What's up with speed limits? Plus Rant on Red Lights and Left Turns

[Ultima]

How come a street in the city full of parked cars and pedestrians qualifies for a 30mph speed limit yet a 6-lane (3 on each side) boulevard in the suburbs gets the same speed limit? Comeon! 30mph is just fine in the city, it really IS a sensible speed LIMIT when you have parked cars and pedestrians, but in the suburbs 30mph is more like a speed MINIMUM.

Come to think of it, I wonder if city street design isn't better overall? Ever notice that on one-way streets in the city, you can sometimes drive for miles without ever hitting a red light? It's like you're rolling on a wave of greens. Wanna turn left? Go for it, you don't have to sit for 5 minutes in a left turn lane. Traffic blocked up on the road? Chances are you can take a cross street and find another one going your direction not far away. In the suburbs, main roads are often a mile apart or more.

Living in the suburbs is nice, but seriously what's the point of wide 6 lane boulevards when you have to stop at red lights all the time and wait for minutes to turn left, and on top of that you have the same 30mph limit. Wouldn't it make more sense to have more roads or one-way roads so that pedestrians had less lanes to cross, there were more travel options, and there were less delays turning left? It has to be the turning left thing that gets me the most. It takes me 5 to 10 minutes (half the time of my total commute of 10 miles) to drive half a mile to get to the freeway in the morning because of red lights and people turning left although the road is a 6 lane boulevard and there isn't that much traffic on it. Argh.. drives me nearly insane sometimes waiting at the red lights

 

[Millennium]

Originally posted by: Ultima
How come a street in the city full of parked cars and pedestrians qualifies for a 30mph speed limit yet a 6-lane (3 on each side) boulevard in the suburbs gets the same speed limit? Comeon! 30mph is just fine in the city, it really IS a sensible speed LIMIT when you have parked cars and pedestrians, but in the suburbs 30mph is more like a speed MINIMUM.

Come to think of it, I wonder if city street design isn't better overall? Ever notice that on one-way streets in the city, you can sometimes drive for miles without ever hitting a red light? It's like you're rolling on a wave of greens. Wanna turn left? Go for it, you don't have to sit for 5 minutes in a left turn lane. Traffic blocked up on the road? Chances are you can take a cross street and find another one going your direction not far away. In the suburbs, main roads are often a mile apart or more.

Living in the suburbs is nice, but seriously what's the point of wide 6 lane boulevards when you have to stop at red lights all the time and wait for minutes to turn left, and on top of that you have the same 30mph limit. Wouldn't it make more sense to have more roads or one-way roads so that pedestrians had less lanes to cross, there were more travel options, and there were less delays turning left? It has to be the turning left thing that gets me the most. It takes me 5 to 10 minutes to drive half a mile to get to the freeway in the morning because of red lights and people turning left although the road is a 6 lane boulevard and there isn't that much traffic on it.

So take the bus.

 

[HappyPuppy]

Just got your drivers licence, eh?

 

[Amorphus]

you don't know whats going on behind the scenes, and frankly, I'm a bit too tired to explain it to you. its perfectly fine just the way it is.

rant scale: 1/10
-not entertaining
-not sensible
-have a nice day

 

[Ultima]

Originally posted by: Millennium

Originally posted by: Ultima
How come a street in the city full of parked cars and pedestrians qualifies for a 30mph speed limit yet a 6-lane (3 on each side) boulevard in the suburbs gets the same speed limit? Comeon! 30mph is just fine in the city, it really IS a sensible speed LIMIT when you have parked cars and pedestrians, but in the suburbs 30mph is more like a speed MINIMUM.

Come to think of it, I wonder if city street design isn't better overall? Ever notice that on one-way streets in the city, you can sometimes drive for miles without ever hitting a red light? It's like you're rolling on a wave of greens. Wanna turn left? Go for it, you don't have to sit for 5 minutes in a left turn lane. Traffic blocked up on the road? Chances are you can take a cross street and find another one going your direction not far away. In the suburbs, main roads are often a mile apart or more.

Living in the suburbs is nice, but seriously what's the point of wide 6 lane boulevards when you have to stop at red lights all the time and wait for minutes to turn left, and on top of that you have the same 30mph limit. Wouldn't it make more sense to have more roads or one-way roads so that pedestrians had less lanes to cross, there were more travel options, and there were less delays turning left? It has to be the turning left thing that gets me the most. It takes me 5 to 10 minutes to drive half a mile to get to the freeway in the morning because of red lights and people turning left although the road is a 6 lane boulevard and there isn't that much traffic on it.

