paved with good intentions

The Forum Flavinius, or Colosseum as it is more commonly known, was second perhaps only to the Pantheon in annals or Roman architecture. Among other innovations it incorporated were the first large-scale air conditioning system, watertight construction so it might be flooded for naumachiæ, and an ingenious network of tunnels for crowd control that the Romans called vomitoria for their ability to rapidly discharge their contents. (The tunnels, not the Romans. But also the Romans.)

It was a colossal undertaking (hence the modern adjective), and the final set of improvements were completed only in AD 238, over a sesquincentennial after it was begun in AD 72. Its final date of completion remains presciently appropriate, since two millennia later the wise lawmakers of California and DC would use the number for a rather less colossal undertaking, namely the creation of Interstate 238 in the San Francisco bay area. Oddly enough for an interstate highway, the 238 is contained entirely within the city of Oakland. This, however, is a common pecadillo among interstates (as, for example, the lowest-numbered interstate, the 4, which runs from Tampa to Daytone Beach entirely within Florida).

(Tangentially: Southern Californians will refer to highways in the definite article, as illustrated above, e.g. “I took the 10 to Santa Monica.” Everyone else omits the article, e.g. “I took 95 to Newark.” Moreover, Non-Angelenos are also more likely to use names for their freeways, so that a New Yorker would be more likely to say “I took the New Jersey Turnpike to Newark.” Actually, a New Yorker probably wouldn't say that; he'd go to La Guardia or JFK. Never mine. But as is true in most matters of automotive patois, the SoCal faction has it right.)

The 238 may be the most villified highway in the nation by that underclass of people who pay great attention to the numeration and systematization of routes. The Great and Mysterious Zzyzx begins his description by opining that “this road is a travesty.” Others are rather more sanguine about its existence, but there's general consensus that it's a gross violation of the interstate numbering system. Why? Read on, dear soul.

All three-digit interstates—except for the 238—follow the same system. The final two digits indicate its ‘parent’ freeway, the two (or one) digit highway whence it comes. Thus the 405 is an offshoot of the 5 (the 5 is considered to be ‘05’ for this purpose). The 238's numeration, then, implies the existence of an Interstate 38, except that there is no such freeway, nor has there ever been. Moreover, even if there were an Interstate 38, it would not intersect San Francisco. It would have to be south of the 40, which is much farther towards Antarctica.

Thus the 238's violation of convention is egregious, and yet is approved by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), the sanctioning body for highway nomenclature. Why this travesty? The road was signed as California 238 before being upgraded with federal money to interstate standards. Since it connects spurs of the 80 (the 880 to the 580), it should legitimately have been named as an X80. However, at the time of its construction, every X80 combination except two were in active use, and those two were already promised to other roads in the works. Lacking any remaining choices, the AASHTO allowed the road to retain its original number as an interstate, even in gross violation of the rules. Since its reigstration in 1983, it has served its purpose as a valuable shunt for traffic heading into the San Joachin Valley, and as a thorn in the side of road buffs everywhere (since it was built, the planned projects were abandoned, so several X80 options are now available).

The Colosseum was ultimately brought to its knees by a series of major earthquakes in AD 442, 508, 847, and 1349. Given Frisco's position directly over the volatile San Andreas fault, which has already sent it such tremors as the Great San Franscisco Earthquake of 1906 which destroyed essentially the entire city, it is not too presumptuous for these disgruntled road scholars to hope that the 238 will one day be wiped off the face of the earth by an act of god. A vengeful God, one would presume.

posted by citizen sunshine @ 9:10 PM     0 comments

One of the crack commandos of PWGI Corps, Eric “Z” Rodriguez, is a zealous student of the rules of the road, and remains the resident expert on traffic law. After much prodding (both metaphorical and physical) in the past, he still asseverates that turning left is permissible so long as there is a break in the double yellow line in the center of the road. We must, therefore, take his word as writ and admit that this practice is legal.

