Mailbag: Roundabout links, subway thoughts, and will Roadguy appear on cable?
Posted on January 6th, 2009 – 1:54 PMBy Roadguy
It’s a still-fairly-new year, and I’m already behind. But I want my 2009 to be more bloggy, so here are a few items:
Alert reader Froggie sent along a heads-up to this New York Times blog post from last week about the environmental benefits of roundabouts. It includes a link to a Strib story about some of the ones in Minnesota (my photo above is of a roundabout under construction in Richfield in November). Froggie also included this link to an Insurance Institute of Highway Safety page about how roundabouts boost safety and fuel efficiency. I also noticed today that another NYT blog has this fresh post extolling the virtues of variable-priced tolling on highways, and our 394 lanes get a mention.
This morning, alert reader Prof. S alerted me to this Wall Street Journal article about a transit system that Roadguy has a special interest in: Beijing’s subway. When I visited China in 2000, the Beijing subway basically looked like this:
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There were two lines, one straight, one a circle. It was more than a little underbuilt for a city of its size. The Prof writes:
The story is an example of the “if you build it, they will come” aspect of these lines. The development of these subways has created opportunities for new businesses. Even for anti-LRT/pro-road people, this story talks about how the building of new subways made traffic much more bearable. People forget that there is overlap between LRT and roads — not a perfect overlap, but certainly a large one and enough of one to bring benefits to road drivers as well.
The fact that there are other benefits is also important. We could create a new high-paying job by taxing people $200,000 to pay one person $100,000 dig holes and another person $100,000 to fill them back in. But that means taking $200,000 out of productive activities to do something unproductive. It’s the Parable of the Broken Window economic fallacy.
In this case, even if the LRT lines cost $1 billion or more, the ROI is likely >1 because of the amount of time freed up for all commuters — both on the rail and not on the rail. This will only be more and more true as we build a network of lines.
The Prof should be writing items for the New York Times blogs, methinks.
Our last item pertains to an e-mail received yesterday evening from a California production company that made a one-hour documentary about the building of the I-35W bridge. Roadguy contributed a few photos from his vast digital archives and did an on-camera interview, but no word yet on whether I made the final cut. We’ll all find out next week when “Twin City Bridge: After the Collapse” has its premiere Thursday at 7 p.m. on a National Geographic Channel program called “Man-Made.” I’ll be inviting myself over to the home of some friends with cable so I can tune in.
That’s all for the moment. Your comments, as always, are welcomed below.
14 Responses to "Mailbag: Roundabout links, subway thoughts, and will Roadguy appear on cable?"
“Twin City Bridge”, eh? It looks like the filmmakers heard that the bridge did not connect Minneapolis and St. Paul, hence the singular city. At the same time, the title doesn’t really work for me.
Maybe I’ll trade in watching an episode of Mega Trains and take in this episode of Man-Made. . .
Oh, nice finds Froggie and Prof. S. Thanks for sharing.
The new roundabouts will hopefully offset all the gas we waste while waiting to cross the LRT rails along Hiawatha.
I LOVE roundabouts. I realize people here are not used to them and that can cause issues, but once you get used to them (and, more importantly, the other drivers that would otherwise hit you get used to them) they are fantastic!
You only have to wait if there is a reason to wait. No traffic….no wait.
I first drove through them in Ireland where even freeway interchanges and off-”ramps” are sometimes roundabouts. It was nice, no need to stop and wait to get on the freeway, just merge into the roundabout lane and move over to where you want to go.
Biggest challenge here would be that on-pavement markings are the best to direct people to the correct lane and those are worthless half the year.
Thanks, Matty. I found the roundabout link of interest first because they directly linked to the Strib article about the Hwy 7 roundabouts, and because of their link to IIHS who argue that roundabouts improve fuel efficiency, which runs directly counter to what one of the Strib article responders claims.
Matty - I thought you would appreciate it, which is why I copied you on the email to Roadguy.
