Quality In Life – Living Smarter…


Crying Wolf in Traffic
February 25, 2009, 8:36 pm
Filed under: Quality, Excellence & Design, Sustainable Living & Social Issues | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

When we cry wolf in traffic, we desensitize drivers to real dangers and real warnings and reduce the overall safety of traffic.

Growing up I was told a fable about a bored little shepherd boy who “cried wolf” to amuse himself.  The townsfolk responded quickly, coming to the boys aid only to learn there was no wolf.  Several times he played this game and each time the townsfolk rushed to the field to defend boy and sheep.  At last a time came when there was a wolf, but no willing townsfolk to answer the boy’s cries.  For the little boy who cried wolf, was the threat real? not at first.   There was no wolf, until he had consumed the good will of the townsfolk.

Crying Wolf in construction zones
We see the same principle of crying wolf applied in traffic warning signs located at construction zones.  Now I’ll start by stating that being cautious around construction workers and  construction zones is important.  Where it gets silly is when the warnings stop protecting workers and instead start desensitizing people and effectively teaching them that the signs don’t mean what they say.
Construction Zone Warning Fines Double

Construction Zone Warning Fines Double

 At 3 AM in the middle of the night on the weekend when there are no construction workers around, the construction speed zone sign applies just as much as it does in the middle of the weekday when workers are just feet away from the roadway.  So when there is no obstacle or risk to workers, the signage causes motorists who would normally drive 110 KM/H must slow to 80 KM/H although the road may be clear, safe and intact.  Do you think the public can continue to take the warning signs seriously?  I suggest to you that we are not doing these workers the justice of making the construction zone safer during work hours because we wear on the patience of motorists with unreasonable demands. One such work zone is on the Transcanada highway near Abbotsford which has been in place for about a year, while a freeway improvement was being made.  A year of reduced speeds?  (where full speed still seems safe)  It is silly to stretch our warnings to cover too much time.

We also do a disservice to these workers by exagerating the area where speed must be reduced. Often in BC, 1-2 KM before the construction zone, there are signs telling drivers to drop their speed by 30 KM (20 below the limit since the limits in BC seem to be arbitrarily about 10KM/h too low and most drivers compensate.)  So you drive for 2 KM at that speed limit until the “real” construction zone begins.  As you drive slower, everybody is piled up on your bumpers because nobody else is willing to obey the ridiculous speed reduction.   If I drive at the reduced speed, before, during and after the construction, I impede the flow of the other drivers who (reasonably) are not slowing.  Likely I’m contributing to an increase in their frustration and that makes the roadway less safe, not more safe. Most drivers know that the sign isn’t to be taken seriously, even though there is an accompanying sign saying that “traffic fines double in a work zone”, and another flashing sign warning that “speed limits are strictly enforced” (which they aren’t) It is another lying sign. I know they are not enforced, it is another rule with no teeth. The police are never there when I go by, pulling over the entire freeway to give it a ticket. STOP LYING!

So too many of these warnings exagerate the danger in area and time. A reasonable person looks at these warnings and they disregard them  as silly.  I’ve watched ambulance drivers, truck-drivers, Police officers and normal commuters all ignore the “STRICTLY ENFORCED CONSTRUCTION SPEED ZONE” and drive 110 KM/H through the 80 KM/H.  In fact the other day there was a whole freeway of us driving at 110KM/h in an 80 zone, nobody flinching or looking guilty, nobody checking nervously for police officers. These freeway commuters have been completely desensitized to the speed limit signs and just don’t believe them anymore because the signs are not reasonble.  I imagine that they must be set by some beaureucrat who has never seen how wide and straight and flat this highway is, or how little construction there really is out here, who is out of touch with reality. One of the signs I saw today was a bright orange diamond shaped construction sign, saying “warning no lane markings!”. I drove past that sign on a road that bore, probably the finest lane markings I’ve ever seen, crisp and clear and bright, not confusing in the least. I drove for kilometer after kilometer after kilometer over these new lane markings. It doesn’t make sense that thousands of dollars would be spent on painting the markings on the lanes, only to leave up the warning signs.  The irrelevant sign clearly needed to come down the night the lane markings were painted. Construction signs in particular tend to be irrelevant in this area. “Sign Management” does that have to become part of the project manager’s job? Is it already? It doesn’t make sense to start saying something unless we know when to stop.  It doesn’t make sense to overstate the danger.  Just looking at how people drive indicates how ineffective the signs are. (and should be if they are unreasonable).

