Links: Molnau, a left-lane crackdown, India and more
Posted on January 11th, 2008 – 6:05 AMBy Roadguy
Roadguy doesn’t know if he’ll get around to writing a real post today — the last couple of days have left him with something of a blog hangover, and that’s on top of a head cold (and a lot of Sudafed). In the meantime, here are a few things to check out:
- Transportation harmony at the Capitol? Hardly; a legislative preview is here.
- Molnau has no plans to quit… An interview with the transportation commissioner is here.
- …and the Legislature might not fire her: Story here.
- A $206 fine for driving slowly in the left lane? Oklahoma wants you to keep right; a video via CNN is here. (Thanks to alert reader Jill for the link.)
- Light-rail crash-o-rama: If you didn’t see the link from alert reader Alex B. in yesterday’s comments, click here for a video of “Houston’s greatest hits.”
- Cars in India: New Delhi is adding 650 cars a day, and apparently all you have to do to get a license is start your car and drive it in a circle; a New York Times story is here. Relatedly, a story on a new super-cheap Indian car is here.
- A fresh start on transportation? That’s what the Worthington Daily Globe says Minnesota needs; an editorial is here.
24 Responses to "Links: Molnau, a left-lane crackdown, India and more"
How about a $206 fine for passing on the right? When I started driving (not quite back when the cars didn’t have mirrors on the right, and the rear windows were little ovals in a back wall), we NEVER passed on the right. Now, I can be driving over the limit, trying to move over to the exit lane, with my turn signal on, and the guys who think they have to go 75 through downtown Minneapolis are zipping up through my blind spot to pass me.
The Houston LRT vid was pretty humorous (in a twisted sort of way). I especially enjoyed the crash at the 1:30 mark where the driver makes a left turn in front of the train from a lane marked with a straight arrow and gigantic “ONLY”. *sigh*
I’m amazed at how many of those Houston Metro crashes were left turners. If you look closer, you can see that several of said vehicle drivers were in lanes marked “straight only”, meaning that they shouldn’t be trying to turn left in the first place.
As far as a passing-only lane goes, there are way too many left-hand entrances and exits to make it work in a metropolitan area (at least this one). Also, I have noticed repeatedly that when I do go to the left to make a pass, I get around the slower vehicle, but before I’ve had a chance to move back to the right “safely” (i.e. making sure I can see both headlights in my rear-view mirror), someone wanting to go even faster has swooped around me — they’re just to impatient.
That $2,500 Indian car is more than a little bit scary. What will adding millions of additional motorists do to gasoline prices in the US? $10 per gallon?
I wonder if Governor Pawlenty would find a quality public transportation system to be controversial then? (He is quoted as saying transit is controversial in the Transportation harmony story.) It’s ironic that the Governor wants to green himself by embracing widely popular renewable energy policy, but shows his true colors by blocking progress on almost as popular multi-modal transportation investments while about 1/2 of our carbon emissions come from the transportation sector.
Are you with Will Steger on climate change or not Governor Pawlenty? If you are, you need to sign a multi-modal comprehensive transportation bill.
I enjoyed your blog for quite some time, I however cannot continue to read it because of the way RSS is now handled. I read your blog via Google Reader and would read the whole entry but recently there has been a change in the way your blog is displayed on RSS. It seems that there is only a little teaser of a sentence or two and if you want to read the whole blog entry then you must click on the link and be redirected to the Star Tribune website. I don’t know if this is because of the recent update that Star Tribune did with there website and servers, or what the reasoning is behind this. Unfortunately Star Tribune’s web presence is getting weaker and weaker with the mismanagement it shows in relation to website design and content inclusion in articles. I am sad to say goodbye to your blog I will check back periodically to see if the RSS issue is worked out, I hope it is.
AMEN OKLAHOMA!!!!
Finally, a state that is fining people for driving that is both dangerous and a source of added congestion.
Maybe Minnesota will start enforcing Minn. Stat. 169.15 as well.
$206 fine for left-lane hogs? YESSSS!! Bring it on!!
Wow, in the Houston LRT “greatest Hits” comment thread someone else finally echoed my thoughts that MONORAIL is the answer, not huge, costly, space consuming, street traffic snarling(see Hiawatha Ave. in Mpls) LRT.
