Road Geek Topics

Roads - Rails - Sidewalks - Bikeways
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woofner
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Re: Road Geek Topics

Postby woofner » September 3rd, 2013, 10:24 am

Speaking of, I understand the City of Minneapolis is experimenting with the radical, bizarre, exotic technique of zebra striping crosswalks. I'd thought that the official test site was Old St Anthony, but yesterday I noticed that they were striped across 35th and 36th Sts at the intersections with Pleasant Ave. Somewhat remarkable as these are square corners. Is this a sign of things to come or a neighborhood initiative?
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Re: Road Geek Topics

Postby LRV Op Dude » September 3rd, 2013, 10:27 am

Speaking of, I understand the City of Minneapolis is experimenting with the radical, bizarre, exotic technique of zebra striping crosswalks. I'd thought that the official test site was Old St Anthony, but yesterday I noticed that they were striped across 35th and 36th Sts at the intersections with Pleasant Ave. Somewhat remarkable as these are square corners. Is this a sign of things to come or a neighborhood initiative?
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MNdible
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Re: Road Geek Topics

Postby MNdible » September 3rd, 2013, 11:27 am

That may be part of a "safe walk to school" program leading to Lyndale Elementary -- I feel like there was some chatter about this a while back.

mattaudio
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Re: Road Geek Topics

Postby mattaudio » September 9th, 2013, 1:30 pm

If anyone likes old bricked streets, check out 28th Avenue today. Makes me wonder why we can't just fix the bricks and call it good!

Image
Brick on 28th Ave S at 42nd St by mattaudio, on Flickr

widin007
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Re: Road Geek Topics

Postby widin007 » September 9th, 2013, 2:38 pm

Asphalt is a job creator!

mulad
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Re: Road Geek Topics

Postby mulad » September 10th, 2013, 2:56 am

Downtown St. Paul has quite a mix of road surfaces including asphalt, concrete, patterned concrete (to look like brick), concrete pavers (in the shape of bricks and larger pieces), and real brick. In at least some places, it seems like the real brick is holding up the best, but in a lot of cases it has been dedicated to the parking lane, so it's difficult to judge it fairly.

cowboyjones
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Re: Road Geek Topics

Postby cowboyjones » September 10th, 2013, 11:40 am

St. Kate's in Saint Paul has a driveway that is brick. In my opinion it seems kind of bumpy, but it is very good at reducing speed.

PhilmerPhil
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Re: Road Geek Topics

Postby PhilmerPhil » September 25th, 2013, 7:01 am

http://nacto.org/usdg/

Some great stuff here^

UptownSport
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Re: Road Geek Topics

Postby UptownSport » September 25th, 2013, 9:05 am

Lots of streets are brick, just paved over.
Minnehaha and Franklin are last places I recal seeing brick poking thru, and intrtestingly theres long faults parallel with street forming- wondering if its a section of rail.

Just off a 35E exit there's still cobblestone, Osceola rd I think, near St. Clair

David Greene
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Re: Road Geek Topics

Postby David Greene » September 25th, 2013, 11:47 am

Girard in front of Walkways is pretty torn up now and the granite pavers are very visible along with the wye rails. I hope to God that any project to create The Walkway here keeps those pavers and the rails. It's a great little piece of urban heritage.

Mdcastle
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Re: Road Geek Topics

Postby Mdcastle » November 9th, 2013, 8:27 pm

There's LED lights going up on some of the major bridges in the SW metro- Mendota, Bloomington Ferry, and I-494, and I-35W over the Minnesota for example. I talked to my contact at Mn/DOT about them, and she said that some new projects LED are specified, but what's happening on the river bridge conversions is they bought a bunch of luminaires (a different manufacturer for each bridge) so they could test how well a larger installation performs and have a larger sample size (I-494 in Woodbury is the area where they test small samples) before making decisions on going with LEDs exclusively or with converting existing installations. They picked river bridges because it's difficult to get lane closures on them for maintenance.

LED fixtures are designed with the same beam pattern and fittings as the High Pressure Sodium roadway fixtures, so if the poles and wiring are good shape they can just swap out the fixture using the existing poles and wiring. More problematic are the tower lights. The standard lights are designed with precise beam pattern, which LEDs are good at. Tower lights flood an area with light, which LEDs aren't good at. There's not a fixture that's a direct replacement for the 1000 watt tower fixtures yet.

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Re: Road Geek Topics

Postby Mdcastle » November 9th, 2013, 8:30 pm

The old Hastings Bridge is almost gone.
Image
IMG_4348 by North Star Highways, on Flickr
Image
IMG_4357 by North Star Highways, on Flickr

David Greene
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Re: Road Geek Topics

Postby David Greene » November 9th, 2013, 11:25 pm

That's one ugly new bridge.

mattaudio
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Re: Road Geek Topics

Postby mattaudio » November 10th, 2013, 10:04 am

Gosh that's a sad sight. I thought it was the most beautiful bridge in the metro. Or second behind the Arcola.

Mdcastle
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Re: Road Geek Topics

Postby Mdcastle » November 10th, 2013, 10:05 am

I'm really not a fan of the new bridge either. I personally think they should have built a generic concrete bridge for the highway and kept the old bridge for a bicycle trail. But Mn/DOT wasn't mandated to keep the old one like they were at Stillwater, so they won't, and the city of Hastings didn't want it, so down it goes.

mattaudio
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Re: Road Geek Topics

Postby mattaudio » November 10th, 2013, 10:07 am

It's interesting they didn't try to sell the span. I remember seeing the old Wakota span on some government auction site.

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Re: Road Geek Topics

Postby MNdible » November 10th, 2013, 7:14 pm

It's not much to look at from the head-on angle, but neither was the old one. The upriver view is quite striking, though.

Mdcastle
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Re: Road Geek Topics

Postby Mdcastle » November 11th, 2013, 8:45 am

Image
IMG_4354 by North Star Highways, on Flickr

Are people here interested in my highway photography?

mplsjaromir
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Re: Road Geek Topics

Postby mplsjaromir » November 11th, 2013, 9:15 am

Are people here interested in my highway photography?
To an extent.

Mdcastle
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Re: Road Geek Topics

Postby Mdcastle » November 14th, 2013, 7:52 pm

Ok. I think people are aware of my Flickr account if they want to see my highway photos so I won't post them here. Now that I'm consolidating my traffic signal and highway photography onto there I'll be going back and adding my older Hastings Bridge pictures into the set over the next year).

A bit off topic, but are pavers a nuisance to maintain? I like the look, but I'm thinking about doing my driveway in concrete just for the ease of maintenance. I know the ones at the rail stations and places always look good, but there's an army of people tramping over them, and people paid to maintain them.


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