Crying wolf in school zones
Here is another example. All summer long I see school zone signs warning motorists to slow to 30 KM/H. but I know that school zones are only in effect on school days, but school days are not during the summer unless “summer school” is in session. But how would a member of the public who did not have a child in summer school know which schools had a summer school running and which didn’t? A law abiding citizen who wants to stay on the right side of the law would have to drive 30 KM/H through every school zone year round just in case a summer school was in session. The same problem extends for the rest of the school year when there are professional development days when the students are not in school. The average commuter has no way of knowing that this is a day when the school zones are not in effect, whereas the 16 year old driver who gets the day off would know this and would drive 50KM/H through the school zone. This is a case of special knowledge.  Not enough information is available for the driver to make an appropriate decision. The people have to obey a warning, that really doesn’t apply, they have to drive 30 KM/H just in case the school zone is in effect. How simple it would be to make the principal of the school (who could certainly delegate this) responsible for covering the signs on days when no school is in session. Issue the principal some heavy burlap sacks with zippers he could use, or make the sign hinged, so it could be locked open or closed.

Another traffic oddity I’ve seen in school zones is those “extra” bright yellow little plastic bag signs handed out by the auto insurance companies, which are posted in school zones as children head back to school. Saying “Drive Carefully” “School Zone”. The problem is not with handing these out or setting them up when school is back in session in September, those are great ideas, the problem comes when they get left up all year long and they mean nothing, or even worse, when the school principal and all the teachers have grown so incredibly numb to these signs, that when the school breaks for summer holidays and there are no children at the school, they continue to leave the signs up throughout the summer, only to replace them with new signs when the students actually return to school in the fall.  (You can’t make this stuff up!)

Crying wolf at the local Thrift store.

Now not related to traffic I saw something similar the other day in a Christian thrift shop here in Abbotsford. There was a sign there warning about the security camera that was recording people and that shoplifters would be prosecuted.  As I looked around at the $0.30 teacups and other discarded items that had been donated. I thought this was ridiculous, who would prosecute anyone for stealing such low value items? Then I looked carefully at the camera, and sure enough it was one of those fake cameras you can purchase at a novelty store with some silly name l ike “view all” or “sky eye” or something. Cheaply composed from plastic. The sign was an attempt to scare people to do the right thing. There was no means of enforcing it, and it was a Lie! “DON’T STEAL OR WE WILL VIDEO TAPE YOU”, well you aren’t going to video tape me, so don’t make that threat.  How about you just say “Don’t steal”. In the case of a Christian thrift shop perhaps the sign should have read; “If you need something just take it” since that would fit more with Christian charity and giving to someone who is in need.

We need to be asking ourselves these questions; “Is the warning reasonable?”, “Is the threat real?”.

Conclusion

When I ask you to do something for me and you do it because you honestly believe you are helping me, I’m relying on your good will to meet a need. Now if I keep asking you and you keep helping me because you believe it is benefiting me, this is good, we have a healthy relationship and there is trust. Now if you find out that I’m asking you to do something I don’t really need, but I’m just amused by watching you serve me, or I’m too lazy to stop you when I don’t really need your help, then you will get tired of helping me, and rightly so. This is what is taking place on the freeway. The whole “enforcement side of things” would not be necessary at all if we could ensure that we are not abusing the good will of people.

Thanks for reading, maybe you will find yourself in a position to offer an unreasonable heavy handed warning and you can instead offer something more reasonable.  Maybe you put up construction signs.  The point is that you can make changes to improve the world we live in.  This is about improving things for all of us, because we’re all in this together.

Thanks,
Greg. 

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Transcanada Highway Lower Mainland
March 10, 2007, 4:31 am
Filed under: Quality, Excellence & Design | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Trans-Canada highway in the lower mainland of BC South of the Fraser river has remained virtually unchanged since the 1960s. As you drive over the 40 year old overpasses, you can see the date of their construction stamped in the concrete. Each overpass following the same 2 lane bidirectional model with few exceptions. In recent years three of these interchanges have been upgraded or replaced. First the 208th street overpass (+2 lanes) in Langley was built to relieve pressure on 200th street, then 200th street (+2 lanes), Vedder Rd (+2 lanes) in Chilliwack, and Mt Lehman (+5 lanes) in Abbotsford. The total increase in lanes crossing the freeway since 1960 appears to be 11 for a distance spanning approximately 85KM. This is in an area where the total number of lanes crossing is now 66 lanes increasing from the 55 provided in the 1960s.

