of time before the increased capacity gets eaten up and the highway is all congested again, except this time even the SHOULDER is congested??? And what are they going to do if emergency vehicles need to get by? What If a motorist needs to pull over? I feel like the traffic engineer who designed this must have an extra chromosome, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.
We have this in the Netherlands as well. Often the shoulder lane is less wide so it requires everyone to drive slower. 2 lanes means 130km/h, 3 lanes means 100/120km/h. General speed was reduced to 100km/h 2 years ago so that effect has gone away. I suppose it allows for a temporary increase in capacity without having to redo the entire line but I don't know if it is considered a succes here.
$45 million spent on it for a 10 mile stretch. There sure seems to be a lot of money for highway expansions. We need to stop trying to "improve" highways and instead focus that money on improving public transit. A few buses at peak traffic times can take just as much traffic off the highway as a flex lane can add capacity, but with the added benefit of reducing cars on other streets as well. Unfortunately highways are decided by the state so it doesn't matter what impacted cities think.
it's incredible that city planners still dont understand induced demand. if you build it they will clog it. that money could have been better spent on public transit.
I love the little flourishes of humor you add, like the Hollister's fun fact or the pronunciation of fancy French terms. If it were me, I would've gone for a tree-lined median, but I suppose that's a bit pricier than stripes and traffic circles.
Nhl if i saw that shit and the road isnt packed, im just driving straight. IN THIS ECONOMY? Mfs in this town gettin shit ass mileage outta their tanks. 💀
Driving in Japan requires your complete attention because the roads tend to be narrow, even suddenly bottlenecking to the point where cars have to stop to allow oncoming traffic through. There are few straight roads with sidewalks. I've often thought that it's too easy to switch your brain off while driving in the US. It's too controlled and predictable, so people aren't focused, and that leads to speeding and distracted driving. This seems like an interesting way to get people to pay more attention to the road.
Honestly if I saw a road like this I would drive as fast as I could just to hear my tires squeal with each turn back and forth it would be a lot of fun. Not safe but funaf
Put businesses on the edges of the reserves. that'll increase traffic, and increased traffic slows them down. pop-up shops would do. Also, put a green median for the sake of everything that's holy, as I can feel the radiant heat coming off the pavement as I sit and watch this video!
Businesses don’t slow things down as much as you would hope. I live near a few streets like this but lined with commercial property and large apartment complexes, so lots of traffic, they also have lots of street lights. The speed limit is 35 but if you go with the flow of traffic you’re easily still going 50 mph or even more. If the cops pulled over speeders they’d literally have to pull over nearly every car driving on the road.
If this had happened in any other state I would be concerned, but seeing how this happened in wonderful California. It is just par for the course. Surfs UP!! Dude!!
Having the curves on each side of the road converge invites head-on collisions. The curves on each side should compliment each other instead of mirroring each other. A concrete median would also help.
That is the idea behind it. The perceived danger of head-on collisions with oncoming traffic is one of the best psychological triggers to slow people down. Remember that our danger sense is not as intelligent as we are. It basically thinks we are running down the street, so it will not see a real danger in e.g. running into pedestrians crossing our path. But running head-on into a solid object, that's always dangerous.
@@HenryLoenwind All well and good until the perception becomes real. I'd really rather not go down a street playing little games of chicken every hundred yards.
We had a similar road running through our neighborhood and speed traps failed to fix the speeding problem. One day after one to many fatal incidents, the city decided to add traffic calming measures from landscaped choke points, and speed warning signs that flashed to driver how fast they are travelling and warn them when they are speeding. The choke points was enough to halve half the traffic. Allowing cars to park along the size caused a psychological effect on driver to slow down. The fixes to this road were very cheap and well thought out.
I like the traffic circle idea because that would be the perfect place to put the crosswalk. That gives drivers the ability to use the straight part of the road for quick travel, but the road slows down enough at the traffic circle crosswalk area to allow pedestrians to cross. This would effectively turn the speed of the road from a flaw into a feature. Since the road acts more like a highway than a street, why not just roll with it but build in some designated areas for pedestrians to cross via a traffic circle?
Maybe they watched one of your previous videos where you said to cut the number of lanes down. Since watching your videos I think a lot more about street design when I'm just driving around.
The solution to this whole problem is simple, though costly. Address it in the same manner as trains vs cars. Remove the pedestrian vs vehicle interaction by burying the crosswalks under the roadway via tunnels or over the roadway via pedestrian bridges. There's no other way to facilitate the safe travel of pedestrians in this day and age.
I just wanna say in advanced, I appreciate you making my commute longer, I don't like showing up to work on time, to make money and I really hate going home to my wife and kids. So please introduce tons of traffic calming and anything to make my commute slower. I'd appreciate it!
@@StaYUTI420 Agree -- this "traffic calming" fad should be called what it really is: "traffic congesting". Or at least, "artificial traffic slowing". This obsession with slowing down traffic is annoying. As long as drivers are driving safely and paying attention, it doesn't matter how fast they're going (within reason). Cars and roads exist in order to get people from A to B in a reasonably quick, efficient manner. The car-hating zealots want to destroy that. 😠
@@Milesco “as long as drivers are driving safely” Yeah tell that to the millions of people a year who get hit by drivers speeding down quiet neighbourhood streets. No one’s putting traffic calming on big arterial streets, and if your commute consists entirely of narrow local neighbourhood streets then that’s a you problem. You simply cannot trust everyone to use a 2 ton death machine responsibly and safely by twiddling your fingers and asking “but.. but would you PWEASE consider slowing down?” That’s the entire point of this video. Using the power of infrastructure so drivers HAVE to slow down in places they need to be. Roads do not exist only for cars. They exist for people walking, biking, taking the bus, etc too. Designing your street for only one mode of transportation is kind of a crappy way to design something.
@@cocobailey777 You're missing the point. Speed, by itself, isn't dangerous (within reason). It's _collisions_ that are dangerous, and speed doesn't cause collisions (except at the extremes). German autobahns have no speed limits at all, yet because of high quality, well trained, disciplined drivers, they are safe. The problem isn't speed, it's incompetent drivers who are unable to control their cars or don't pay attention. Focus your energies on suspending or revoking the licenses of _those_ people -- the truly incompetent -- and we'll have safe streets, while still allowing competent drivers to proceed to their destinations at a reasonable velocity and not at a granny's pace. _"Roads do not exist only for cars. "_ Yeah, they do. _"They exist for people walking...."_ No, that's what sidewalks are for. _"...taking the bus..."_ That's functionally the same as cars (motor vehicles) _"...biking..."_ Okay, that one's a legitimate concern, but again, the problem is incompetent motorists not keeping their eyes (and brains) open and *paying attention.* The cause of motor vehicle-bicycle collisions is, in most cases, drivers not keeping an eye out for bicyclists. (Although in my experience, I'm happy to say that most do.) Not speed. If you're driving down a straight road, you can go at a fairly decent clip and still have no serious risk of hitting a bicyclist, unless the bicyclist swerves into your path, in which case, that's the biker's fault. The only time there are real issues is when the motorist wants to make a turn -- typically a right turn across (or unfortunately, into) the path of a bicyclist. Regrettably, those situations do result in all too many collisions, but again, that's the fault of drivers not looking out and paying attention. Not speed. (Indeed, the motorists are already going slow because they're _making a turn!)_ So, to sum up, don't worry so much about speed, worry about the incompetent drivers and get them off the road.
