I look at a highway like I-244 and wonder why the hell did they design this freeway like they did? Left exits and entrances everywhere, poor geometry, poor visibility, unnecessary curves and short on ramps. It's really a terrible road. Why did they design urban freeways like this? I can't think of a rational reason they would design it this way.
The answer is "Yes, basically". We simply didn't have the experience building freeways that we do now. When the idea of exit and entrance ramps is new to begin with, details like ramp length, placement, and the side they are on are not things you are likely to spend a lot of thought on.
Even the German autobahn sucked in the beginning–they had cobblestone offramps: https://www.aaroads.com/blog/the-last-reichsautobahn/
My feelings on urban expressways are mixed, but I think they did the best they could with what little space they had. Most of the twists and turns were to avoid buildings that couldn't be demolished or moved.
Quote from: bugo on March 21, 2019, 03:57:57 AM
I look at a highway like I-244 and wonder why the hell did they design this freeway like they did? Left exits and entrances everywhere, poor geometry, poor visibility, unnecessary curves and short on ramps. It's really a terrible road. Why did they design urban freeways like this? I can't think of a rational reason they would design it this way.
Do something today for the first time. It's probably going to be improved upon 10, 20, 50 years down the road as well. When you look back, you'll wonder why it was done the way it was done the first time also.
Also, it takes time for standards to evolve. What if the standard became left entrances/exits, and everyone kept left except to pass? Even today, standards that have existed for years change.
A 100 years from now, when every car is self-driving, they'll look back and wonder why we even needed signs.
Quote from: Scott5114 on March 21, 2019, 04:43:13 AM
The answer is "Yes, basically". We simply didn't have the experience building freeways that we do now. When the idea of exit and entrance ramps is new to begin with, details like ramp length, placement, and the side they are on are not things you are likely to spend a lot of thought on.
Even the German autobahn sucked in the beginning–they had cobblestone offramps: https://www.aaroads.com/blog/the-last-reichsautobahn/
We lived in Darmstadt in the mid 60s, and our off-ramp was still cobblestone when we came back stateside.
There was a similar discussion on one of the Route 66 Facebook pages regarding roads and bridges with little or no shoulder. Safety standards continually improve and roads are upgraded or replaced.
While they were, in theory, a good idea, their execution was very poor indeed. Narrow ROWs and tight spacing of ramps are part of the reason why, but the newer ones are definitely an improvement.
Having lived in Arizona most of my life where the majority of freeways were designed and built after the 1980s, I can confirm this is the case when I visit other states.
I-880 in Oakland then known as CA-17 was one case where Caltrans was not experienced to make freeways earthquake safe though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMnXZiw3hJk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfyZqkiGAdA (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfyZqkiGAdA)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoOQ7NLE4cY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_uC17QuPIo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZNBzfTAbFw (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZNBzfTAbFw)
Quote from: Scott5114 on March 21, 2019, 04:43:13 AM
Even the German autobahn sucked in the beginning–they had cobblestone offramps: https://www.aaroads.com/blog/the-last-reichsautobahn/
That may have been intentional to force drivers to drop their speed from autobahn speeds to surface street speeds.
Quote from: bugo on March 21, 2019, 03:57:57 AM
I look at a highway like I-244 and wonder why the hell did they design this freeway like they did? Left exits and entrances everywhere, poor geometry, poor visibility, unnecessary curves and short on ramps. It's really a terrible road. Why did they design urban freeways like this? I can't think of a rational reason they would design it this way.
More than likely a learning curve involved. "Interstate standards" were looser up until the late 1960's. I'm looking at I-40 for a good example. Some of the on-ramps lack "proper" acceleration areas and are marked with a yield sign at the end of the on ramp (seen in Arizona, New Mexico, and Oklahoma). I-40 has a few "left exits", in particular west of Elk City.
Former CA 11 (CA 110) north of I-110 has the shortest on-off ramps I have ever seen.
Cloverleaf interchanges can be tricky, especially older ones without CD roads.
Another "design flaw" left over from the olden days are 2 way frontage roads with short on-off ramps. Texas has lots of them and the stretch of I-55 in Arkansas has them too.