Now the Lower Mainland and Victoria areas of BC account for 9% of the population of Canada. In 1961 the population of BC was 1,629,082 just 20 years earlier it had been half of that. 30 years later it had doubled to 3.2 Million in 1991. At that time there had been no increase in lanes, with the 208th overpass being added some time in the 1990s. In 2006 the population of BC was 4,1 Million. That population increased 2.5 times from 1961 to 2006. In 2006, the combined population of the area south of the Fraser in the lower mainland including Chilliwack, Abbotsford, the Langleys and Surrey was 692,000. We can infer a similar increase in the population of the lower mainland that is accurate enough for this discussion.

The population increases to 250% of 1960 levels, but the overpasses increase of 20% of 1960 levels. Clearly the capacity enjoyed in the 1960s is not enjoyed today and the Federal and Provincial Governments have not paid close attention to maintaining our transportation network.

The 200th street fiasco got delayed for years (6 years?) because as I understand it, the provincial government tried to avoid paying cash for the interchange, and instead managed to trade adjacent land and favourable zoning to the developers. This delay affected thousands of area residents who were forced to queue for years to cross the freeway. Nowhere in the cost savings, was the inconvenience to citizens measured. Eventually the existing 2 lanes crossing the freeway were torn down and replaced with other lanes crossing the freeway, and a big box shopping centre was installed in every adjacent piece of property to the detriment of the traffic.

Now to area residents, it seems that when the Golden Ears Bridge comes in 2009, that the 200th st interchange with its multitudes of traffic lights and single lanes will be completely overwhelmed.  It has been obvious for the last 10 years or so that the only logical location (the empty place in the river where the roads have been aligning) for the Maple Ridge Langley bridge to exist is at 201st street near the water treatment plant on the Fraser river. However, area traffic has been queuing excessively between freeway and big box retail area and industrial area for 15 years. In 2009 when the bridge traffic joins the freeway at 200th we’ll see what happens. Currently, in the mornings, Westbound commuters have found traffic trying to exit Northbound at 200th from the Freeway.  These vehicles are often lined up for 1/2 a mile along the side of the freeway.  Naturally some of these vehicles stick into the Freeway lanes, creating an extreme traffic hazard for the 100 KM/hour traffic.  The exit needs to have double the capacity to carry traffic from Westbound Freeway to North and Southbound 200th.  The Lights at the interchange at 88th North of the freeway need to function so they do not impede the flow of traffic off of the freeway.  Sensors in the roadway on the exit ramp should be linked to these lights, such that when there is a backup of traffic attempting to leave the freeway, the light stays green allowing the traffic to continue to flow North across 88th and off the the Freeway.  It is much more important that a traffic light not impede the flow of the freeway, than that cars are allowed to get onto the freeway. It comes back to our methods for handling intersections and our fascination with traffic lights despite their implicit need to stop “some” traffic at all times. So 200th looks like too little too late, and time will tell us this year whether the engineers and architects planned well or planned poorly

Apart from inadequate overpasses to get local populations across the freeways, truck traffic, has not been given fair treatment on our freeway.  Nowhere except at the East bound truck scales (near 160th) do we find a third lane provided for trucks to gain speed as they climb a hill.  [EDIT: since I started drafting this article, a climbing lane has been added Westbound at Mt-Lehman THANKS]. This “feature is missing in many locations including but not limited to:  200th to 216, 232 to 208,  232 to 264, Mt Lehman, Sumas way to Macallum Road and Peardonville to MtLehman. Since our society seems to have embraced freight bearing trucks and largely dispensed with rail, it is strange to see that government is not adequately supporting the needs of trucks on our roads. Clearly there is much to be said about how freight trucks on our roads interact with other drivers, but that will have to wait for another article.