@@Milesco Speed IS dangerous, as it increases your chances of getting into a collision in the first place, it reduces your time to react in case anything happens in front of you, and studies have shown that even a 15mph increase in speed can have a serious impact on fatality rates. A person hit by a car traveling at 35 miles per hour is five times more likely to die than a person hit by a car traveling at 20 miles per hour. You say "speed isn't dangerous, collisions are" - that doesn't really make sense as the two are directly correlated with one another. You reduce your speed, you reduce your chance of hitting something or someone. German autobahns have no speed limits and they are safe BECAUSE OF THE INFRASTRUCTURE, which is exactly what is being talked about in this video. Nowhere in the video does Rob say "wow these highways are so safe because drivers are". Wide lanes, gentle curves, and straight roadways - all to keep people safe at 65mph. Infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure. It's the same thing for American highways as well, and the thing is, those are designed for you to go fast. _That's why they're highways._ Your local neighbourhood street does not need to be designed like a highway, which is (again) the message that this video is trying to make. You want to get to your destination at a reasonable speed and not at a 'granny's' pace, as you say. Then don't drive on the traffic calmed streets. That's the entire reason the traffic calming is there in the first place. You are acting like they are installing 50 speed bumps and chicanes and narrowing down the lanes to 2 feet wide in every street in your city. No. There's different types of roads for a reason (again, mentioned in the video), and you already what you need - arterial streets, for going fast - while the streets this video is talking about is for local neighbourhood streets, with people backing out of their driveways onto them and kids playing everywhere. These streets do not need to be designed like a highway (or a runway as Rob calls them). _You do not need to drive on them like it's a highway._ I disagree with your point that roads exist only for cars. If you built a city with that mindset, you would get dystopian hellscapes with half the city paved with parking lots and multi lane stroads clogged with traffic snaking throughout the entire city. Oh wait, that's what most American suburbs look like nowadays. And those suburbs are an objectively bad place to live. You may not see it (I'm assuming you're reasonably car dependent judging by your response of "I want to go vroom vroom everywhere"), but dense walkable cities like in Europe are way better in terms of... well, everything. And guess what, part of the reason why that is is because you don't have people flying down those streets at 50mph. "No, that's what sidewalks are for" Many sidewalks in America either don't exist at all, or are in terrible condition, extremely narrow, and can be inaccessible to people with disabilities. So, uh, yeah, pedestrians are still a very important part of the conversation here. Plus, there have been plenty of accidents from drivers mounting the sidewalk and killing a pedestrian. So the one place that's supposed to be safe for pedestrians isn't really that safe, if you let people go a million miles an hour on them. Taking the bus is not the same as single occupancy motor vehicles in this context, as a well designed 'complete street' as Rob calls it should have some sort of transit priority. A lot of American public transit systems are absolutely terrible, and part of that is because the buses just get dumped onto the streets with the traffic and have to compete with other cars. Buses, when managed well, can take dozens of cars off the street which makes things better for everyone. And I can tell you've probably never ridden a bike for any reasonable amount of time in your life, because saying that you're fine with people passing by at 50mph right beside bikers (or any other vulnerable road users) is something any cyclist would never say. I've done commutes before on highway shoulders (it was permitted, for some reason) and having cars pass by you a few feet away at highway speeds is NOT pleasant at all. Do better. "So, to sum up, don't worry so much about speed, worry about the incompetent drivers and get them off the road." The problem with this statement is that it would only work in a utopian world where we could somehow magically detect every single bad driver and say "no driving 4 u". That's not how the world works - there are always going to be shitty drivers no matter how hard you try. So to mitigate the risk of those shitty drivers, you use infrastructure in order to lower the risk of collisions and make things safer for everyone. Such as... you know, _making people go slower._ If the real cause of every single collision was drivers simply being incompetent and not paying attention (it isn't), then answer this. Would you rather those drivers make a mistake at 20mph, or 50mph? These are all points that are already being made in the video you're watching right now.
A nearby town to me did thus with endless s-curves on Main Street tosliw people down and create a walking community. Everyone loved it for a few years until it became a hassle, so they tore it out again.
It's better to just preserve the right of way and only go beyond the 2 lanes when it's actually warranted. 2 lane roads can already carry a lot of traffic anyway and in that scenario they coul've built a nice multi use pathway in the shrubs besides it.
My idea would be to put car lanes at the very edge of the road, 3 meters each, and then the rest can be a green median with a perfectly straight shared path. The median could be separated by a truck apron curb so emergency vehicles can hop onto the path
"I don't work for the city" well DON"T walk down the "middle" of the road - move the drain (8:45) when you can direct the rain TO the drain road markings are not an inhibiter people will just drive over them not even notice BUT if you have plastic street pylons this gets the impression of a smaller road thus slowing people
Even that plan is completely wrong. The road should have been significantly physically narrowed and the bike path should have been behind a barrier, not plastic posts... Signs, lines and plastic bollards don't do much for safety...
3:02 And children should not be running out in the street. If they are not raised properly, this is called the darwin award. The easiest way to fix that issue is to put a crossing light there to allow pedestrians to cross. Hard concept to understand I know.
Luckily, there probably won't need to be any litigation. The city, per the contract specs, probably didn't pay the contractor for the striping, and won't pay until it's done correctly. The contractor will most likely come back and fix it, since they obviously want to get paid.
Water doesn't wreck asphalt. It recks the road bed under the asphalt. Asphalt just keeps the roadbed dry. That's it. It doesn't make the road stronger it just keeps the road from turning into mud.
I'm surprised they didn't come up with a practical "dip" in the road that is reasonably comfortable at 40 but will discourage speeds above 50. Speed bumps are stupid. There's one on a residential street nearby that's treacherous on a bicycle even at 5 mph.
Only the new way roads are built/painted is for the fuel companies to make you waste more fuel to buy more gas !!! 4 lanes is a freeway a 2 lanes is a street !!! just put in some killer speed bumps !!! just give them 100mph for 2 blocks and go right back down to 40 mph and have cops sitting on both sides where it is only 40 mph. area and see who all gets caught !!! I could put 10 of my towns in that town area making it a city where I live !!!
I feel like the kind of people that actually follow those lines instead of just going straight are also the kind of people that get a booster shot every 6 months
It’s interesting that the US has problems with roads to big and Germany for example has problems with roads that are to small because they were building to have like 10 horse carriages on them not 100 cars
Build the road wide but the extra outside lanes can just be blocked off and used for pedestrian use only. If the road is needed they just can open the closed off lanes.
@@4149stonepony You could google it, big car guy. It's something that is bad for you, too. And you should want me on a bike, so you can keep the road to yourself. Advocating only for car lanes is just gonna force both of us into cars, instead of just the one who actually wants to drive one.
@@MentalEdge Yeah I could google everything I just wanted to hear from the little bike people what the actual definition of a "stroad" is. Or my favorite is induced demand another ambiguity little cyclistas love, so let me destroy that for you. Would you rather have a speeding problem or induced demand? Wait, what speed should traffic be allowed to go, so that cyclists feel 'safe' 3 mph? So is it still a cars fault if you run into it and it is parked? Biking, while great for exercise and recreation makes for real shitty transportation, but don't tell the status hungry virtue signalers that.
@@4149stonepony I don't think you're looking for discussion. If you were, you'd be coming at me with information, stats, and google results. Not this girly passive aggressive use of the word "little", etc. You're clearly either a troll, or far too entrenched to be capable of reasonable discourse on the matter. There's nothing ambiguous about induced demand, it's literally a peer reviewed research item with hard numbers available. The answer to making cycling safe btw isn't limiting the speed of cars anywhere but in places where they intermingle with other traffic (on walking streets, such as in superblocks), it's properly segregating the lanes and paths of the different forms of traffic in the first place. Paint does little to stop a metric ton of metal, there's a reason we do the bare minimum of giving sidewalks a curb. I'm not sure if I'll block you yet. You seem like the type of shitslinger that might be fun to screw with. As for crashing into parked cars? I mean that's just a smol brain attempt at getting a rise out of someone.
@@4149stonepony Arguing for cars-only is like saying elevators are a must, because in your house, the fridge is on the third floor while your kitchen is on the first. The real solution is to fix your wacky zoning laws so you can put the fridge in the damn kitchen, and use your hands to get what you need for cooking. It's not like elevators shouldn't exists, they serve an important purpose. But maybe don't use the space they take up as an excuse to place stuff further apart (parking lots), nor discount the usefulness of stairs when you only need to move a floor or two. And it's not like I never use cars. But I only need to like once or twice a year. Meanwhile, the US has used cars as an excuse to allow their cities to sprawl into inefficient money-sinks that makes their daily use mandatory, whether you can afford it or not.
