Drivers wouldn't stop... even for an 8-ft CHICKEN! (Why did the chicken cross the freeway?)
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 11 ก.ค. 2024
- Even an 8-foot-tall chicken struggles to cross the on-ramp!
Buy me tacos 😀🌮► / roadguyrob
Ask a road question ► www.roadguyrob.com/interchange
"Wait to Cross" jam ► roadguyrob.com/waittocross.mp3
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Background research:
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"Diverging Diamond Interchange: Accommodating Bicyclists and Pedestrians," Federal Highway Administration. pdfs.semanticscholar.org/07f7...
"Complete Intersections: A Guide to Reconstructing Intersections and Interchanges for Bicyclists and Pedestrians," California Department of Transportation (2010). nacto.org/docs/usdg/complete_...
"Guide for Pedestrian and Bicyclist Safety at Alternative and Other Intersections and Interchanges," Transportation Research Board (2021). www.nap.edu/catalog/26072/gui...
"Literature Review on Vehicle Travel Speeds and Pedestrian Injuries," NHTSA (1999). one.nhtsa.gov/people/injury/r...
"Pedestrian Safety Guide and Countermeasure Selection System," FHWA. www.pedbikesafe.org/pedsafe/co...
"MOXIE for Scientists: Mars Oxygen ISRU Experiment," NASA (2020). mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/spacec...
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Time sections:
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Introduction: (0:00)
Pedestrian Skybridge: (1:06)
Speed: (3:35)
Trouble of DDIs: (6:04)
Width: (9:37)
Best of Both: (10:50)
No Sidewalk!: (13:47)
Henderson: (15:13)
Manteca Skybridge: (16:36)
CFI or DDI?: (19:11)
Mars: (20:44) - ยานยนต์และพาหนะ
I feel like this video was made so Rob could rationalize getting a chicken suit
He can write it off as a business expense!
How do you know he didn't already have one?
@@lo1bo2 Am I to believe he had one before now...and never used it? Don't be silly...
I think Rob is the one in the chicken suit and he's not telling us.
What came first, the chicken costume or the video?
The 51' tall pedestrian bridge is an absolute eyesore. Who approved that?!
Worse, it's not even practical. One can generally put up with the occasional eyesore if it's as a side effect of the thing actually being useful, after all.
The Stay-Puffed Marshmallow man authorized it.
And the "wheel chair accessible" ramp? Would have to be an olimpic wheelchair racer to get up that.
The worst thing about that pedestrian bridge imo, they destroyed a home, or maybe two, to make it.
@@creditableme1 For that amount that thing is going to cost the city into the future, I would say they destroyed more than two homes.
I can probably cross any and all of those intersections, but sadly that's how a lot of ppl think of this: can someone do it? Yeah, sure, someone can.
But the real test is "will you allow your 10 year old son/daughter to cross it by themselves?". That's the litmus test for pedestrian safety, can a kid do it on their own? Be it crossing a street or using the street in general (biking).
If the answer is no, then this is not pedestrian-friendly infrastructure.
Thats what I was thinking the whole time. Like yeah I could cross these as a 21 year old male in shape, but is it safe for children or people with disabilities?? Ehhh the whole environment is too unsafe for sure.
Then there’s no such thing as pedestrian-friendly infrastructure
I completely agree. We should develop our civil engineering projects to a higher standard when it come to safety.
@@Archimedes115 Nope!
th-cam.com/video/ul_xzyCDT98/w-d-xo.html
th-cam.com/video/y_SXXTBypIg/w-d-xo.html
@@Archimedes115 there is, we just choose to put car convenience over safety here in the US.
This man traveled through three states to cross freeways while dressed as a gigantic chicken, respect.
Jesus, that bridge looks like it's out of Rollercoaster Tycoon. What where they thinking when they designed it
oh damn iron here nice to see you watching my fav teacher
Yeah. I’d love to know who signed off on that design 😱
which one
THAT'S what it reminded me of!!
Which one?
can we talk about how inhuman all of these "people-friendly" designs are?
They're car friendly, not people friendly.
Yeah, road guy rob really needs to do that.
I mean the proof is in the video itself. He's dressed as either a 8 ft tall chicken or in high vis vest. How much more conspicuous can you be and cars still don't see him or stop. What chance does an 8 year old have or a 70 year old or even a regular person in normal clothing?
I was hoping he'd address the fact that any road is meant to carry people, not cars. People can be on a bike, on feet, or in a car, but not exclusively the latter. I'm baffled by how he thought that last crosswalk at the end looked good.
I actually think the standard diamond is about as pedestrian friendly as you can get, if you get rid of the slip lane right turns. Roundabouts/dumbbells would be pretty decent too.
But if you want to look at the safest, just look at the Netherlands. Its mostly Parclos (AB2s) so a separated bike path can be on the side with no ramps. Or the bike path is on a bridge parallel to the interchange, but not with 50ft of winding ramps, the highway is lowered below the road so the bike path/MUP can cross over completely flat. Or the highway is raised and the bike path goes underneath.
I'm from Australia, but yet I've never been more interested in American road design/layout. Almost seems crazy how large the roads are over there! Great video!
