Iconic, Quirky, or Ugly: Transportation in America

A site called MetaFilter recently posted the following question, “Calling all non-USAans: Can you give me some examples of tiny, weird things you discovered about the United States only when you got here?”  The responses cover many aspects of America life and are a lot of fun to read.  Sandwiched in with observations about bottomless cups of coffee, guns at Walmart, the diversity of choice in toothpaste, and the amount of water in our toilets, I found some useful reflections on our transportation system.  The following is a compilation of these observations, organized by topic.  The list is unedited so I apologize in advance for the occasional curse word.

Pedestrian Accommodations

• Drive-through everythings. Drive-through ATMs, drive-through bank tellers, drive-through pharmacies, drive-through liquor stores in some states. On the flipside, the paucity of sidewalks/pavements in many parts of the US, where your European would receive funny looks from his hosts if he suggested walking to a relatively nearby destination, and might even be stopped by the cops if they spotted him strolling along a residential area.
• Residential streets without sidewalks.
• The first time I tried to cross a road by myself, it took me at least 15 minutes to get the rhythm of the traffic lights and how much time I had to make it to the other side. Streets are a lot wider, so the timing is completely different. And the multi-lane intersections... aaah. So confusing.
• Jaywalking - seriously - you're going to ticket me for crossing the road?

Signs and Markings

• Writing on the road is the wrong way around: LANE BIKE not BIKE LANE.
• Oh, and the round things that mark highway lanes. Someone told me that the guy who invented them licensed them to the Dept of Hwys for 10c each. Whenever I go to the US, I try to count them and estimate his riches.
• From the UK: much greater tendency to use text on signs - in Europe we tend either to use graphics or not to bother with a sign at all.

Intersections and Right of Way

• Some places you can turn right on red -- wait what YOU CAN DRIVE THROUGH A RED LIGHT if you're turning WHAT THE HELL PEOPLE
• No roundabouts. Stop signs and the awkward negotiated dance of who has the right-of-way to go next.
• Four-way stops flummoxed me. As a UK driver I'm used to roundabouts where you know who has right of way. Working out who has right of way at a four-way stop is a recipe for an accident. (In Ohio, it appears, the truck with the biggest tyres tires has right of way.)

Freeways and Speed

• Speed limits that feel way too slow -- 35 limits would often be 45 or 50 or 60 back home. Freeway exits sometimes every quarter-mile -- UK motorways have very much fewer exits.
• The roads are just huge. A dual carriageway/divided highway is a big road in the UK, but it's every other street in Texas. Never have I seen so many huge, multi-level junctions

City Planning

• Cities where streets follow a grid. And almost all streets allow cars. As a European I'm accustomed to look for the city center; a place where there are no cars, where streets are meandering, where there are terraces to sit outside and have a coffee. A place that's amenable to walking, to hanging out and enjoying the atmosphere. I did not find such a space in the american cities I've been to. And it prevented me from enjoying the place.
• There isn't a pedestrian area in city centers where you can stroll between shops and cafes and not worry about getting run over by a bus.
• Lots of things that people have said above, but the thing that amazed me the most was going to places, large places, that have no center.  If you want a funny look, stop someone in Boca Raton and ask them where the main street is.
• Lack of sidewalks, even within large shopping malls (I have to drive in from the street? I have to DRIVE between buildings in the same complex?!)

Bicycling

• Riding a bike is dangerous and an enterprise, not a mindless means of transport.

Transit

• The buses in LA make a stop every block. During a one-hour bus trip, the bus might make 66 stops. That is more than a stop a minute.
• We were surprised to find that our neighbors had not only never used the bus, but they were scared to! This kind of attitude seems to lead to a viscous funding cycle for transit. In fact, people vote against upgrades to transit, because it might bring the riffraff into their neighborhood.

Vehicles and Parking Lots

• The cars here are huge! I've stood eye-to-eye with a bumper.
• And oh man the surbuban parking lots! Yeah everyone's heard of them, but nothing will prepare you for the overwhelming size and quantity.
• Stores have their own parking lot and you cannot run errands in medium towns without driving between different shops. 

The responses illuminate a lot of areas for improvement in the U.S.  However, having traveled abroad extensively, America doesn’t have a corner on the transportation quirks market.  Many countries need to work on their pedestrian facilities, rural roads, and vehicle interactions at intersections.  I almost fell through a hole on a bridge in Russia, took my life into my hands crossing a roundabout in Paris, and ran over a sheep’s leg in Ireland.  Nobody’s perfect. 