So take the bus.

The bus suffers from the same problems and then I have to transfer, wait for it to show up, and now that it's cold as hell I'd rather not freeze my ass off waiting for a bus

 

[Ultima]

Originally posted by: Amorphus
you don't know whats going on behind the scenes, and frankly, I'm a bit too tired to explain it to you. its perfectly fine just the way it is.

rant scale: 1/10
-not entertaining
-not sensible
-have a nice day

Why is it just fine the way it is? Because you said so?

Originally posted by: HappyPuppy
Just got your drivers licence, eh?

No, but I just moved here a couple months ago

 

[EMPshockwave82]

<- small town.. dont have to worry about a lot of that stuff... but good luck with all that suburbia stuff

 

[jteef]

i know i'd like to know the qualifications of the traffic engineers that utah hired to design their roads. only half the roads have left turn signals, of the roads with them, only half of them ever turn green, and of those remaining, only half are green for more than 10 seconds. So what you end up with are a bunch of cars (5-10) driving through yellow and red lights and blocking the intersection while the 10 seconds on the cross street's signal expires. These are major intersections with thousands of cars / hour attempting to pass through them. Its also impossible to hit more than 3 green lights in a row...even if nobody is waiting at the cross streets.

Other than that, the roads here are great...50-55mph on major suburban streets is common(although, quite a few people act like the limit is 45) but constant 0-60-0 puts a lot of wear on engine & brakes...

 

[Ultima]

Originally posted by: Amorphus
you don't know whats going on behind the scenes, and frankly, I'm a bit too tired to explain it to you. its perfectly fine just the way it is.

rant scale: 1/10
-not entertaining
-not sensible
-have a nice day

So are you ever going to substantiate your post with something, amorphus?

 

[dullard]

There are multiple considerations made when making a speed limit. They are (in approximate order):
1) State and Federal laws,
2) Local laws,
3) Chance of getting in an accident,
4) Chance of getting in an accident in the worst possible conditions (something like a very icy road, with fog),
5) Problems caused by an accident in that location,
6) Proximity of children.

#5 is most commonly forgotten. While it may be very safe to drive 50 mph on that 6 lane road, a single accident could easilly block 3+ lanes, instantly disrupting or halting all traffic in that entire suburb. Due to that problem, the engineers may have decided to keep the limits artificially low to really, really minimize the accidents there and to have lots of lights to ensure the traffic speed is kept low.

 

[Rob9874]

Boulevards all throughout the Phoenix metro area are all 45. It's nice.

 

[Gravity]

It's not about safety, it's about REVENUE! You think that your streets are designed for 30mph? Maybe 50 years ago when the auto technology was built for that speed. Fewer people are dying in cars and cars are much safer. Traffic enforcement is all about the $$$. Get a radar detector and drive responsibly. Otherwise, payup!

 

[Jzero]

And people naysay jughandles....

 

[Ness]

Ever consider writing the city and questioning the speed limit? It could be that it's just gone overlooked for some time, or that a series of accidents caused the limit to be lowered.

 

[rh71]

Why are there sports cars when there are speed limits ?

 

[dman]

I want my flying cars. All the futuristic civilizations have them, I was promised we'd be flying everywhere when I was a kid... but NOOOoooooooooo, still driving, still using gas, hmph!

 

[amcdonald]

The easiest way to avoid normal traffic regualtions without getting into trouble is to become a cop.

 

[rahvin]

Originally posted by: Gravity
It's not about safety, it's about REVENUE! You think that your streets are designed for 30mph? Maybe 50 years ago when the auto technology was built for that speed. Fewer people are dying in cars and cars are much safer. Traffic enforcement is all about the $$$. Get a radar detector and drive responsibly. Otherwise, payup!

Conspiracy theory #37.

 

[dullard]

Originally posted by: Gravity
It's not about safety, it's about REVENUE! You think that your streets are designed for 30mph? Maybe 50 years ago when the auto technology was built for that speed. Fewer people are dying in cars and cars are much safer. Traffic enforcement is all about the $$$. Get a radar detector and drive responsibly. Otherwise, payup!

Around here, all ticket revenue is donated - the city and the police get nothing out of it.