You guys have trucks that are size of freight trains (not that north American commercial trucks are small but Aussie trucks are a wow factor). Anyways you all don't have large roads?
@@AtomicReverend We don't really have the freeway through the middle of a neighbourhood thing except maybe in a few big cities, but we also aren't Europe small roads.
Everything seems bigger through a video camera. Or is it smaller?
I don't remember. I just know toilets in Australia swirl the wrong direction. I think.
@@CheaddakerT.Snodgrass I don't think I've ever seen a toilet that actually swirls. They are all the wrong type
@@CheaddakerT.Snodgrass Our roads are smaller than American roads, especially downtown/CBD, because we never bulldozed them to make way for cars. Or at least not to as great an extent.
And I'm very happy we didn't bulldoze our city centres, means we don't have to start from scratch
The solution to crosswalks is stargates tbh
*But they are too expensive to be practical at every intersection...*
That is such a breakthrough. Why hasn’t anyone thought of that yet it’s so good
You will need a new toaster
@@RoadGuyRob I just use an Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device to portal across to the other side.
@@MoiraPrime yo we’ve all go the ideas. Why can’t all of them just take our ideas
If you really want a level-separated pedestrian crossing, at least build an underpass. It needs only 3-4 meters (9-12 ft) down, but if you make an overpass (bridge) it has more vertical difference and therefore more ramps/stairs. The 15,5 meter (51 ft) high bridge is absurd and insane on every level.
It was the first thing i thought of, but its also a tradeoff of visibility/safety
@@waharadome Strangely, plenty of places seem to manage it just fine. Mind you, a large part of the trick to that seems to be actually dealing with your crime problems (which generally involves having a not-completely-defective criminal justice system and actually reducing poverty, so...), with a side order of actually maintaining your infrastructure...
@@waharadome How is it not safe/visible?
Lights and usually a few cameras does the business here.
Also I very like when local artist groups paint the walls, if so it is also very aesthetic.
I do not know how dangerous your neighborhood, but if a neighborhood is safe, the tunnel is also safe. So nothing really about the tunnel.
@@laurencefraser The crime problem is a lack of fathers in the home, lack of discipline in schools, and a very soft criminal justice system.
@@johnathin0061892 The usa locks up more people than any other sovereign state
FYI - the cost of the chicken costume was totally worth it. It really made me laugh while absorbing knowledge at the same time 🐓
I don't understand how you make content like this *so* engaging, Kudos!
Thanks 😃! I owe everything to Costco-sized boxes of fruit snacks and gallons of Trader Joe's grapefruit juice.
@@RoadGuyRob Haha I will try to support these businesses, but I don't think there are any Trader Joes on my continent :/. Either way, I'll make sure to explain this to my chickens; they have a tendency to cross various streets and roads near where I live...
Also, really nice to see you look at some of the challenges of diverging diamonds after looking at the pros, a balanced perspective is eggsactly what we want from you
Making pedestrian crossings over/through/under/around freeways interesting takes a whole heap of talent. Poor guy living next to that enormous pedestrian bridge. How was it approved?
For real. I feel like I’m an interstate expert.
It's because he's so enthusiastic about the subject. When someone is really passionate about something and is excited to explain it, it's more likely to retain your attention compared to someone reading off a script or facts in a very bored, monotone voice. Plus it helps that is editing game is on point.
I think there's a fundamental problem with the road layout if pedestrians have to cross at freeway interchanges in the first place. Freeways in urban areas are awful, they should mostly exist at the edge of cities (which is a problem if the city grows, but anyways) and as intercity routes.
Nearly every example I show are cases where the highway interchange existed (as a rural interchange) and the city grew around it.
Retrofitting the old to better fit the new--- with budget restraints.
@@RoadGuyRob of course, it's better to retrofit existing infrastructure in the ways shown in the video as opposed to just leaving it in its now unsuitable state, all with budget in mind.
The problem is when a city is bulldozed to fit in a freeway, which is what sadly happened a lot in and around the 60s. Of course, that's not really the topic of this video.
Even if they do go through the middle, tunnels!
@ISeeDogs Unfortunately, that's how things should be. Yes, I know they're very expensive, but it could be worth it in the long run, especially since having a highway cutting through the middle of your city makes things less pleasant for citizens. You could take the cut-and-cover method that reduces costs though.
@ISeeDogs Eeeek... If you can't tunnel or bridge, your options would be to build it on the surface or to not build it at all. However, if you're able to dig the tunnel as cut-and-cover to reduce costs, and wanted to shift a highway underground, there would be benefits in that the land value around the highway could increase, you would be able to build more homes, and it would also free up more land to reconnect neighbourhoods. There are also some health benefits from not having a highway on the surface.
I’m very glad to see you addressing walkability more! And I personally enjoy the chicken jokes...but somehow I think a frog 🐸 might be great for those free-flowing intersections 😨
A real life game of Frogger
Make a DDI in cities skylines
Frogger ! Yes!
You missed the opportunity for a joke/pun when you didn't say that "...it kind of makes helping chickens cross freeways seem kind of ... pedestrian by comparison."
