Author Archives: Road Guy Rob
Bridges, Categories, Freeway, Patreon Locked
This $100M bridge is made with WOOD and is MOSTLY AIR inside!
Feb
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Bridges, Freeway, Patreon Locked, Safety, Urban Issues
Foolish to build FACTORIES underneath FREEWAYS? (It’s legal in California)
Dec
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Oct
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Aug
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Jul
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Bridges, Construction, Freeway, Patreon Locked, Urban Issues
But HOW can I-95 re-open… in under TWO WEEKS?
Jun
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May
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Apr
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Mar
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Construction, Freeway, Patreon Locked, Safety, Signal/Signage
So, they’re painting ORANGE LINES on freeways now?
Jan
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Jan
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Oct
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Patreon Locked, Safety, Signal/Signage, Urban Issues
Los Angeles THREW AWAY all their RED-LIGHT cameras?
Aug
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Jul
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Jul
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Apr
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Feb
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Patreon Locked, Safety, Signal/Signage, Urban Issues
Can this “HAWK” STOP LIGHT make walking feel SAFE again?
Jan
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Oct
So, you’re having this really nice walk across town when suddenly, there’s a freeway you have to cross. Seeing a large bridges with nice big sidewalks can be a relief. But what about those pesky interchanges where cars are entering and exiting the freeway? It gets a little bit scarier at newfangled designs which work […]
Sep
America loves “diamond” highway exits. Which is too bad, because when life gets busy, they work pretty terribly. Gil Chlewicki, the “adoptive” father of the Diverging Diamond Interchange (DDI), explains why it’s time to untangle our freeway interchanges.
Jul
Avid bicyclists roll their eyes as state engineers rebuild a highway through town. Tyranny of the car, right? Here’s a project in Utah which added a raised median that unlocked an avalanche of really cool safety improvements — including a traffic signal just for bikes!
Jun
Raised medians reduce left turns which prevents crashes (and saves lives). But cities only block left turns for some businesses and not others. How can the engineers decide fairly? And what do we do with drivers who still need to turn left? ——————————- Additional reading: ——————————- Federal Highway Administration. https://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/saferjourney1/library/countermeasures/16.htm. Accessed Jun. 9, 2021.
May
Traffic travels in both directions. So it makes sense we’d have a malicious moniker for two-way left turn lanes (TWLTLs). Are they actually dangerous, though? Let’s look at the safety of these middle lanes. After all, they are on roads pretty much everywhere in the United States. ————– Sources cited: ————– Mukherjee, D. Choosing Between […]
Apr
The light turns yellow and you find yourself in a panic. Should I slam on my brakes and risk getting rear-ended? Or should I run the yellow— and possibly in the process, the red too? Every stop light on the planet has one of these “A BAD PLACES.” Radar technology can act like a life […]
Mar
Getting a red light ticket feels really crummy. When yellow lights (“change intervals”) are set long enough, red light runners vanish. For safety, why don’t we double or triple the length of yellow lights? Check out pt. 2: Our brains and yellow lights — https://youtu.be/P_EmAKRrlBc ——————————- Sources cited: ——————————- “Guidelines for Timing Yellow and All-Red […]
Feb
If we let more people live ¼-mile from the train, everyone saves money.
America is not affordable because building lots are not affordable. And there is not nearly enough people who ride our billion-dollar light/commuter rail trains. Here’s how these two problems solve one another.
Freeway, Patreon Locked, Signal/Signage, Urban Issues
Why do some freeway ramps have an extra red light?
Dec
All you want to do is get on the freeway. Then a seemingly superfluous traffic signal stops you. Do ramp meters work?
Dec
In the 1970s, Arizonans resoundingly voted “NO” to completing Interstate 10 through downtown Phoenix. But that’s because I-10 would have been a ten-story tall freeway bridge through the north of downtown. But the “NO” vote canceled all new freeways, including finishing Interstate 10 coast to coast.
Oct
Trains are wonderful but too expensive for most cities. A bus operating like a train may help smaller places afford quality mass transit.
Aug
How does a traffic signal knows when to turn green? Especially late at night when you are the only driver on the road. In this video, I chat with two traffic signal experts: Mohammed Bendelhoum, an engineer with the California Dept. of Transportation (Caltrans) and Brian Girardo (Iteris) explore the history of vehicle detection (induction […]
Dec
Western America has not built a single mile of new Interstate constructed since 1980. Here’s how Las Vegas and Phoenix teamed up build one which they desperately need.
