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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

#351

Post by JPKab »

dont__panic wrote: post #144
nostromo wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is a really good point, but I also want to bring up a (small) counterargument: I live in Denver, CO. Cars basically make it impossible to walk around most of the city, even in the more residential areas. Walking is an essential part of the public transit/non-car transportation experience because essentially everyone has to walk a few blocks from a bus stop, train station, bike rack, etc. to complete their trip o…

I live just south of Superior outside of Denver. I lived in DC area for 10 years. For 6 of those years, I commuted on the bus to metro to work.

The DC metro deteriorated markedly, and has continued to. A lot of it is a combination of bad initial designs (lack of surplus tunnel capacity to ease maintenance) along with the aggressive, powerful, and corrupt WMATA employees union. (I was on a project to analyze WMATA's staffing issues, and within the first hour, my team identified that there was a huge incentive to understaff the maintenance/technician teams to allow existing employees to collect massive amounts of overtime. Many would simply hide and sleep during the time they claimed to be "working". Hiring more mechanics/techs was foot-dragged, because it reduced the overtime pay for the existing workers who would interview them.). 2 mechanics working normal hours cost the same as 1 mechanic pulling tons of overtime, but the gap in productivity is huge. The WMATA union doesn't care. The rudeness of the staff is pretty legendary amongst locals as well.

Anyway, all of that is a long winded and detailed way of saying that WMATA gradually became a significantly less reliable means of transportation. My brother was on a car that got stuck in a tunnel that started filling with smoke. He stopped riding. And the buses need the metro to be running well. Without that, the buses become far less reliable. It's a shit show. And it's deteriorated markedly since I last lived there.

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

#352

Post by rayiner »

kaesar14 wrote: post #147
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Quoted post unavailable.

Nobody in northern Virginia wants to live in Hong Kong, and even if they did that ship sailed long ago. Also, the fertility rate in Hong Kong is less than half the replacement rate. They’re like the Asgard—an impressive civilization, full of marvels, but without a future.

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

#353

Post by jshprentz »

kube-system wrote: post #20
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.

People are also stuck on Amtrak in VA https://www.upmatters.com/news/national/snow-stalls-amtrak-i...

Snow covered trees fell across the tracks, delaying Amtrak's northbound Auto Train by 12 hours.

https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/northern-virginia/t...

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

#354

Post by selimthegrim »

MandieD wrote: post #226
flavius29663 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 bec…

Yes, our life in Franconia (northern Bavaria) is nothing but suffering, in our townhouse with a yard that’s a 600m walk from a subway station and a suburban rail station, either of which gets me to downtown Nuremberg in 20 minutes, because that place is a hellhole, and to the miserable corporate 35-hour-a-week job (the fault of IG Metall) that pays for said townhouse in 40 minutes. I especially resent the fact that I…

To be fair, I have no idea how my cousin managed to afford a house in Wendelstein, they all seemed pretty expensive for being a drive away from the subway as opposed to a walk.

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

#355

Post by intrasight »

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…

In 1972 when I was about 7 and my younger brother was 6, we were driving to NYC with my parents and got clobbered by a blizzard in Marathon, NY. So many scenes were etched into my mind - including stopping at a gas station where the attendant told us where to go to find shelter. We walked into a gymnasium where there were hundreds of other stranded folk.

But to you point, from that day on, my father kept an emergency kit in the trunk. Food, water, cash, space blankets, sweaters, etc.

I should do that too.

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

#356

Post by jon-wood »

globalise83 wrote: post #327
SauciestGNU wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Believe it or not, in some parts of the USA that can get you labeled a sex offender for life.

Wow, didn't know that! In the UK and most of Europe it's standard practice.

The same applies in the UK, but like the US you’re unlikely to get arrested unless you’re doing something more than peeing behind a bush.

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

#357

Post by mmcconnell1618 »

dragontamer wrote: post #13
jdavis703 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Route 1 seems like a local-road to me with lots of traffic lights though. I-95 works really well as long as its clear. But as soon as an emergency happens, the spillover traffic is too massive for Route 1 to ever hope to handle. An interstate-highway can't rely upon a traffic-light laden local road to handle the traffic from a 4-lane interstate. EDIT: In the case of the 2017 eclipse, the traffic was so heavy that tru…

301 through Maryland is the next closest highway that has fewer traffic lights.

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

#358

Post by rootusrootus »

NikolaeVarius wrote: post #60
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.

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

If induced demand is going to negate the improvements from adding capacity, then why not just reduce capacity to one lane? Or less?

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

#359

Post by dont__panic »

JPKab wrote: post #351
dont__panic wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a really good point, but I also want to bring up a (small) counterargument: I live in Denver, CO. Cars basically make it impossible to walk around most of the city, even in the more residential areas. Walking is an essential part of the public transit/non-car transportation experience because essentially everyone has to walk a few blocks from a bus stop, train station, bike rack, etc. to complete their trip o…

I live just south of Superior outside of Denver. I lived in DC area for 10 years. For 6 of those years, I commuted on the bus to metro to work. The DC metro deteriorated markedly, and has continued to. A lot of it is a combination of bad initial designs (lack of surplus tunnel capacity to ease maintenance) along with the aggressive, powerful, and corrupt WMATA employees union. (I was on a project to analyze WMATA's s…

Hope you're OK after the Marshall Fire -- "just south of Superior" sounds like a very, very good choice compared to "in Superior" these days.

Do you use public transit in the Denver area at all? I find myself biking to most places because the public transit routes don't really get me where I want to go, but a lot of folks I know in the area used to use the buses and light rail in the before times. Seems like it had a pretty good rep before covid.

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

#360

Post by rayiner »

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…

> So don't spread the jobs out all over the spokes? Is some urban planning really hard to do here?

“Just completely restructure every single place 80% of the population in one of the country’s largest metro areas lives and works in.”

Yes, there is an argument that Reston, Vienna, etc., shouldn’t exist in their present form (or anything close to it). But that ship sailed long ago.

Efforts to gloss over that reality end badly. The Silver Line and all the adjacent development are monstrosities. Stations are huge concrete edifices in the middle of freeways that are nerve wracking to navigate with a squirrelly three year old. Billions were spent making places that are nice for just a handful of people who can afford $4,000/month for a two bedroom near the McLean Metro so they can take the Silver Line to their job at Google in Reston.

> That isn't true at all in much of the world. Rail transit still works in many non-dysfunctional countries.

Those countries are dysfunctional. Birth rates in these transit-oriented metro areas are well below replacement, meaning that their form of civilization is literally sustainable.

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