I think that Eric from Henderson stopped receiving complaints because nobody who's not in a car uses that abomination of an intersection anymore. Those patches of green (15:54, 16:01 , 16:05 ) are some the sorriest excuses for cycling infrastructure i've ever seen.
Total grade separation like in Manteca is the only way to make these crossings safe and comfortable. All the other solutions are flawed at best and totally unacceptable at worst.
I was about to say. Someone's going to get killed using that Henderson bike lane.
Bikes are not cars. Engineers should stop treating them like cars and putting them next to high-speed traffic. They could, at a minimum, turn the median into a protected cycle lane, but what are the chances of that actually happening in America?
@ISeeDogs Yeah, you do get some protected cycle lanes, but once you get into suburban areas, cycle infrastructure starts getting worse.
I drove to Sacramento CA just to travel on that biking grade separation it felt amazing safe. I wish more cities would do that. BTW it was at Watt avenue crossing HWY 50.
Can we all just stop for a second and just appreciate that Rob literally traveled from the north end of Utah, down to Southern Utah, than down to Las Vegas, and then up to central California, just to visit different interchanges just to film them and talk about them for our enjoyment? Rob is obviously very passionate about this stuff and it's amazing to have people like him that put this kind of effort into videos like this.
Yes....and his videos seem to be well.....mmmm...engineered?
Definitely a Colonel of truth in this chicken video.
Road Guy Rob: travels to three different states and delivers a quality video that’s over 20 minutes
Me: why doesn’t he post more this is ridiculous
Quality vs Quantity young grasshopper
19:31 I built this in Cities: Skylines (but with the extended ramp on both sides). I call it the extended-left-turn diamond.
Cool! Sounds like bright minds think alike.
The one in the video is almost a single point urban interchange, except that the single point isn't centered under the bridge, but to the south of it - and the north side has a T intersection mashed in - which is also how the westbound off-ramp comes in.
The only thing it clearly isn't is a DDI, because the straight avenue movements don't cross over each other.
In general the engineers do not think ahead. Here in Ontario, Canada the favorite design is the partial cloverleaf (parclo). A standard parclo has 3 crosswalks: one deadly, one a bit less dangerous and one almost safe. Building a parclo that allows safe crossing for pedestrians and bicycles requires advance thought, and some extra budget, before any construction begins. However, since new interchanges appear at the edges of civilization, there are initially few peds or cyclists and the thought is "no need to consider them". Then 15-20 years later population reaches the interchange and "nothing can be done because retrofitting is too expensive".
Do I need to mention that the new interchange was typically justified by "we need to look ahead and construct for future growth"?
I feel like the best solution is to get freeways out of cities and suburbs entirely. Ideally people who live somewhere would only rarely need to use the freeway in their own city, with commuter rail taking its place. Freeways should be for vehicles that are intending to go longer distances (freight, road trippers, etc).
That's more like a "people" problem. They want to move to cheaper housing outside of the city perfectly knowing they won't be able to walk or bike safely on the current roads and then decide they want to.
Don't forget the bridges that only have like 2 foot wide sidewalks, and speed limits over 60kph.
Oh, and zero seperation between you, and cars regularly doing over 80
It's not that they don't think ahead. They're often pressured to maximize convenience for drivers, often at the expense of pedestrian safety.
3am Road Guy Rob time
I'm no early BIRD, that's for sure. This ole night OWL is pecking away at my phone keyboard, snugly in my nest.
Oh, jollibee reference. Surprise one but feels appreciated.
I just discovered the one in Rancho Cucamonga. The palabok (sp?) is so good!
Really unexpected place for a Jollibee reference.
yeah. i was like "jollibee? that's a new one on me!" that place is from the philippines, never expected it to come up in this vid
Also, I just sent this video over to the project managers at ITD (Idaho Transportation Department) to convince them to do the Cedar City design for two new planned DDI's in Rexburg Idaho. They haven't started construction yet so hopefully I caught them before it's too late.
I don't know how you make your videos so engaging, but they are incredibly fun and informative to watch. Being Dutch, I'm not really fond of the car-centered infrastructure and city lay-outs I encountered in North America when I lived and traveled there. But I was pleasantly surprised that many places are taking pedestrians and cyclist more and more into account. I hope that one day you will be able to come visit and cover the Dutch bicycle friendly road designs. Would love to see your take on that!
What part of North America did you visit?
We just like to drive here. It is our culture, it is what we do.
@@johnathin0061892 Exactly. Car culture is strong in America! 🚗 🚙
There's a problem when You've got no choice but to drive, even for short distances. A lot of young people only get the freedom to move around independently when they're old enough to drive. Before that they are often dependent on if their parents want to taxi them to their friends or other social spaces. Otherwise they're isolated. So it's no problem if people like to drive but it'd be nice if infrastructure gets improved so younger, older and disabled people who can't drive get more freedom of movement. It's also nice to have other options in case there's a fuel crisis.
@@donnerwetter1905 Not like sidewalks don’t exist in North America, it’s just a little more inconvenient, but nobody is stopping you from walking or biking.
Plenty of folks have asked the age old question "why did the chicken cross the road?" But Rob here is asking the hard questions like "HOW does the chicken cross the road?"
