Seemingly impervious to the uptake of knowledge -- Henry Rollins.
Friday, December 02, 2005
Traffic
Neither my wife nor I are in any sense traffic engineers, but on a casual walk this morning, we talked at length about turbulence in traffic flow, traffic calming techniques, patterns of traffic, and roadside-area design.
Well, obviously my fascination is of the aficionado kind. I can stop thinking about it when something more interesting comes along, not have to stick with it like people who really know what they're talking about. But on the other hand, I think it's an inherently interesting, sometimes faascinating subject. I look at some of the intersections around here and think ah, another PennDOT piece of -- well, not well done. And then I think okay, you're so smart, how would you have done it? Which makes me think a bit about the problems they were trying to solve, and why roads work the way they do. It doesn't usually make me think gee, those folks at PennDOT know what they're doing, but its a fun exercise nonetheless. If there were a casual guide to how that kind of analysis is done -- say, one of the kind of articles that the New Yorker sometimes runs -- I'd read it.
3 comments:
I'm glad someone else thinks so too! :)
Well, obviously my fascination is of the aficionado kind. I can stop thinking about it when something more interesting comes along, not have to stick with it like people who really know what they're talking about. But on the other hand, I think it's an inherently interesting, sometimes faascinating subject. I look at some of the intersections around here and think ah, another PennDOT piece of -- well, not well done. And then I think okay, you're so smart, how would you have done it? Which makes me think a bit about the problems they were trying to solve, and why roads work the way they do. It doesn't usually make me think gee, those folks at PennDOT know what they're doing, but its a fun exercise nonetheless. If there were a casual guide to how that kind of analysis is done -- say, one of the kind of articles that the New Yorker sometimes runs -- I'd read it.
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