There is indeed a large gulf in terms of geometric design standards between 1950's/early 1960's facilities and the ones currently being built today, but I would not characterize this as a result of the designers being stupid. They were working, as others have pointed out, with a limited knowledge base.
* Traffic planning in the 1950's used the 1950 edition of the Highway Capacity Manual, which talked about "practical" versus "theoretical" capacity. The modern concept of LOS and the idea of building to given LOS standards (e.g. upper LOS B in rural areas, middling LOS D in urban areas) did not come until the 1965 edition.
* There was no granular understanding of ramp operations and their effects on capacity. The use of motion picture and video cameras to carry out capacity and operational studies (famously to establish 2200 VPLPH as the maximum empirically observed per-lane throughput, on a slight downgrade on US 101 in Hollywood) did not come until the mid-1950's.
* For economic planning purposes, it was assumed that each highway had a useful life of 20 to 25 years. Longer horizons (with design standards appropriate for such) are now used pretty much everywhere, it having been universally recognized that it is the exception rather than the rule that there is money to transition to an improved facility right at the 20- to 25-year mark.
* A lot of safety research--establishing, e.g., that stabilized vegetated shoulders are next to useless, or Texas turndowns are actually quite dangerous--was not carried out until well past the mid-1960's.
* Understanding of design consistency was nowhere near what it is now. (In Europe, notably Germany and the UK, there was work on "flowing line" alignments that trended in the same direction, but it gained very little traction in the US.) It was therefore not uncommon for urban thoroughfare plans to commit urban planners and state DOT engineers to freeway alignments that involved, e.g., 30 MPH mainline bends. (This helped set the stage for freeway revolts later on as engineers pressed to build to better standards even at the cost of added destruction of neighborhoods.)
The general rule of thumb, not just in the US but also in various western European countries and China, is that design standards change rapidly in the first few years or decades of freeway construction before they stabilize in such a way that they change very little in ensuing decades. In the US standards set in this way roughly in the late 1960's.
As for the use of stone setts (Kleinpflaster) on the Autobahn in the 1930's, I am not aware that the engineers at the time claimed any special advantages in terms of enhanced strength or durability of the running surface, signalling a need to slow down for off-ramps, etc. It was, however, politically driven. In the mid-1930's, the SS, which ran the concentration camps (though not yet as part of a systematic program for eliminating the Jews), was charged with operating quarries with a view toward producing stone for the Nazis' ambitious building program. This was found to require a level of skill that the typical concentration camp prisoner did not possess, and the SS was left with a glut of unsuitable stone. It was turned over to Fritz Todt (head of the Autobahn program) essentially to get rid of it by using it as a surfacing material. Besides ramps, it was also used on the mainline, representing a small percentage (IIRC under 5%) of the total centerline mileage.
Albert Speer mentions the building-stone debacle in Inside the Third Reich. Nikolaus Wachsmann's KL: a history of the Nazi concentration camps describes it in detail, including the horrendous working conditions in the quarries.
^^^^^^^^
Regarding CA 110 between L.A. and Pasadena -- there's a reason why the facility reverted to being called the Arroyo Seco Parkway from its 50+ year stint as the Pasadena Freeway -- many of the on/off ramps, particularly those down in the arroyo itself -- are exceptionally short -- functionally RIRO's, seeing as how many onramps have a stop sign at the parkway. And that's what it was designed as back in the late '30's; most of the land along its southeast flank is actually a L.A. city park along the Arroyo Seco channel. But it carried mainline US 66 traffic for two dozen years -- even though most through truck traffic had long since shifted to the parallel US 60/70/99 to the south simply to avoid the downtown areas of the foothill cities arrayed along US 66. When I was young and still living in the L.A. area, I used to take out-of-town visitors on a trip along the Arroyo Seco just to show them how the first L.A. "freeway" was configured vs. more recent designs. Reactions were mixed -- some enjoyed the bucolic and "vintage" feel of the Parkway; others treated the ride as one would a roller coaster -- it can be a bit unnerving, particularly in regards to traffic!