Aug
Highway construction of the 1950s were a collision of value engineering, latent racism, and big government. Bulldozers loomed over families living on Almond Street who weren’t given any say. The game has changed over the past half century. New federal rules require states to explore how roadway projects will affect the communities they cut […]
Aug
Georgia wants to become “The Roundabout State.” You aren’t going to see an official marketing campaign for that. But a decade ago, Georgia’s Department of Transportation issued a new policy. Engineers must now seriously consider a roundabout at every intersection they redesign. This policy is colliding with centuries-old history in the mountains north of Atlanta. […]
Aug
It’s likely your sandwich will get a ride in an autonomous vehicle (AV) before you do. For safety reasons, I’m completely fine with that. The bigger question is, how soon will GrubHub roll up in front of my apartment? The future of AV food and package deliveries will depend on how quickly tech companies work […]
Jul
Good riddance to those unsafe little buildings which sit in the middle of high-speed roadways. But without a “cash lane,” how are you supposed to pay a toll on vacation?
Jun
For a few years, an Oregon program (unintentionally) charged drivers of “green” cars and handed over cash to drivers of gas guzzlers. Not what one would expect from a state which in the 1980s cancelled a freeway and used the money to build a light-rail line. Road User Charge (RUC) is a new acronym you […]
Jun
Data from the National Highway Transportation Administration (NHTSA) shows a bicycle rider is more than twice as likely to be killed by a vehicle than the national average. In 2016, data show the state had the highest percentage (4.3 percent) of auto-involved accidents killing a “pedacyclist” (person riding a bicycle). The national average was about […]
Jun
In Northern California, gold rushes are routine. The ’49ers raced across America to pan for gold in Yerba Buena. Silicon Valley generated several of its own gold rushes. The most recent, currently underway, produces a new millionaire every day. The wave of cash fuels job creation, population growth, and crippling traffic [News Release]. A business […]
Jun
Ever freak out how a big earthquake could drop a bridge right on top of you? I talk with a seismic engineer about the six cool secrets they use to make bridges safe.
May
Thirty years ago a major earthquake destroyed a double-decker freeway, leaving 42 people dead. Here’s the sad history and the lessons engineers have learned.
Apr
Everything is bigger in Texas, including the roads. In the rush to accomodate its swelling population, it may be creating a traffic disaster for the future.
Nov
Signs used to look different at night. Here’s why.
Sep
Here’s the real reason why Caltrans is removing Botts Dots (turtles) from the state’s hundreds of miles of freeway (Hint: It has something to do with Tesla). Enjoy my video? https://www.patreon.com/roadguyrob
Aug
I casually drove Uber and Lyft for a day. The math didn’t add up.
Aug
It’s called a ‘Continuous Flow Intersection.’ I take a quick look at traffic signal engineering and how this new type of displaced left-turn improves traffic flow by 30 percent. Enjoy my video? I wouldn’t say “no” to a chocolate shake 🙂 https://www.patreon.com/roadguyrob
Aug
Traffic signals are not scary. Roundabouts can be, especially if you’ve never driven one before. Let’s take a fun dive into America’s fastest-growing transportation design. Are these spinny circles really better that a traffic light or just a passing fad? Enjoy my video? https://www.patreon.com/roadguyrob
Jun
“All we have are banana peels.” One of my earliest childhood memories was my Dad getting a laugh out of the state employee in response to his question if we had any produce to declare. This was the 1980s and it was still common for inspectors to stop every car entering California to check for […]
Mar
Marty McFly would struggle to find a safe to skateboard to the Twin Pines Mall. What this tells us about pedestrian safety in the real world.
Jan
Why you should stop fighting the speeders and start blaming the roadway itself.