Chicanes are in common use in Australia to slow traffic on long straight streets, but they aren't just painted on to be ignored. Instead the curb is brought in to interrupt the driving lane. Sometimes a tree or other landscaping is planted there as well to really make it obvious. This is more expensive, though, and does need some thought if you want to have bikelanes.
Collectors where I live, (Surrey, BC) are typically underbuilt with no room for bike lanes. Instead of forcing developers to build arterials and collectors developers pay into a fund (development cost charges) and the city later retrofits older 2 lane roads, typically that had ditches or wide gravel shoulders and no sidewalks or very poor ones into 4 lane roads with protected bike lanes. Unfortunately only in the last few years did the city start building protected bike lanes so much of the existing network either has skinny painted bike lanes or nothing at all.
Notice, no roads except school zone should be below 35 mph. In my state if the speed limit is 30 mph or lower, citizens can request to drive golf carts on the road. Bicycles should be keep on 5 ft wide sidewalks. Give large tickets or take their license for reckless driving. I notice numbers on the road, why, they do not mean anything in some states.
I can see small, round, median curbs being placed between the main driving road and the Bicycle lanes later on. If the developers want to decorate them, they could use some native flora or perhaps some low-water plants, considering California’s current water crisis. The reason the curbs would be small and round (circular) is to A. create a speed bump to punish drivers for not watching their driving, and B. to allow the storm drains to still function as intended. If spread out, the “curb bumps” would still allow water to get to the existing storm drains while protecting cyclists.
I love how the plan to slow down traffic is to put in a traffic circle, while go to any anti car VT channel and all you hear is a how they are faster. Just narrow the road with barriers, expand them out at crossings to have turning lanes and advances then neck down to an uncomfortably narrow road. Maybe throw in a few of the super improved pedestrian crossing lights. Nope paint stupid lines all over and leave the people to race down the road drifting at 60mph or just ignore them and drive straight and safe-ish.
"Just lowering the limit doesn't do anything" Tell that to VDOT. Doesn't stop them from lowering actual freeways to 55 mph. Around here, they'd also shove a bunch of 5mph speed bumps all over a 25mph road like this and call it a day... though, they probably wouldn't have to, since _every single intersection_ on it would be a stoplight for literally no reason. Seriously, those things can't be cheap. Spend some money on lane retroreflectors or paint that's still visible in the rain for literally a _single_ road in the entire city, why don'tcha? I can't tell road lines from tire tracks if someone sneezes on the road at night.
Is there any update on this?
The former mayor let me know the project is all finished now. Haven't yet been back to Hollister to see it yet.
I also found this 1 year later news story which said it had been all fixed but some councilmembers and the current mayor want it rolled back to 4 lanes (th-cam.com/video/iG--u1gw_-Q/w-d-xo.html)
Lol
@@Transitionalone step forward two steps back lol
I just drove down the street today. The zig zags are still there but way more gradual and not really noteworthy or interesting as they were before. They also removed the bollards and from the wear on the white lines you can tell people just go straight and don't even really follow the curves.
Huge respect to the mayor for not only having a cool idea but also about being open with talking about it so the public can understand what's going on.
And in a way that is not devencive. He explained it in a good way/
@Darkfarfetch It must be tiring to make up horrific scenarious in your head and live on them. I pity you, truly.
The gangs have taken over though --if you look up the definition of a gang in Black's law dictionary? Find me one tiny little shred of definition that does not perfectly describe every Police department in America. Go on, I'll wait.
@@darkfarfetch3664 you don't have crime in small cities like that. Everyone knows everyone else.
And you can just go missing if you're an outsider.
@Darkfarfetch Your channel name reflects what you just said - far fetched.
this "street" is so wide that you could shrink it twice the size, increase the sidewalk, give a proper bicycle path, and maybe even add a business or two on the sides.
I'm glad the mayor is not insane.
Is that rlly better tho?
wouldve been alot funnier if he was
Sometimes you gotta get a little crazy to see some changes
He's still a politician, therefore he's insane
honestly, he seems very likeable
The production value and direction of this video really makes it seem like a TV program! Absolute gold.
I think this will also work much better once the plastic barrier sticks are in place, because they make the roadway seem narrower (in a similar fashion to decorative trees or parked cars), which usually reduces drivers' speed.
Planets, grass and trees can do the same and it looks better than just asphalt and paint
@@gameguild1555 - Those don't help bicycles, though.
@@gameguild1555 Planting new trees ist difficult, because the roots can destroy the pipes and cables in the underground.
@@gameguild1555 I'm pretty sure adding new planets would be pretty expensive - not to mention the shift in gravity it would create
@@TommyJonesProductions of course they do, in fact a median with grass and trees is better at protecting cyclists than these silly flex posts. Flex posts are only visual indicators, slightly better than lines. They are completely useless as actual barriers.
It's so nice the Mayor took the time to shoot a video with you and explain the intent of the bungled stripe job.
Well, he needed to cover his ass and explain why the effed-up street painting design wasn't his fault.
@@Milesco I mean... looks like the plan clearly showed a single chicane between the intersections, with smooth curved striping...
Bhaahahahha
@@Milesco cover his ass on a
He has to, it's a part of his court ordered community service after his drug conviction...
this entire channel is like a pbs show i could just binge everyday
Australian here.
As soon as I saw the lines I thought I knew exactly what the intention was.
We use many 'traffic calming' measures over here, but for slightly different reasons.
Sometimes, it's similar and it's just to slow traffic down through a section.
But often it's used as the coralley to induced demand. If there's a street being used by people to rat-race through a neighbourhood, they'll add these measures to make it less convenient and more annoying to use.
That annoyance drives people to use arterial roads away from children etc.
Explains some of the road designs I've seen in some video games. Wonder how autonomous vehicles will change road design?
@@brodriguez11000 Autonomous vehicles are probably being designed around similar logic to what humans already use, so I really doubt it'd change much.
In a similar fashion. Going around curves means 1) lower speeds, 2) slghtly higher distance and 3) less comfort.
Another thing to keep in mind is the fact that autonomous vehicles are going to be programmed to follow speed limits hopefully.
There are a lot of road/traffic safety designs that Europe and other countries use that I would absolutely love to see in the US. Particularly protected bike lanes.
Except there is literally nothing to stop anybody from just driving straight down the road and ignore the lines. You'd have to be one hell of an npc to actually turn your steering wheel and follow the lines.
"People are driving too fast, so let's make them go left and right randomly on the road"
What?
It's missing crosshatches or medians.
It's typically the residents that speed through their own neighborhoods.
That's why it's common to see speed humps even in neighborhoods that only have 1 entrance and exit.
If they want people to slow down, they should place trees or objects to make the road look more narrow than it is to make drivers think they are driving faster than they are.
yeah I feel like it's a losing battle given how big the road is already
Psychology backs that up.
Some paint or a bollard artificially narrowing and slowing a street annoys drivers and makes them feel oppressed, but a proper kerb, trees or plants, or benches on them, and grass and stuff, and it feels natural to slow down and drive more carefully, even if they're only installed to do the same thing as paint and bollards.
idk, ive seen people do 90 down back roads barely wider then the car, if cars can go faster then the speed limit people will do it.
Ok, but most people don't. Naturally some people are still gonna drive like idiots, but most people don't want to risk wrecking at high speeds.