Quote from: J N Winkler on April 10, 2019, 04:24:04 PM
* For economic planning purposes, it was assumed that each highway had a useful life of 20 to 25 years. Longer horizons (with design standards appropriate for such) are now used pretty much everywhere, it having been universally recognized that it is the exception rather than the rule that there is money to transition to an improved facility right at the 20- to 25-year mark.
The whole 41,000 mile Interstate Highway System project was originally projected to be completed in 1969, which would be a 13-year construction period. We see how much longer it took mainly due to cost inflation but also due to increasing design standards and increasing environmental standards.
So they really weren't looking at any timespan in the 20- to 25-year range in 1956, other than a general lifespan for a new superhighway.
The early turnpikes were still young back then, with some segments not yet opened. So they really didn't yet have knowledge as to just how long a new superhighway would last, other than asphalt pavements needing resurfacing every 8 years or so. Concrete pavements hadn't yet started wearing out, nor bridges.
Also keep in mind that modern design standards are a lot more expensive to execute than the earlier more experimental designs. Especially with older urban highways using 45mph or similar design speeds, whereas today it's pretty much all 80mph. While there was a big jump in road/highway funding in the 1950s, it pales in comparison to what we're spending today, but for rather marginal additional gains.
Quote from: jjakucyk on April 12, 2019, 11:44:31 AM
Also keep in mind that modern design standards are a lot more expensive to execute than the earlier more experimental designs. Especially with older urban highways using 45mph or similar design speeds, whereas today it's pretty much all 80mph. While there was a big jump in road/highway funding in the 1950s, it pales in comparison to what we're spending today, but for rather marginal additional gains.
Are 80 mph design speeds really that common for dense urban freeways? NYSDOT uses 50—60 mph (depending on 85th percentile) design speeds for "urban core" interstates and 50—70 mph for other urban interstates.
Quote from: jeffandnicole on March 21, 2019, 09:46:13 AM
A 100 years from now, when every car is self-driving, they'll look back and wonder why we even needed signs.
Or roundabouts.
Quote from: tradephoric on April 12, 2019, 03:28:57 PM
Quote from: jeffandnicole on March 21, 2019, 09:46:13 AM
A 100 years from now, when every car is self-driving, they'll look back and wonder why we even needed signs.
Or roundabouts.
Or stoplights.
I was a kid in the 1960s. I was a highway nerd even then, designing new highway overlays over the free maps I'd pick up from gas stations and state welcome centers. I have some vague memories of my early plans. I didn't worry about existing buildings, or I'd twist a route/ramp around an obstacle with no consideration of speed or ease as long as there was no full stop. My planning at times was practically FritzOwlish; yes, it was that bad. The freeway was a new concept back then. Robert Moses was doing the same thing to New York.
Quote from: J N Winkler on April 10, 2019, 04:24:04 PM
* A lot of safety research--establishing, e.g., that stabilized vegetated shoulders are next to useless, or Texas turndowns are actually quite dangerous--was not carried out until well past the mid-1960's.
Sorry I'm not clear - by Texas Turndowns, are you referring to the advance U-Turn lanes at freeway ramp/surface street intersections for frontage road traffic?
A Texas turndown is where a guard rail is ended by simply twisting it 90º and sloping it down to the ground where it's bolted to a pad. Like so: https://www.flickr.com/photos/40971431@N04/9395645110/in/album-72157634850129510/ It was found to be dangerous when oncoming cars would get launched up into the air and/or flipped over because the turndown acts like a ramp. At first it seems safer since there's no blunt end to hit, but the launching effect wasn't anticipated. Newer end caps have been designed to provide a crumple zone to absorb impact, but they're also more likely to snag trailers or rear wheels, and in some cases have impaled drivers that hit them. The best option is "buried in backslope" since there's no blunt end to hit and also no ramp effect, but it requires a specific type of terrain: https://goo.gl/maps/ZcmPCJdE3upJa4zC6
Quote from: roadiejay on September 28, 2019, 05:50:21 PMSorry I'm not clear - by Texas Turndowns, are you referring to the advance U-Turn lanes at freeway ramp/surface street intersections for frontage road traffic?
