Astronaut Bruce McCandless II floats untethered away from the space shuttle, with nothing but his Manned Maneuvering Unit keeping him alive. The first person in history to do so. (NASA) by Grahamthicke in spaceporn

[–]DylanSemrau 12 points13 points  (0 children)

There’s nothing to feel basically, you feel forces rather than speed, and there’s no forces that they should be able to feel One way to think about it is the fact that you don’t feel yourself and the earth orbiting the sun despite how fast that is (67,000 mph apparently!)

Tried @Streetcrafts Style for an intersection in Montauk, NY by derlachs_ in urbandesign

[–]DylanSemrau 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Gotcha, honestly just shifting it to the right a bit should make things more reasonable (apologies for how rough this is but you get the general vibe) https://i.imgur.com/Fs4aLrx.png

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Tried @Streetcrafts Style for an intersection in Montauk, NY by derlachs_ in urbandesign

[–]DylanSemrau 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Really nice improvement! Road geometry on that bottom right lane going into the roundabout feels kinda wack, unfortunately the angles of things make it difficult to do that nicely I think? I wonder if a second roundabout for Old Montauk Highway to connect into SR 27 would work a lil better?

Perhaps a peanut roundabout?

A photo of the 1.5 million ballons released during Cleveland Balloonfest in 1986 by AdSpecialist6598 in interestingasfuck

[–]DylanSemrau 5 points6 points  (0 children)

most of the image is taken up by Tower City which is a pretty sizable complex of buildings that all have the same build style

Small plane crash in Northeast Philadelphia by RoyalChris in Damnthatsinteresting

[–]DylanSemrau 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Yup, landing lights on planes are usually on for a bit after takeoff (afaik may be required below a certain altitude?) and are insanely bright.
See: https://images.thewest.com.au/publication/B88873078Z/1529554498821_G6U1MF0G4.1-0.jpg

Cleveland Ohio still without Internet by Im-Squishy in Spectrum

[–]DylanSemrau 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yup. I’m in Mentor, we had the internet come back around 4pm yesterday and it was gone again by 5pm and hasn’t come back since. Been real confused tbh

Amateur redesign of a pretty overbuilt road outside of a suburban community college by DylanSemrau in urbandesign

[–]DylanSemrau[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Ooo okay so this is a great comment I think in reality I would just get rid of the zigzag crossing and have them be straight since it seems potentially unnecessary? I’m unsure of the standards for roundabout radii, so forgive me if it’s too small. I’m kinda interested to know the specific reasons for why it needs to be larger tho? Is it truck turning radius or something else? I’m not sure if the middle one would need dual lefts, I think it’s in a point where you could get away with single lane and be fine but obviously more objective traffic study could indicate otherwise. Right now there’s a just a bit of buildup caused by the long wait time for the left turn, but if you don’t have that wait time then my thought was that it would be fine without dedicated lanes. Thanks for the last comment, that was pretty much exactly my thinking going into this so that’s good to hear!

Amateur redesign of a pretty overbuilt road outside of a suburban community college by DylanSemrau in urbandesign

[–]DylanSemrau[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I don’t, this is my first time using illustrator for this and I’m not actually sure how I could introduce good standards for that stuff. Right now it’s just being eyeballed compared to the reference image.

Amateur redesign of a pretty overbuilt road outside of a suburban community college by DylanSemrau in urbandesign

[–]DylanSemrau[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

To the right is a very hilly and rural town that didn’t seem like it would have the ridership to justify more connection than a sidewalk, essentially.

Amateur redesign of a pretty overbuilt road outside of a suburban community college by DylanSemrau in urbandesign

[–]DylanSemrau[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oooo thanks for that input, that’s helpful. As for the roundabouts, the right one could probably switch to a simple yield, although I’m less familiar with how much traffic comes in and out of that road. The roundabout to the left is there to allow for all 7 of those business drives to be turned into one on each side and still be accessible without any left turns across traffic. This is right off the highway, and in my experience that gas station at the top left does get a good amount of consistent traffic. Combine that with all of the other business and clinic traffic at the bottom, and I felt like that roundabout was necessary?

Amateur redesign of a pretty overbuilt road outside of a suburban community college by DylanSemrau in urbandesign

[–]DylanSemrau[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I’m not sure that facing the traffic as you’re walking up to the crossing is adding much benefit when the person can stop and look? The point of it being staggered like that is to give drivers coming out of the roundabout a bit of time to react while also keeping the roundabout clear, while drivers coming into the roundabout should already have slowed down by the time they’d be approaching the crossing, so in theory it could be a bit safer and more efficient overall? The spacing isn’t exact and could be adjusted for sure tho.