Thanks for the endorsement Roadguy. I’m glad you included the commentary (including the parable of the broken window) because it should help people think about these types of projects. Let’s not just spend money to spend money, but when there is a great ROI (return on investment for non-financial people), then we should do it.
Lastly - I actually use to run a blog called “Done as a Society” that had all sorts of stuff on it. Freakonomics - the blog you linked to on road pricing - actually cited a post I drafted once on the percentage of Americans with a mental disorder. In other words, even the NYT thinks I should be writing for the NYT. Not to scare you, but I’m not so sure about the job security of working for a newspaper, however.
They are building roundabouts on the state highways in Arizona. I visited recently and was very encouraged by the fact that they are much more efficient and no waiting for red lights to turn green. Traffic is often caused by stoplights rather than too many cars on the road. With roundabouts things keep flowing.
Prof - Thanks for the link to your mental illness post. I couldn’t agree more. While I do think there are many people with actual mental illnesses, I think recent increase in diagnoses is bs. The symptoms of ADHD are the same as the normal personality traits for Myers-Briggs type ESTP.
But I still hate the new roundabouts in Richfield. Maybe I just can’t concentrate long enough to make it around the circle. 
RollinOn writes
“I realize people here are not used to them and that can cause issues, but once you get used to them (and, more importantly, the other drivers that would otherwise hit you get used to them) they are fantastic!”
I live near the Minnehaha/Minnehaha roundabout, which still confuses some drivers. In Richfield, it seems most drivers are handling the new roundabouts better all the time.
I really dislike the THREE roundabouts they put in Edina on 70th st. I’m not really against roundabouts, but they took a 2 lane street and reduced it to 1 lane. Plus the roundabouts aren’t much bigger than a quarter. Ok I’m exaggerating but it’s a major slow down. There is no way that the 70th street change boosts fuel efficiency.
I was riding with someone recently as we came to a roundabout. My driving companion had never seen one before, nor knew anything about them. (Not sure exactly where we were.) As a result, there was nearly a nasty accident. Is there any publicity about these, say, on TV? Something along the lines of the conversion to HDTV.
Joe S, I must agree with you.
In many areas round-abouts make sense (and heck, I live in richfield, they work) but I think the planner for Edina was drinking a bit too much of the roundabout cool-aid when they did up that design.
Ok, several of you make a good point, allow me to ammend my remarks.
I love WELL-DESIGNED ROUNDABOUTS!!!!
There’s another side to this discussion, and I’m going to rephrase it:
If you shove it down their throats - and have the tax payers (90% who don’t use it) heavily subsidize it, then they will come.
Give us a break, don’t insult our intelligence. A communist country - those pepole are capatives - they ‘follow orders.’ They have no freedom of choice, nor do they have the option of choosing freely.
Prof S
Too bad you carry on about things you are ignorant about. There are so many half truths and simplified “facts” I don’t even know where to begin. I have my doctorate in psychology, and I can’t even begin to illustrate why your argument about the mental health field is from the dark ages. The brain cannot be scanned like the body, so yes, we have to be more “subjective” in our interpretations of what is going on. That does not make our field self-promoting. It is clear that you did not major in psychology, because you do not understand it. Yes, autism diagnosis is more used, because it is more understood. We all grew up with the “weird” kid who never received any special services, well, guess what…now hopefully he/she will be recognized as autistic and get help. Although, probably not, because even now with all these abundant services you talk about, a child has to be TWO STANDARD DEVIATIONS BELOW the mean to get help. Do you have any concept of how low that is, and how many children go through school with learning disorders that aren’t serviced, because they aren’t “severe” enough? Also, charging higher fees by holding numbers of psychologists down? That’s a laugh out loud moment, we are paid NOTHING for 8+ years of schooling, especially considering the debt we accrue. Why? Because people like you continue with bogus arguments that try to make our field look like a joke. And so the mental health double standard endures.