No; those are generally called crossovers, not just in Texas. The Texas turndown was much as Jjakucyk describes. It entered into use in the 1960's when unprotected guardrail ends were recognized as a spearing hazard, but the launching problem was recognized around 1977 (http://onlinepubs.trb.org/Onlinepubs/trr/1992/1367/1367-007.pdf) and the 1990's saw concerted efforts to improve guardrail terminal design.
Quote from: J N Winkler on September 28, 2019, 06:42:06 PM
Quote from: roadiejay on September 28, 2019, 05:50:21 PMSorry I'm not clear - by Texas Turndowns, are you referring to the advance U-Turn lanes at freeway ramp/surface street intersections for frontage road traffic?
No; those are generally called crossovers, not just in Texas. The Texas turndown was much as Jjakucyk describes. It entered into use in the 1960's when unprotected guardrail ends were recognized as a spearing hazard, but the launching problem was recognized around 1977 (http://onlinepubs.trb.org/Onlinepubs/trr/1992/1367/1367-007.pdf) and the 1990's saw concerted efforts to improve guardrail terminal design.
I appreciate the clarification; I had once heard, but long since forgotten, that term.
Sequential kinking guardrail terminals have gained much usage in Arizona, mostly phasing out the older "boxing glove" style ends.
Quote from: bugo on March 21, 2019, 03:57:57 AM
I look at a highway like I-244 and wonder why the hell did they design this freeway like they did? Left exits and entrances everywhere, poor geometry, poor visibility, unnecessary curves and short on ramps. It's really a terrible road. Why did they design urban freeways like this? I can't think of a rational reason they would design it this way.
Consider also stormwater management, and not just in Houston, Texas.
When the Interstates were being designed, the idea of stormwater management was pipes to drain away the rainfall of a storm, generally what the engineers thought was a "100 year" storm.
Now freeway bridges are used in some cases instead of pipes and culverts, and are able to handle much heavier rain events. And runoff from "routine" events is now detained, so pollutants can settle out and in some cases to cool.
The Twin Cities didn't escape early design ignorance either. Until the 2010s, a stretch of MN-100 between 36th St and I-394 still had bridges and interchanges from its original design in the...'40s i think? I believe it was the first freeway stretch of MN-100 ever built. The intersection with MN-7 was a cramped cloverleaf and only 1/4 mile south of it was another cramped interchange. There used to be one of those vintage cloverleaves at the current I-394 as well, but that construction in the early 1990s destroyed that one.
Also see MN-51 just south of the MN State Fairgrounds...talk about some tight ramp turns and cramped exits... 3 exits in the span of about 1/2-3/4 mile.
Cobbling up a response to the OP -- they weren't particularly stupid, per se, but they were still near the bottom of the learning curve regarding the methodologies of deploying freeways through existing developed areas, all the while attempting to satisfy (or placate) the various parties involved (often reluctantly at best) in the venture. There will always be a "hindsight" controversy swirling around whether urban freeways should have been developed at all; but those that were tasked to do just that had a very tough row to hoe, so to speak. The "flight" of the consumer class out of the cities in the '50's and early '60's resulted in extensive plans to expedite the continuation of their spending habits within the city centers -- and that invariably meant freeways to convey them back and forth from their new suburban homes to those urban cores; just look at the original Interstate "Yellow Book" to see just how extensive those projected networks were. Confronted with not only reluctant folks in the way of the freeways but with the expense of purchasing their properties (a principal reason that less prosperous neighborhoods were selected for the various routes), narrower-than-optimal ROW's were often deployed to simply reduce conflict as much as possible while saving dollars. With Interstates, the issue was not the 90% federal funds but the remaining 10%, which had to be raised within the various states -- and with the original 16-year funding timeline -- later extended -- staring the DOT's in the face, so there could hardly be any let-up in the process. So such things as shortened exit and entrance lengths, the use of LH egress, and squeezing lanes into narrow carriageways -- and regularly seeking waivers from published standards -- became commonplace. And when, especially on the East Coast, parallel/redundant facilities were being deleted from the system after the pushback starting in the mid-60's -- those existing freeways that were developed prior to that pushback were required to handle traffic loads for which their design standards were inadequate. Thus began the "piling on" of criticism regarding those corridors -- sociopolitically impossible to upgrade/expand -- all while seeing their traffic loads increase over time. But the plain truth is that the aggregate freeway mileage -- actually developed or not -- was largely the product of political pressure emanating from the cities themselves from those who exercised influence and power at the time!-- and their goal was to ensure the cities' economic survival by providing egress to regional residents with resources extending to car ownership and use. Of course, eventually that goal was increasingly thwarted by the deployment of suburban shopping malls, often located adjacent to beltways or outer bypasses -- but that prospect wasn't even on the horizon (at least outside of CA) in the mid-'50's when the Interstate network was in its formative stages and state DOT's were busy planning additional freeways to address those areas not served by the I-network.
