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Confessions of a Recovering Engineer: Transportation for a Strong Town?
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You're the one without a clue. The reason they died out is because they were deliberately killed off because it was more profitable for banks, the oil and auto industries not because they weren't effective.
If you don't want to believe me, maybe some civil engineers telling you how car-centric transportation sucks ass and needs to change will help.
I recommend checking out Confessions of a Recovering Engineer by Charles Marohn. The current, poor, dangerous designs came from the minds of engineers that were solely concerned about traffic flow. Computer simulations will never correctly replicate real-life scenarios.
Thanks for the shout-out. I have an engineering degree, but in a different field (materials). At my alma mater, CS was very high status, but it was a different kind of high status than engineering. The highest status department was still mechanical engineering. (But that's probably because I went to a dedicated engineering school, and not an "everything" university.)
> The best-of-the-best, I'm told, do not go into civil engineering any more.
Correct. Civil engineering is the lowest paid engineering discipline. It is mostly about infrastructure (roads, bridges, drainage systems), and not as much about buildings. So it attracts people who care a lot about the public policy around big, flashy infrastructure projects, versus people who just want to build cutting edge stuff for its own sake.
The elite engineers who just want to build cool stuff are out building robots and rockets, not bridges.
If you'd like a more in-depth look at the "public policy first, build stuff second" attitude in civil engineering, I'd recommend the new Strong Towns book, <em>Confessions of a Recovering Engineer.</em>
Strong Towns is great. They did a really good job of simplifying our problems with transportation in their recent Confessions of a Recovering Engineer book. I hope they continue to gain momentum. The fact that we're talking about them here is probably a good sign.
The guy with the website is also a civil engineer with a career in road design. He wrote a whole book about some of the failings of auto-centric street design and what needs to change. The whole point is that maximizing vehicle traffic speeds on streets leads to unsafe streets and dysfunctional street life. Trying to put lots of intersections and driveways on roads similarly leads to reduced utility of the road as a thing that connects places via high speed travel and also makes it unsafe.
The book is called Confessions of a Recovering Engineer (amazon link)
I thought stroads are the best designs available!
My current reading selection: https://www.amazon.ca/Confessions-Recovering-Civil-Engineer-Transportation/dp/1119699290
Soupir. Ok. Je te propose de lire. J'ai pas l'impression que c'est l'activité préférée de l'électeur conservateur moyen toutefois, mais essaye: https://www.amazon.ca/Confessions-Recovering-Civil-Engineer-Transportation/dp/1119699290/ref=asc_df_1119699290/?tag=googleshopc0c-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=459616255919&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=16696851648254931926&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9000386&hvtargid=pla-1187958944116&psc=1
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Ça explique POURQUOI les propositions de Duhaime en lien avec les automobiles sont absolument totalement indiscutablement IMBÉCILES.
Dude. There’s probably only recreational paths here, the German suburbs are all quite walkable. These are not because the only pleasurable way to walk, without the cars going 65 kph, is by taking back roads. Also, I’m basing my argument on the data presented in Confessions of a Recovering Engineer: Transportation for a Strong Town by Charles L. Marohn Jr..
The US suburbs need actual bike infrastructure otherwise you have to deal with walking over 30 minutes down a main stroad without any walking paths.
They are the futon of Civil Engineering, Chuck Marohn Confessions of a Recovering Engineer: Transportation for a Strong Town.
Of IRTAD members, you are more likely to be killed as a pedestrian in the United States than most other developed nations (top four, behind only Korea, Colombia and Chile) - dataset.
Why is one of the wealthiest nations in the world, with one of the most impressive transportation networks ever built so far behind (and falling further)?
Many believe that it's because our streets have become highways, speed and throughput of car traffic above all else. Our neighborhoods have been split by stroads that were never intended for walking or cycling. Exclusive zoning has codified car dependency, forcing anyone unable to drive to bike or walk on these dangerous roads.
If you're genuinely curious, here's a few resources to start your rabbit hole:
- StrongTowns.org (Confessions of a Recovering Engineer is a great entry read)
- NotJustBikes (link to their StrongTowns playlist)
- NACTO
Not exactly. Normally they build a road/street according to the DOT handbook guidelines. They flatten out bumps, remove trees, increase road widths, etc. to accommodate a set traffic volume and traffic speed. Then they take that speed they've designed for and they reduce that number by a significant factor. This becomes the speed limit. [Source]
Its backwards to what it should be. A street (as opposed to a road, or a highway) should have the limit set (for example, a neighborhood street such as shown in the video should be set to 15-20 mph) and then the road should be built to make it unsafe and undesirable for drivers (NOT pedestrians) to exceed that limit.
MOST drivers don't actually pay attention to the speed limits (or really their surroundings), or other signs on the road. This is called system one thinking. Driving for most people is an unconscious activity. They are more actively focused on the radio, the passenger, what they are going to do that day, what is going to happen when they get to work, etc. (How many people go on a drive to "clear their head" for example). This isn't always a bad thing. You couldn't drive fully alert to everything all the time or a day of driving would be absolutely exhausting. Roads and highways should be designed to minimize the amount of attention needed. Lanes should be straight, speed limits constant, sightlines long, signs big and easy to read.
Streets should have the opposite design. They should force the drivers to pay attention. They should force a shift to system two thinking in the drivers.
If a road, street, or highway is designed to be comfortable, then drivers do what feels safe (in most cases) regardless of what speed is set. This "what feels safe" depends on a whole host of factors, including: age, race, car type, pavement quality, amount of sleep/amount of fatigue, weather conditions, and many others.
In the video, this is a street. It has driveways to houses and you can see people with small kids walking in front of houses. There are no business on this street. Even the lane width suggests that there is room for cars to park, but not for two lanes of traffic. The speed limits should be low, and going below the speed limit should be not only tolerated but normalized.
The researchers from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found that for every 5 mph increase, roadway fatalities rose 8.5 percent. [SOURCE] This IS looking around and seeing people, and reacting as they should. They are slowing down and reducing the risk to others.
In America we have this culture that the limit is not a limit, that it's some guideline that is set. In some ways, they are right. Traffic engineers set up roads and streets to make it feel that way. If we want livable neighborhoods, then that can hold true for roads, but should not hold true for streets. We as drivers should shift our thinking to the limit being just that... a limit. Not a goal or an ideal speed.
I know this is a wall of text, and that there is a lot missing from this. Traffic engineering is not easy, and not straight forward. People spend years in school and as apprentices before they are allowed to design roads and set speed limits. There is so much more to setting a speed limit than " They decide what a safe speed is and set it. " And drivers have much more of a responsibility than to just "pay attention to their surroundings."
If you want to learn more about American road and street design, I can highly recommend the book "Confessions of a Recovering Engineer: Transportation for a Strong Town" by Charles Marohn. Its is a good place to start to understand American design practices and principles as it pertains to roads, streets, and highways.
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