Crosstown traffic

You jump in front of my car when you,
you know all the time
Ninty miles an hour, girl, is the speed I drive
You tell me it's alright, you don't mind a little pain
You say you just want me to take you for a drive

You're just like crosstown traffic
So hard to get through to you
Crosstown traffic
I don't need to run over you
Crosstown traffic
All you do is slow me down
And I'm tryin' to get on the other side of town

I'm not the only soul who's accused of hit and run
Tire tracks all across your back
I can, I can see you had your fun
But, darlin' can't you see my signals turn from green to red
And with you I can see a traffic jam straight up ahead

You're just like crosstown traffic
So hard to get through to you
Crosstown traffic
I don't need to run over you
Crosstown traffic
All you do is slow me down
And I got better things on the other side of town

Jimmy Hendrix, November 21, 1968

One sign I haven't found in Australia

The above sign is quite common in Europe. Most of the European countries have it and in Greece the official name translates to “Start of residential area marked as traffic calm”. 

In Netherlands is called “woonerf” which is the most used international term from the Dutch words wonen 'reside' + erf 'premises, ground'.

Historically this scheme originates from Holland. The Dutch government developed traffic regulations for woonerfs in 1976, though the first woonerf was built in the city of Delft a decade earlier.

In the UK they have the “Home Zone” sign which is much similar. 

In Australia we have the 10 Km Shared Zone which is a quite different in colours. 

 Maybe we need to rethink about not only the sign design but the sign usage as well.

Road safety: A tale with a dragon with big teeth.

The other day I was discussing some road safety issues and a treatment with the name of “Dragon’s teeth” was mentioned. To tell you the truth it was the first time that I heard of the term so I asked myself “What are Dragon’s teeth?”

By the term Dragon’s teeth in traffic management we mean one of the following three things:

1. Triangular road markings that have been installed at the entry points to all 10,000 school zones across New South Wales up to 32.5 metres at the start of each school zone, to improve road safety for students. The Dragon’s Teeth markings further increase the visibility of school zones for motorists and provide a constant reinforcement to keep to the 40 km/h speed limit around schools.

 

2. Calibrated edge and centre line markings used as a secondary method to check vehicle's speed manually by calculating its speed between them when using a road side speed camera.

3. Road surface mechanical devices used to enforce one way traffic. They are mostly used on private road.

Diverging diamond interchange- Traffic engineering innovation

For this week I will take a break from my commuter thoughts and comments and present a small video that I found with some help from Institute of Transportation Engineers newsletter about Diverging Diamond Interchange (DDI)
Wikipedia defines  diverging diamond interchange as a rare form of diamond interchange in which the two directions of traffic on the non-freeway road cross to the opposite side on both sides of the bridge at the freeway. It is unusual in that it requires traffic on the freeway overpass (or underpass) to briefly drive on the opposite side of the road from what they are accustomed.

For many years traffic engineers were only concerned on how to find ways to reduce congestion and provide better traffic flow. Network capacity was in the heart of their research and providing more lanes and better intersections was a priority. But as years past by, everyone realised that providing more road resulted on ending up with more traffic. So over the last decade the research shifted to network efficiency. One of the latest attempts is this new type of  interchange that was was listed by Popular Science magazine as one of the best innovations in 2009 (engineering category) in "Best of What's New 2009".

A picture is worth a thousand words so this 5.15 minute video is worth almost 7.5 million words (or almost 19 million words depending on video quality). :-)

Commuting from Gold Coast to Brisbane - Part 2. What people do?

My last post was about my impressions of commuting by train from Gold Coast to Brisbane. It is indeed very slow and uncomfortable and that is why the majority of people do not use it. But there is a big number of people living in the Gold Coast and working in Brisbane and a not so big but still significant number of people commuting the other way. So what all these people do every day?

Well I suppose for the people living in Brisbane and working in Gold Coast is fairly easy. They drive each day through the M1 Motorway and find a relatively easy and cheap parking spot in Gold Coast.

But how about people from Gold Coast working in Brisbane? Here is what they do:

First option: They drive to Brisbane but not to the CBD because of the very expensive parking. Instead they drive just outside the limits of the traffic control areas and try to find a free on street parking space.

