Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night • Hacker News Board

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

#171

Post by R0b0t1 » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 8:48 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #92

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 grew up in Northern VA. Public transit here is a solution looking for a problem. The job centers and commercial are too spread out for public transit to make any sense. Most of the population and jobs in the DC metro area aren’t in DC but spread around in Tysons, Loudoun, Reston, Arlington, Bethesda, etc. The state spent billions building the Silver line out to Tysons, Reston, and Loudoun, and ridership was disappo…

Use public transit to incentivize development.

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

#172

Post by ceejayoz » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 8:48 PM UTC

alphabettsy wrote: post #124

jackson1442 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also of note- in a snowstorm situation there are no exhaust pipes that can be clogged with snow on an EV. It’s self-contained!

I’ve never heard of exhaust pipes getting clogged with snow, the gas coming out is hot. I’d be surprised if this has ever happened unintentionally. If what you mean is that the exhaust can linger too long or be redirected in ways that aren’t ideal then yea.

If you're trapped for a day in a inches-per-hour snowstorm, you're not going to be able to run the engine the whole time. You may also be in a snowbank, with wind causing drifts to build up.

It definitely happens.

https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/carbon-monoxide-poi...

> In New Jersey, 23-year-old Sashalynn Rosa, of Passaic, and her 1-year-old son, Messiah Bonilla, died of carbon monoxide poisoning while sitting in a running car that had its tailpipe covered in snow. Rosa's 3-year-old daughter, Saniyah Bonilla, was hospitalized in critical condition and died on Jan. 27. The father of the children was just steps away shoveling snow from around the car.

> Angel Ginel of New York died in a similar way Monday afternoon. Police say Ginel was found inside his running, plowed-in car in Brooklyn. His relatives believe he got inside the car to warm up Sunday, and the car got buried.

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

#173

Post by epistasis » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 8:48 PM UTC

HarryHirsch wrote: post #54

epistasis wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Still significantly less comfortable than being able to walk around and use a proper bathroom.

And if you have young kids.... yikes I can't even imagine the hell of that sort of situation.

It would be really nice to have an alternative to being forced to drive for every day tasks. Instead, we have forced car dependent through law and through federal spending.

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

#174

Post by mardifoufs » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 8:48 PM UTC

kaesar14 wrote: post #156

mardifoufs wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's hard to literally relocate hundreds of thousands of jobs according to some urban planners dreams. We aren't talking about intra city planning, but about state wide job markets. I guess Canada is dysfunctional too because there is absolutely no way to get rail service working beyond the big cities. Maybe it has something to do with north America not being Europe so trying to just force a European model here…

The context of this thread is about Virginia which is part of the I-95 corridor, the most densely populated area in the country, with a population density comparable to many Western European countries[1]. This is like the one region of the country you actually could scale up intercity/state transport, and it sucks so bad that Amtrak is terrible. 1: https://tetcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/2040_Vis... .

I guess it could be, but the point of the GP was that the jobs and the population were spread out widely even if the population density is similar. Now I could be wrong, but from what I know from the half of my family living in France, transit in Paris for example is mostly pouring into the city where the jobs are. In this case, everything is spread out, so the density itself does not really matter. The problem is the spread.

Even here in montreal, while the metro is pretty good and we are currently building a pretty nice light rail system you still can't really depend on the rail system if your job isn't in montreal itself. The whole transit system is based on feeding the big city, not move people in between smaller cities. (Also, It's a bit tiring then to hear about just how dysfunctional the US is and how good they have it everywhere else when it's just not true. The American self loathing just get repetitive honestly)

I think public transit is amazing for city transit but does not scale very well when there's something else than the usual suburb->city->suburb pattern of movement. You can't really interconnect every single medium-small ish city at a north American scale

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

#175

Post by wyager » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 8:49 PM UTC

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...

There is no economical way for public transportation to cover the kind of transit patterns serviced by highways. If I had to take buses from Bozeman, MT to Boise, ID, any plausible bus network would take 5x as long to get me from A to B.

Making everyone ride busses and bicycles in a country with the geography of America is a fantasy, even if you buy the premise that this is otherwise desirable.