The upshot is that state DOT planners and facility designers were really limited in their options -- and did what they thought would get the job done with minimal fuss & bother -- and physical limitations were part & parcel of that methodology.
Also keep in mind that, in the '50s and early '60s, we didn't have much experience with freeways or freeway operation. We have over 60 years of it now.
Quote from: sparker on October 02, 2019, 05:06:44 AM
With Interstates, the issue was not the 90% federal funds but the remaining 10%, which had to be raised within the various states -- and with the original 16-year funding timeline -- later extended -- staring the DOT's in the face, so there could hardly be any let-up in the process.
13 years originally, 1956 to 1969. With the unforeseen cost inflation there were shortfalls in the revenue for the federal share as well.
Still a very rapid process. By 1970 the overall system was 70% completed mileagewise, but the urban and metropolitan portion was only 55% complete.
Quote from: froggie on October 02, 2019, 08:50:59 AM
Also keep in mind that, in the '50s and early '60s, we didn't have much experience with freeways or freeway operation. We have over 60 years of it now.
Trucks were considerably smaller back then and cars and their tires were not yet attuned to continuous travel at freeway speeds. The turnpikes built in the 1950s started building that experience but even that was in mostly rural areas and in a small part of the country.
Quote from: J N Winkler on September 28, 2019, 06:42:06 PM
Quote from: roadiejay on September 28, 2019, 05:50:21 PMSorry I'm not clear - by Texas Turndowns, are you referring to the advance U-Turn lanes at freeway ramp/surface street intersections for frontage road traffic?
No; those are generally called crossovers, not just in Texas. The Texas turndown was much as Jjakucyk describes. It entered into use in the 1960's when unprotected guardrail ends were recognized as a spearing hazard, but the launching problem was recognized around 1977 (http://onlinepubs.trb.org/Onlinepubs/trr/1992/1367/1367-007.pdf) and the 1990's saw concerted efforts to improve guardrail terminal design.
Also called "Texas Twist."
Admittedly, I didn't read all the comments in this thread, but I would literally sit and ponder this every single day while sitting stuck in a two-lane bottleneck on the Schuykill Expressway through Philly...
Daydreamed about going off on those engineers quite a bit...
Quote from: froggie on October 02, 2019, 08:50:59 AM
Also keep in mind that, in the '50s and early '60s, we didn't have much experience with freeways or freeway operation. We have over 60 years of it now.
The same could be said for freeway signage and guardrails.
I don't know. Guiderail is a funny situation because it has been more about consideration of benefits vs. costs than just benefits, if you believe those that say cable was actually the best at stopping vehicles...but then you had to repair it after the big hit.
Cars could not accelerate as fast as they can now, couldn't brake as fast, and were much less safe in accidents. Prevailing speeds were lower. Trucks were much smaller. They designers figured people would be so overjoyed by the opportunity to drive 45 mph through the city without stopping that they wouldn't try to push for 65. So, they'd offer a lot of compromises with the cities: narrower ROW, shorter merging lanes, sharper curves. Also as has been noted previously that kept the cost down.
Call this a stupid question, but why wasn't futureproofing roads for faster cars of the future ever considered?
