Posted on 10/22/2012 7:52:22 PM PDT by logic101.net
Stop the roundabouts
The vast majority of us hate roundabouts. Unfortunately, the state Department of Transportation loves them, as do their close friends, the road builders. Why the road builders love them is simple - they can charge us 10 times more to put them in.
Sadly, the DOT prefers to make its friends happy rather than the taxpayers. They now have taken to trying to hide their plans from us by referring to them as "broad, looping, free-flowing."
Often we will be told that they work so well in Europe. However, Europe's idea of a big truck is about the size of a U-haul van. Our big trucks have 53-foot trailers and need the entire roundabout to get around them, creating a dangerous situation.
(Excerpt) Read more at jsonline.com ...
You have to be a liberal doing a cruel parody of a conservative.
You have to be a liberal doing a cruel parody of a conservative.
How well I remember!!!
Nice new tagline by the way!!!
or Kelley Square in Worcester MA
That really put a benediction on this thread...
I know of two roundabouts in my area. Both are benign as there is no traffic. However, when I go to MS, and drive from the airport, there is a roundabout just outside.
They are irritating, to say the least.
And, dangerous, when there is traffic.
“They won’t be happy till we’re all riding bicycles around those stupid roundabouts dressed as Chinese Commonists in identicle clothing shaded by those cone-headed coolee hats like in 1972 when Nixon (another socialist) went there to see some ping-pong games!!!”
Thank you! You made me LOL! ;o)
“(It’s not my fault... I have compulsive smartass disorder.)”
It might be better if you revert back to that.
I know how to use roundabouts, and I hate them.
I drive defensively, as we are taught, and there are too many aggressive drivers in roundabouts.
And...no...I don’t need to consider my fitness behind a wheel.
I’ve driven cars much more aggressively than anyone in a roundabout has.
These have started to crop up in Michigan too. Ridiculous.
You da bomb, dc2000 lady!!! (wide toothy grin)
;o)
It's always so good to see you!
The vast majority of us hate roundabouts.My favorite from the idiots who support these roundabouts (and those idiotic "turn right to make a left" bowties) is "studies show that blah blah blah". My response is, "really? Who was the author of the studies? Where and when were they published? Or didn't they mention that on NPR?"
And having a brother who was a civil engineer and District Chief in the MN Highway Dept, I think I'm relying on pretty good authority on what I said.
The environmentalists in MN have long wanted to pull people out of cars and into light rail. They've managed to build a short one from downtown to the airport. Except for a base of common sense outside the metro area, they'd be swimming in rail lines and debt.
You really need to get out of Kansas to see what silly things the liberals want to do. I'm amazed that you could read FreeRepublic and still believe that there isn't a lot of insanity out and around in the liberal states.
A better example of such insanity: Gov Florio in NJ raised taxes on the sale of big rig trucks in NJ, so they were thousands of dollars above the taxes in PA, or NY, etc. The entire business of selling big trucks collapsed, businesses closed, salesfolks were let go. The tax revenues were negative. Yet Gov Florio insisted that he could not remove the tax unless another tax was substituted to replace the revenue to be lost when the truck tax was removed. Since there was no revenue from the truck tax, and lost revenue from income tax, this was an insane request.
So thinking that the environmentalists who want us to give up cars (and really, do I have to find links to prove that this is true?) would engineer roads and actually encourage congestion to make that happen?
Why that's exactly what happened here in NJ. We introduced car pool lanes on a couple of highways to speed things up. But due to demographics and travel constraints (both source and destinations were diffuse), car pooling is not effective and congestion got a lot worse while the car pool lane stayed empty.
It was a long fight to get rid of the car pool lanes. Some politicians wanted to keep it to force people to change their lives so that car pooling made sense, and some wanted to keep it just for the money from tickets for single drivers in the car pool lane. Insanity and corruption.
Changing subjects on ya but along those lines, they are rebuilding I694 up around 35w. From the ground up. Regrading, new bridges, clean sweep from scratch.
I’m getting a bad feeling watching the work that they are going to end up with still only two through lanes through there. If that were the case then that decision was nothing less than economic vandalism. The incremental cost of adding a lane in a total rebuild would have been insignificant. Same with 35E and W north of 694. They tore them up and repaved from scratch. Perfect time to add a third land. But no. Same with 694 east of 35 E all the way to 94. Complete rebuild, no third land.
I hope I’m wrong about the 694 rebuild.
Changing subjects on ya but along those lines, they are rebuilding I694 up around 35w. From the ground up. Regrading, new bridges, clean sweep from scratch.
I’m getting a bad feeling watching the work that they are going to end up with still only two through lanes through there. If that were the case then that decision was nothing less than economic vandalism. The incremental cost of adding a lane in a total rebuild would have been insignificant. Same with 35E and W north of 694. They tore them up and repaved from scratch. Perfect time to add a third land. But no. Same with 694 east of 35 E all the way to 94. Complete rebuild, no third land.
I hope I’m wrong about the 694 rebuild.
Roundabout keep traffic moving and help reduce congestion.
They work better than 4 way stops or traffic signals in all but the busiest intersections. In addition they are safer for left hand turns (again for all but the busiest intersections)
They are not a solution for every intersection but they are a better solution for most arterial and secondary road intersections.
Roundabouts keep traffic moving and help reduce congestion.
They work better than 4 way stops or traffic signals in all but the busiest intersections. In addition they are safer for left hand turns (again for all but the busiest intersections)
They are not a solution for every intersection but they are a better solution for most arterial and secondary road intersections.
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