I have no idea why the video didn't bring up the idea of median in the middle of the road, despite even depicting some sort of dual-median design at one point. The storm drains are a problem because they're on the outside of the road, and narrowing the road by removing those lanes will always be a problem. Removing the interior two lanes would be comparatively cheap.
in the UK this problem has been solved using a kind of barrier that is spaced at regular intervals. The barriers are just gates made by bringing the curb in suddenly and adding an island between the 2 lanes to create a very tight space to drive through. This way drivers have to approach it very slowly to avoid a collision. But you don’t have to do any complex manoeuvres and you can still pass through it comfortably at around 20mph
One of the biggest issues with this is that it's just lines. If it had actual obstacles like tree planters, curbs, parked cars, barriers and so on then it wouldn't be as weird, because then the drivers would only have the driving line visible to them and not all the other bits outside of the lane that confuses them. Then again the change in directions of the narrowing are also too close together and abrupt (for this road) so that doesn't help either.
They’re going to fix it, so some of those things might be installed.
Exactly, paint is not infrasture, you see many of the drivers ignoring the paint and just drving striaght through it. I wish they exactly went about narrowing the street and putting physicals barriers between cycles and by doing so you couldc also widen the sidewalk. But they did mention the storm drain and other existing infrasture that would be costly to relocate. It sad this road is built this wide in first place to accomodate so much cars and leave scraps over for cyclists and pedestrians. I hope in implement a more effective road diet with physical traffic calming measures that protect vulnerable users
To be fair, they did mention that budget was a concern. Paint's better than nothing, and cheaper than trees. The little stick barriers will help some. As the area gets more lively and safe for pedestrians and cyclists, and property values start increasing, I think this mayor and his engineers will be supportive of more permanent solutions. The concept needs to prove itself, and the money needs to get there. One step at a time.
Just pour larger sidewalks. Designate a portion of that for bikes. As a pedestrian, id rather be hit by a cyclist than a car. And as a cyclist, id rather not piss off the 2000lb walls moving towards me.
The fact that cyclist and foot traffic cant share the sidewalk is the true apalling issue.
Cyclist in my coty dont fallow road laws, and cops womt enforce them. The city is also narrowing roads and slowing traffic, for an almost non existant cyclist community. Its just causing drivers to get irritated, which leads to more accidents all around.
Ye, let's make it harder for emergency vehicles to pass traffic congestion
I am a big believer in using landscaping and physical features to tell the driver how fast to drive.
There's one street in particular in my small city that is almost wide enough for 4 lanes (although it is marked for 2), then on the side there is 10 feet of grass, a sidewalk, and another 20 feet of grass before you reach the backyard fences of the neighbourhood. The speed limit is 50 km/h (30 mph) but it feels like I should be going 80.
On another portion of the same street, it is split into 4 lanes, the sidewalks and houses are closer to the road, and there are trees planted on both sides and the median. The speed limit is the same 50 km/h, but there's never been any issues with speeding on that stretch.
I would love to see you do another report once the road design has been fixed! Great video!
They’re fixing it. Scraped up the paint. I am saddened by the loss. It was a fun way to feel the steering in my car.
@@josephhoward4697 If they screwed up that badly where I live, during the winter months those homes would have a lot of guest if they kept within the lines at even half the posted speed lol.
@@egg-roll8968 Uninvited guests, I presume?
@@josephhoward4697 uninvited overweight and rude guests that seem to not be able to find the door
I would love to see even a short video showing this road fixed. (I watched the earlier video of this street also).
So would I, but that would depend on it getting fixed.
Love that you do roadway focused content while still being pro transit/bike lane
a well designed road is typically multi-modal
what good is a road if it only offers convenience for one type of transport.
He's one of the few TH-camrs I've seen on the topic who seems to believe you can actually design a road to serve all three at the same time. Most people like to argue for prioritizing one over the other, but he presents a balanced take where the goal is getting everyone using the road safely.
@Moon Shine out of curiosity what do you want bike lanes for? Bikes seem impractical for transportation since you show up at your destination sweaty and gross, and for recreational purposes bike trails seem far safer as well as prettier.
@@lukasg4807 not rlly unless you live in like nevada
@@gio160 well he said moving from Phoenix to Dallas, both of those places are hot af 90% of the year
I live in New Brunswick, NJ, and they recently finished a re-striping project on the street I live on. When I first moved in, the street had two lanes in each direction and people were flying down it. What they ended up doing was re-striping it to have one car lane in each direction, a turning lane between them, and a bike lane on each side of the road.
I used to stay in Elizabeth. But they did that to a street be me in Houston and Ngl, I definitely don’t go above 35 anymore 😂
The way it's suppose to be from the beginning :) Nice!
It’s called a road diet. It’s suppose to make traffic go slower
Yes, classic road diet.
Livingston?
This is a really good vid. Thanks for addressing important issues that people often take for granted if it benefits them or ignore if it's not something they themselves are suffering from.
Rob, you delivered again! And it was so cool to see you got the actual Mayor of Hollister involved!
What would be really interesting would be to cover those mid section (between yellow) with t-based median strips to reduce heat and make it safer for pedestrians.
That's what I was thinking, paint can only go so far
Throw a few trees (in pots) in these spots. Adds some shade and avoids drivers choosing to ignore the lines. And they don't have to be expensive either (unlike medians or the like)
Why doesn't someone make some "indestructible" (perhaps plastic) trees/bushes that could line the road - separate the bicycles from the cars - but emergency vehicles could drive over if needed. Oh, and if a family car hit one it would just fold over. This would give the perception of speed and cost less than ripping up the street. The heights and sizes could be varied to look natural and smaller ones could be used in high wind areas.
Would be more effective if they used raised medians and curbsides with e.g. plants and actually slowed down traffic by the way they are arranged; Might sometimes be a bit annoying, but it helps. They can be set up to slow down car traffic and still handle the size of full-size trucks
Just look at the width of that road, it's ridiculous!
Hey 👋
Exactly, it's really the giant open which is simply marked with lines that causes the problem. If it has curbs and planters the lines wouldn't be visible so there wouldn't be anything to confuse the drivers.
money seems to be the main driving factor behind the lack of these features.
That road is ridiculously wide and they can definitely can narrow it too add protected cycling infrasture, street trees and planting strip. It's insane that they build this road wide in a neighbourhood and near a school and wonder why they have a speeding problem.
That design of road further enforces the perception that cities have lets roads be more forgiving and proctecting car drivers at the expense of being a hostile environment for pedestrians and cyclists
California city "planning"
How about a speed meter that controls a traffic light? If they are going 10+mph over the limit the traffic lights down the road will intentionally turn red to stop them?
As someone from a place that has snow on the ground several months of the year, and plenty of roads that need to be repainted, I don't like any road where I can't tell about where the lanes are without paint. Even without those issues, it sometimes still takes too much focus to figure out what the intent of the paint is, which makes you look at the paint more than the other cars and pedestrians. Hopefully they put enough structure around the road that their planned fix feels natural to the drivers.
Snow is not an issue in the desert, lol
Lines are stupid.
Give the space back to the other users.
Makes the side walks wider, plant trees, make separated cycling path (not just painted lines) so that you end up with single lane for each direction. People will slow down.
I started watching your videos out of curiosity for street design and urban planning but am sticking around thanks to your friendly demeanor! Always a joy to watch.
Thanks!
Yup. Looks like it works.
I had been excitedly waiting for this vehicle. The original design the mayor wanted makes a lot of sense
Honestly, the "botched" design will be far more effective at slowing down traffic if they put up delineators.
@@snoopyloopy I'm not sure they're trying to go for the absolute most effective way at reducing speed, they just want to reduce the speed to a certain amount
@@snoopyloopy because no one would drive on it
Nice report, Rob. I would love to see a collaboration between you and Not Just Bikes. many moments in this video I found myself thinking "What the Dutch would have done is....."
Great video as always Rob, I hope people recognize how rare it is that a youtuber puts this much effort in to make their channel both highly entertaining and informative. Going on site to so many places and getting irl interviews with the people involved in the projects is amazing. Keep it up!!
This channel is criminally underrated
That’s what I thought too. Nobody can make videos on road design that are this entertaining. Except Not Just Bikes lol
They should actually use a median with trees and plants, or at least some bollards. That will definitely calm traffic while also making the road a lot more pleasant!