Interchanges, trucks, another deficiency of the Transcanada highway in the lower mainland that bears mentioning is that we do not find reasonable on-ramps. There does not seem to be a standard for a safe on-ramp despite the pretty illustrations in the Province’s driver’s handbook.  Almost every freeway interchange is designed uniquely and differently from other interchanges. In some cases these on-ramps and off-ramps, and these are becoming increasingly dangerous as the level of traffic congestion increases.  One feature that we sometimes see on the freeways in other cities which is absent in our own is the feature of a lane that links the on-ramp at one interchange with the off-ramp at the next.  By way of example, in Abbotsford Westbound between Sumas and Macallum exits, there is a relatively short distance of about 1 km where such a lane would allow traffic to merge less suddenly, allow traffic leaving the freeway to get out of the flow of traffic earlier, would have a limited cost and would reduce congestion by smoothing the flow of traffic onto and off of the freeway while increasing capacity between interchanges.

As fragile and full as our freeway traffic may be here in the lower mainland on the transcanada highway, another factor that contributes to the overall situation, is that we allow overloading the freeway with spikes of traffic. For example at 232 Eastbound in the afternoon rush, traffic coming in on the on ramp is equal in volume and speed to the traffic in the fast-lane.  The slow-lane has emptied itself of cars at the other side of the interchange as everyone preemptively avoids the merging traffic. Imagine with me, that if the freeway is at 100% capacity before the merge, then it is at 150% after the cars merge on.  They come in bunches.  The bunches overwhelm the freeway’s ability to smoothly absorb the traffic.  There is a bunch and then nothing and then another bunch.  Bunches are equal to the density of traffic in the fastlane.  Other jurisdictions address these spikes in traffic volume by leveling or smoothing the traffic admitted to the freeway. Metering the on-ramp would lower the density of the traffic coming on to the freeway, spreading it out and allowing for a responsible and sustainable merge into the slow-lane from the on-ramp.  This should better allow the freeway to retain its flow (its speed).  When the speed of the freeway drops to a crawl the people who just merged on, can force their way across to the fastlane, further disrupting the flow of traffic. Ideally where there are merge points, there would be some method to reduce lane switching to reduce the “turbulence” created by merging traffic.

If that isn’t bad enough, some commuters, knowing about this issue, choose to exit the freeway and drive in the decelleration lane only to re-enter the freeway at the point of congestion.  They effectively drive around all of the patient drivers who are slowing prior to the congestion, but they compound the problem by further disrupting the flow of traffic at the merge point, perpetuating the situation they “avoided”.

Congestion on this highway is such that it took me 37KM from the 160th exit in Surrey to exit 87 in Abbotsford BC to catch up with a semitrailer hauling large sections of steel pipe.  With uphill sections and that kind of weight, you can appreciate he wouldn’t be the fastest vehicle.   It goes to show you how inefficiently our freeway is working, when a capable vehicle cannot pass a lumbering vehicle , much less catch sight of it. This suggests the need to pro-actively increase the number of lanes to maintain traffic capacity.

I have hear the argument time and time again that if we build better roads, more people will drive their cars. While it is probably true that people who already drive their cars will drive further because they will get there in the same or less time than they currently do. We are currently experiencing a dramatic increase in the number of cars on the road despite no new roads being built. The argument would be fair if there was an alternative that was cost effective, reasonable and efficient. Unlike much of Europe and many major US centers, we do not have an effective rail transportation system unless you live and work within a 1/2 mile of the sky train. Bus service is “spotty” at best especially if you live outside of the Vancouver core. Traveling from Fleetwood in Surrey to BCIT in Burnaby by bus and skytrain takes 1 hour longer per day than making the same trip in a car on the freeway. How a 45 minute trip could take 30 minutes longer by using transit (1:15) highlights the situation that the lower mainland’s transit is in many cases 60% less effective at moving people. So we must have our roads alongside other solutions. If we neglect the roads we neglect the citizens who must travel them to hospitals, to work, to return home, we neglect the freight corridors that bring food to the supermarket etc.

We need to think twice about only doing what is “cost effective” and need to start doing what is “traffic effective”. The whole point of building a transportation infrastructure is not to “save money”, the point is to provide transportation. It is expected to be costly because it is a long term investment which yields continuing dividends in terms that may never appear on the bottom line. Reduced pollution, shorter commute times, higher efficiency, improved commerce, improved health through lowered stress, better safety resulting in fewer injuries and medical costs. It is like the cost of minting a penny. some people object to a penny costing more than 1 cent to mint, thinking that somehow there is a loss, but in reality, a penny allows for commerce, and will be used and re-used many hundreds of times in its lifetime creating a value that far outstrips the cost of minting it.

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