But there's a lot of people hanging a louie that really shouldn't, at least under the circumstances. To wit: Los Angeles has recently been racked by storms so severe that they made the national news from New York to Wichita, whose cost in human life is only now beginning to become clear as work crews clear away the mud. The storms have wrought great havoc on the essential Los Angeles network of roads and freeways, tearing up chunks of asphalt the size of small meteorites and shutting down many a critical artery. Particularly at risk are roads abutting hillsides, where the “Slide Area” signs often go unheeded and unnoticed but are now illustrating those dangers most vididly.

Prominent among these is Sunset Boulevard, which wends from downtown to the ocean, following the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains that bisect the city transversely for most of its route. Because of its path along tall muddy slopes, one or both lanes of traffic on the northward side are closed intermittenly along its length. Traffic along its eleven-mile length from Beverly Hills to the Pacific Ocean is, to put it mildly, slow.

The situation would only be reminiscent of the flow of mollases (rather than glass, which is, as a chemistry student might tell you, actually a fluid, though probably not a liquid) were it not for the presently piggish desire of drivers to turn left. Sunset is a street on which signals are relatively few and far between, and has no stop signs, so traffic proceeds near constantly. Moreover, because of the narrowness of the grade in many places—particularly where the road is flush against the hillside—there is no dedicated left-turn lane. Thus, motorists wishing to hang a louie at small streets are forced to come to a complete stop in the left lane and wait for a pause in the opposing stream of cars.

This behavior causes untoward delays even under the best of circumstances, where there aren't massive piles of mud being cleared away by bulldozers in the right lane. It can often take several minutes for a pause to appear, during which the line of cars behind the sinistral motorist can reach prodigious magnitude. Those stuck in this line often try to merge into the right lane in frustration, and the differential in speed between the two lanes is a recipe for disaster. Yes, this obstruction to traffic is legal under the traffic code, but legality does not imply rightfulness. The wise and considerate driver constructs his route so as to avoid making a left turn in a location where there is no left turn lane and a profuse flow of traffic, as a matter of good road citizenship. Citizenship, after all, is not only about following the letter of the law, but also evincing a general regard for one's compatriots.

That a driver would opt to block traffic in the only remaining lane of the street when conditions are already aggravated by construction vehicles and temporary laning marking seems all the more repugnant to the general good. After sitting in a twenty-minute line caused, in part, by a series of drivers performing just this thoughtless maneuever off of Sunset, the affront to decency seems particularly manifest. So be a good citizen of the road, and plan your trip accordingly. Thank you in advance.

posted by citizen sunshine @ 1:33 PM     0 comments

Houston is, according to new reports, not only the most polluted city (a distinction it acquired during President George W Bush's tenure as governor), but also the home to the most dangerous example of light rail in the nation. Certainly Texas's answer to Italy's Venice (they're both built in swamps and prone to flooding or sinkage) has enough problems on its plate without having homicidal streetcars hurtling through its downtown.

Alas, like it or not, it looks as though they have one. Regional papers and safety experts have been lambasting the 7.5-mile track that threads through the city's center level with pedestrian walkways for some time, noting the potential for disaster even with the most assiduous precautions—which have seemingly been lacking in Houston. Action American is to be the first to name the ill-fated line the “Slam-Bam Tram” (thank you, ma'am), but there is no shortage of other similarly witty suggestions: “The Little Engine That Couldn't” and “A Streetcar Named Disaster” have also proven popular.

The Slam-Bam Tram certainly lives up to its name, registering sixty-two accidents in 2004 on its short track, implying almost one accident per mile every month. For purposes of comparison, this rate is over 1000% of the next-highest accident rate, which is almost absurd. The basic problem seems to be that almost the entire route proceeds at ground level past bars and social centers downtown, often without insurmountable physical barriers between streets and rail lines. There are ample colorful signs and automated bars which descend when the Slam-Bam approaches, but these appear insufficient to deter the often-drunk clientelle which the train is intended, in part, to serve.