I know nobody could predict say, the 1973 oil crisis, and I know that freeways in general were a novel concept (after all, they had already been 20 years old by the time of the Interstate system, and still underdeveloped) but I'm sure that a brief glance at history shows that cars in the '50s were faster than the cars of the '20s.
The only city that I could think of that did futureproof their roads was Dallas, with its major arterial already being constructed in the '50s and '60s with 8 lanes to start out with. I don't think that section has changed aside from repaving - it's possible those lanes are their original width.
My dad did say that when the engineers thought of the Garden State Parkway, they did build the Raritan River Bridge as four lanes, but built the piers for the later day expansions that took place as they did anticipate growth at the time.
Even the original free section from Exit 129 to 140 they built all the overpasses with six lanes in mind as when the 1980 widening took place all the Moses stone arch bridges remained. Only at New Dover Road and Inman Avenue in Woodbridge Township did they have to lower the freeway as those stone arch overpasses had a more round configuration over the ones at Madison Hill Road, Westfield Avenue, Raritan Road, and Centennial Avenue further north that have an arch but straightens out on the sides. Also the underpasses at Lake Avenue, the 135 former Circle underpasses, and Walnut Avenue never needed widening. Plus all the Iselin overpasses and US 1 underpass all are as wide now as when they were built in 1948.
There are others including the tunnel under Downtown Irvington is never been widened underneath and that has had two lanes added since and that was built after the Union County and Middlesex County parts.
Quote from: noelbotevera on October 03, 2019, 11:15:21 PM
Call this a stupid question, but why wasn't futureproofing roads for faster cars of the future ever considered?
It is not just the speeds, but being able to maintain a highway speed for hour after hour without stopping, that is what was a new phenomenon, and auto designs of the 1940s did not take that into account, and the rate of breakdowns was high, until mechanical and tire technologies improved based on those needs. Engines, radiators, oil systems, transmissions, etc.
Quote from: noelbotevera on October 03, 2019, 11:15:21 PMCall this a stupid question, but why wasn't futureproofing roads for faster cars of the future ever considered?
It was, and in some cases it was done. The German
Autobahnen used a flat-country design speed of 100 MPH right from the start in 1933. In both the US and the UK, designers had had an opportunity to observe the phenomenon of design creep during the interwar years (e.g., in the US the standard unit lane width for interurban highways went from 9 ft in 1918 to 12 ft in 1940, and there were corresponding changes in sideslope design, ditch profiles, etc.). This experience, in combination with practice in Germany and the Netherlands, informed adoption of initial design standards that had a fair amount of futureproofing baked in. Much stricter design criteria were also used for select facilities, such as the New Jersey Turnpike.
As a result, some very early freeways like the Santa Ana Freeway in Los Angeles function acceptably with modern traffic (aside from being almost perpetually congested), though they are noticeably not as up-to-date as freeways built from the late 1960's onward when geometric design standards essentially became fixed.
The Arroyo Seco Parkway is more an exception that proves the rule than an example of failure to futureproof. It was a compromised design from the start because it runs through parkland and was designed to follow a river channel. It opened at almost the same time as the Cahuenga Pass freeway, eventually part of the Hollywood Freeway, which was much closer to modern standards in its design.
Quote from: noelbotevera on October 03, 2019, 11:15:21 PMI know nobody could predict say, the 1973 oil crisis, and I know that freeways in general were a novel concept (after all, they had already been 20 years old by the time of the Interstate system, and still underdeveloped) but I'm sure that a brief glance at history shows that cars in the '50s were faster than the cars of the '20s.
Cars even of the mid-1930's were noticeably faster than cars of the 1920's--for example, the Ford V8 came out in 1932.
The question is not whether to futureproof at all so much as it is what operating speed to adopt as a target for segments of the network where the only practical constraint on speed will be the geometric design, taking into account the fact that building a significant share of your ultimate network to a given speed "locks you in" and makes it economically problematic to move to a higher speed for the rest.
