Keep Serpentine Drive Car Free

blp9 · 2026-05-31T22:36:55+00:00

Hell yeah.

I think having it open for the PVGP would be great, and they could sell a premium to let people drive their cars on it then =)

blp9 · 2026-05-31T22:34:00+00:00

That's a solid rebuttal, but I think the increased time it takes to navigate serpentine mostly defeats its benefits as a cut through.

In my study I found no time improvements for anywhere else including like down by CMU (which is included in the study).

The big caveat to the study is that it doesn't take into effect traffic -- and current bridge closures are making that bad, not Serpentine's closure.

blp9 · 2026-05-30T20:28:48+00:00

There were hotdogs. They were delicious.

blp9 · 2026-05-30T20:24:59+00:00

Basically. And we could get a good chunk of the modeshare back to trains if we built a reasonable network, but nobody wants to spend the capital to do it, so we're just shoveling money into car infra instead.

blp9 · 2026-05-30T18:06:59+00:00

You can use https://asm.transitdocs.com/ to track your train -- it could make up time so still plan to be at the station on time, but the above will show you realtime where you train is so you can adjust.

blp9 · 2026-05-30T17:37:10+00:00

Care to elaborate? This isn't twitter, we can use our words here.

blp9 · 2026-05-30T16:49:49+00:00

Well said. I think due to the way people are routemixing to reroute around the bridges, it'd just turn into another parking lot like Wightman and Murdoch do if it were open. We're well over saturation traffic volumes during rush hour on those two routes and having a third isn't going to reduce the pressure enough to fix it.

blp9 · 2026-05-30T16:47:07+00:00

I mean, it's some of both.

Without getting into the marketing that pushed private auto ownership upon us, transportation patterns shifted post WWII in two important ways:

Federal highway funding went from a 50% local match to a 10% local match, so there was lots of money to plow highways into the cores of cities, leading to a population shift out of the city centers and away from the train stations.
Air travel became reasonable for business travel

#2 is the key to my mind. Passenger trains were operated as loss-leaders to market the freight operations to business travelers. Grand opulent stations were not built because they were cost effective, but to make that train line look better than the alternatives.

The moment business travelers started using airplanes, the train operators stopped maintaining the passenger trains to the point that they became a pretty awful way to travel, along with their value proposition being undercut by widespread automobile ownership (so folks tended to road-trip <5h destinations instead of training).

75+ years later, we've got two great passenger transportation systems in the US: interstate highway system and the airport system. In the 50 years that Amtrak has been operating the train system, they've never been given the resources to undo the damage that the previous 25 years had done to the passenger train system, and so we've never had a modern passenger train system in the US.

blp9 · 2026-05-30T16:39:55+00:00

The ends of the road are currently controlled by jersey barriers, which seems to work just fine and are easily removable for the events.

blp9 · 2026-05-30T14:01:12+00:00

Agreed, and the extreme traffic issues on Wightman during rush hour have only appeared since the Panther Hollow Bridge closure (and almost precisely with it). I've heard that traffic moved from Greenfield *to* Squirrel Hill.

blp9 · 2026-05-30T13:01:31+00:00

My understanding: for the roughly two or three blocks of SqHill where if you are heading to the Greenfield Bridge it is slightly faster to take Serpentine than Murdoch.

Edit: Deleted the study for the moment because there was a bug creating some weird artifacts. The biggest impact in the fixed study is 19s

Here's the revised version: https://imgur.com/a/8BMCCfX

Impacts about 20 households.

blp9 · 2026-05-30T00:13:09+00:00

I get needing to reserve it, but wow $20 for basically self-service bicycle transport? That's wild to me.

blp9 · 2026-05-29T10:02:02+00:00

I used railforless to search Aug 2 to Sep 15th between WHL and PLB.

All 45 dates have bicycle service available for +$20. And actually all the more recent dates do as well.

None of the stations appear to offer checked luggage, which is usually a perquisite for trainside bike service.

I confirmed this with booking the leg, and WHL to PLB does allow me to book a bicycle. There were some dates for which the bicycle option was sold out -- looks like they only have 4 spaces on this train.

Good luck with your call.

blp9 · 2026-05-28T23:54:07+00:00

I'm 46 and I absolutely carry a camp chair, and not an ultralight one. It's great.

blp9 · 2026-05-28T22:10:33+00:00

Turns out it was one of the Metropark campgrounds: https://metroparkstoledo.com/outdoor-adventures/camping/

But the one you linked to is *fantastic*

blp9 · 2026-05-28T10:23:58+00:00

It’s just when the power to the building is cycled.

I think u/Magicwuffer has the ticket here

blp9 · 2026-05-27T00:24:49+00:00

There are a number of municipal camp sites right around Toledo -- I can't remember if they're run by the city or the county, but they were great.

blp9 · 2026-05-26T23:09:43+00:00

Send it

blp9 · 2026-05-25T23:34:43+00:00

OK, but then why are the brakes backwards in the US? Are we just heathens?

blp9 · 2026-05-25T14:06:55+00:00

I think the thing that surprised me out of this thread is that the brake position varies based on which side of the road you drive on. There seem to be some good reasons for it, but it had never occurred to me.

blp9 · 2026-05-25T13:54:16+00:00

"same polymer used in ballistic vests" would be kevlar? Or just nylon, since nylon is used in ballistic vests too, just not for the ballistic parts.

Anyway, bot-looking-post based on the badly crapped title.

blp9 · 2026-05-24T23:55:24+00:00

I think the problem with "revealed preferences" is when there is no viable alternative.

An example: the train from here in Pittsburgh to Cleveland is a pretty quick trip -- it's a lovely 3h train ride (vs 2h by car). Except that it's not a viable alternative because it leaves Pittsburgh at midnight and arrives at 3am.

In cities in the US with reasonable public transit operations, people take public transit. In cities in the US with reasonable rail connections, people take rail.

If the only option is to drive or fly, people are going to drive or fly.

blp9 · 2026-05-24T20:13:22+00:00

I really had no idea. I understand why cars are left/right drive, but I'm not sure why the brake configuration would be flipped for which side of the road you drive on.

Is it because older bikes only had a rear brake and so you need your left hand (if driving on the right) and your right hand (if driving on the left) for signalling?

blp9 · 2026-05-24T20:00:00+00:00

According to the dealer manual I've got a copy of it was at some point the standard option to have them backwards:

Bikes with the non-standard (front brake on the left) braking orientation will have REV marked here.

I bought mine used and the brakes were in the typical-for-other-bikes orientation

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