If you have a transportation quirk to share, either from your experiences in the U.S. or your travels abroad, please post a comment.



Poodles, Peer Pressure, and Product

Last month, something was amiss in the world of competitive dog shows.  The United Kingdom-based Kennel Club decided it was time to get tough and enforce their ban on the use of performance-enhancing products in dog shows.  They showed their teeth at Crufts, the world’s largest dog show, when they introduced random testing of the canine competitors for these banned products.  But the Kennel Club wasn’t testing for steroids.  No, the performance-enhancing products in question were just that – products, as in hairspray. 

Casually listening to the radio on my drive to work, this story caught my attention.  Sure, I allow my daughters to put an occasional bow or curler in our family dog’s hair, but I draw the line at product.  This hard-hitting issue was sandwiched between a report on the collapse of the Greek economy and the start of the new Supreme Court term.  The radio reporter interviewed Sandra Vincent, Secretary of the Standard Poodle Club of Great Britain.  Ms. Vincent was leading the pack of dog owners who did not consider the use of products to be cheating, “The bottom line is that we've always used hairspray.  We know it is against the rules but everyone has done it and done it very carefully. Whether you like it or not, dog shows are beauty competitions of sorts. [The ban] is like Miss World going in without her make-up on."

I was having a grand time listening to this story.  I was waiting for her to draw the obvious analogy to American baseball when she said something that caught me off guard, “It’s like speeding.  No one follows the speed limit. We know it’s against the rules but everyone does it.”  Drawing an analogy to beauty competitions or American’s favorite pastime was one thing, but Ms. Vincent was comparing breaking the rules at a glorified parade of family pets to an activity that contributed to over 10,000 fatalities last year. 

I don’t have an issue with Ms. Vincent.  I’m sure she is a nice, well-groomed person.  The truth is, she was right.  Speeding is ubiquitous.  Everyone does it.  Police officers charged with enforcement don’t enforce the posted speed limit.  If they did, the driving public would be up in arms, the media would jump all over the subject, and the judges would throw the citations out.  Instead, there is an unspoken threshold at which we consider speeding acceptable.    

On some level, all drivers make a calculation to determine our operating speed when we get in the car.  I think the calculation looks something like this:

                                                S = 1.1P + 3 – 4(W_z) – 7(S_z)

Where

                        S = Operating Speed in MPH

                        P = Posted Speed in MPH

                        W_z=1 if in an active work zone, 0 otherwise

S_z=1 if in an active school zone, 0 otherwise

For teenagers, the equation looks slightly different:

                                                            S = 1.1P + 5T

Where

                        S = Operating Speed in MPH

                        P = Posted Speed in MPH

                        T = The number of their friends in the car

I know my causal readers just glazed over (sorry Mom) when I introduced math to the discussion.  However, unless you are always staying at the speed limit or you are constantly getting tickets, you are doing this math to stay within the “acceptable” limits for speeding.  How did this collective math evolve?  We didn’t learn this calculation in driver’s ed class from the 1950s videos on the Smith System of Driving. 

I discussed this with my company’s president, Bob Brustlin, when he visited Raleigh earlier this week.  He had a similar thought that morning on his way to Logan airport.  Driving the speed of traffic, he passed a state trooper parked on the shoulder of the road.  He checked his speed – 80 MPH.  The trooper didn’t budge.  e waIf Bob had driven slower in the high-speed congestion, he may have caused a crash.  Similarly, if the state trooper pulled cars over, the same may have happened. 

All of this begs the question, When did speeding become the ultimate peer pressure?  And, the more important question, What do we do about it? 

How did the Kennel Club resolve the opposition to the enforcement of the ban?  They rolled over.  The ban was lifted.  Hairspray is now fair game.  I think I can hear Pascal (our family dog) running for cover. 

Please post your thoughts on these issues in the comment box.  I'd be particularly interested in thoughts (or equations) on how you select your speed in relation to the posted speed limit.