"The most Nevada thing I've seen all day" 😂
A Duramax Dually pulling a oversized Un Covered Wagon? Yep. He’s damn right.
@@genociderjill Absolutely correct. It was just pretty darn spot-on for a hot take.
It's time for TH-cam to verify the channel.
Just crazy how large the roads are there
Eggscellent content as always Rob 🥚
I'm clucking with gratitude here! 🐔
Nice yolk!
With all these egg puns, I'm wondering why HowToBasic hasn't commented.
@@RoadGuyRob Get your clucking in before the DONT PECK light comes back on...
The center walking path is nice, as long as they can keep it clean. There's a bike path near me that's absolutely littered with road debris.
my problem with the center path is that it makes cyclists have to stop 4 times so that cars can keep moving freely. And the right turn slip lanes beforehand are awful.
With those concrete barriers, the only way I'd see road debris littering that center path is if someone somehow rammed the concrete barrier at a 90-degree angle with high speed. That or an over-zealous rear end collision between two tall vehicles right next to the barrier, but still unlikely.
@@hauntedshadowslegacy2826 The barriers trap all sorts of little pieces of junk, gravel, ect.
There's a little section of sidewalk with barriers like that on my kid's way to school, and it ends up being a comparable hazard to just going on the shoulder of the busy street instead. Hitting gravel and debris on a bike is a bad thing, especially when there's just a low barrier between that bike and high-speed traffic. Better than no barrier, but not good.
I drive under that red pedestrian bridge almost every day. I never realized how ugly and out of place it looked from the neighborhood side! 😖
I love the ageing skateboarder representing pedestrians
He seemed like he channeled a similar energy as Rob, but just in his own genre of skater.
I drove the DDI in Henderson NV in June! I accidentally came upon it trying to get to a bank and I was like "OMG ITS A DIVERGING DIAMOND!" to my friends in the car and they were really confused. I had a lot of fun explaining it to them and I was living for it.
If you weren't cackling like a madman whilst driving on the 'wrong side' to utterly terrify your friends, I'll be very disappointed in you. Happy SpookTober, by the way.
Thank you for acknowledging pedestrians. I have three comments that I'm hoping you can address in future videos.
1) Beg buttons are dangerous. They have an incredibly high fail rate, and because engineers rely on their activation in the cycles a broken beg button leave an intersection virtually impossible to cross when they do fail. There's also the germ issue with having to touch something.
2) There are ALWAYS pedestrians. That interchange in Nevada may not have anything immediately to the other side, but because the freeway destroys connectivity for miles on each side pedestrians often have to hike for miles out of the way to these interchanges, and when we do get there to find no safe crossing it's dehumanizing in ways that are difficult to describe. Please ALWAYS design for pedestrians.
3) Engineers always forget about buses and local transit. Buses need to be able to stop on both sides of the street, and pedestrians need to be able to cross the street at those intersections. Additionally there are often freeway running buses that need to stop on these ramps to connect with local buses. DDIs are absolutely terrible for buses and through local traffic. I've found double roundabouts to be the best, accomplishing most of the goals of DDIs while also allowing transit and pedestrian access on a legacy bridge. On a bridge between roundabouts, the road narrows leaving a wider berm, perfect for bus stops. Freeway running buses can then hop off the freeway and take both roundabouts to serve local stops in both directions and hop right back on the freeway with no issue.
The classic 90 degree off-ramp on-ramp design handled freeway exit bus stops well too, but all of these other crazy designs have engineered transit completely out as an option.
I slightly disagree with point #2. The Netherlands approach is to design for either cars only or pedestrians and cyclists where cars are guests. The NV DDI is a perfect example where pedestrians shouldn't be, theres nothing for them. The problem is when highway type development happen where peds and bikes should be prioritizes.
Issue 3 seems weird to me. Surely the correct logic is that the bus on the freeway actually Leaves the Freeway and stops somewhere Actually Safe to load and unload passengers, then returns to the freeway?
What is a beg button? If you are talking about pedestrian push buttons (PPB), then just say so. No need to use stupid insulting advocate slang.
Regarding PPBs failing, it depends. Many of the older ones do fail, but newer ones (say...last 5-10 years) have been very reliable. The higher quality ones with audio feedback and a feedback light with few or no mechanical moving parts are even better. One manufacturer even demonstrates this in their videos by bashing their PPB repeatedly with a baseball bat to show how durable their PPBs are!
@@puffpuffin1 transportation engineer here. A beg button is a common phrase within the pedestrians advocacy groups because of the underlying message. Never heard of PPB, but the proper acronym is APS (accessible pedestrian signal) which includes more than a button but audio confirmation and tactile response. A pedestrian shouldn't have to push a button to get a walk signal, they should be able to be detected like everyone else, it's insulting.
@@puffpuffin1 I work with my district DOT office regularly and every engineer I work with calls them beg buttons. Not sure, might be a regional dialect thing.
Regarding fail rates, it's encouraging that new beg buttons are failing at a much lower rate than older versions, but they do still fail. The problem is not that they fail, it's that engineers don't plan for safe pedestrian passage when they do fail. It seems that a lot of engineers rely on beg buttons functioning properly and in turn design the cartways and cycles without consideration for pedestrians in the absence of a beg. The result is intersections that are significantly MORE dangerous when the buttons fail.
Is there any examples of tunnels being used instead?
Also will you cover pedestrian friendly planning?
I love your videos and the quality of them, the small sound effects you use too.
Oh wait you cover a tunnel lol
Thanks Joey. Pedestrian friendly planning sounds fun. Need to find good real-world examples (within 600 miles of me) and the right academic/professional expect to interview and learn from.
@@RoadGuyRob Eugene, Oregon has a ton of pedestrian and biking accommodations. One of the rivers that splits the metropolitan area into two has the same amount of pedestrian/bicycle bridges as there are car bridges.
@@SwarmofAngryBees he covers traffic & pedestrians - in Eugene he’d be scared away by the homeless and drug use and waste his time.
@@RoadGuyRob do a collab with Not Just Bikes, they're all about pedestrian safe design.
Why did I sit through 20 minutes of chicken jokes?
to get to the other side!
ken is straight out of king of the hill
The chicken should get combat hazard pay. I hope he was getting union wages instead of chicken feed. Just saying. Great job. Thanks. Cheers!
Rob's channel should be mandatory teaching for driver's ed. everywhere.
I accepted a job offer with the City of Manteca today!
When I was there for my interview I noticed the new DDI and immediately thought about your last video, and that exact interchange gets a shout out in this one! Love it!
Id love to see a video from you about street design in europe.
Thats gonna be much less car-centered, and more bicycle focused.
Boring
@@sharkheadism ah yes because massive parking lots are so exiting!
The more of your videos I watch, the more I learn. Funnily enough the more I learn, the more of an anti-car urbanist I become lmao.
The car certainly has it's use and its place, but that use and place is absolutely Not the one those in charge of American (and related) city design for the last several decades gave it.
Same here. I like cars and I like driving but everybody sucks at driving so I like walking or taking my bike when I can.
Not everywhere can be an urban area though. Rural areas make up most of the country, and large semi trucks are the biggest users of our highways.
@@jgood005 I mean, last time I checked like 86% of all Americans live in urban areas, so creating infrastructure not focused on the car is an improvement to the lives of a majority of Americans. To say rural areas makeup most of the country is kind of true, in the sense that it is true from a geographical perspective, but from a demographic perspective it isn't.
Of course, being against cars doesn't mean I don't want cars to be banned completely, they have specialized uses, but they shouldn't be our primary form of transportation in a situations. I would argue that semi trucks being our biggest form of transport is actually a result of our highways being built to force people to drive, rather than highways being built for them.
In most countries, they have a robust rail network that is as expansive as our highway system, and it's far more efficient simply because a freight train can carry way more Goods, so it's much more fuel-efficient than a semi truck. The railway is also nationalized in most countries, meaning that they can afford to put a station in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, so access to commuter rail is also generally higher in these places
America kind of worked backwards, it's not that rural areas were always reliant on the car, but that rural areas are reliant on the car because America built an expansive Road Network rather than an expansive rail Network. In most other places you can take a train the majority of the distance, and this is true for deliveries as well.
While not all the principles can be applied to rural areas, a lot of the same design philosophy can be applied that way and tailored to suit beneath of the local population.
A lot of things that you discussed aren't actually problems that rural areas have always had, but rather problems that were created for rural areas because we became so reliant on the car
@@pennyforyourthots People love to talk about the idea of "cities not designed around cars." But nobody actually talks about what that means. Nobody wants to trudge to the bus stop and wait 15 mins to spend 45 mins to get into downtown when you could do that with a car in 20. People love to talk about biking, but few are willing to suit up in rain gear and snow pants and bike 12 miles to their workplace in January. Trust me, I've done both. Owning a personal car is a simple luxury. Frankly, I think many people take the convenience of the car for granted, and simply aren't aware of the cons of alternative modes. Sure, that Sunday afternoon bike ride one takes at the park may be total bliss. Waking up at 5 AM to ride to your workplace through freezing rain? Not so much.
0:26 goes hard and we need a full version
Damn, Road Guy Rob hustlin' all over the western USA to bring us juicy traffic engineering content.
As always, amazing production value and content!
I love how you visited a place literally called Lard.
pedestrian bridges are built because freeway planners don't care about human size infrastructure. freeways shouldn't cut through dense areas and if they absolutely have to they should be below or above ground therefore not needing crossings. Lastly probably the wrong channel to put this on, but we have to get away from car centric city planning or we are in for a helluva future.
That's true. A lot of urban freeways never should have been built.
Every case I show is a suburban location where development grew to surround an existing rural highway. Which changes the interchange's requirements.
I've used freeway pedestrian bridges on my e-scooter and they are a piece of cake to use. We do have to move away from cars but human ability is too limited, "walkability" is not the answer. Designing cities for e-scooters and e-bikes and other forms of powered micromobility would allow achieving optimal outcomes for safety, emissions and convenience, at minimal cost.
@@yanDeriction Bikes & scooters + Pedestrians + Transit = Ultimate combo
Even if you design your city for bikes and scooters, you should at least leave space for pedestrians. Ideally, you want a mix, because a sidewalk, if done right, can carry large amounts of people, but a bike lane can allow people on bikes and scooters to go much faster without having to weave around obstacles like signs and other street items.
@@williamhuang8309 It doesn't cost much to add a narrow paint-separated pedestrian lane to a bike path, but costs skyrocket when you want to keep walkers from getting inconvenienced or tired. When I say to deprioritize walkability, I am mainly talking about slopes and distances. Pedestrians will jaywalk just to avoid an extra 100ft, this is an unnecessary challenge for urban planning. The "high traffic capacity" of walking comes at too great a cost. All of the traveling public should be on some sort of small electrified vehicle, with only leisure users walking or jogging.
@@yanDeriction Well, if you design streets for pedestrians and cycles instead of cars, you don't need to worry about jaywalking, as long as you lived in a civilised society where people are mindful of each other. If you design your streets to provide good access to shops and workplaces, you don't need any other things to get you around, nor do you need to worry about vehicle theft. When walking, you start to become tired when you reach the 15-minute mark, so as long as everything is within about 1km, you can walk there easily. You could also drive an e-scooter or ride a bike, but that's optional. And if your city is designed in a way that disincentivises driving, you don't need to worry about cars on the roads blocking other methods of transport. And no, you can have pedestrian paths crossing bike paths, you just need to make sure that there is good infrastructure like wide sidewalks and paths that allow both pedestrians and people on other modes of transit to use them. As long as people are courteous of each other, they shouldn't get in the way. Forcing people to only use a bike or scooter is like forcing people to use a car. Ideally, you should have a choice. If you want to walk, walk. If you want to ride a bike, ride a bike! If you want to ride a scooter, ride a scooter!
Holy moly. I busted out laughing at some of those sketches.
"GET RIDDA RED LIGHTS AND MAKE EM ALL GREEN LIGHTS"
I really liked how you used the radio station ids to transition locations! Keep up the good work!
15:54 Gosh, that's narrow. Our bridges still do have crossings on the outisde, but they're not as narrow. Still pretty narrow though!
You make me wish I went to school for Urban Planning instead of Business, I love the videos RGR! Come visit Seattle one day and do a video on the Alaskan Way Viaduct removal/replacement with the SR99 tunnel, I'm 100% positive it would be an interesting video for your viewers!
They could be like PennDOT and put "No Pedestrian" signs at all intersections outside of corporation limits. Outlawing pedestrianism is easy and cheap.
Don’t have to make safe for pedestrians if you make the pedestrians illegal 🤔🤔
The pedestrians should get where they're going in their cars like the rest of us! They should put up "No Accidents" signs too.
Yeah, I loved, just *loved*, walking through the weeds in Penn because they felt like the only acceptable way to get to Target from the hotel was without a sidewalk and over a highway. What a..... scam state?
PennDOT has to be the absolute worst DOT in the country. They don't even try to maintain the roads they just let them go to shit and then build new ones
@@AdamSmith-gs2dv RI does the same thing...except they skip the build new ones part...
I like the design of the recent north gate pedestrian bridge over i5 in the Seattle Area, Washington state. It’s wide enough and has gentle enough gradients for cyclists and connects right to the new link light rail station
9:43 again, extremely poor design. Generally, in NZ, they will sometimes give a free left turn (we drive on the left) but the ramp is narrowed with the use of lane markings, and the ramp is split by a pedestrian refuge area such that the crosswalk is split into two. Even if there's no free left turn, generally, the curves on the road will be adjusted such that the turning radius is tighter, reducing the length of the crosswalk. In some cases, they could even shift the crosswalk back.
Yea but see that’s because you live in a place that values people equally. Here in America if you’re on foot you must be poor, and if you’re poor you don’t matter.
This was one of the funniest (and most interesting) RGR videos yet! Keep up the great work!
Once, on the way to Salt Lake City, I had to stop by at a random gas station in Cedar City. The freeway interchange to get there just so happened to be that exact diverging diamond interchange shown in the video...
Desert highways on foot at night are not as fun as they might sound. It's literally pitch black like SAW trap, and you have to know there's a barrier that comes up to your knees, at best keeping you from falling off a cliff, while you have to just trust there is floor there when you put down every step into nothingness.
I'm not trying to make this preachy, but yes, can't say I've seen him either, but just about literally stuck my hand in the hole. and something bit me!
Damn, this episode is wild. It's nearly got everything in it.
I eagerly await every new video. I try to tell people about how great this channel is but they are like "it's about traffic?", if only they knew what they are missing
I'll be real, that was the smoothest transition from talking about pedestrian crossings to martian in-situ resource utilization I have ever seen. It's also the only transition from talking about pedestrian crossings to martian in-situ resource utilization I have ever seen.
hahahahaha! It was indeed smooth, but also there's little competition; true entrepreneurship: finding and dominating a new market.
This chicken costume is absolutely epic
Amazing content. Feels like I was watching something that was only 5 minutes long. Very engaging, very dense with information, gold standard to for a TH-cam video.
140ft crosswalk??!! Good luck!