Aug
When the Great Recession hit in the fall of 2008, elected officials across America pumped the brakes on planned highway projects. This included the state of Utah, which stopped all upcoming contracts. After a new months of financial analysis, the governor of Utah looked at low labor and commodity prices — and decided he’d be […]
Aug
A decade ago, the state of Utah granted drivers of all compressed natural gas (CNG) vehicles special access to carpool lanes on Interstate 15. The idea was to incentivize drivers to switch to a cleaner-burning fuel and reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil. The program was too successful. Enough CNG drivers joined a growing crowd […]
May
The winter of 2007-08 was brutal on Utah’s roadways. The weather kept freezing and thawing, allowing water to seep into cracks in the asphalt. The water would freeze overnight, expand the cracks, and the cycle continued. As I drove to the story meeting at the newsroom, my old Subaru’s right front wheel plunged into a […]
May
About a decade ago, the Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) rolled out three potential alignments for a new major freeway. Each put the new freeway near existing homes. Residents of Lehi, Utah wanted the freeway to cross a major bluff at the northern end of town — a financially impractical option that would have meant […]
May
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has a problem. The seasoned air travelers, with their ID in their left hand, and shoes in their right, would be dancing around families who were — a bit slow. So, the agency tested a new method for the airport screening line, based on ski resorts. Ski resorts divide their […]
Apr
Enthusiastically pursue granular e-business after web-enabled metrics. Authoritatively seize optimal infrastructures after cutting-edge sources. Compellingly promote cross-media services through premier services. Monotonectally whiteboard scalable technology through.
Apr
Compellingly deliver standardized quality vectors via user-centric e-markets. Phosfluorescently embrace sticky products whereas empowered e-tailers. Enthusiastically formulate value-added deliverables for flexible interfaces. Compellingly customize world-class information.
Apr
Proactively pursue functionalized supply chains rather than 2.0 ROI. Collaboratively orchestrate wireless e-tailers and intermandated information. Dynamically scale scalable information before B2C paradigms. Rapidiously seize 24/7.
Apr
Intrinsicly re-engineer optimal niches after cross-platform meta-services. Appropriately enable resource maximizing core competencies whereas corporate e-business. Phosfluorescently disseminate adaptive sources rather than functional best practices. Appropriately.
Oct
For Christmas, I got a dash cam. I’ve been taping silly dash cam videos of drivers the past few months and compiling them onto YouTube. I think maybe 30 people have watched. Until last week, when a newspaper reporter wrote to say they wanted to write a quick blurb on their web site, with a […]
Oct
Abstract — This paper explores the various design elements of off-pavement and on-pavement standards and changes to U.S. and international highway design policies over the latter-half of the 20th century that contributed to a major reduction in automobile fatalities. It explores the policy, geometry, and expansion of roadside hardware. It then demonstrates that these changes […]
Jul
If you read a few of my posts, it’s no secret that I love new freeways. In one of my recent trips through California’s Central Valley, I was reminded of the non-monetary costs we all pay when there’s new construction. Westside Parkway The smooth new concrete, gentle grade, and baby landscaping plants offer the civil-version […]
Jun
This could be what the commercial district near University Parkway in Orem could look like in five years. While it isn’t the prettiest-looking solution, I think the city of Orem would open their arms wide to embrace a $50,000,000 solution like this. The Problem The intersection is terrible. Among the busiest in the entire state […]
Apr
Abrstract — A Look at BRT Viability as an Alternative Solution to the United States Congestion-Relief Funding Crisis The Congestion Funding Challenge In the coming decades, as many as 100 million new people (US Census Bureau, 2014) will immigrate to, be born in, or be blessed with a longer life in United States cities. Currently over […]
Mar
“Since when does a highway have stop lights?” I’ll never forget my buddy Paul complaining to me about Bangerter Highway. He’s from Ohio, where the word “highway” means “freeway.” But putting aside English-language nuances, he has a good point — and one most Salt Lake County westsiders have complained about for over two-decades: Bangerter should’ve […]
Mar
I suppose it’s nothing special to Salt Lake to have a major rail corridor running within blocks of the central city. When it came time to build I-15 back in the 1950s and 60s, freeway planners routed the new road near this freight corridor. As I-15 was rebuilt from 1996-2001, most of the crossings were […]
Dec
I’m exploring a site along Provo’s 500 West, which a SafetyAnalyst project identifies as one of the most crash-prone stretches of road in the county. SafetyAnalyst allows a transportation researcher to combine data and other analytical tools to identify roadway segments and nodes which are statistically more dangerous than others, controlling for many other factors. […]
