Month: February 2011

By Alexandra Seltzer
JUPITER — It could be at least a week before a decision is made on whether to charge the driver who struck and killed a Boca Raton firefighter, Jupiter police Sgt. Scott Pascarella said.
Myron Umbel, 66, hit John Wilson with his Chevy Trailblazer Monday morning while Umbel was turning east on Indiantown Road. Umbel lives part-time in Jupiter and is a permanent resident in Maryland, Pascarella said.
Wilson, 50, of Jupiter, was riding his bicycle in the crosswalk while trying to cross the intersection of Indiantown Road and Maplewood Drive when he was struck by Umbel’s vehicle.
Wilson was flown to St. Mary’s Medical Center in West Palm Beach, and died shortly after arriving.
…
Continue reading “MD Motorist hits FL Cyclist”

BY BRUCE SICELOFF – Staff Writer, New Observer
RALEIGH — David N. Cox says he was merely exercising his right to petition the government, but a state Department of Transportation official has raised allegations that Cox committed a misdemeanor: practicing engineering without a license.
Cox and his North Raleigh neighbors are lobbying city and state officials to add traffic signals at two intersections as part of a planned widening of Falls of Neuse Road.
After an engineering consultant hired by the city said that the signals were not needed, Cox and the North Raleigh Coalition of Homeowners’ Associations responded with a sophisticated analysis of their own.
Quantcast
The eight-page document with maps, diagrams and traffic projections was offered to buttress their contention that signals will be needed at the Falls of Neuse at Coolmore Drive intersection and where the road meets Tabriz Point / Lake Villa Way.
It did not persuade Kevin Lacy, chief traffic engineer for the state DOT, to change his mind about the project. Instead, Lacy called on a state licensing agency, the N.C. Board of Examiners for Engineers and Surveyors, to investigate Cox.
Cox says Lacy is trying to squelch dissent.
"All we ever tried to do was express our view about this," said Cox, a computer scientist. "We never expected something like this. We think it’s wrong. We’re just trying to make our neighborhood safe."
Lacy said his complaint "was not an accusation" against Cox.
"I’m not trying to hush him up," Lacy said.
Cox has not been accused of claiming that he is an engineer. But Lacy says he filed the complaint because the report "appears to be engineering-level work" by someone who is not licensed as a professional engineer.
…
Andrew L. Ritter, executive director of the engineers licensing board, said it will take three or four months to investigate Lacy’s allegation against Cox. He said there is a potential for violation if DOT and the public were misled by "engineering-quality work"- even if the authors did not claim to be engineers.
…
Continue reading “Citizen activist gets accused of practicing engineering without a license”

[B’ Spokes: It amazes me how much drivers complain about automated speed enforcement with a 12mph over the speed limit cushion as it seems to be motorists "right" to do 15mph over the speed limit. Yet a cyclists doing 6mph over the speed limit needs to be enforced and I wounder how many motorists have they ticketed for doing "just" 6mph over the speed limit? How many crackdowns on road safety have there been after motorists hit and run, especially after they caught the guy? I find such double standards extremely appalling.]
***********************************************************
By Michael Lee Pope
It may have been a first in the annals of law enforcement for the city, according to the Alexandria Police Department. Earlier this month, a city cop issued a speeding ticket to a bicyclist who was clocked going 31 in a 25. Alexandria Police Department spokeswoman Ashley Hildebrandt says the enforcement measure is part of a stepped-up effort to crack down on bicyclists flouting the laws on the streets of Old Town.
"We’ve been receiving a lot of complaints," said Hildebrandt. "So we’ve increased enforcement."
The unusual speeding ticket comes on the heels of another incident in which a bicyclist hit a pedestrian and tried to flee the scene. But a band of citizens chased the hit-and-run biker down and detained him until authorities showed up to arrest him. Hildebrandt says that police officials are hoping the new increased wintertime enforcement will pay off when more bicyclists hit the road this spring.
"We’re hoping the word will get out," she said. "Maybe we’ll see fewer violations."
Continue reading “Biking in the Fast Lane”

A hearing was held in DC on this topic and in so many ways, we have the same issues in Baltimore.

Struck in DC from Jay Mallin on Vimeo.

More details from TheWashCycle

This podcast gets into some very important issues around cost benefit analysis and why they are a fraud. And why investing in infrastructure is like a Ponzi scheme, many of our “investments” done over 40 years ago are coming due so we have to pay for both replacing current infrastructure and creating new infrastructure.

From his conclusion:

… the way we spend money today on infrastructure responds to our preferred lifestyle choices but provides no financial return. We are spending enormous amounts of money on a American way of life that cannot be financially sustained. At this point in our development nearly every project we do in this model costs us vastly more money then we will ever recoup in added tax revenues. Our economy is stifled and because of our extraordinary efforts we can’t revive it, largely because we are choking on a infrastructure platform that sucks wealth instead of creates it. We have used private and public leverage and a variety of perverse incentives to create thousands of local Ponzi schemes, each providing the illusion of growth and prosperity, it is not real and we as a people inherently know that. Despite our efforts to deny reality by using bogus analysis that convert nominal social benefits into monumental but fictitious financial gains, the emperor has no clothes. But understand the emperor is not the city of Staples, it is not local economic professionals, engineers and planners or even politicians, the emperor that has no clothes is us, the American people. It is we who value the 45 seconds saved on a wider road over the money to invest in our schools, it is we who value the ability to live far away from where we work, more then we value having parks and quality public spaces, it is we who want invest in a platform for easy growth in strip malls and big boxes rather the configure our communities for a slow but far more resilient economy. It is we who value our private space more then building communities we want to be part of. And it is we who do not want to pay the enormous costs associated with our choices. …

Some of the figures presented:

Project $9.85M
Total benefit $55M
Time Saving $47M for a couple of minutes
Distance Saving $6.5M for 3/4 of a mile
Savings 94,000 gallons of gasoline (Government loses $632K)
Maintenance $8k per year ($780K, $45K per year just for resurfacing)

$5M interests costs, not accounted for.

I would like to put my spin on the time savings issue, there is no doubt that some would be willing to pay a $5 toll to get to work 15 minutes faster but how many would like being required to pay an additional $10 a day just to get to and from work, even if they saved 15 minutes each way? How many would support tolls in both directions in order to go shopping, picking up the kids or a doctor visit? Assigning a top dollar amount based on what some would pay sometimes is not the same as what all would pay all the time. The society benefit should represent what we as a society would be willing to pay for and these figures come no where near that. If anything this cost benefit analysis is saying put a toll on this overpass and the government could make $47M and still save the public $6.5M but the reality probably is that so few would actually be willing to pay a toll that such a project would not be worth doing as a toll bridge. That is the discontinuity here, there is no real monetary benefit and the true social benefit as perceived by society is not anywhere near the costs of the bridge.

Time and time again I am overwhelmed by the lack of honesty in the road/traffic engineering professions. We need these professions to adopt new tools and metrics that reflect the reality and economics of the times.
Continue reading “We are not seeing results we were promised with infrastructure “