10:23 That ambulance animation was top notch.
I recognize that ambulance. That's BeamNG Drive!
@@AlphabetSoupABCI saw that and went to the comments haha
Oof!
10:24 beamng drive games ambulance players 😂😂😂
I love how quick you were telling people you don;t work for the city
LOL! at the 11:40 mark, I wonder what passersby were thinking as they saw you playing with trucks and chalk with a safety vest on.
the thing about these solutions is that they rely on drivers to adjust accordingly to the road conditions. Given that chicanes (which, as stated, originate from racing) are going to be used, the potential carnage that could result from various different kinds of collisions is frightening to me, compared to a straight road. Chicanes are normally meant to have only one direction of traffic, so in order for CEs to remove the possibility of head-on collisions, there needs to be a crash barrier in the median. Otherwise, I'd be terrified of an oncoming collision
They should put there mobile trees in containers. So it would be more green, more obsticles and it can be removed if there is no success.
Also a good thing i have just introduced to: the traffic light which is green by default, but turns red if someone is speeding.
The traffic light would have to be in a sensible location (e.g at a crosswalk or intersection), otherwise it would look strange and people could just ignore it. A red light camera should also be installed.
I'm willing to bet that making the lanes curve slightly so that they kiss in the middle of the road would fail to cause anyone to slow down and likely cause more accidents.
I just found this channel and the editting is amazing. It's like something I'd watch on Discovery.
My home town renovated the main street a few years ago. It used to be an almost straight 2 lane street with no traffic lights or any other features to force drivers to slow down. It's not too wide and has parking spaces along the sides but I don't remember drivers driving under the speed limit, which is 50 km/h (31 mph). They added traffic islands to some of the pedestrian crossings that doubles as traffic calming devices and it works surprisingly well. The speed limit hasn't changed but drivers now often drive at 40 km/h (25 mph) or even slower.
See, around here I'm fairly sure they'd consider that a hazard... and so change the speed limit signs accordingly. Because the claim that people pay no attention to speed limit signs isn't actually quite correct. The thing is though, 'driving to the conditions' includes 'not driving at a substantually different speed form the other vehicles around you' if you don't want to cause significant accidents. So all it takes is for Enough people to regularly ignore the speed limit signs and then no one else can safely follow them. In places where the culture is to stick to the speed limit? Basically everyone sticks to the speed limit!
This only changes on roads with very light traffic. And even then, if the signs are sufficiently prominant, and standardized, people will generally stay fairly Close to the limit.
@@laurencefraser I didn't mention but you can still easily drive at the speed limit, it's not dangerous to drive around the traffic islands at normal speed. I personally find it a bit annoying to be stuck behind someone going slower, but I wouldn't consider it a hazard until that car doesn't change speed erratically.
I love traffic calming. It makes the sidewalks much better to walk along. I prefer shared streets though.
@@baksatibi It's a hazard to _be_ the car going much slower than everyone else, since it means someone might rush up behind you.
If somebody misread the plans, please explain away the cat-tracking. If you look closely you'll see little white paint marks between the yellow strips and in person you can see them elsewhere. Cat-tracking is used by the striping contractor to get approval of where the striping goes. The city inspector reviews the cat-tracking and either approves it or asks for changes. Was the city inspector derelict in his duties? Has he been fired? Or...could it be that this is just part of the sweeping hair-brained city planning implementations that are cursing this city lately? For instance Hollister has invented a new form of roundabout that doesn't have yield signs...just a normal intersection with a raised rubber circle in it. Instead of bicycle lanes some streets get a no-mans-land center lane useful to no one that pushes traffic closer to the sidewalk and parked cars.
I find myself wondering if the contractor "messed up" this job on purpose, to make either the city or the idea itself look stupid, even knowing the city would probably make them re-do it.
Obviously. Nobody accidentally does this.
Yeah they love costing themselves time, money, reputation, and valuable city contracts. Take that, government!
So you're telling me, because of all the speeders, they're going to lose a 4 lane road into a 2 lane road
Damn I'd hate to live with that
One burning question, Rob. Could they not simply rip out the section of the road in the center and make that into a median with trees and shrubs planted? I think that would have both beautified the road, created extra green space, and achieve the intended traffic calming.
That costs a lot more than paint
Hollister doesn't have that type of money. It would definitely be the preferred solution.
Would have cost millions.
It would be cheaper than going to the intended long term solution of 2 immediately adjacent lanes (because the curb, drains and all the asphalt that you want to retain for your traffic calmed configuration would remain in place).
But it would also mean that once you are ready to re-build it into the best configuration, (which has the advantage of leaving plenty of space for buffers to the cycle lanes, wide sidewalks, and whatever else they'd want to put onto the street), you'd have to re-add the asphalt of those center lanes, making that step more expensive.
I do however think that just putting some planters on that dead space between the double yellow lines (instead of turning it into a full-on median) could be a good way to beautify the street and make it visually narrower.
Are you going to pay for it?
Crazy how much thought goes into things everyone uses everyday. Never thought of a road system as more than just a line you lay down to get you from a to b.
So glad I discovered this channel. Such fantastic styling in the editing and the humor is so dang funny!
Palm Desert and Encinitas in California did very similar retrofits which includes some of all of the above. Additionally there is art work and appropriate drought tolerant plantings which serve to h soften these once very hardscaped through-ways. All contribute to causing drivers to go slower and actually visually interact with the surroundings. It doesn’t only slow traffic but beautifies the neighborhood.
We have a street by me people easily would go 50 on, it’s wide and there’s no light for a mile. They made it 1 lane each way, added bike lanes, and lots of trees in the middle. Going over 35 on it feels way too fast now. I actually like it 🤔
Yeah that's great :) With the added benefits of making cycling an option (less traffic, more exercise) and lessening the heat island effect and air pollution with the trees.
@@Snowshowslow I mean… it’s hot here half the year so idk about biking to work. But it’s fun for weekend rides lol
@@PatricenotPatrick Where do you live? :)
This channel's production value makes me feel like it has 5M subs. But it's not even 100k?? Subscribe, people!
Great video! It's so refreshing to see an infrastructure TH-cam channel that isn't overly preachy and binary: cars bad; trains good. And despite some groups that think cars shouldn't exist and that everyone should just hop on a train or walk, the reality in the vastness of the U.S. is that cars are pretty much a necessity, and it can be a good thing if done well -- as your channel tries to illustrate. Keep it up!
The problem is largely sprawl in our city development not the spacing between cities. Large distances between cities is more an argument for airplanes and high speed trains, not for slower cars. The goal isn't to eliminate cars, it's to provide another option for people where transit is possible to reduce congestion and improve travel times for everyone.
I've stopped watching most infrastructure, transit, and urban planning channels for this exact reason. A lot of the more popular channels don't even seem to have a technical understanding of what they're talking about. They just repeat "Stroads bad" and "Replace it with a train" endlessly. It's all very dogmatic. I'm all for more and better transit, but it's not the answer to everything.
the cars are a necessity in the USA almost entirely because your governement keeps spending much more than rail would cost on ever more counterproductive roads and highways (that they don't even maintain properly) rather than building the proper rail and pedestrian infrastructure that would render most of them unnecessary. Yes, you still need roads, but when you're not trying to make them do everything else's job, badly, at much higher cost when you don't ignore half the numbers (roads are subsidized a Lot, drivers pay more for their cars purchase, upkeep, and fuel than they would in ticket prices (and also more than the transit company would have to pay per rider for Their vehicles even if they don't cheat somehow), and so on and so forth), you need a lot less of them, at a lot smaller scale, that are a lot safer and more pleasant to use...
Basically, properly built and run public transit makes Roads better too.
Yes, yes, cars are still needed in specific use cases, it's rarely practical to properly serve farms via passenger rail, you still need last mile delivery vans, and so on.
Doesn't change the fact that they are massively over used and in many places (especially in the USA) the infrastructure needed to support them is well and truely excessive.