I would have also loved to see a monorail here in Minnesota… Instead of light rail. Keep it above ground level with skyway entrances… Would have been really cool. I was in vegas a couple years ago when I said how nice it would be to have the vegas style monorail here. Of course now that’s unlikely- although they could do it for the wash ave area still.
If you haven’t been to vegas- above ground monorail that connects a good number of the hotels on the vegas strip. And is 100% computer operated, so it always runs on time.
Apparently the deal with the Houston light rail is that there is some serious driver re-education going on, often in the form of a collision. Note that the situation has improved greatly since it’s opened, but still.
There are some obvious instances where people are either turning left when they shouldn’t (with plenty of signs to remind them of this). I’ve read that left turns on that particular stretch were never allowed, but that restriction was never enforced, thus people have no reason to pay attention to the rules.
Some of the other accidents in that video are just of people not looking, or not checking their blind spots. That’s just plain inattentive - that train isn’t exactly a Pinto.
Still waiting to see an example here in the Twin Cities of a “left lane hog” causing congestion.
G’luck enforcing it with all the left exits in this city.
Watched the CNN video and heard “the law says that drivers going under the speed limit must stay out of the left lane”.
Sounds like you can still get a ticket for speeding in the left lane.
Botski: do you spend any time at all on the freeways? If you don’t see a car in the left lane with others bunched up behind it and about a mile of open freeway in front of it every time you’re on the road you need to put down the cell/laptop/ipod and pay attention to your surroundings. These aren’t isolated incidents.
As for “all” the left-lane exits, give me some examples. There aren’t that many (that I’m aware of), and those that exist are well marked from my experiences, generally at least 3 miles in advance. And besides, they aren’t rocket science. If a left exit confounds you, you have no business on the roads.
I think what botski is saying is that congestion does not mean you can’t drive as fast as you like. Indeed, a really wide variance in speeds amongst cars on a roadway causes a great deal of congestion.
Everybody loves to trump up the freedom that cars give drivers, but they usually fail to mention the downsides of that freedom. Each individual acting in their own self interest (i.e. wanting to pass someone who’s driving reasonably fast in the left lane) can add up to a huge negative for the population as a whole.
Left lane exits I witness or use on a near daily basis:
94 westbound to 52/3/Lafayette/whatever
94 westbound to 35E southbound
35E southbound to 94 eastbound (I believe)
94 westbound to 280N
35W southbound to 62 eastbound (I believe)
I think you meant “94 EASTbound to 280N”, botski, but otherwise that’s a good partial list. There are several others.
I believe the 35W-to-62 situation is being corrected as part of the interchange reconstruction. At least I hope it is.
Alex, I agree to a certain extent, but why is it so hard for these people to just simply move over and let others who want to go faster by? To so many of them it is a conscious decision to not let people by. They go out of their way to be jerks. It’s just so unnecessary.
The left lane, everywhere I’ve been, has always been known as the “fast” lane, or in less congested areas the “passing” lane. That’s just the way it is, and it makes sense. Where practical, keep right except to pass. This mindset of intentionally holding up traffic in the left lane because they can needs to go.
Now, some people unwittingly block the left lane because they are oblivious to their surroundings, to the two dozen cars stacked up bumper to bumper behind them. That is a whole other issue that should be dealt with as well.
This whole thing is a safety issue. Like it or not, some people like to drive fast for whatever reason. It is not up to others to force others to conform to the speed limit. Forcing others to be delayed because you refuse to move over just infuriates the other drivers for no other reason than you just being stubborn. Rising tempers leads to riskier driving, which in turn needlessly creates hazardous situations involving road rage.
I’m not justifying road rage, I’m just saying it wouldn’t even come to that point if people just drove with more common sense and more importantly common courtesy. If people are swerving around you to pass on the right, or swerving across multiple lanes to get around on the right, right or wrong, like it or not, you are a hazard and you need to swallow your pride and move over.
It is just such a simple thing to do that would alleviate so much road rage, yet people in their self-righteousness can’t grasp this simple notion. That’s what’s so frustrating. One of those simple things that just would make such a big difference, but some go out of their way to knowingly and willingly make this an issue. They want to show the other driver “who’s boss”. It’s just ridiculous.
I know some will argue the same could be said for the person who wants to go faster, but it doesn’t hold water. The faster drivers aren’t asking slower drivers to match their speed, just move over, if only briefly, when another driver wants to pass. The situation only escalates when a stubborn driver refuses to do so. It is so avoidable.
