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Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

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Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#51

Post by whatshisface »

azylman wrote: post #45
dragontamer wrote: post #5

I'm not surprised. I've taken this road before during the 2017 Eclipse. Its a path that connects major parts of the country together, but there are no alternative roads to take if this one road closes. Other locations have "Backup" highways to lighten the load or otherwise take up the slack if the main road closes. Not so here. I've been told that Virginia once had plans to build additional highways / alternative roa…

No comments on emergency situations, but wanted to call out one thing: > You need additional highways (aka: additional offramps) to truly scale day-to-day traffic Additional highways are at-best a stop-gap for day-to-day traffic, never a solution, due to induced demand [1]. You really need large-scale investments in public transportation for this. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand#Effect_in_trans...

I've never understood how inducing demand doesn't count as success. That means people want to use the road, doesn't it? It's almost like saying that releasing new software doesn't do anything to help users, because it increases the demand for software by the virtue of its own utility more than it reduces the demand for software by keeping people busy.

Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#52

Post by relaytheurgency »

exhilaration wrote: post #34
arberx wrote: post #6

How do electric vechicles hold up in something like this?

A stranded ICE vehicle will exhaust its gas tank in 8 hours, max. You can turn it on an off to stretch it out but I wonder if you'll just burn more gas that way. Google (and Quora) suggests that a Tesla will last 36-72 hours, "or less" if it's very cold. I think EVs win in this case, assuming a full tank versus a full charge. Regardless if you're in a place where this could happen you should have a box of chemical ha…

Where are you getting the 8 hours from? A car that gets 30 mpg with a 14 gallon tank can _drive_ for nearly 8 hours at 60 mph. That same car may burn (on the highest end) 1/2 a gallon an hour idling which would be more than 24 hours of idling time.

Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#53

Post by hotpotamus »

exhilaration wrote: post #34
arberx wrote: post #6

How do electric vechicles hold up in something like this?

A stranded ICE vehicle will exhaust its gas tank in 8 hours, max. You can turn it on an off to stretch it out but I wonder if you'll just burn more gas that way. Google (and Quora) suggests that a Tesla will last 36-72 hours, "or less" if it's very cold. I think EVs win in this case, assuming a full tank versus a full charge. Regardless if you're in a place where this could happen you should have a box of chemical ha…

8 hours seems quite quick. I've heard that the average car will idle for 2 days on a full tank, though I haven't tried it myself.

Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#54

Post by HarryHirsch »

epistasis wrote: post #48
ceejayoz wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It happens to trains, too. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/01/12/national/heavy-... > Around 430 passengers in Niigata Prefecture were forced to spend the night on a packed four-car train after it got stranded Thursday evening by heavy snow along the Sea of Japan coast. https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/east-asia/article/1904881/jap... > About 110 passengers on a Sanyo Shinkansen bullet train bound for Shin-Osaka…

Agreed, being stuck on a train in a winter storm is far far less terrifying to me than being stuck in a small car, running out of gas (or battery charge), without water or food or access to bathrooms.

And that's why you always have a blanket, a few cans of water, a few cans of food and a book in the trunk in wintertime. There's no excuse not to.

Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#55

Post by wayoutthere »

kube-system wrote: post #37
jeffbee wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That happens even without snow. I've been stuck on Amtrak trains because there was some object on the track (crashed vehicles) and the train just sat there for hours and they refuse to open the doors even though were were in the center of Oakland and could have happily just walked out. Amtrak is not a great example of how trains should work.

I don't think any train operators are immune to the issues caused by track obstructions. Nor are car drivers immune to obstructions on I95.

Amtrak is particularly vulnerable in that they lease their tracks from freight companies, who generally prioritize their own (much longer) trains over Amtrak. So a small delay can snowball into a large one very quickly.

Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#56

Post by animal_spirits »

azylman wrote: post #45
dragontamer wrote: post #5

I'm not surprised. I've taken this road before during the 2017 Eclipse. Its a path that connects major parts of the country together, but there are no alternative roads to take if this one road closes. Other locations have "Backup" highways to lighten the load or otherwise take up the slack if the main road closes. Not so here. I've been told that Virginia once had plans to build additional highways / alternative roa…

No comments on emergency situations, but wanted to call out one thing: > You need additional highways (aka: additional offramps) to truly scale day-to-day traffic Additional highways are at-best a stop-gap for day-to-day traffic, never a solution, due to induced demand [1]. You really need large-scale investments in public transportation for this. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand#Effect_in_trans...

Correct, The Downs-Thomson paradox [1] is a known issue in urban planning stating basically unless you improve public transportation car congestion will continue to get worse.

> the equilibrium speed of car traffic on a road network is determined by the average door-to-door speed of equivalent journeys taken by public transport.

NotJustBikes has a good introduction to it [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downs%E2%80%93Thomson_paradox

[2] https://youtu.be/RQY6WGOoYis

Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#57

Post by cm2187 »

julianh95 wrote: post #12

Some _fast_ and reliable mass transit like the trains in Japan/Europe sure would be nice to help alleviate situations like this and general traffic.

Trains are often disrupted in Europe by snow. Even the tube in London is a mess when it snows.

Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#58

Post by azylman »

whatshisface wrote: post #51
azylman wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No comments on emergency situations, but wanted to call out one thing: > You need additional highways (aka: additional offramps) to truly scale day-to-day traffic Additional highways are at-best a stop-gap for day-to-day traffic, never a solution, due to induced demand [1]. You really need large-scale investments in public transportation for this. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand#Effect_in_trans...

I've never understood how inducing demand doesn't count as success. That means people want to use the road, doesn't it? It's almost like saying that releasing new software doesn't do anything to help users, because it increases the demand for software by the virtue of its own utility more than it reduces the demand for software by keeping people busy.

It depends what your success criteria is. It's true, you've successfully increased the throughput of the transit network, but you haven't done anything to improve transit times - you just have more people stuck in traffic now. There are other ways you could have spent that same amount of money (public transit) that both increase the throughput of the network _and_ improve transit times.

Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#60

Post by NikolaeVarius »

whatshisface wrote: post #51
azylman wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No comments on emergency situations, but wanted to call out one thing: > You need additional highways (aka: additional offramps) to truly scale day-to-day traffic Additional highways are at-best a stop-gap for day-to-day traffic, never a solution, due to induced demand [1]. You really need large-scale investments in public transportation for this. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand#Effect_in_trans...

I've never understood how inducing demand doesn't count as success. That means people want to use the road, doesn't it? It's almost like saying that releasing new software doesn't do anything to help users, because it increases the demand for software by the virtue of its own utility more than it reduces the demand for software by keeping people busy.

If the point of adding lanes is to reduce delays, and induced demand prevents that, you have failed in the task.
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