Archive for June 29th, 2009

Another item of interest I had come across in Joe Moran’s book was the “Conemaster,” an automated device for laying down traffic cones on the highway. That’s a U.K. product, but there are others, as the video — of a “single operator lane closure system” — above shows. Given the hazards posed by drivers to people working on highways, this is a clearly useful device. A bit of background:

Currently, traffic cones are deployed by a person riding on the exterior of a modified vehicle. This person is typically either standing in a basket at the end of a truck or sitting near ground level between the axles of the customized cone body truck. On the current Caltrans cone truck, two horizontal stacks of cones are fed by conveyor to a worker who then places or retrieves the cones while another person drives the vehicle.

A typical lane configuration uses 80 traffic cones for each 1.5 miles of lane closure. Traffic cones come in various sizes up to 36 inches high. Caltrans uses a 28 inch high cone that weighs 10 pounds. When cones are being carried to and from stacks on the bed of a truck, personnel are restricted from carrying more than 3 cones at one time and this operation of manually transferring the cones is often performed on the roadway.

Now, where have our robotic bollards gone?

Oh, and by the way, it cleans up after itself too.

The name Lord Adonis, were one to see it Brooklyn, conjures a Bed-Stuy middle-weight boxer, or maybe one of the dance-hall reggae performers ones sees on posters cruising along Flatbush.

But for the uninitiated, he’s the U.K.’s new Secretary of Transport and, it turns out, a fan of Traffic, as he notes in a recent talk. (I just hope he didn’t purchase it with taxpayer funds!)

The speech makes a number of worthy points, including the idea of connecting various travel modes.

One key factor is the ease of interchange between cycling and other forms of travel. Let me take the specific issue of the interchange between cycling and rail travel. While some 60 per cent of the population lives within a quarter of an hour cycle ride of a railway station, only two per cent of journeys to and from stations are made by bike. By contrast, in Holland, cycling accounts for roughly a third of all trips to and from rail stations. This massive difference isn’t in the different genes of the British and the Dutch; it has a lot to do with the provision of facilities for cyclists at stations.

I’ve just returned from the Netherlands, and was struck, as always, not just by the cycling numbers but the cycle parking. As it is with car traffic, parking is an often overlooked factor in the whole traffic equation; needless to say, the presence of a safe, convenient space at the end of a trip is of incredible importance to the desirability or even possibility of making that trip (more so than some cultural disposition to mode choice). As I looked at the long rows of bikes outside shops and train stations (where, David Hembrow notes, there is an actual crisis of parking) in Utrecht and Rotterdam, I couldn’t help thinking: What if all these were cars? Well, of course, those tidy, compact, well-populated streets wouldn’t exist. I suspect someone, somewhere, has crunched the numbers on how many bicycles can fit inside an average car parking space, I’d estimate the factor must be something like 15 to 1?

Because even in the deadly serious business of road safety, there is a need for humor. In case you don’t recognize it, it’s Withnail and I, featuring the fantastic Richard Grant.

A traffic hazard you may not have considered — other people trying to be nice to you.

KINSTON - On June 19, a Kinston man was taken to the hospital after the small truck he was driving turned across two lanes of traffic on Vernon Avenue and into the path of a sport utility vehicle, flipping his truck and badly damaging the Toyota Highlander. The driver of the truck, 60-year-old Willie Morris, was treated and released.

Local law enforcement officers said these situations - where drivers try to be courteous but cause hazardous situations - are frequent, problematic and avoidable, especially along roads like Kinston’s four- to five-laned Vernon Avenue.