Looking for resources to reduce speeding?  VHB compiled a CD of resources on speeding for the Federal Highway Administration.  Email me (keccles@vhb.com) if you’d like a copy of the searchable CD or check it out online at:

http://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/speedmgt/ref_mats/fhwasa09028/

The Importance of Strategy

The Military Civilian Workshop to Improve Highway Safety was held earlier this week at Fort Eustis, Virginia.  The Workshop is a tradition in Virginia, held annually for over 40 years.  The conference brings together what could be characterized as an army of partners in highway safety – military leaders, enforcement, first responders, engineers, media – to discuss strategic ways to improve highway safety. 

Military leaders may seem like unconventional partners in highway safety until you consider their responsibilities.  Many military bases are the size of small cities.  Fort Bragg here in my state has a population of 40,000 and covers 250 square miles.  Military leaders are responsible for safety on these large transportation networks within their bases and for the safety of their personnel (many of which are young, inexperienced drivers) as they travel outside the bases. Imagine being the traffic safety engineer for a town of 40,000 people where the average resident was under 25, single, male, and had a high risk tolerance.  It would be a challenging job to say the least.    

The two-day conference included numerous sessions to discuss strategic ways to improve highway safety on Virginia’s roadways, both on and off bases. 

The Workshop also provided the perfect setting to discuss Virginia’s new strategic highway safety plan.  States and some local agencies develop strategic highway safety plans to guide their safety improvement efforts.  The plans are collaborative and bring together partners from a broad perspective on highway safety, very similar to the participants at the Workshop. 

The following is an interview of Stephen Read, the Highway Safety Improvement Program Manager for the Virginia Department of Transportation and architect of Virginia’s new strategic highway safety plan.  The interview is conducted by Mike Sawyer, the former State Safety Engineer in Virginia and the architect of the previous strategic highway safety plan. 

These two Richmond gentlemen sat down over a glass of iced tea during a break at the Workshop.  Their conversation follows.

Mike:  Where do you see Virginia’s strategic plan headed and where is it at today?

Stephen: Like many other states, we’re in the process of updating our plan.  Our last plan had a four to six-year time period.  Ours has elapsed so we’re in the process of updating our vision, our mission, our goals and objectives, as well as our major strategies for our strategic plan. 

Mike:  How does the new vision or mission statement compare to the old plan?

Stephen:  One thing that has happened since the old plan is that there has been worldwide emphasis on the public health aspect of highway safety.  With international emphasis on working towards zero deaths (TZD), Virginia has adopted the vision now to look TZD; everyone should arrive at their destination safe and alive.  For our vision, we’re really working towards reducing not only deaths but serious injuries as well.  In our last plan we had goals and objectives that looked at all injury crashes.  In this plan, we’re going to look at those serious injuries that, without some sort of intervention in that crash, could have possibly been a fatality. 

Mike:  What are some of the key emphasis areas of this new plan?

Stephen:  Well, with the last plan the starting point was a lot of work from the late 90s that was more comprehensive in nature.  It had numerous emphasis areas that in some cases were overlapping or intermingled. With this plan, our attempt is to not leave these things off the table but to be a little bit more strategic on what we really think we can work on to drive the numbers down.  Our attempt is to look at 5 or 6 of those key emphasis areas.  Our last plan had 14 including two which were fundamental looking at the data and having good transportation safety planning.   Our hope right now is to go from the other 12, if you will, to get down to a targeted 6 emphasis area.  We looked at how each of those contributed to the deaths and severe injuries and decided on the new top 6 based on their contribution.

Mike:  What’s your schedule?  What are the next steps?

Stephen:  In September, we held Road Shows to educate folks about the plan, get their interest, and understand their issues with the emphasis areas.  We also asked them to get involved - review the strategies for the statewide plan but also think about developing regional plans and be involved at a more local level where they could target and develop more local plans within their own community.  At this point we have a list of folks, we have a governing body that we call the Steering Committee, and we’ve decided on leadership for each of the emphasis areas. 

We’re about to embark on a series of webinars and interactive dialog that will concentrate on the emphasis areas and strategies and also the potential actions that come out of those strategies.  Again, we want to refine not only the emphasis areas but also the strategies that come out of the emphasis areas so we can focus on the key things we need to be working on in the next five years.  The goal is to not put into the plan things that are actions or specific project or specific functions but to leave those more for the implementation plan in terms of the actions.

Mike:  Thank you for your time today.  It’s been great to hear what’s going on in Virginia.  We appreciate all your efforts.

Strategic, focused, and with an army of support, Virginia’s new strategic plan is on course to get more people home for Holiday Dinner every year.