Oh, and people say 'replace it with a train' endlessly because, well, each mode of transit has situations where it works very well and situations it's not so good at... and the USA Keeps Building Roads for situations where road vehicles are Shit and they should be using Rail! Much like you don't build high-speed rail where a local tram is all that is needed, and don't try to use a VW bug for jobs that require one of those mega mining trucks, and don't take a passenger ferry from New York to California, there are situatons where rail is ideal and personal road vehicles and/or trucks are just DUMB. Pretty much Anywhere you get gridlocked highways? It's because the vast majority of that traffic SHOULD have been going by rail.
The USSR dominated rail transport for both passenger and freight. It is indeed possible
Speed limits are getting too damn slow, they’re are apparently lowering them to 20mph in my neighborhoods.
Not a fan of traffic calming circles at least how they are implemented in my county. Should just be roundabouts. Interesting hearing the issues of speed bumps. My city installed a bunch of tall raised crosswalks on multi-lane high traffic roads with no other forms of traffic calming or addition of lighting and signaling. Said roads happen to also fan out from the local hospital. The speed limits remain unchanged while traffic usually cuts 15-20 MPH to go over the bumps to just zoom right back up.
I argued the point of continuing to allow street parking with our neighborhood board years ago. They said in a nutshell our condo complex had too many cars and made the property values and neighborhood of single family homes across the street seem "less desireable". Now they comolain about speeding and nightly street racing down the same street. But they don't want cars parked there, don't want to spring for remarking and putting up barriers for a bike lane. Even though biking through there is popular and dangerous now. Oh, and the cars parked on the main street that didn't see much traffic? Our condo comolex residents now just park on the side steets in the single family home neighborhoods to make a point. They don't want to eliminate street parking on their portion of the development, just ours.
Great video Rob! You have some mad editing skills, some of the stuff you did takes forever to edit!
It is unfortunate so many cities overbuilt and continue to overbuild their infrastructure. It is both more expensive in the short and long term and less safe. What cities need to understand is as Strong Towns suggests that a capital cost is also an ongoing operational cost. Every street and road will need to be maintained and rebuilt at some point. Also, though developers build the wider roads, cities typically have to pay or reimburse for widening beyond the needs of a project through impact fees or some other method depending on where you live.
Hollister looks like they understand the speeding issues in their town and are trying to do something about it, which is great. Cities all around the country need to start understanding and adopting a safe systems approach as the FHWA is now finally supporting (though looking to the Dutch Sustainable Safety policy would provide some clarification).
A big problem with safety on the arterial roads is the speeds are still too fast, that combined with all the access they allow, they are some of the most deadly in the US. The design of those have to change as well. As suggested in the video, if it is actually safe to walk and bike places, more people will do so and a city may actually help their traffic issues. The most important thing to get right to encourage more walking and biking is a city’s road plan. When roads are calmed and safer, then they aren’t such big deterrents or barriers to walking and biking.
This specific neighborhood road near me had its residents complaining to the city that people were going too fast on it so they painted sharp turning zig zag lines to try to slow people down. They ended up removing that pretty quick and just replacing it with speed bumps.
since i started watching your channel, around a year or so ago, now. I really think about the planning that went into a lot of roads that i drive on and that it really isnt as simple as ''need road, build road''. theres a lot more that goes into it.
i like how the mayor explain his thinking out to us. Much appreciated.
Not just bikes would have a stroke
Build highways and people will drive at highway speeds. This is the biggest problem with Stroads.
Hey Rob, love your videos, recently the engineers here in Madison Wisconsin redesigned the Beltline (a major highway that goes through the city and has major problems with congestion) so that people can use the shoulder during peak traffic - they call them 'Flex lanes'. Wtf were they thinking??? Isn't it only a matter of time before the increased capacity gets eaten up and the highway is all congested again, except this time even the SHOULDER is congested??? And what are they going to do if emergency vehicles need to get by? What If a motorist needs to pull over? I feel like the traffic engineer who designed this must have an extra chromosome, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.
We have this in the Netherlands as well. Often the shoulder lane is less wide so it requires everyone to drive slower. 2 lanes means 130km/h, 3 lanes means 100/120km/h. General speed was reduced to 100km/h 2 years ago so that effect has gone away. I suppose it allows for a temporary increase in capacity without having to redo the entire line but I don't know if it is considered a succes here.
$45 million spent on it for a 10 mile stretch. There sure seems to be a lot of money for highway expansions. We need to stop trying to "improve" highways and instead focus that money on improving public transit. A few buses at peak traffic times can take just as much traffic off the highway as a flex lane can add capacity, but with the added benefit of reducing cars on other streets as well. Unfortunately highways are decided by the state so it doesn't matter what impacted cities think.
I'm pretty sure that the phenomenon of "induced demand" all but guarantees that the "flex" lanes will eventually become permanent lanes.
it's incredible that city planners still dont understand induced demand. if you build it they will clog it. that money could have been better spent on public transit.
@@CRneu I think the city planners understand induced demand quite well, but they're not the ones making the decisions about what to build...
North America is many, many years behind in road design and how they want to catch up, still isn't that great.
I love the little flourishes of humor you add, like the Hollister's fun fact or the pronunciation of fancy French terms.
If it were me, I would've gone for a tree-lined median, but I suppose that's a bit pricier than stripes and traffic circles.
Nhl if i saw that shit and the road isnt packed, im just driving straight. IN THIS ECONOMY? Mfs in this town gettin shit ass mileage outta their tanks. 💀
Driving in Japan requires your complete attention because the roads tend to be narrow, even suddenly bottlenecking to the point where cars have to stop to allow oncoming traffic through. There are few straight roads with sidewalks. I've often thought that it's too easy to switch your brain off while driving in the US. It's too controlled and predictable, so people aren't focused, and that leads to speeding and distracted driving. This seems like an interesting way to get people to pay more attention to the road.
Rural Britain is also like that.
Honestly if I saw a road like this I would drive as fast as I could just to hear my tires squeal with each turn back and forth it would be a lot of fun. Not safe but funaf
Put businesses on the edges of the reserves. that'll increase traffic, and increased traffic slows them down. pop-up shops would do.
Also, put a green median for the sake of everything that's holy, as I can feel the radiant heat coming off the pavement as I sit and watch this video!
Yeah, just form a bunch of businesses. lol
Businesses don’t slow things down as much as you would hope. I live near a few streets like this but lined with commercial property and large apartment complexes, so lots of traffic, they also have lots of street lights. The speed limit is 35 but if you go with the flow of traffic you’re easily still going 50 mph or even more. If the cops pulled over speeders they’d literally have to pull over nearly every car driving on the road.
If this had happened in any other state I would be concerned, but seeing how this happened in wonderful California. It is just par for the course. Surfs UP!! Dude!!
Having the curves on each side of the road converge invites head-on collisions. The curves on each side should compliment each other instead of mirroring each other. A concrete median would also help.
That is the idea behind it. The perceived danger of head-on collisions with oncoming traffic is one of the best psychological triggers to slow people down.
Remember that our danger sense is not as intelligent as we are. It basically thinks we are running down the street, so it will not see a real danger in e.g. running into pedestrians crossing our path. But running head-on into a solid object, that's always dangerous.
@@HenryLoenwind All well and good until the perception becomes real. I'd really rather not go down a street playing little games of chicken every hundred yards.
We had a similar road running through our neighborhood and speed traps failed to fix the speeding problem. One day after one to many fatal incidents, the city decided to add traffic calming measures from landscaped choke points, and speed warning signs that flashed to driver how fast they are travelling and warn them when they are speeding. The choke points was enough to halve half the traffic. Allowing cars to park along the size caused a psychological effect on driver to slow down. The fixes to this road were very cheap and well thought out.
Love the demo with sidewalk chalk, Legos, and toy cars. Real quality... And a clever way to get folks to think about the reason for traffic calming ;)
And we also got a little history lesson.
