Mike on Traffic

Prezi - Engineers/Architects/Planners best Presentation Software

My friend Chris Chromy told me about a software package called Prezi.  It is basically a giant whiteboard where you put all of the information from your typical PowerPoint slides.  You can also throw on drawings, videos, reports, and any other items you think you might get asked about in a meeting.  It makes it amazingly easy to bounce between graphics and allows you to zoom/pan around so you can hone in right at the detail you need to talk about.  So if a neighbor asks a question about there house, you can zoom right into there house.

No more scrolling back 25 slides in your presentation to answer a question.  Check out a rough traffic study presentation I put together in about 30 minutes here.

Rethinking Level of Service

The current issue of the Institute of Transportation Engineers' Journal had an interesting article in it about the City of Pasadena, California moving towards a Multi-Modal Level of Service framework for making decisions.  Pasadena recognizes that a vibrant downtown with good transit, pedestrian, and bicycle mobility will have suboptimal vehicle mobility.  This was certainly my experience in Manhattan - vehicle traffic was quite congested, but there were a tremendous amount of people getting from A to B in a reasonable amount of time because of the subways and the bicycle/pedestrian systems. 

No one would argue Manhattan needs to tear down buildings to make bigger roads - in fact they're moving the other way by turning streets into pedestrian/bicycle malls and adding bike lanes onto streets that used to be dominated by vehicles.

The article spoke about Pasadena's framework of how they make decisions.  Fred Dock and Mike Bagheri from the City were kind enough to respond to an email from me and provide a couple of initial project specific studies where they've implemented Multi-modal Level of Service (MMLOS) standards to assess transportation conditions instead of just looking at the standard vehicle Level of Service. They're early in the process and I'm hoping to see more examples of how communities are implementing MMLOS to move away from an auto-dominated infrastructure system.

The 2010 Highway Capacity Manual has many chapters related towards MMLOS - this is the way our industry is heading, but it is a slow moving tanker that needs to be turned.  Anyone out there have good project specific Transportation Impact Studies that implement MMLOS?  I'd love to share examples - maybe we can get the slow moving tanker turning a little faster.

Demograghy and Traffic

I attended the NCITE luncheon yesterday where Tom Gillaspy (MN State Demographer) was the featured speaker.  It was very scary and informative.  The scary/informative part (true for both the United States and Minnesota) -

• The babyboom generation (began in 1946) is magically turning 65 (age when they can collect Medicare in addition to Social Security).  Huge wave of retirements coming.
• The current twenty-somethings (GenY) strongly prefer dense/urban living.
• The above factors are driving a resurgance of inner-city/first ring suburbs.
• GenX (me) is the smallest generation out there.  Retiring babyboomers plus small generation of forty-somethings means potentially huge shortage in leadership.

Scary slide (because it leads to Medicaid type services totally engulfing Federal and State spending on our current trajectory - this slide is for MN, but Tom says MN is very representative of U.S.):

What does this aging population/change in demographics mean for traffic engineers?

• Need to be better with signage (size, location, etc.).
• Need to design facilities keeping longer reaction times in mind.
• Peak hour traffic will plateau or decrease, but non-peak traffic will go up.
• Transit plays a much bigger role moving forward.

 

 

Streets.MN Launches

Happy to report Streets.mn has launched.  I'm a bystander on this one, but a lot of the Minnesota based transportation planning bloggers are taking part.  Including Nate Hood, who started working with me last fall. Here's the mission statement from the site -

"Streets.MN explores the pressing issues facing our cities, towns, neighborhoods and the places in between.  Our mission is to expand and enhance the conversation about transportation and land use through research and informed commentary.  Streets.MN was formed because we think transportation and land use news and information in Minnesota can be done better."

 

Utah DOT's Innovative ThrUTurn Intersection

The Utah state DOT has come up with a creative solution to fix a congested intersection and an even more creative video to explain the problem/solution.  I am very impressed with the video below (prepared by the transportation engineering/planning firm Avenue Consultants).  Check out the project website for more information on the through/u-turn project.  For a lot more background on the ThrUTurn concept, check out http://thruturnintersections.org/. 

Photos/Observations of Traffic from New York City

A few weeks ago Jane and I were lucky enough to spend a long weekend on Manhatten (thanks to our folks for watching our kids!).  Go to flickr (here) for a bunch of photos I took of intersections and bike/pedestrian treatments (and yes I deserve some grief for being a geeky traffic engineer).  I would have liked these photos when I was working on the painted bumpouts in Pine Island, MN - feel free to use them.