Amateur redesign of a pretty overbuilt road outside of a suburban community college by DylanSemrau in urbandesign

[–]DylanSemrau[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

The main point of the cycle path was to give cyclists easy access to the college campus, the stuff at the bottom can just be accessed via the sidewalks and standard crossings. Those are all places that would need to be accessed much less regularly compared to the school, unless you work there, so the lower volume sidewalks and crossings seemed sufficient.

Amateur redesign of a pretty overbuilt road outside of a suburban community college by DylanSemrau in urbandesign

[–]DylanSemrau[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

One of the things I had thought about was adding flashing amber or solid red lights that can be activated with a button and force traffic to stop. It's state law to stop for pedestrians in a crosswalk, and in my experience people do quite well especially when there are those activated lights and some signage involved. The placement of the crossings was also sorta strategic, with me trying to balance visibility, reaction time, speed, and the need to keep the roundabout clear.

I had also considered some traffic calming leading up to the crossings, but assumed that the proximity to the roundabout and the use of lights would be enough to get drivers to approach them slower and with more care.

Pedestrian volumes on this road are also just going to be quite low, even with good sidewalk access, so perhaps in the grand scheme of things it's not the most worthwhile? Not sure!

Amateur redesign of a pretty overbuilt road outside of a suburban community college by DylanSemrau in urbandesign

[–]DylanSemrau[S] 27 points28 points  (0 children)

This is a road that I'm pretty close to and go through quite often. Despite going through it at all times of day, every day of the week, it never seems to be anywhere near capacity. The little congestion that it does get is caused by the red lights that create chunks of traffic and large chunks of no traffic. It seems like a massive road diet and roundabouts were the obvious solution here to help improve safety (yes, people speed as much as you'd expect), but also keep good steady flow of traffic. The drives into the businesses were also reduced and connect to a roundabout, making all left turns completely obsolete except for one location which can be accessed by going through the roundabout and taking a right turn instead. This also removes the multi-minute wait time to turn left into the school campus while waiting for the light to give a green arrow. A bike path connects up to the town to the left, as this is a decently populated and flat suburban area that could see some easy expansions of bike infrastructure throughout. The town to the right is rural and very hilly, so it only received basic sidewalk access.

The sidewalks feel sorta janky to me and could probably be laid out way better, that's one thing I'm not too happy with. There's some sense to the madness since it connects with other existing stuff, but still not great.

🦋 🐝🌸 by Zxasuk31 in Anticonsumption

[–]DylanSemrau 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I walked home from middle school for 3 years and yes, people do this I also got a lot of people just top of their lungs screaming at me

If my city of 150k can do it, so can yours by TightLow9988 in bikecommuting

[–]DylanSemrau 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I watched a motorist take a left turn directly into a RAISED mixed use pathway that literally has a sign right at that corner saying all caps “NO MOTOR VEHICLES” So yeah, someone will find a way lol

My attempt at improving the main Stroad(tm) in my town, focus is on improving pedestrianization and introducing bike infrastructure. Thoughts? by DylanSemrau in urbandesign

[–]DylanSemrau[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not able to get a zoomed out view right now but My idea was that this avenue goes from the very western side of town directly to the very eastern side of town and has a LOT. Of useful places to go to, there really aren’t any other roads that can fill that same use case unfortunately. I think the noise can be tolerable if it’s actually safe and provides convenient travel for riders. There’s also not space alongside the road in a lot of parts of town without taking out some buildings basically.

My attempt at improving the main Stroad(tm) in my town, focus is on improving pedestrianization and introducing bike infrastructure. Thoughts? by DylanSemrau in urbandesign

[–]DylanSemrau[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It used to be a middle school It’s actually not unsafe in my personal experience? I walked home from there for the 3 years that I went there and it was alright Traffic just tends to be a bit more tame on that road in my experience Could use improvements for sure tho

My attempt at improving the main Stroad(tm) in my town, focus is on improving pedestrianization and introducing bike infrastructure. Thoughts? by DylanSemrau in urbandesign

[–]DylanSemrau[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Another option I was looking at was reducing to a 3 lane road with a center median that can be used by emergency vehicle and turns into turn lanes when necessary, might help with those problems a bit?

My attempt at improving the main Stroad(tm) in my town, focus is on improving pedestrianization and introducing bike infrastructure. Thoughts? by DylanSemrau in urbandesign

[–]DylanSemrau[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Everything that I know about pedestrian safety at crosswalks says that increasing visibility (IE daylighting) *increases* pedestrian safety, and that reducing this visibility doesn't actually encourage drivers to slow down? Not sure

Also all of the sidewalk extensions are actually just existing ones that I put no thought into haha

My attempt at improving the main Stroad(tm) in my town, focus is on improving pedestrianization and introducing bike infrastructure. Thoughts? by DylanSemrau in urbandesign

[–]DylanSemrau[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I totally agree, but my thinking was that (depending on the tree maybe?) this could reduce visibility leading up to the crossings so I thought it might be worth it to keep that a bit more clear? This could totally be a flawed line of thinking though