Dec
The signs all went up today, making Salt Lake City home to America’s fastest urban interstates. Traditionally, urban freeways are 65 miles per hour (or 55 in cities with really twisty road geometry). As far as I’m aware, no state has ever allowed a DOT to raise urban freeways to higher speeds, until now. The […]
Dec
It looks like Caltrans thought ahead for this 2002 project. That’s the year the state of California extended the 210 freeway from the 57 freeway to I-15 in Rancho Cucamonga, California. The new freeway replaced Highland Avenue, which became a frontage road. As I explored historic aerial photography on Google Earth, I discovered that Caltrans […]
Dec
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Nov
In retrospect, I wish I’d put more time into getting a girlfriend. Oh well. Over fifteen years ago, I was in junior high school. Being borderline-A.D.D. and super stoked to get a driver license, I began drawing “cities.” I put the word “city” in scare quotes, because I really drew freeway interchanges and complicated intersections. […]
Nov
Ouch! That’s what happens Shaq gets distracted in his Porche 911 convertible and forgets to duck. I phoned it into the city engineer as soon as I saw it. The phone went to voicemail. So I called the police dispatcher, and she says they’d already gotten a lot of calls about this already this morning. I […]
Oct
A new freeway is slowly appearing on Salt Lake County, Utah’s west side. The Mountain View Corridor, SR-85, will parallel Interstate 15 from roughly Salt Lake International Airport south to Saratoga Springs, and possibly one day, west of Utah Lake to Payson. It’s one of the few large-scale, non-tolled urban freeway projects going on in […]
Jul
California has America’s least-cost-effective freeways, short of Rhode Island, Hawaii, and Alaska. Well, that’s if you agree with the study-producing think tank’s philosophy of “Advancing a free society by developing, applying, and promoting libertarian principles, including individual liberty, free markets, and the rule of law.” Don’t get me wrong. I’m a huge fan of cost-effectiveness. But […]
Jun
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Jun
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Jun
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Jun
This is probably the first time since the 1960s that Salt Lake County, Utah has seen serious demolition for a transportation project. In another post, I show some photos of a vanishing neighborhood between 4100 South and 3500 South in West Valley City. Here are some pictures of a neighborhood just south of 4100, along Timber […]
May
There’s a series projects which demonstrate some good long-term thinking in Draper, Utah. When UTA built its Frontrunner commuter rail line, it built this overpass even though there isn’t a road for yards around (I’d say miles, but there are many roads within a mile). Good thing, too, since it’s a looooooong drive around (red). In […]
May
Campus Drive was a ring road that allowed vehicular access to the internal parking lots of Brigham Young University’s campus in Provo: It’s now closed, as you can see from the barrier in the middle of the street: I liked the old way, but to be fair we humans tend to have a status-quo bias. […]
Mar
North of Brigham Young University’s campus boundary sits a house at a T-intersection. Well, I should say “sat” a house. Because a young adult with a medical issue (I suspect suicidal depression, but we’ll never know) plowed an early-90s Suburban into it. And from the looks of it, the Suburban won: The force from the crash was […]
Oct
All the time, we see roads being built. And if a road is being removed, it’s to replace it with a new road. So here’s a rare situation where a road is being removed for the sake of removing it: It’s for good reason. UDOT is building the frontage roads for a new freeway (Mountain […]
Feb
It looks like UTA has broken ground on its future station in Provo. The commuter rail service, called “Frontrunner” already operates between SLC and Ogden. It will soon extend service south to this very site. Location:
Jan
I have no idea what this collision’s back story is. I just happened to be driving by and saw this semi tipped on its side. It almost looks like it’s trailer fell off as it turned east onto 1860 South.
Dec
It appears the first major demolition has begun for the future Mountain View Corridor freeway (SR-85). I just drove down Bills Drive a few weeks ago and there was a tree-lined street of landscaped, established 1970s-80s tract homes. Everyone is gone now. The photo doesn’t do justice of just how eerie this street feels now, […]
Aug
Props to Salt Lake International Airport for deploying this traffic-saving tool. I drove to pick up a friend whose flight was delayed. Normally, I’d probably just be circling the airport’s ring road waiting for his text telling me to come pick him up curbside. To save on vehicle emissions and reduce traffic and appease customer frustration […]
Mar
I had to get on the phone with UDOT right away when I saw this. Crews added two new “right-turn only” arrows. But why? That sounds really unsafe. The intersection does back up a lot during rush hour, but I think painting a protective “free right” stripe would’ve been a better option. What’s UDOT (or […]
Sep
It only took an extra 5-years to settle all the law suits. But I’m happy to say the new Legacy Parkway (SR-67) is open and I’ve driven it! Here’s a photo dump: