Musings on traffic...

Ok, I will leave the actual "rant" about this for my Rant Blog Page. That will be the next thing that I will have to update...

I personally think that the engineers that design our highways here in the USA are a little daft. I know that you people design these things in an "ideal" world and within a certain range of parameters. However, I think that you really should start designing them in real world or worst case scenarios. Don't you think that our highways are congested enough and have to be rebuilt way to often?

For example... I am sure that you design on and off ramps and their locations with safety in mind, and use something like say 15 MPH as your guideline as to how to bank them and how close they can be to each other, etc...

However, in real life people RARELY take a ramp at 15 MPH. Also, Vehicles these days can go much faster and much more safely (from a handling perspective) than cars from 50 years ago. So stop designing the highway system as if it is only populated by drivers who are 80 years old, driving a '62 Buick, doing 50 MPH max, and have fantastic manners.  The truth is (as far as USA drivers are concerned), we do not drive less than 60 MPH, require more than .25 miles between an on and off ramp to merge because those on the highway don't want to let us on and we want to get in front of them on the highway, and generally drive very fast and without regard for other drivers let alone common courtesy or sense (let alone safety).

Now, do not get me wrong... I don't think that this is right. And for one, I don't believe that I fall under the same description (except perhaps for the driving fast part, but as far as allowing other to merge and being safe I am way better than say 90% of the drivers on the road). Personally I think that probably 1/2 of the drivers on the US roadways need to have their licenses revoked. But hey, who am I to judge?

But back to the original comment. The problem here is that on and off ramps are designed (as far as I can tell) as if there is a steady flow of traffic and people let you merge. This is kind of like picking the the highway up and tilting it on its side so that it looks like an ant farm behind glass. Then pour water into the on and off ramps at a nice slow trickle. You will notice that nothing over flows and there is little to no turbulence in the water. However, in reality we end up with tons of congestion and accidents (which cause more congestion) because it acts more like your are pumping water into the on and off ramps at high speed or volume. Notice if you do this then you end up making a mess because the roads cannot handle the volume and there is tons of turbulence due to the flow dynamics of the water.  This is the model that I think that roadway designers should adopt. Always think worst case scenario... pump high volumes in and assume that people will not allow those coming in to merge... because that is REALLY what happens.

Just a thought...

Here we go...

Well, it has been a long time since I initiated this blog... however it never really took off. Of course I never really wrote much here.

So, I am starting from scratch!

I have recently gotten into heavy usage of FaceBook and Twitter so I figure that I should naturally just continue throwing diatribes here as well so that they would be posted for all the world to see and in a more permanent basis.

I currently have 2 blogs and I am not sure if I will keep them both operational and possibly a third, or just kill all but this one. Only time will tell. And if some of you out there actually start reading these blogs I will take your suggestions into consideration.