Constructing a light rail line at grade is indubitably less expensive that an elevated track or a subway, but the Slam-Bam illustrates vividly the reasons why most city eschew such penny-pinching. A rail line proceeding down the center of a freeway is all well and good, but one proceeding down the center of busy city street is an invitation to disaster. Nearly all cities with a comprehensive light rail mass transit system (and at this late stage of urban development, that comprehends most of the largest) have settled on elevated or subterranean lines, or a combination thereof. At-grade lines are employed only far outside of densely settled areas or sequestered by walls past which the drunk and youthful will not infiltrate and get themselves killed.

For Houston to have installed an at-grade trolley in a densely trafficked area abutting saloons aplenty seems foolish at best, and callous at worst. It's a damn fine thing the PWGI Bunker isn't located there. Someone from the Road Team would probably have been run down by now (we're not exactly teetotallers). And being annihalated by a trolley is one of the more ignominious ways to shuffle off this mortal coil.

“I'm so sorry, Mrs. Dunkirk... how did it happen?”

“It was... (sniffle)... a freak trolley accident.”

(long pause, followed by poorly suppressed giggling) “You have my deepest condolences.”

So don't drink near the trolley of downtown Houston. Or anywhere else in Houston. Although if you find yourself there, you may need to. Yeah, it's a Catch-22.

posted by citizen sunshine @ 7:49 AM     0 comments

People like metals, and they particularly like the coinage metals, namely copper, silver, and gold, or Group Eleven of the periodic table. Wikipedia helpfully points out that the newly minted metal roentgenium belongs to the same group and should thus be considered coinage as well. Its stablest isotope only exists for 3.6 seconds, so this seems unlikely to cause problems. It also observes that many other metals have been used to strike coins, without accession to the elitist group. Like country clubs and fraternities, this is an organization that values the patina of tradition.

This may help explain the profusion of metallic names in rapid transit names. Nor are these names given to any old track, but instead are reserved for projects demanding of that extra little semiotic oomph that a precious metal provides. Thus when Boston debuted its very first rapid bus transit system in 2004, it designated its project the Silver Line. Bostonians, accustomed to their legacy subway and light rail system, and shellshocked by decades of the Big Dig transforming their surface streets into a barely navigable quagmire, were understandably wary of forgoing their safe subways for the vagaries of a bus. The Boston Metro's (MBTA) site disagrees, stating that “The Silver Line earned its color designation because it will deliver fast service using the world's most advanced Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) technology. From race cars to rockets, its use symbolizes speed and high performance.” As master practitioners of bullshit, we can assure you that the foregoing is an unadulterated load. They just like how it sounds.

Nor has the MBTA's chicanery with nomenclature gone unnoticed by the vulgar masses. No less a lobby group than the Sierra Club observes pithily that “no matter what color you paint a bus, it still gets stuck in traffic.” To give fair shrift to the Club's complaints, they make some good points: busways may be less expensive to build, but they're significantly more polluting than light rail, and incur greater maintenance costs over time. All in all, busways are more of a short-term or stopgap solution than a long-term answer. Perhaps the MBTA is painting the busses silver to conceal how dirty they are.

Also employing this nasty little trick is one of the many activist groups in Los Angeles militating for an expansion of its light rail system. These Friends of the Silver Line advocate building a roughly east-west segment of rail from Hollywood Boulevard past Dodger Stadium, through downtown, and ultimate east past CalState Los Angeles to El Monte and its Metrolink (i.e. commuter rail) station. The plan has recently gained the attention of city councilman and mayoral candidate Antonio Villaraigosa based mostly on internet advocacy, no doubt because of the sparkling sheen of their proposed rail cars. We're pretty sure that they would have called their proposal the Gold Line, since gold generally trumps silver—except that the L.A. Metro had the temerity to have built a Gold Line already. (Meanwhile, another advocacy group is pushing for an extension of the Gold Line, capitalizing on its powerful name recognition.)

We should note, for the record, that there seem to be no Copper Lines. Or, for that matter, Roentgenium Lines.

posted by citizen sunshine @ 2:30 AM     0 comments