Botski, I don’t count freeways splitting as left exits, a la 35E SB from EB 94, even though I suppose technically they are, even though they’re not really “exits”, per se. Not the best way of doing things, but yet another example of our planner’s penchant for “Commons”. In that particular interchange space was a big issue. Very tight quarters.
A good example of a left exit you mentioned is 35W SB to 62 EB, but even that has its own exit only lane. That will indeed be fixed during the crosstown makeover. It will still be a left exit off of the flyover, but you will exit the mainline to the right before flying over 35W to reach EB 62. That is common on flyover ramps.
But again, left exits aren’t the worst thing in the world to navigate. If you are paying attention, they shouldn’t sneak up on you. When I am in a strange city and unsure of the exit ahead, I stay in the middle lane to be prepared. If you know there is a left exit coming you can still stay in the middle lane until reasonably close to the exit if you aren’t comfortable going with the left lane flow.
“Each individual acting in their own self interest… …can add up to a huge negative for the population as a whole.
”
In my opinion, that statement sums up the transportation problem right there. It isn’t banning anything, it isn’t just building cars that drive themselves, it isn’t building 20-lane superfreeways or ramps 30 stories in the air. (Are there parachutes for flyovers?)
But trying to tell everyone to get along just isn’t cool and sexy around here. Now, if a tough Texas trucker can ’share the road’ (Please see yesterday’s RG entry, then why can’t there be a campaign to boost morale in Minnesota a little, too?
Morg says: “The faster drivers aren’t asking slower drivers to match their speed, just move over, if only briefly, when another driver wants to pass. ”
There are another group of people who are such poor drivers, they drive the left lane so they don’t have to deal with cars entering and exiting. Going north bound on 35W - from the former bridge to highway 36 - is a prime area where the incompetents ‘park’ in the left lane. I sometimes flash my highs - but I guess they don’t use the rear view mirror either.
Unfortunately it wasn’t possible to adequately serve traffic and get rid of all the left exits while keeping the scale of the project under control. So design compromises were made. When it’s done they’ll be two left exits, from MN 62 east to I-35W north, and from Mn 62 west to I-35W south. That’s down from two left exits and two left entrances so I guess it’s an improvement.
BTW, Roadguy hasn’t mentioned it but theres an article about how Scott County being proactive at getting roads built. After sucess after decades of lobbying to get the new Ferry Bridge and Shakopee bypass built, they’re looking at concepts for MN 13 and what used to be MN 101. The paper talks about “high speed flyovers for all but left turns which will be signalized” so I can’t exactly visualize what they have in mind. One possibility is a directional interchange with intersecting ramps, like the one in Duluth.on
Morg, would your anger subside if you knew the left lane hogs weren’t purposely, maliciously trying to piss you off?
Would you support a law that tickets people going slower in the left lane as well as anyone going over the speed limit in the left lane be ticketed for speeding? Sounds fair to me.
The Houston light rail story illustrates some of the dangers of street-running rail systems. There is little separating the trains from traffic, which leads to much of the conflict observed here, particularly during left turns.
Note that the Hiawatha Line has had 5 fatalities since 2004, and this is with gate arms at each signalized intersection. The Houston Line has been around about as long and has had well over 100 crashes. I do not know exactly how many of these have been fatal. However, it suggests that there is something more going on in Houston than just stupid drivers.
Consider the benefit/cost tradeoffs that could have been made here. Gate arms, whistles, and other safety equipment are cheap relative to other components of rail systems. Compare the expenditures on these elements to the resulting costs in terms of fatality, personal injury, and property damage. Granted, this is all hindsight, but it seems like a no-brainer.
Interesting comments on those who drive in the left lane. For those who do not get over, you are causing a dangerous situation that forces people to pass on the right. I understand that it can sometimes be difficult to stay out of the left lane in the city, but it is the law to let faster moving traffic by. As far as I know it is also the law that those driving in the left lane (or any lane for that matter) who are going over the speed limit can get a ticket. For those that feel they have a right to try and control faster drivers by driving in the left lane on purpose please note the following:
1. You are not able to legally enforce the law even if you “think” that someone is speeding.
2. You are causing a dangerous situation by not yielding to faster drivers and forcing them to pass on the right.
3. You are contribuitng to further road rage situtions which is quite simply childish.