Why 70-80 MPH, which is the consensus choice of the world at large, and not, say, 160 MPH? I think the ultimate explanation lies in subtle human factors constraints that make it difficult to build highways such that the masses can operate their own cars on them safely at speeds well above 100 MPH. In the railroad world, 78 MPH is the breakpoint for more stringent requirements for protecting the right-of-way (at least in the US). High-speed rail involves a higher caliber of infrastructure provision and train operation has a significant drive-by-wire element.
The 1973 oil crisis did provoke a study by FHWA to evaluate the possibility of lowering highway design speeds. It appeared facially excessive to design for 70 MPH when the double-nickel speed limit looked like it was here to stay. However, FHWA concluded that the higher design speeds were worth keeping not only for consistency with older facilities already built to 70 but also for the improved margin of safety. The savings from designing to a lower speed were also minimal, aside from highly constrained environments such as mountains or dense urban areas where lower design speeds had already been allowed for decades.
Quote from: J N Winkler on October 04, 2019, 12:19:50 AM
The German Autobahnen used a flat-country design speed of 100 MPH right from the start in 1933.
Why in the world would they do that? The idea of -sustained- automobile speeds of even 50 mph was unknown and untested back then, as in hour after hour of continuous speeds by the common fleet of private vehicles.
They were built for rapid movement of military traffic, and most of those vehicles didn't travel much over 30 mph tops.
Quote from: J N Winkler on October 04, 2019, 12:19:50 AM
The 1973 oil crisis did provoke a study by FHWA to evaluate the possibility of lowering highway design speeds.
The rural Interstate mileage was 80% complete by then, and most of the rest had been designed at least in basic alignment, and that would have had a lot to do with not lowering the remainder.
Don't forget the miles of elevated freeway, with hundreds of matchstick supports. I'm just waiting for someone to realize that most of I-5 through downtown Seattle and South isn't stable because of the elevated nature, and they have to replace it. It will make 85/20 look like a cakewalk.
When properly designed I don't see any problem with left entrance/exits, it is when they aren't properly designed, don't have extended acceleration lanes, or high-volume exits a short distance on the right, that you really run into problems.
Quote from: Beltway on October 04, 2019, 05:56:37 AMQuote from: J N Winkler on October 04, 2019, 12:19:50 AMThe German Autobahnen used a flat-country design speed of 100 MPH right from the start in 1933.
Why in the world would they do that? The idea of -sustained- automobile speeds of even 50 mph was unknown and untested back then, as in hour after hour of continuous speeds by the common fleet of private vehicles.
They were built for rapid movement of military traffic, and most of those vehicles didn't travel much over 30 mph tops.
A key forerunner of the
Autobahnen was the AVUS motor racetrack in the Grunewald near Berlin, which was later integrated into the system as part of the A115. There was an expectation from the start that the system should be able to accommodate high-performance vehicles to allow the realization of time savings in interurban automobile travel that were not possible on the existing road network owing to geometric limitations, even if the bulk of the vehicle fleet was not yet capable of such speeds.
The Germans built the roads before the vehicles partly as what we now call Keynesian stimulus. The vision back in 1933 was to achieve mass motorization with the "People's Car"--i.e., the Volkswagen; what we now know as the Bug was prototyped shortly before World War II started.
Quote from: J N Winkler on October 04, 2019, 12:42:51 PM
Quote from: Beltway on October 04, 2019, 05:56:37 AMWhy in the world would they do that? The idea of -sustained- automobile speeds of even 50 mph was unknown and untested back then, as in hour after hour of continuous speeds by the common fleet of private vehicles.
They were built for rapid movement of military traffic, and most of those vehicles didn't travel much over 30 mph tops.
A key forerunner of the Autobahnen was the AVUS motor racetrack in the Grunewald near Berlin, which was later integrated into the system as part of the A115. There was an expectation from the start that the system should be able to accommodate high-performance vehicles to allow the realization of time savings in interurban automobile travel that were not possible on the existing road network owing to geometric limitations, even if the bulk of the vehicle fleet was not yet capable of such speeds.
The Germans built the roads before the vehicles partly as what we now call Keynesian stimulus. The vision back in 1933 was to achieve mass motorization with the "People's Car"--i.e., the Volkswagen; what we now know as the Bug was prototyped shortly before World War II started.