I like the traffic circle idea because that would be the perfect place to put the crosswalk. That gives drivers the ability to use the straight part of the road for quick travel, but the road slows down enough at the traffic circle crosswalk area to allow pedestrians to cross. This would effectively turn the speed of the road from a flaw into a feature. Since the road acts more like a highway than a street, why not just roll with it but build in some designated areas for pedestrians to cross via a traffic circle?
Maybe they watched one of your previous videos where you said to cut the number of lanes down. Since watching your videos I think a lot more about street design when I'm just driving around.
The solution to this whole problem is simple, though costly.
Address it in the same manner as trains vs cars.
Remove the pedestrian vs vehicle interaction by burying the crosswalks under the roadway via tunnels or over the roadway via pedestrian bridges.
There's no other way to facilitate the safe travel of pedestrians in this day and age.
There are plenty of ways for pedestrians to cross safely that are illustrated in other videos on his channel. Nothing is black and white.
I need to see an update when they’re done
The basic concept is good, but you really need grade separation to make that work. I suggest a planter in the shape of those yellow lines.
love every one of your videos! I started my CE degree this year & you've been a big inspiration (:
I just wanna say in advanced, I appreciate you making my commute longer, I don't like showing up to work on time, to make money and I really hate going home to my wife and kids. So please introduce tons of traffic calming and anything to make my commute slower. I'd appreciate it!
@@StaYUTI420 Agree -- this "traffic calming" fad should be called what it really is: "traffic congesting". Or at least, "artificial traffic slowing". This obsession with slowing down traffic is annoying. As long as drivers are driving safely and paying attention, it doesn't matter how fast they're going (within reason). Cars and roads exist in order to get people from A to B in a reasonably quick, efficient manner. The car-hating zealots want to destroy that. 😠
@@Milesco “as long as drivers are driving safely”
Yeah tell that to the millions of people a year who get hit by drivers speeding down quiet neighbourhood streets. No one’s putting traffic calming on big arterial streets, and if your commute consists entirely of narrow local neighbourhood streets then that’s a you problem. You simply cannot trust everyone to use a 2 ton death machine responsibly and safely by twiddling your fingers and asking “but.. but would you PWEASE consider slowing down?” That’s the entire point of this video. Using the power of infrastructure so drivers HAVE to slow down in places they need to be.
Roads do not exist only for cars. They exist for people walking, biking, taking the bus, etc too. Designing your street for only one mode of transportation is kind of a crappy way to design something.
@@cocobailey777 You're missing the point. Speed, by itself, isn't dangerous (within reason). It's _collisions_ that are dangerous, and speed doesn't cause collisions (except at the extremes). German autobahns have no speed limits at all, yet because of high quality, well trained, disciplined drivers, they are safe.
The problem isn't speed, it's incompetent drivers who are unable to control their cars or don't pay attention. Focus your energies on suspending or revoking the licenses of _those_ people -- the truly incompetent -- and we'll have safe streets, while still allowing competent drivers to proceed to their destinations at a reasonable velocity and not at a granny's pace.
_"Roads do not exist only for cars. "_
Yeah, they do.
_"They exist for people walking...."_
No, that's what sidewalks are for.
_"...taking the bus..."_
That's functionally the same as cars (motor vehicles)
_"...biking..."_
Okay, that one's a legitimate concern, but again, the problem is incompetent motorists not keeping their eyes (and brains) open and *paying attention.* The cause of motor vehicle-bicycle collisions is, in most cases, drivers not keeping an eye out for bicyclists. (Although in my experience, I'm happy to say that most do.) Not speed. If you're driving down a straight road, you can go at a fairly decent clip and still have no serious risk of hitting a bicyclist, unless the bicyclist swerves into your path, in which case, that's the biker's fault.
The only time there are real issues is when the motorist wants to make a turn -- typically a right turn across (or unfortunately, into) the path of a bicyclist. Regrettably, those situations do result in all too many collisions, but again, that's the fault of drivers not looking out and paying attention. Not speed. (Indeed, the motorists are already going slow because they're _making a turn!)_
So, to sum up, don't worry so much about speed, worry about the incompetent drivers and get them off the road.
@@Milesco Speed IS dangerous, as it increases your chances of getting into a collision in the first place, it reduces your time to react in case anything happens in front of you, and studies have shown that even a 15mph increase in speed can have a serious impact on fatality rates. A person hit by a car traveling at 35 miles per hour is five times more likely to die than a person hit by a car traveling at 20 miles per hour. You say "speed isn't dangerous, collisions are" - that doesn't really make sense as the two are directly correlated with one another. You reduce your speed, you reduce your chance of hitting something or someone. German autobahns have no speed limits and they are safe BECAUSE OF THE INFRASTRUCTURE, which is exactly what is being talked about in this video. Nowhere in the video does Rob say "wow these highways are so safe because drivers are". Wide lanes, gentle curves, and straight roadways - all to keep people safe at 65mph. Infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure. It's the same thing for American highways as well, and the thing is, those are designed for you to go fast. _That's why they're highways._ Your local neighbourhood street does not need to be designed like a highway, which is (again) the message that this video is trying to make.
You want to get to your destination at a reasonable speed and not at a 'granny's' pace, as you say. Then don't drive on the traffic calmed streets. That's the entire reason the traffic calming is there in the first place. You are acting like they are installing 50 speed bumps and chicanes and narrowing down the lanes to 2 feet wide in every street in your city. No. There's different types of roads for a reason (again, mentioned in the video), and you already what you need - arterial streets, for going fast - while the streets this video is talking about is for local neighbourhood streets, with people backing out of their driveways onto them and kids playing everywhere. These streets do not need to be designed like a highway (or a runway as Rob calls them). _You do not need to drive on them like it's a highway._
I disagree with your point that roads exist only for cars. If you built a city with that mindset, you would get dystopian hellscapes with half the city paved with parking lots and multi lane stroads clogged with traffic snaking throughout the entire city. Oh wait, that's what most American suburbs look like nowadays. And those suburbs are an objectively bad place to live. You may not see it (I'm assuming you're reasonably car dependent judging by your response of "I want to go vroom vroom everywhere"), but dense walkable cities like in Europe are way better in terms of... well, everything. And guess what, part of the reason why that is is because you don't have people flying down those streets at 50mph.
"No, that's what sidewalks are for" Many sidewalks in America either don't exist at all, or are in terrible condition, extremely narrow, and can be inaccessible to people with disabilities. So, uh, yeah, pedestrians are still a very important part of the conversation here. Plus, there have been plenty of accidents from drivers mounting the sidewalk and killing a pedestrian. So the one place that's supposed to be safe for pedestrians isn't really that safe, if you let people go a million miles an hour on them.
Taking the bus is not the same as single occupancy motor vehicles in this context, as a well designed 'complete street' as Rob calls it should have some sort of transit priority. A lot of American public transit systems are absolutely terrible, and part of that is because the buses just get dumped onto the streets with the traffic and have to compete with other cars. Buses, when managed well, can take dozens of cars off the street which makes things better for everyone.
And I can tell you've probably never ridden a bike for any reasonable amount of time in your life, because saying that you're fine with people passing by at 50mph right beside bikers (or any other vulnerable road users) is something any cyclist would never say. I've done commutes before on highway shoulders (it was permitted, for some reason) and having cars pass by you a few feet away at highway speeds is NOT pleasant at all. Do better.
"So, to sum up, don't worry so much about speed, worry about the incompetent drivers and get them off the road."
The problem with this statement is that it would only work in a utopian world where we could somehow magically detect every single bad driver and say "no driving 4 u". That's not how the world works - there are always going to be shitty drivers no matter how hard you try. So to mitigate the risk of those shitty drivers, you use infrastructure in order to lower the risk of collisions and make things safer for everyone. Such as... you know, _making people go slower._
If the real cause of every single collision was drivers simply being incompetent and not paying attention (it isn't), then answer this. Would you rather those drivers make a mistake at 20mph, or 50mph?
These are all points that are already being made in the video you're watching right now.
