You are cordially invited to change the design of a town that has been around for 1,000 years and which train line has not been planned with the expectation of basically every household owning at least one car plus tourism.
While you raise a valid point, the only feasible alternative would’ve been to keep funneling pass through car traffic through the town center or to pay for an ever bigger bypass, easily four times longer, all through privately held suburbs, industrial zones and farmland.
Train traffic is light enough that halting on the tracks isn’t an immediate danger, but I’m one of the weird guys who keeps at least one meter distance from the tracks unless there’s a train standing (at train stations) or who actually comes to a full stop at a stop sign.
One night I was coming home on a commuter train. There was quite a series of bangs when the train bounced over a heavy chain that someone had wrapped around the rails a few times. I don’t know if the train eventually cut the chain, but the first several cars certainly didn’t.
There was much delay while they checked everything, and then we continued.
Wow, sounds like Sab-o-Tage (sorry, inside joke: used to work with a woman who, whenever anything went wrong, would dramatically speculate that “Sab-o-Tage” was the cause). But seriously, sounds like an attempt to derail the train. Surprised they didn’t halt everything and have a massive investigation
This is a pretty interesting video with engineers removing progressively larger sections of rail in an attempt to derail a train. It takes more than you’d think.
That was pretty interesting, although I’m sure they knew the the small or evenly spaced gaps would not work; trains wheels are connected two wheels on each side in assemblies that tend to keep them on the tracks. I worked for the railway only about five years, many years ago but came from a railroad family… you were taught to apply a differential load if you wanted to derail a car… if using timbers, place them at an angle. But if it’s more than a runaway unloaded car, good luck. The same place that had the coal car runaway had earlier had an entire train runaway ( it was later determined, due to the persistently steep grade, there was a point of no return where if you were above a certain speed you couldn’t stop ). The Engineer that had that runaway rode it out and stopped it just before the main line (rather than bailing, which I think others in his crew may have done) and thereafter had a permanent job being a pilot and instructor for that piece of track
The same problem of sitting on tracks also goes for entering an intersection when it’s not possible to make it all the way through. I’ve had drivers behind me try to go around on the shoulder because they think blocking oncoming traffic when the light changes is a good idea.
It’s become such a problem in my area that they’ve painted lines where cars are not supposed to stop, posted “Don’t Block the Box” signs, and finally started ticketing offenders. My favorite incident was the day an 18-wheeler with a Walmart logo blocked a four-lane road during rush hour. The traffic light went through two cycles and nobody in the blocked cross-street was able to get through. I could hear drivers around me cheering when a police car showed up, and the truck couldn’t get away. It was worth getting stuck just to see someone finally get what they deserved.
Oh yes, Even worse: There’s a road I use nearly every work day, that’s 100 kph for roughly 900 meters. And of course, some people are always in a hurry. At least once a year I witness the following scenario:
A truck driver seemingly doesn’t accelerate, driver of a passenger car behind them gets anxious, sees a chance to pass, pedal to the metal, SHIT SHIT SHIT! Because there was a scooter going 45 kph in front of the truck, leaving barely enough space to let the %&$&%$&% car driver avoid collision with oncoming traffic or the scooter.
All for “saving” freaking 30 seconds, if even that much.
Edit: I’ll add that the oncoming traffic in all cases did the right thing and decelerated, anticipating the problem, but one these days it will be another Audi or BMW also with pedal to the metal and there will be blood on the street. If there hasn’t been already, I don’t follow the local news.
About a week after we moved in to our current place, my daughter called us from her room at the front of the house (our room is in the half-basement at the back). It was around 2am and she said there was someone shining a flashlight into our cars and walking around the yard. Then they started knocking on the door. It was a cop, who was looking for the owner of a car involved in a hit-and-run and the vehicle was registered to our address. Mr. Bells groggily said the cars in our driveway were the only ones we owned and we’d only lived there a week and he said “Ok” and left.
It’s been two and a half years and we still get mail for the previous tenants, by the way. The most baffling is mail from a school district that our house isn’t even in. Like, how did they give them this address and somehow get their kid enrolled?!
You don’t live in Seattle too, do you? Because this describes Mercer Street, aka the deepest circle of Hell. Cars get stuck in the intersections, the people behind you are honking because you’re refusing to be the next person stuck blocking traffic, other people are pulling into the parking lane and then trying to merge back into traffic where there’s NO ROOM already…
It has taken me two hours to drive from 5th Ave to the freeway on-ramp down Mercer. It’s 3/4 of a mile. I hit the on-ramp and burst into hysterical sobbing.
Too many areas in and around the city are like this at rush hour. I was lucky for several years because my company allowed people in IT to telecommute. After that, my policy was to go early or leave late. It amazes me that the same intersections that are jammed between 4:30 to 5:30 are practically deserted at 6:00 PM.
In smaller cities like Wilmington, DE streets can downright creepy after sunset, because you might be the only car waiting for the light to change. The morning rush was more varied, and could be bad until 9:30. Still, it cut down on my stress level to avoid the worst of it.
There aren’t a lot of scooters on the roads here. When I see this happen, it’s usually a small car - like a Honda or MINI Cooper. Their drivers must have nerves of steel, though. You couldn’t pay me to drive either one in this area, where commercial trucks, pickup trucks, and huge SUVs like Chevy Suburbans terrorize the rest of us.
They aren’t very common here either, which probably make the problem worse. The 45 kph scooters kinda work in our 50 kph cities (where traffic is often slower or even limited to 30 kph), but they don’t work well on country roads where they are also not allowed to use the bike/pedestrian way next to the car way.