1/3 of the way across and the clock starts ticking 🙈
Whatever you do don't be old.
I can't believe how much I love this channel
Great vid! Pretty interesting sidetrack at the end there.
This is honestly so sad to watch as a German. Just the idea of crossing such interchanges here in an urban setting is somewhat alien to me, if at all we have crossings with wide sidewalks, underpasses or reasonable bridges. Luckily we have (mostly) working public transport here and the distances are small.
The places he visited developed around the freeways after they were built. Not much you can do if people choose to settle around it knowing it is there and want to walk under it.
Germany is also about the size of the states of Washington and Oregon combined. The distances and space in North America is so vast, much of which has only been settled by modern civilization for about 150 years. And much of the sprawling suburbia was built after the second world war. Who knows, Germany might've rebuilt more spread out after the war had it more space to do so. I flew out of Frankfurt about 10 years ago, and I was highly impressed at all the little villages and hamlets neatly dotting the countryside wherein a village had 4-6 story buildings along narrow, winding streets, an old, beautiful church, and then the town ended after several blocks giving way to countryside of fields and patches of woods before the next little town. I remember thinking: Leave it to the Germans to have perfectly organized land use with no wasted, sprawling, mixed space. But none of it was on a grid, and there wasn't a straight line through any of it. It was obviously planned, but it had a very organic, human look to it.
@@johnathin0061892 That's the big difference with Europe where every bit of land was already developed before cars came about. They just couldn't build big car infrastructure in existing cities. While in America, big cities are recent and were actually built for cars and continue to grow because it's still a relatively new territory.
Well Germans are taxed out of there ass to pay for those things and, the have succeeded politically by wasting money on trains and other liberal garbage.
What a well done video, Rob! This really takes a subject that many of us have thought about, but explains it so well. Your graphics and editing are just superb, plus this video involved a fair bit of travel. Hope you enjoyed it! I sure did!!
Utah has crazy new age road ideas! Check out 5400 South in Taylorsville. They can change lane directions with X's and O's depending if it's rush hour is going one way or the other.
This video is so pedestrian. Thank you for that.
Button activated strobes on crosswalk signs would probably help those crosswalks at least on the narrow free-flowing lanes.
100% true. They work extremely well as attention-getters to vehicular traffic and don't require a traffic signal. The only places I've seen them installed were in college towns.
I was expecting to hear about pedestrian safety and freeways NOT 20 minutes of chicken jokes.
I’m going to have to cry fowl.
This channel is the single reason I want to do this planning as a profession! I really find stuff like this super interesting and I was so surprised that there even was a channel with someone that shares my interest!
I play a lot of Cities: Skylines and you always give me interesting ideas. Strange how much of this translates
THAT BRIDGE?! My gosh, how did that ped bridge ever get built? It has the same appeal as living next to a 5 story parking garage. Poor neighbor.
Also, @RoadGuyRob I'd love a quick video on the new (to me) - I don't have a name for them - indicator of off-ramp lines in California. Not in urban areas but on 40 they have a break in the shoulder line and then it does a smooth arch from the edge of the road, to the shoulder-line point and then follows the exit ramp. I *love* these for night driving. They are so incredibly helpful and it's such a simple change. What are they? Where did they come from? Why are they not every-the-wheres?
Do they allow busses or slow semi trucks to drive on the shoulder there? From streetview/imagery, they look like they're intended to guide someone driving down the shoulder to merge into a travel lane prior to the off ramp to prevent a conflict with exiting traffic. That consistent with the rumble strip stopping prior to where shoulder-driving traffic would be merging. But with that area being so desolate, I wouldn't have expected a need for shoulder driving. I'd also be interested in the official reason for these.
@@yuwtze I've never heard of driving on the shoulder being allowed except in the cases of emergencies in California. In fact the 40 has "truck" lanes for slow vehicles on long uphills.
If they serve some other purpose and helping me is just a side effect that'd be awesome too! I really love them as a user experience improvement and miss them in other states.
I didn't know pedestrians crossing the freeway was something that even happened in the US.
We have so many freeways...
21:49 Ok...it’s 1am and that joke...I’m just gonna go to bed now...😅
Rob, you have the most underrated channel on TH-cam. Bravo!!!
I had to cross that DDI in cedar city a handful of times when I attended SUU, it was a pain, but by no means the worst part of the five mile walk. There are 200 meters of stroad with no sidewalk just out of view of that picture u showed at 10:54, so IDK why they even tried. The other freeway exchange there was a parclo that I also had to cross, which was comparatively easier.
Fix the stroads, then the interchanges.
I love the music you put in your videos
The amount of effort you put into making a somewhat boring topic extremely interesting and entertaining is what keeps me coming back for more. Never change Rob.
Not only your videos are packed with interesting and, sometimes, unusual information but you're the most charismatic youtuber I've watched so far. Please, keep them coming!
That Californian solution is probably how the Dutch would do it. That's the only safe one to my Dutch eyes.
It also has California money.
@@RoadGuyRob that does make things a lot easier haha. Anyway, great vid as always, love diving into American road design.
Love the content Rob
Oh no, once we settle Mars, we're going to need traffic planing again. Your channel is still on point even for space.