The most popular areas for this are: Lower West End and Highgate Hill, Buranda, Stones Corner, Norman Park, Coorparoo.

Second option: They drive to one of the many park and ride spaces that Citytrain provides in the suburbs and then take the train. Popular Southeast stations for park’n’ride:

Fairfeild, Yeronga, Yeerongpilly, Moorooka and some Northeast stations like Buranda, Coorparoo and Norman Park.

Third option: They drive to different inner suburbs and then park illegally wherever they think they have better chances of not getting fined.

Of course there are quite a few other options that people follow in order to move from their place of living to the place of work.

But of course all these options are not viable sustainable transportation. They create lots of troubles to people on those Brisbane suburbs and at the end of the day they don’t save that much time and money for commuters.

Commuting by train Gold Coast to Brisbane. Captain Slow is on the driver’s seat

Having to commute every day from Gold Coast to Brisbane I experience first hand the good and the bad of commuting by train. First let me give you some useful data:

The distance from Surfers Paradise to Brisbane CBD is around 77 kilometres and driving through the M1 motorway or as they call it Pacific motorway will take you less than an hour. That is even in peek hours but not when you run onto a road accident that is quite common in M1 motorway which is very heavy on traffic and is considered one of the most dangerous highways in Australia regarding accidents. In those cases total travel time might be as long as two and a half hours.  Plus if you go by car in Brisbane city centre then you have to pay a small fortune every month for parking.

So this is a great opportunity to develop the  sustainable and environmental friendly solution of train commuting. But unfortunately train is not that popular in South East Queensland. And if this is not the case for the people living here, it certainly is the case for the decision makers. And let me explain this:

The rail line that connects Gold Coast (in general and not Surfers Paradise) with Brisbane City Centre is almost 90 kilometres long making a journey from Surfers Paradise to Brisbane a total of one hour and a half.

  That is about 20 minutes by car to Nerang Station -where fortunately there is a free commuter parking- and then 70 minutes from there to Central Station in Brisbane. If we consider the rail distance from Nerang Station to Brisbane Central Station is 75,9 kilometres, that makes the average train speed 65 kilometres per hour. Did you say slow? Actually it is slow,  regarding all train standards and not just highspeed rail. 

But I am afraid that is not the only drawback keeping commuters away from the Gold Coast train. The train is not comfortable at all; The seats are like the ones that you expect from a metro train and not from a suburban train not to mention an intercity train. Certainly if you want to catch an early morning snooze or a late afternoon nap then you must do that on a sitting straight position with the fear of banging your head somewhere.

"Ok I can not sleep but can I use this time to work in my laptop?"  Bad luck again. No tables at all and not enough space to have it even on your lap. 

"How about wireless internet connection?" Only a small number of the trains have that and not in every car. And when you are lucky enough to be in one of those then there is a time limit and a limit in what you can access. So, no youtube videos or other streaming media.

But even you are someone that does not care for all this and you just enjoy reading a good book during trip time then you should take care where you board the train. Almost all trains during the peak hours run full so for the most part of the trip there are a lot of standing passengers. Add to that that the trip frequency is not good having only 3 trains from Gold Coast between 7-8 am and only 5 trains between 7-9 am. 

In one of my next posts I will write about what people commuting from Gold Coast to Brisbane do and what they can do with a little help from state government and the two city councils.

Good news for my work but not so good news for my blog.

Moving to Australia from Greece a few months ago I found my self in the not familiar position of applying for a job and especially doing it in another country. But searching and waiting period is over as now I am employed at the biggest city council in Australia.

That is surely good news for me since working in traffic and transport issues for a city so high up the global city hierarchy is a big challenge. Having the opportunity to help in the effort to improve people’s every day life or to contribute in developing policies and strategies to enhance city’s sustainable mobility is a great honor and at the same time responsibility.

I am afraid that starting work in a daily basis is bad news for my blog since my free time is considerably minimised. I must admit that I was never a consistent bloger even at times that I had more time available. But …

I will do my best to continue this blog and find the time and good mood to keep writing about interesting aspects of traffic and transport always from a sustainable point of view.