Recent posts

#1

Great Lakes and Ohio Valley / Re: Ohio

Last post by Scott5114 - Today at 03:46:06 AM

Assuming the references to Lady Bird are to the Lady Bird Johnson Highway Beautification Act, I just read through it (it's at 23 USC 131), and it looks like it mostly concentrates on billboard suppression. Don't see anything about landscaping in that specific law.

#2

Mountain West / Re: I-40/US 93 West Kingman In...

Last post by Sonic99 - Today at 02:23:25 AM

It's a battle for the funding. There's some HUGE projects all across the state that could all be argued "should be next up" without even getting into the pavement projects that are so desperately needed everywhere (that the rural Arizonan's SCREAM about on every ADOT Social Media post).

Currently underway:
I-10 Broadway Curve
I-17 between Anthem and Sunset Point

Starting soon:
This US 93/I-40 partial interchange
I-10 between Chandler and Casa Grande

Desperately needed:
SR 30 across Southwest Valley
US 93/I-11 between Lake Mead and Phoenix
Completion of the 303/I-17 interchange

ADOT only has a finite amount of money each year, so figuring out which giant project gets the $$ for that year is a fight that there's no winning.

#3

Southeast / Re: Interstate 73/74

Last post by TheStranger - Today at 01:43:59 AM

FHWA requires full movement at all Interstate interchanges (with very few exceptions) hence the redundant ramps.

Is this something introduced in the last 15-20 years, in which the interstate-to-interstate connection must include direct ramps between all directions?

I ask this because I can think of many interstate-to-interstate junctions that don't have this, usually a bypass route and its parent (i.e. for a California example, I-405 and I-5 at both ends in Sylmar and Irvine respectively, in which Route 118 and Route 133 serve the missing movements nearby).

There are some examples of Interstate-to-interstate in North Carolina that do not have this:

I-40/former I-85 (US 29) in Greensboro, in which the missing 85 north to 40 west move was covered by US 220. Junction was built when both routes were Interstates, before the Greensboro urban loop/I-840 happened

I-285/I-85 in Lexington, grandfathered in as I-285 was not originally interstate.  Standard Y junction

I-40/I-840/I-85 in eastern Greensboro, I-40 east from the Death Valley section does not have any ramp to 85 south

I-795 and I-587, though the Interstate designations came after both freeways were originally constructed.

#4

Off-Topic / Re: Technology Random Access T...

Last post by Scott5114 - Today at 01:03:23 AM

What sort of witchcraft is being performed to make a network socket behave like a file? Makes file transfer really freaking easy in C.

That's how Unix works—everything is a file, even devices. (Look in your /dev directory and there they all are.) You send data to a device by writing to the file that corresponds to the device. This means you can do some kind of amazing stuff very simply. You can make a white noise generator by reading /dev/random and writing it to the speakers, for instance.

Since C is native to Unix, it just kept the same metaphor.

#5

Traffic Control / Re: Road Sign UNO

Last post by TBKS1 - Today at 01:01:41 AM

FL 41 -> FL 482 off of I-4 in Orlando (taken 26 March 2024)

#6

Central States / Re: Cashless Tolling coming so...

Last post by Plutonic Panda - Today at 12:53:24 AM

I'm a little surprised that the Turner will not be the last to go cashless as it is the most traveled rural turnpike in the state and believe the plan was for it to convert last. There was an accident at one of the toll booths near Stroud recently, and I wonder if that pushed the Turner Turnpike to convert earlier than originally planned.

I believe this was always the plan from day one whenever that was.

#7

Mountain West / Re: I-40/US 93 West Kingman In...

Last post by Plutonic Panda - Today at 12:50:36 AM

And what of the part north of this interchange?  There's even a traffic light.

That signalized intersection will (eventually) be replaced by an interchange. I was talking about the part from US 95's East Junction with I-40 south through Wikieup to just north of Wickenburg.

You mentioned the whole corridor at the end of your post and seemed to imply that this interchange was the only thing preventing I-11 from being signed from I-40 to the Nevada border.  To get that finished, they would also need to address the stuff north of I-40, and quite a few more things to the south, not "just" the ones you listed.

AZDOT needs to fucking get with it, IMHO.

#8

Southeast / Re: Interstate 73/74

Last post by sprjus4 - Today at 12:42:42 AM

I don't get the need for full access at all 3 interchanges.

I was wondering this as well. Who is going from I-40 westbound to I-74 westbound or eastbound, or I-74 (either direction) to I-40 EB? There are no plans to continue the beltway south/west, right? Seems like a massive interchange for very little traffic.

I agree... I can understand the ramps for redundancy, but 2 lane flyovers seem a bit excessive. Well... at least they will never be congested!

FHWA requires full movement at all Interstate interchanges (with very few exceptions) hence the redundant ramps.

NCDOT standard design for flyovers is two lanes because widening the structure later is nearly impossible.

Why not loop ramps with C/D ramps?

#9

General Highway Talk / Re: Roads that you have been o...

Last post by cwf1701 - Today at 12:20:45 AM

The only other bridge i was on before a disaster was the I-94/Middlebelt road bridge before August 1987. While the Bridge was not destroyed in the crash of Northwest 255, the bridge took some minor damage from the crash and was replaced during reconstruction of the ramps around Metro Airport in the 90s.

#10

Off-Topic / Re: Technology Random Access T...

Last post by noelbotevera - Today at 12:20:13 AM

(when I got to the end of K&R, I was like...wait, that's it? that's the whole language?)

When I was in college, that book was (only half) jokingly referred to as "the Bible".  I still have it after all these years, even though at this point the odds of me doing anything in C are slim to none.  The C language does have a certain elegance that many other languages lack.

I pull it out and read it cover to cover from time to time, even when I'm not planning on writing any C any time soon. So many modern languages (especially the two I write the most code in, Perl and PHP) lean so heavily on what C does, that it's helpful to refresh my knowledge of C even if I'm not writing in it.

Hey, I actually printed out this book to self study! I'm amazed at how it also teaches you to be a better programmer (like avoiding magic numbers -- replace fixed constants with symbols, so it's easier to change these constants later) while teaching you the language. Obviously some of it is outdated, namely anything involving floats being simplified with C99.

I think one of the neatest tricks with (Unix like) C is how basic system calls like read(), write(), open(), and close() can be used for both files and network sockets. What sort of witchcraft is being performed to make a network socket behave like a file? Makes file transfer really freaking easy in C.