Several traffic observations:

• Holy cow that's a lot of bike/ped vehicle traffic mixing.  New Yorkers eek every ounce out of the system by jaywalking, merging late, running yellow lights.
• We only saw one fender bender.  I thought our cabbie was going to get us into a couple just getting to our hotel from JFK.
• The signal systems are tiny.  They must be a lot cheaper than the systems in Minnesota.
• Signal controllers look quite old and I heard the clunking of a mechanical controller.  The system is so saturated, I really don't know if operations could be much improved with updated signal controller technology.
• A lot of innovative treatments (see photos) to improve life for bikes and peds.
• We used the subway a lot and loved it.  Amazing how crowded they were even on a weekend.
• Should have warn a pedometer.  We were on our feet for 10+ hours a day.
• And yes, I walked all of the way across the Brooklyn Bridge and back (I don't know how any civil engineer could skip that).
• Kind of hard to talk about congestion in Minnesota now that I've experienced New York City.
• Non-traffic but worth noting - The 9/11 Memorial was amazingly well done.

 

App for Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices

TrafData has come out with another interesting App for the traffic engineering community.  It looks like an easy way to move through the FHWA's Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices.  Below is a video from Gary Shoup about the new product.  At $1.99 it's a steal.  This drill down method on an iPhone or iPad is so much easier than wading through pdfs.

I don't think I'm going to buy it though.  Minnesota has it's own version of the MUTCD and I'd be leary of grabbing one of the few items that isn't consistent with the Federal version. 

There are a lot of resources out there that would be very handy to have on my iPhone.  Here are a few I can think of:

• MnDOT's Temporary Traffic Control Zones Layouts Field Manual
• The Highway Capacity Manual
• MnDOT's Traffic Safety Handbook
• Actually - all standard specifications, standard plates, and design manuals.

And a couple of tools that would be useful:

• A type of quick screen menu for building and then conducting surveys.
• I don't think the iPhone's gps is accurate enough, but I'd love to be able to do accurate travel time runs with it.

Intersection Spacing - Roundabout/Dual Left Lane Integration

Landform is working on an updated master plan for The Cor (a large mixed use/neo-traditional development in Ramsey, MN that has struggled due to the economic downturn).  They brought me in to update some traffic forecasts which Mark Lenters (Ourston Roundabout Engineering) can use to redesign a key intersection in the development. 

How close can an intersection controlled with a roundabout be to another intersection?  Based on operational experience around the country, much closer than if the intersection was controlled with a traffic signal - often a couple hundred feet is all the spacing that's needed.  This is pretty well established and why Mark was brought in for this project, but how close can a roundabout controlled intersection be to a traffic signal controlled intersection that has dual left turn lanes at it?

I raised this question to Mark early in the project and he's been kind enough to share the real world example (below) at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah.  There's only 200 feet between the roundabout and University Parkway.  I haven't found any references to how well this area operates, but it's a creative example of putting a roundabout close to a large intersection.

Hay Days 2011 Traffic Management/Parking

Hay Days (the largest snowmobile event in the world) is coming up this weekend in Sunrise Township, Minnesota.  Last year I posted about the traffic mess around Hay Days, having worked on the initial traffic impact study but not the traffic management plan.  This year the Sno Barons Snowmobile Club (hosts of Hay Days) brought me in to help with the traffic management plan.

Last year, the problems were cause by a perfect storm.  Literally - they had problems at the site driveways due to rain and big trailers getting stuck.  They've really beefed up the driveways to withstand rain and they've also changed how vendors access the site.

From my perspective though, things will be greatly improved this year because more parking lots have been added (map here).  Instead of a single lot there will be four big lots that triple the amount of available parking.  These lots provide many more options for visitors. 

We're placing signs at every key junction near the site pointing in the directions of available parking.  If one direction is jammed up, follow the signs to an alternate parking lot.

I'm not able to make it to Hay Days because I'll be at my grandma's 95th birthday party.  I'd love to get feedback from those who attended so we can make next year even better!

 

Minnesota State Fair - Traffic Success

My family joined 101,653 of our neighbors at the Minnesota State Fair on Thursday (opening day).  There is a lot of construction happening, but I haven't heard much grumbling about traffic around the fair.  Amazing given the large attendance at the fair.

The state fair draws 100,000 to 200,000 per day with the record attendance being set at 234,384 people on Saturday, September 4, 2010.  Over the twlve days of the fair, they draw approximately 1.7 million people.  To put this in perspective, Ohio State (NCAA leader in attendance) averaged about 104,000 attendees per football game.  The fair does more than that every day for almost two weeks!

I've only missed going to the fair once in my 38 years on this planet.  When I was a kid...  traffic really was a mess at the fair.  Over the last ten years, the staff at the fair have done an amazing job of working in transit and bicycling.  Parking on the fair grounds can still be a challenge, but there are a lot of stress free alternatives.

We took a bus from the University of Minnesota parking lot by TCF Bank Stadium at 8:45.  We waited about a minute and a half for a free coach bus to pull up.  Then we had a comfortable five minute ride on the dedicated transitway to the fair.  The return trip at 2:30 in the afternoon was equally efficient (and the air conditioning was greatly appreciated).

If you go to the fair, the U of MN park and ride lot is a slick way to go since it has a dedicated transitway.

If you ever work on a traffic management plan for a large event, check out the state fair's website to see how they've integrated transit.  They're a great case study.  And as long as you don't call them in August, I've heard the fair staff are very happy to talk to folks about their system.