281–290 of 770 posts
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Some numbers for comparison according to a Google search: Hong Kong Area: 427 mi² Washington DC Metropolitan Area: 5,565 mi²
The DC metro area is just a pretty flat sprawl. It should be an easy case transportation wise, but...Americans.
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Snow actually didn't use to happen in those places. Not in this way. That's why the word "change" is in "climate change". DC, btw, is not a state, and has no "state government".
Grew up outside of DC. Snow absolutely happened then, and it was a standing joke that the Russians were investing in weather control so they could cause an inch of snow to shut down the city. I still remember Feb 1979, when we got 2 feet of snow overnight and school was closed for a week.
It used to be that shorts weather at Christmas was something to remember and retell to the next generation. (That would be the year of the roller skates, and the horrifically muddy ski trip) Now it’s just last week.
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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.
More lanes generally improves throughput. However, more lanes often increases latency.
City planners may prefer this, but individuals may not.
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…
This also helps limit the amount of water that can condense on the walls of the gas tank and wind up freezing in the pump or fuel line.
It’s possible modern cars have some countermeasures for this because it has been years since I’ve seen it happen, but an additional (potential) benefit.
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Both terms have been in use since the 80s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change#Terminology
Yes, both terms existed since the 19th Century, but the concerted push on branding dates to the late 90s by green groups which began to discourage the phrase "global warming" and replace it with "climate change". https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=%22climate+cha...
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…
I know this is gross to talk about, but I'd also add "incontinence blankets" to this list. Specifically for being locked in traffic for this long. There are reusable incontinence blankets you can get. This way you have something designed to catch waste if you misfire.
14 inches of snow at Fredricksburg, VA. All at once. The annual average is 13 inches. This seems to be an unexpected consequence of climate change. Slower moving storms, with huge amounts of rain or snow in a short period.
Does climate change also explain the larger storms in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries? https://www.novec.com/About_NOVEC/Virginias-Historic-Snowsto...
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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.
I drive 2-3 times a year from NY to South Carolina or Florida for years, always timing crossing through DC around 5AM. Traffic 15-20 years ago coming into DC extended down to Potomac Mills. When I passed though in 2019 it extended almost 60 miles, well past Fredericksburg!
More demand drives more sprawl that drives more demand for roads. Eventually metastasizes into a nightmare like LA or Long Island!
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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…
Yes, impossible actually to prevent this from happening. Corporations always want a good deal for office space, so they will literally shop around different cities looking at who will give them the biggest tax advantages and the most developable land. City councilmembers literally make careers out of wooing corporations into building suburban office parks, and why wouldn't they? They just injected a thousand white collar workers who will be paying taxes into their school district and another 5 thousand workers who will be driving in every morning and spending money on local sales tax when they get starbucks from the drive through. It's a race to the bottom as long as local governments have local control over their planning processes, and it would probably still continue if planning were done regionally or nationally since it is very easy to bribe American politicians.
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I know this is gross to talk about, but I'd also add "incontinence blankets" to this list. Specifically for being locked in traffic for this long. There are reusable incontinence blankets you can get. This way you have something designed to catch waste if you misfire.
I have these bags made for urine or vomit with a gel in it that will congealed the contents. I was stranded on a closed highway and had to pee so bad. Never again.