I don't even buy the premise, because things that are valuable to me include:

1. Expediency

2. Comfort

3. Not being subject to timetables decided by other people

4. Not having to deal with homeless or crazy people while transiting

5. Sanitation. Public transit and pandemic mitigation measures are mutually incompatible

While driving, I only have to deal with one network topology (the road system) instead of two (the bus network on top of the road network), leading to vastly shorter travel times in practice. My vehicles are customized to my comfort. I don't have to get permission or wait on someone else to use them. I don't have to share them with anyone. I can keep them as clean as I please.

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

#176

Post by flavius29663 » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 8:49 PM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #118

rayiner wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up in Northern VA. Public transit here is a solution looking for a problem. The job centers and commercial are too spread out for public transit to make any sense. Most of the population and jobs in the DC metro area aren’t in DC but spread around in Tysons, Loudoun, Reston, Arlington, Bethesda, etc. The state spent billions building the Silver line out to Tysons, Reston, and Loudoun, and ridership was disappo…

> But when the jobs are spread out all over the spokes, that model breaks down. So don't spread the jobs out all over the spokes? Is some urban planning really hard to do here? > Rail transit is an anachronism, best suited for the 1950s when life involved a woman staying home with the kids while dad took the train into the city for work. That isn't true at all in much of the world. Rail transit still works in many no…

> Rail transit still works in many non-dysfunctional countries.

Define "works". Sure it can move millions of people each day, but those people live miserable lives most of the time. Have you lived in a city where commuting one hour each way by train is considered "very good" ? And some of the worse are around 1.30-1.45 hours each way, each day? Even if for a while the train is fine, if the city is growing it will become unbearably crowded, smelly, hot and just a nightmare to deal with when you're tired and want to get home at 6 PM.

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

#177

Post by zip1234 » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 8:50 PM UTC

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 driving demand can be induced by massively subsidizing it with billions as is currently done, so can other forms of transportation.

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

#178

Post by kadoban » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 8:51 PM UTC

R0b0t1 wrote: post #169

emptybottle wrote: post #73

A good reminder to keep some warm blankets/coats/gloves/hats in your trunk, along with some non-perishable snacks and a first-aid kit & flashlight. Water is harder to store in the winter since it will freeze and burst containers if full, but snow can be melted given a container to put it in. Also a good to refuel often. I try treat 1/2 a tank as empty and stop accordingly. On longer trips it lines up well with bathro…

If I really kept kitted out for an incident like this I use up all my grocery room or most of the back seats. I was in my last car, but because I usually didn't take passengers.

If you optimize for space it's not too bad. Even a thin blanket of the right material is a huge improvement over nothing. That and nest things inside of each other where possible and/or use vacuum seal bags. I've typically been able to jam everything in the least convenient corner of the trunk.

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

#179

Post by zip1234 » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 8:52 PM UTC

nostromo wrote: post #87

whatshisface wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, they're shifting the goal posts. Here in city (Seattle) most people drive because transit tends to be spotty and slow for most people. So, what's the solution? Make driving worse of course. Speedbumps everywhere . Change 4-lane roads to 2-lanes. Remove parking. Lower speed limits to absurd levels. Make through streets dead ends. Transit still mostly sucks, but now driving sucks too. Success! I love transit and…

You realize speed bumps are not there to 'ruin driving'--they are mechanical means to stop drivers from speeding as signs are useless and as soon as people are past the cops they speed again.

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

#180

Post by shadowgovt » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 8:52 PM UTC

jdavis703 wrote: post #7

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…

> there are no alternative roads to take if this one road closes. US Route 1 basically parallels I-95 in most of VA. I was once detoured on it after a military HAZMAT incident. It’s slow going, but it works.

The former Jefferson Davis Highway (now Emancipation Highway) has never had the capacity to back-stop I-95. It can be used in emergencies, but only if one wants to get stuck in a slightly different place with an occasional soda machine within walking distance... A feature one stuck on that road may be able to take advantage of, given the speed one will be going.

And I don't imagine it would be much use in a sudden-onset winter storm, since it's right next to I-95; it's going to get blanketed about as fast as I-95 will, and most of it lacks enough shoulder for plows to get along it if it gets jammed with traffic.