07-11-2022, 03:59 PM
(07-11-2022, 10:02 AM)ijmorlan Wrote:(07-11-2022, 09:10 AM)danbrotherston Wrote: Haha! Shocking that I of all people forgot about Frederick and Benton.
Also, Homer-Watson north of Ottawa.
And I mean, this list is only the clearly overbuilt roads...like roads which would see LOS A or B when reduced to 2 lanes. This is to say nothing of slightly more radical opinions like, not using only LOS to measure congestion, or *gasp* arguing that completely free flowing traffic 100% of the time achieved by having more road capacity than the free market will consume even when priced at 0 dollars should not necessarily be a societal goal.
This is the bit I really don’t get. I understand someone thinking that cars are the best and we need to cater to people who want to drive them; but I don’t understand a so-called “engineer” who deliberately overbuilds things at massive expense, thus incurring further increased maintenance expenses. I mean the first person is wrong, but the second person just makes no sense at all.
Because those engineers were taught that such road s were *not* over engineered. They were taught that it was *necessary* to be that big and that wide and that straight for roads to be safe, and all across North America the standards to which they must adhere to were written in that same era even though anybody with an ounce of keeping current knows how much stuff like that has been shown to do the opposite of keep things safe.
Even if an civil engineer is young enough to have been taught the new data, they still have to adhere to those standards or what they design will just get thrown in the trash. Also, plenty of them are just unimaginative pencil pushers who just accept what the manuals say without questioning why they haven't been updated with the new data, which is kinda odd because engineering is supposed to be a culture of continuous learning for your entire career, why you need to under go regular testing to keep your certifications "current".