By Mike Spack, PE, PTOE Most schools have a well-developed safety plan for dealing with emergencies. They even have regular fire, tornado/hurricane, and lockdown drills so staff and students are well prepared. Even though being killed in a car crash is the leading cause of death for school age children in the United States, most schools don’t […]
By Jonah Finkelstein, EIT Roundabouts have readily been adopted in most European countries, but are still relatively new to North American drivers. The benefits of roundabouts are numerous, but sometimes the biggest road block to implementing them is addressing the concerns of agencies and the public. During this year’s Joint ITE/CITE 2017 Annual Meeting and […]
By Bryant Ficek, PE, PTOE Back-in angle parking is a relatively new concept starting to be seen in more areas. The basic concept is similar to standard 45-degree parking. But instead of pulling forward into the space, drivers back into the angled stall. This is also referred to as reverse-angle or reverse diagonal parking. For […]
By Mike Spack, PE, PTOE After more than a year in design and manufacturing, I’m excited to announce the all new COUNTcam 2 (check out how the COUNTcam 2 was designed from our technology partners at Tomorrow Labs) We originally designed our COUNTcam video recording systems out of our own need to find a more […]
By Bryant Ficek, PE, PTOE I just got back from attending the Institute of Transportation Engineers’ Annual Meeting. The Spack Consulting team attending this year’s meeting will be sharing our thoughts on the event over the next couple of weeks, but here are some initial thoughts about what we saw: Toronto is a great host […]
By Mike Spack, PE, PTOE For a quick three-minute overview of traffic calming techniques, check out my post Techniques and Devices for Slowing Down Traffic (Traffic Calming Explained). The Institute of Transportation Engineers has the most complete website on traffic calming devices (click here) I know of including four types of measures (vertical deflections, closures, […]
By Mike Spack, PE, PTOE Exciting new research sponsored by the National Science Foundation and conducted by Rutgers-Camden, Temple, Arizona, and Illinois Universities shows that a few autonomous vehicles in the traffic stream could eliminate pesky phantom traffic jams. According to Daniel Work, assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who was a […]
By Mike Spack, PE, PTOE There are literally hundreds of decisions that need to be made when dealing with any development project. Sometimes, a few details get missed. Over the years, Spack Consulting has worked with numerous developers on projects large and small. Following are the top traffic issue mistakes that are commonly made during […]
By Vern Swing, PE In Minnesota, transportation improvement projects frequently require acquisition of right of way. The process used is referred to as eminent domain, and in general the government takes the property and is required to compensate the property owner a fair market value. The source of conflict of course is what is a […]
By Max Moreland, PE I recently made a trip to Copenhagen, Denmark. While I first and foremost want to let everyone know how well-travelled and impressive I am, I also wanted to reflect on some of the big differences between the transportation system in Copenhagen as compared to here in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Specifically, in regard […]