Thanks for making this video about something funny but then explaining the idea behind it in detail
A nearby town to me did thus with endless s-curves on Main Street tosliw people down and create a walking community. Everyone loved it for a few years until it became a hassle, so they tore it out again.
It's better to just preserve the right of way and only go beyond the 2 lanes when it's actually warranted. 2 lane roads can already carry a lot of traffic anyway and in that scenario they coul've built a nice multi use pathway in the shrubs besides it.
My idea would be to put car lanes at the very edge of the road, 3 meters each, and then the rest can be a green median with a perfectly straight shared path. The median could be separated by a truck apron curb so emergency vehicles can hop onto the path
"I don't work for the city" well DON"T walk down the "middle" of the road - move the drain (8:45) when you can direct the rain TO the drain
road markings are not an inhibiter people will just drive over them not even notice BUT if you have plastic street pylons this gets the impression of a smaller road thus slowing people
Even that plan is completely wrong. The road should have been significantly physically narrowed and the bike path should have been behind a barrier, not plastic posts...
Signs, lines and plastic bollards don't do much for safety...
I', sure they'd be more than happy to do that if you send them the money for it.
3:02
And children should not be running out in the street. If they are not raised properly, this is called the darwin award. The easiest way to fix that issue is to put a crossing light there to allow pedestrians to cross. Hard concept to understand I know.
This is super interesting. Wonder how the litigation would go for the new lines being paved.
Luckily, there probably won't need to be any litigation. The city, per the contract specs, probably didn't pay the contractor for the striping, and won't pay until it's done correctly. The contractor will most likely come back and fix it, since they obviously want to get paid.
Water doesn't wreck asphalt. It recks the road bed under the asphalt. Asphalt just keeps the roadbed dry. That's it. It doesn't make the road stronger it just keeps the road from turning into mud.
The mayor actually seems like a sound dude to chill with and get a good laugh off lol
I'm surprised they didn't come up with a practical "dip" in the road that is reasonably comfortable at 40 but will discourage speeds above 50. Speed bumps are stupid. There's one on a residential street nearby that's treacherous on a bicycle even at 5 mph.
Rob why would you post this at 230 am im trying to sleep...
But thank you
And here I am up cause I went to bed early
Only the new way roads are built/painted is for the fuel companies to make you waste more fuel to buy more gas !!! 4 lanes is a freeway a 2 lanes is a street !!! just put in some killer speed bumps !!! just give them 100mph for 2 blocks and go right back down to 40 mph and have cops sitting on both sides where it is only 40 mph. area and see who all gets caught !!! I could put 10 of my towns in that town area making it a city where I live !!!
I feel like the kind of people that actually follow those lines instead of just going straight are also the kind of people that get a booster shot every 6 months
It’s interesting that the US has problems with roads to big and Germany for example has problems with roads that are to small because they were building to have like 10 horse carriages on them not 100 cars
So many pickup trucks lol
this state has become infested with them lol
Build the road wide but the extra outside lanes can just be blocked off and used for pedestrian use only. If the road is needed they just can open the closed off lanes.
They just tried to stop it from becoming a stroad. Commendable tbh.
The little bike agenda and "stroads". What is a stroad little bike person?
@@4149stonepony You could google it, big car guy. It's something that is bad for you, too. And you should want me on a bike, so you can keep the road to yourself. Advocating only for car lanes is just gonna force both of us into cars, instead of just the one who actually wants to drive one.
@@MentalEdge Yeah I could google everything I just wanted to hear from the little bike people what the actual definition of a "stroad" is. Or my favorite is induced demand another ambiguity little cyclistas love, so let me destroy that for you. Would you rather have a speeding problem or induced demand? Wait, what speed should traffic be allowed to go, so that cyclists feel 'safe' 3 mph? So is it still a cars fault if you run into it and it is parked? Biking, while great for exercise and recreation makes for real shitty transportation, but don't tell the status hungry virtue signalers that.
@@4149stonepony I don't think you're looking for discussion. If you were, you'd be coming at me with information, stats, and google results. Not this girly passive aggressive use of the word "little", etc. You're clearly either a troll, or far too entrenched to be capable of reasonable discourse on the matter.
There's nothing ambiguous about induced demand, it's literally a peer reviewed research item with hard numbers available.
The answer to making cycling safe btw isn't limiting the speed of cars anywhere but in places where they intermingle with other traffic (on walking streets, such as in superblocks), it's properly segregating the lanes and paths of the different forms of traffic in the first place. Paint does little to stop a metric ton of metal, there's a reason we do the bare minimum of giving sidewalks a curb.
I'm not sure if I'll block you yet. You seem like the type of shitslinger that might be fun to screw with.
As for crashing into parked cars? I mean that's just a smol brain attempt at getting a rise out of someone.
@@4149stonepony Arguing for cars-only is like saying elevators are a must, because in your house, the fridge is on the third floor while your kitchen is on the first.
The real solution is to fix your wacky zoning laws so you can put the fridge in the damn kitchen, and use your hands to get what you need for cooking.
It's not like elevators shouldn't exists, they serve an important purpose. But maybe don't use the space they take up as an excuse to place stuff further apart (parking lots), nor discount the usefulness of stairs when you only need to move a floor or two.
And it's not like I never use cars. But I only need to like once or twice a year. Meanwhile, the US has used cars as an excuse to allow their cities to sprawl into inefficient money-sinks that makes their daily use mandatory, whether you can afford it or not.
Chicanes are in common use in Australia to slow traffic on long straight streets, but they aren't just painted on to be ignored. Instead the curb is brought in to interrupt the driving lane. Sometimes a tree or other landscaping is planted there as well to really make it obvious. This is more expensive, though, and does need some thought if you want to have bikelanes.
All of this is insane. ROADS ARE FOR CARS. WHY CATER TO BIKES?
Collectors where I live, (Surrey, BC) are typically underbuilt with no room for bike lanes. Instead of forcing developers to build arterials and collectors developers pay into a fund (development cost charges) and the city later retrofits older 2 lane roads, typically that had ditches or wide gravel shoulders and no sidewalks or very poor ones into 4 lane roads with protected bike lanes. Unfortunately only in the last few years did the city start building protected bike lanes so much of the existing network either has skinny painted bike lanes or nothing at all.
Notice, no roads except school zone should be below 35 mph. In my state if the speed limit is 30 mph or lower, citizens can request to drive golf carts on the road. Bicycles should be keep on 5 ft wide sidewalks. Give large tickets or take their license for reckless driving. I notice numbers on the road, why, they do not mean anything in some states.
I can see small, round, median curbs being placed between the main driving road and the Bicycle lanes later on. If the developers want to decorate them, they could use some native flora or perhaps some low-water plants, considering California’s current water crisis. The reason the curbs would be small and round (circular) is to A. create a speed bump to punish drivers for not watching their driving, and B. to allow the storm drains to still function as intended. If spread out, the “curb bumps” would still allow water to get to the existing storm drains while protecting cyclists.
I love how the plan to slow down traffic is to put in a traffic circle, while go to any anti car VT channel and all you hear is a how they are faster.
Just narrow the road with barriers, expand them out at crossings to have turning lanes and advances then neck down to an uncomfortably narrow road. Maybe throw in a few of the super improved pedestrian crossing lights.
Nope paint stupid lines all over and leave the people to race down the road drifting at 60mph or just ignore them and drive straight and safe-ish.
"Just lowering the limit doesn't do anything"
Tell that to VDOT. Doesn't stop them from lowering actual freeways to 55 mph.
Around here, they'd also shove a bunch of 5mph speed bumps all over a 25mph road like this and call it a day... though, they probably wouldn't have to, since _every single intersection_ on it would be a stoplight for literally no reason.
Seriously, those things can't be cheap. Spend some money on lane retroreflectors or paint that's still visible in the rain for literally a _single_ road in the entire city, why don'tcha? I can't tell road lines from tire tracks if someone sneezes on the road at night.
"Traffic Circle" ?? Pugh. No.