Shower Drive-Hwy 130 traffic light

[Rob Tucker]

quote:

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Originally posted by JWFITZ

It seems to be that if the projected growth will be there, so should be the revenues.

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That may well be true. But these type of projects take ten to fifteen years or more to schedule and insofar as Puna has needs for a wide variety of things we are generally at the mercy of Oahu whose population frankly holds the purse strings. Honolulu is trying to fund rail at a price (currently) of $200 million a mile. Honolulu has already burned up several billion dollars on highways and traffic lights and in the words of their highway engineer: "It's been a failure - roads are jammed."

One message at last nights HDOT meeting was essentially: It (the money) is there for you now, take it, you may not see it again.

[mikewj]

Standing water on a roundabout is an engineering problem to which the remedy is quite simple. Elevate the center of the roundabout so that rain runs quickly to the outside edges. Our local volcanic soil absorbs a great deal of water very quickly so that visibility should not be greatly impaired. As an aside, it seems that zero visibilty in torrential rain, and in darkness, has no impact whatever in reducing the speed of the 'ainamobiles', but at least if one of them drives into the center of a roundabout it is much less likely to t-bone an innocent party than if it barrelled into a signal controlled junction where the lights were out.
As I said, I'm preaching to the choir, so this is my last post on this subject. I'll just wait and see what develops 'bymby'.

[JWFITZ]

Agreed, but of course if you do that and design the roundabout to shed water like that you must also 1) increase the radius of the roundabout or 2) decrease the entry speed permanently.

I really don't have that strong of opinion about the matter either way, frankly.

Just be aware of all the potential unforeseen consequences. . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFgR7tEfnZ4

Just where did you think the sport of "drifting" got started?

You'll be needing to hire those cops regardless.


http://sensiblesimplicity.lefora.com/

[JWFITZ]

And, yee-haa, here's another good one. . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIPJ7ymOsDg

or this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTejrd8uqzE&feature=related

9 out of 10 punks prefer roundabouts to stoplights and favor police controlled intersections least.

I'm sure you get my point.

http://sensiblesimplicity.lefora.com/

[PaulW]

Back to the real world:
http://tinyurl.com/3xwsduu

Studies by the IIHS and Federal Highway Administration have shown that roundabouts typically achieve:
A 37 percent reduction in overall collisions
A 75 percent reduction in injury collisions
A 90 percent reduction in fatality collisions
A 40 percent reduction in pedestrian collisions

[JWFITZ]

Excuse me, a study is not the real world. Those videos are indeed of the real world. You'll see there's dozens if not hundreds of others. Drifting is a growing sport and growing here in Puna.

I expect you'll get to see the real thing in person. That will be real world too.

It might be interesting to discover what the dates on those studies might be. I didn't see any posted. Those dates may predate the sport, the widespread presence of powerful and relatively inexpensive vechicles, a cult culture that enjoys them, or all of the above. The data as well is not clear what the "reductions" are compared to.

Perhaps we're both correct. After all there were no collisions in any of those videos I posted. Just good clean fun. And a lot of noise. Like all night, I bet.

Again, I'm not arguing against roundabouts. Simply pointing out that there are issues associated with every solution that are often under-represented. This is one. Expect it to manifest itself if these structures are built. It is very much an issue akin to one in urban architecture. Architecture now must take into account the presence of homeless or skateboarders as well as aesthetics and structural issues. If you don't want kids tearing up the front of your bank building with skate boards or people sleeping under certain architectural details, you must eliminate those details from your design. This is just real world stuff. I'm suggest rain and road racing are two very real things here that are every bit as important to the success of our systems as anything else, and they aren't being, to my mind, duly considered. We can't do much about the rain, but we might consider whether or not we're encouraging delinquency.

Sorry, edited to say after more thorough reading those studies predate our current situation by some measure. 2000-2001.



http://sensiblesimplicity.lefora.com/

[PaulW]

If "punks" want to converge at roundabouts, it makes it all the easier for law enforcement to deal with them.
Installing a traffic camera is cheap.

Scientific studies reflect the real world. Youtube videos do not.

[Rob Tucker]

A national expert on roundabouts, Michael Wallwork, did a presentation in Keaau several months ago at a KPAC meeting. His current data was consistent that that just posted by PaulW. The decrease in fatalities is dramatic. These are lives saved. Ours or our neighbor's lives potentially.

It may be that Mr. Wallwork will be returning to Puna for another presentation. Soon we hope. Keep your ears open for it. The guy knows his stuff forward and backwards and it would be a good opportunity to learn and ask questions. I believe this web site is Mr. Wallworks:

http://www.roundabouts.net/


The good news is that roundabouts are not a new invention being foisted on a rural county. There is a long and studied history. Many of us have been working for the facts to be presented pragmatically and intelligently. But there is a fair bit of knee jerk reaction. I was skeptical once on RBAs, not any more. Last trip to the mainland I was surprised to see one right on an off ramp of I-10. Truckers, locals, tourists, random travelers heading for an Indian casino. Smooth as silk. No problemas.

[peteadams]

Obviously relevant to the topic of roundabouts is the sometimes very negative reactions some have to the proposed change. This reminded me of a very similar, very negative reaction to a traffic proposal in the South Bay around the late 90's. The south end of I-280 goes east and west from San Jose to Foothills Expressway and has many on and off ramps in a dense urban/suburban area. The highway engineers proposed to place timing lights on the on ramps to meter people into the freeway flow. The outrage and upset was huge. You have some very aggressive drivers in the Bay area and they did not like every single vehicle waiting on a timing light before they could enter the freeway. Hue and cry, the torches and pitchforks were out. But the timing lights were installed anyway. And, guess what, traffic flow immediately and obviously improved. Traffic merged like gears meshing and not only was the merge faster and smoother, it was less stressful. The principle of timing and meshing the merges had been obvious, but apparently few thought it through.

In the case of roundabouts, if the DOT wants traffic signals they are, in my opinion, very wrong. I can believe, as has been hinted, that a lot of money for some construction and consulting companies is the real driving force for traffic lights and perhaps a few revolving door jobs as well. The case for the roundabouts is easily made and expressed well in a number of posts here. The case against roundabouts seems to be primarily personal dislike and no evidence outside of anecdotes has been offered.

[Rob Tucker]

Good points Pete,

Mr. Wallwork's presentation had a couple of other worthwhile items:

1. Learning curve. The process of constructing a roundabout takes a few months - during which everybody gets lots of practice with police guidance and orange cones.

2. Many locations had 80% opposition prior to roundabouts being installed. Two years later the numbers were reversed.

I do hope he can come and do another presentation.