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Originally Posted by Yahoo
Obviously you need to quit just looking at tables and rules and add common sense into it too. Stand back when you're done your design and take 10 seconds to imagine what could go wrong.
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Considering the people designing these roads probably drive more than anyone on this forum? Yeah, I think they look outside the tables a bit. The amount of reviews a project goes through is sometimes ridiculous, as well. Wonder where all your tax dollars to employ these people go? So they can harass designers to make sure everything is right. They can pick out some pretty minute details, let me tell you.
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Originally Posted by Yahoo
A little common sense and you can make a massive improvement in transportation. For example the citizens and businesses were frustrated by the awful conditions on our roads sometimes days or even weeks after a snow storm. The fix was easy and obvious - to everyone except for the experts responsible. "Experts" that couldn't understand the economic and life quality impact of icy roads - let alone the safety disaster that was being ignored.
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A little common sense also says that people need to drive to the conditions more often. This sadly doesn't happen nearly enough. There is no snow clearing budget in the world that can do what you're suggesting. Speaking of common sense, some of the people who review our stuff don't have design experience, only real life experience. Their suggestions are just as valuable as an engineer's or safety auditor's suggestions.
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Originally Posted by Yahoo
Stoney Trail NW. Overpasses and interchanges were announced at every intersection - all except on one. That was Nose Hill drive - where a death occurred almost immediately when the road was opened. You have a high speed interchange with traffic lights at the base of a steep hill! There is also a curve at the interchange which made for an almost blind left hand turn (depending on visibility and traffic). It cost at least 1 more person her life. If safety was a priority the most dangerous intersection would have been the first to receive an interchange. Instead it was the last interchange to be built on Stoney.
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I would suggest Nose Hill was a special case, but I doubt you'd care. To me, it appears that they were looking at doing Nose Hill when they twinned the Bow River bridge. To do it first would mean some other desperately needed interchanges on Stoney would have been left. I'm sure if they did Nose Hill, the City and the residents of the NW would be bitterly complaining about accidents at Crowchild Trail. It's nice that they went ahead with Nose Hill anyway, but it's not a great situation for Stoney until they twin the Bow River bridge.
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Originally Posted by Yahoo
The fact is that there are lists of the most dangerous intersections and roads - and quite often they are ignored for decades even if something as simple as a concrete barrier could resolve the death count. (and does anyone ask why the barrier wasn't there to begin with?)
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If a concrete barrier was the simple answer, then why is it not done immediately? Sometimes, even those magic barriers of yours can be the cause injuries, deaths, and more issues for the road. It's not that simple, sadly. It could be something like there is already a plan to improve the intersection, but it doesn't have funding. It could be a land owner fighting the City and preventing the project from happening. It could be that the intersection improvement is tied to a much larger project that needs to happen at the same time. Sometimes we get lucky and the City pushes through a big project even when it's not immediately necessary (Airport Tunnel), and many times we don't.
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Originally Posted by Yahoo
When there is a death on a construction site it's a big deal. When there is an aircraft crash it's a big deal. When there is a car accident it's simply "call an ambulance or hearse, call insurance and remove the wreckage". There is no inquest or anything more than fleeting action taken to prevent the identical accident now is there?
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Have you been involved in a serious accident or traffic fatality before? I don't know if you're aware of the sometimes multi-year legal battles that are waged over car accidents you've never heard about. These aren't "sexy" enough to get coverage in the news (which is where you're getting the "big deal" stories from), but many times the government is called upon to prove their design wasn't the reason for the death, and the engineer of record has to testify against Insurance Company lawyers. Happens much more often than you think.
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Originally Posted by Yahoo
I understand money is often the deciding factor. We can't bubble wrap the world - but I stand by what I've said. Often times safety budgets are behind art, landscaping, and material choice - simply because the designer would sooner build a copper roof on an LRT station then spend that money on another pedestrian overpass.
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Safety budgets are incorporated into the roads. I suppose if you look at the tender package of a road project and price out just the safety features, you can put a price on it, and I can guarantee you it will beat out Art, Landscaping or any other aesthetic feature in cost. I suppose if you removed every copper roof on WLRT, you MIGHT be able to afford a really cheap pedestrian bridge. Maybe.
Anyway, if you go to Alberta Transportation's site and look at their Highway Design Guide, you can see a clear Cost/Risk analysis tool at work, and yes...they put a price on your car, and your body. Chapter G, Appendix A and B have examples. How much does it cost the government every time a car crashes? When someone dies? How much will cost to install a median barrier based on the probability of a fatality occuring in this stretch of road? A road user's life is reduced to numbers.
It may not sound friendly or nice, but it's the reason North America in general enjoys some of the best roads. We have these analysis tools, and then are told to exceed them whenever possible (which happens regularly in the flat prairies). You'll be hard pressed to find a project built in the last decade or so that uses minimum standards for something.
During the design of Stoney Trail, I can recall a few things being added to design standards for additional safety: Taller concrete barriers on bridges to prevent overturning trucks from leaving the road, additional wrong way signs on ramps and the mainline at each interchange, wider shoulders on ramps, the highest test level barriers had to be used in all cases along the roadway, the minimum retro-reflectivity of all signs was increased to the newest standard (diamond grade), and the clear zone was increased. All these changes added millions of dollars to the cost of Stoney, and most were added because someone asked "what if this happens?" (Correct me if I missed anything, Jimmy Z.
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What I'm trying to get at is your view that these tables and standards are flawed or unsafe is incorrect. If the warrant says there should be a barrier immediately, they would put a barrier immediately. Some very far edge cases are considered in design frequently, and those cases are the designers thinking about real world examples, not just the numbers.
If it's something that is "plainly obvious", there's a good chance it's already been documented and they probably have a plan to fix or remedy the problem spot. They do bow to public pressure often though, I can agree on that. Highway 63 really got moving this year, didn't it?