My fav “wait” voice is in nyc!!!! “WAIT…” “Alarm goes off” 🤣
Love the beginning of the classic Hot 97 top of the hour ID at 2:00.
YAY! I'm glad you recognized it.
@@RoadGuyRob I’m originally from NY. 😎
Would it make (cost-effectiveness and safety) sense to use cut-and-cover underground walkways to replace/retrofit surface ones?
In Florida we have a hard time keeping water out of tunnels.
@@subicstationditosailor4053 from South Florida that's pretty accurate
There is also a safety issue with underground walkways, particularly if visibility is low between inside and outside the underpass.
@@matthewparker9276 the "safety issue" of tunnels can be solved with more foot traffic. I grew up in Hong Kong, which has lots of pedestrian walkways yet incredibly low crime rate.
For America and our low density cities, plastering the tunnels with CCTV cameras is probably the only realistic solution.
@@yanDeriction there can be more done than just cctv, especially in cases where the highway is already raised, so it's not always a bad decision to have an underpass, it's just something that should be considered.
Regarding width (9:37), about 30% of that crossing distance is just from the huge corner radius. It would be reduced substantially if the sidewalk deflected away from the road just a little, crossing the ramp where it is narrower.
The problem with diamonds is storage space? Yeah that tends to happen when you put traffic lights on what is essentially a roundabout. No really, the space between ramps on diamond is just a really skinny roundabout if you think about it. So if we treat it as a roundabout, and give traffic inside the "circle" priority over traffic trying to enter, then we've just re-invented the dogbone interchange.
It's always great to see a RGR video in my feed. Great production and interesting subject matter. Plus, the chicken outfit was hilarious.
I would love to be a fly on the wall between you and the Not Just Bikes guy
Everybody seems to be pitting us against each other. But I think he and I would have a lovely chat--- a lot of common beliefs.
But if he got his way and 150,000,000 American suburbanites suddenly joined him, I fear the Netherlands probably wouldn't be quite as nice as he currently appreciates.
@@RoadGuyRob You two would probably be chilling with a couple of beers while the subscribers slug it out in the comments!
In the end, I think he's more of an idealist and you're more of a realist. The US isn't going to turn into NL in terms of transportation infrastructure, that would require a radical redesign of human development, we're talking bulldozing and rebuilding massive swaths of nearly every city and town in the country. Considering the population density it might not even be possible.
Much like in politics, there's room for both kinds of people in the discussion. Sometimes a radical idea can become a workable idea with the right perspective and compromise.
@@Croz89 require bulldozing massive amounts of land? Sort of like what was done for highways in the first place that displaced millions of lower socioeconomic citizens? Yeah that would really suck to make a new place that is more walkable and bikable and less stress free and more healthy and less noise and air pollution.
@@jayjackson5705 Well in this case two wrongs won't make a right, and it would be on a scale much more immense than that, you'd have to eliminate pretty much all the low density suburbs of most cities. That's more than a few strips of houses for highways.
I'm sure there are places where lowering car dependency would work, especially in the older eastern cities that were mostly developed pre-car. But its not going to be on the same scale as in many European countries which have a higher population density and older cities.
@@Croz89 I dont disagree with your assessment. It would take decades but we need to stop the bleeding and only allow sustainable development and force redevelop any areas near transit, or at least allow zoning for something other than single family detached homes and align incentives.
Why did the chicken cross the freeway? She missed her eggs-it.
The most Nevada thing I have seen all day 🤣
The fact that the pedestrian went straight to a katana was really interesting.
Unexpected show! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
19:52 (look frame-by-frame)
I think you'll show up on Apple's lookaround maps some day
I read the description midway through the video. I was completely surprised to see MOXIE mentioned and I wondered how it would relate to pedestrian crossings on freeways.
It's cool that you ran into someone who worked on developing it.
I really love how this channel manages to make these topics seem important and interesting, with a lot if funny little jokes!
Hey rob, can you do a video on the railroad literally splitting the city of Phoenix in half and inconveniently ruining traffic every day at a certain time of day lol
From a European perspective this looks terrifying. We either don’t build a sidewalk on such interchanges, since - in contrast to US cities - freeways go usually there where you don’t have pedestrians. Freeways through cities though are almost always completely separated from pedestrians, either by pedestrian bridges or car tunnels.
These pieces of infrastructure were totally out of dimension for foot traffic, the speed isn’t even safe with traffic lights, there’s nothing separating you from traffic and you feel terrified.
The problem isn’t so much the design of the crosswalk, but the decision to build such a giant intersection there in the first place.
Yeah, but how many users in europe are in a car vs a pedestrian? That number is probably AT LEAST opposite in the US. Up to a certain point (death), safety doesn't matter if it's inconvenient to a vast majority of users. Plus, every example in this video (as noted elsewhere by Rob) and the US in general is in a place that WAS outside of the city at the time of construction. The US has had far more migration within its borders than Europe (see: the rust belt/sun belt), so many more situations like this occur due to shifting demand.
real improvement in video quality since i last checked in here, good stuff man
I srsly can’t believe how good you are at this. I both laugh and consistently learn