That sounds like something that came from the book that claims that GM destroyed the street cars.
The 1930s autobahns were really little more than a boondoggle inspired by the demonized --
"Hitler's autobahn construction began in September 1933 under the direction of chief engineer Fritz Todt. The 14-mile expressway between Frankfurt and Darmstadt, which opened on May 19, 1935, was the first section completed under Hitler. By December 1941, when wartime needs brought construction to a halt, Germany had completed 2,400 miles (3,860 km), with another 1,550 miles (2,500 km) under construction.
As many American visitors had noted during the 1930's, the autobahn was built before the country had enough motor vehicles to justify the expense. Only the well off or powerful in Germany could afford automobiles. "
https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/reichs.cfm
Quote from: Beltway on October 04, 2019, 11:11:34 PMThat sounds like something that came from the book that claims that GM destroyed the street cars.
It is not an urban legend. The Wikipedia article on Volkswagen has a section addressing its founding within the context of an effort to democratize motoring (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen#1932%E2%80%931938:_People%27s_Car_project). Besides the references cited in the Wikipedia article, there is some discussion in Ian Kershaw's biography of Hitler.
In any case, you asked why the Germans should design to such high speeds when vehicles capable of them represented such a small share of the German vehicle fleet. The FHWA history page you linked to and partly quoted notes (correctly) that the
Autobahnen were an elite-led project, and the elite had cars that could run for hours and hours at high speed. Leslie Burgin, the British Minister of Transport who toured the
Autobahnen in the winter of 1937-38, travelled between Munich and Berlin by car, partly on recently built segments of
Autobahn, in this way. (When he returned to Britain, he felt obliged to endorse a motorway plan to meet the technological challenge. It was not progressed at the time because rearmament was deemed a higher priority, but it influenced the development of the postwar "tea room plan.")
Quote from: J N Winkler on October 04, 2019, 11:52:25 PM
Quote from: Beltway on October 04, 2019, 11:11:34 PMThat sounds like something that came from the book that claims that GM destroyed the street cars.
It is not an urban legend. The Wikipedia article on Volkswagen has a section addressing its founding within the context of an effort to democratize motoring (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen#1932%E2%80%931938:_People%27s_Car_project). Besides the references cited in the Wikipedia article, there is some discussion in Ian Kershaw's biography of Hitler.
Take Wikipedia for what you will. The Richard Weingroff (FHWA historian) article said that the VW project didn't start producing until 1939, and most of the autobahns were built by then.
Quote from: J N Winkler on October 04, 2019, 11:52:25 PM
In any case, you asked why the Germans should design to such high speeds when vehicles capable of them represented such a small share of the German vehicle fleet. The FHWA history page you linked to and partly quoted notes (correctly) that the Autobahnen were an elite-led project, and the elite had cars that could run for hours and hours at high speed.
So? They are not going to build 2,500 miles of freeways for a trickle of high-speed cars when nothing of the sort had ever been built before.
Like I said, this project was part of the deluded and sick mind of Hitler.
https://www.dw.com/en/the-myth-of-hitlers-role-in-building-the-autobahn/a-16144981
Quote from: vdeane on October 05, 2019, 09:51:01 PM
https://www.dw.com/en/the-myth-of-hitlers-role-in-building-the-autobahn/a-16144981
Not all by himself, but he certainly had a major directive role in allocating funds for the bulk of the 1930s construction, as Richard Weingroff (FHWA historian) pointed out in his article.
So, is someone going to declare Godwin's Law and call this thread finished? :bigass:
Quote from: hbelkins on October 06, 2019, 06:24:45 PM
So, is someone going to declare Godwin's Law and call this thread finished?
No need. He was the chief executive of Germany from 1933 onward, and made executive decisions about national infrastructure projects.
As for the OP's topic, I'd say that the correct word is 'inexperienced', not 'stupid'.
Mike
This thread reminds me of the mass of right exit ramps and left entrance ramps on the Kennedy Expressway (I-90-94) just north of the Eisenhower Expressway (I-290) near downtown Chicago. It blew my mind seeing that for the first time.