I was reading a news article the other day about how this particular town had just spent over a million dollars to try and improve their problematic Y-shaped intersection. But, rather than go high-tech and add a light or curbs to force cars to merge a certain way, they went low-tech and just tried adding in a couple of lines and a stop sign. Shocker of shockers, that master plan didn't work. In fact, after watching the traffic patterns for a couple of weeks the town engineers discovered the new configuration was actually making traffic back-ups worse. (One of the town managers is quoted as saying she never like the plan. Thanks for speaking up.) Now, to the town's credit they hadn't paved the new road set-up yet and unlike a lot of government officials they were willing to admit they made a mistake. So, they will basically spend another few hundred thousand dollars to undo their changes and then re-pave the road. The problem is that by having to do this one section of road twice they will be out of money and not able to take another crack at fixing this troublesome intersection for another couple of years. Given how they handled it this time around I don't think that is necessarily a bad thing. And who knows what could happen by then? Maybe if these town officers had simply told the taxpayers in this town that they were going to double-spend on this project everyone would have been a little nicer at that intersection and not made the project necessary in the first place.
Sunday, July 21, 2013
Where The Rubber Meets The Road
Every year the state of Massachusetts releases a list of the worst intersections in the state. (Considering how bad the roads can be around here I pity the person who has to whittle the list down.) These are the places with the highest number of incidents and accidents and I've noticed that most of the intersections on the list are Y-shaped. That means you have two streets coming from the same direction and it can be really hard for the drivers to see one another, which is why there are so many problems. Honestly I think if most city planners could go back in time making sure they eliminated all of these type of intersections would be high on their to-do lists. No new road system would ever allow these things to be installed. Anyway, for most of my teen years one of these intersections was in the next town over. I nearly got into an accident there in my first couple months of driving and I admit it freaked me out enough that I spent the next few years avoiding this stretch of road whenever possible (and making damn sure it was always possible). It was a terrible intersection right up until a few years ago when the completely reconfigured it by adding lights and curbs. It completely changed the intersection for the better, but it took a lot of work. It is too bad another nearby town didn't call and ask them how they pulled it off.
I was reading a news article the other day about how this particular town had just spent over a million dollars to try and improve their problematic Y-shaped intersection. But, rather than go high-tech and add a light or curbs to force cars to merge a certain way, they went low-tech and just tried adding in a couple of lines and a stop sign. Shocker of shockers, that master plan didn't work. In fact, after watching the traffic patterns for a couple of weeks the town engineers discovered the new configuration was actually making traffic back-ups worse. (One of the town managers is quoted as saying she never like the plan. Thanks for speaking up.) Now, to the town's credit they hadn't paved the new road set-up yet and unlike a lot of government officials they were willing to admit they made a mistake. So, they will basically spend another few hundred thousand dollars to undo their changes and then re-pave the road. The problem is that by having to do this one section of road twice they will be out of money and not able to take another crack at fixing this troublesome intersection for another couple of years. Given how they handled it this time around I don't think that is necessarily a bad thing. And who knows what could happen by then? Maybe if these town officers had simply told the taxpayers in this town that they were going to double-spend on this project everyone would have been a little nicer at that intersection and not made the project necessary in the first place.
I was reading a news article the other day about how this particular town had just spent over a million dollars to try and improve their problematic Y-shaped intersection. But, rather than go high-tech and add a light or curbs to force cars to merge a certain way, they went low-tech and just tried adding in a couple of lines and a stop sign. Shocker of shockers, that master plan didn't work. In fact, after watching the traffic patterns for a couple of weeks the town engineers discovered the new configuration was actually making traffic back-ups worse. (One of the town managers is quoted as saying she never like the plan. Thanks for speaking up.) Now, to the town's credit they hadn't paved the new road set-up yet and unlike a lot of government officials they were willing to admit they made a mistake. So, they will basically spend another few hundred thousand dollars to undo their changes and then re-pave the road. The problem is that by having to do this one section of road twice they will be out of money and not able to take another crack at fixing this troublesome intersection for another couple of years. Given how they handled it this time around I don't think that is necessarily a bad thing. And who knows what could happen by then? Maybe if these town officers had simply told the taxpayers in this town that they were going to double-spend on this project everyone would have been a little nicer at that intersection and not made the project necessary in the first place.
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