News & Discussion: Roads & Traffic

[camaro68]

‘drwaddles wrote “In which case, why do you continue to ignore or refute the information given here by SMEs?

Unlike some people on this post I don’t make assumptions as to what people’s expertise or socio economic position is, so if there are SME’s on this forum, then kindly identify yourselves and perhaps a brief summary of your experience that would make you an SME in this area.

‘drwaddles wrote” Besides, I would not call Civil Engineers SMEs on anything other than the actual physical design of roads without knowing what their knowledge outside of Civil Eng is like. Civil Eng does not encompass traffic engineering, let alone the complex interactions between land use and transport.

Not sure if you know any Civil engineers however many do expand into exactly the areas you’re talking about, in fact the two that I quizzed one worked in the UK for 5 years and is now heading the traffic engineering department of a well known international firm who’s headquarters are in Melbourne. The other one works for a big engineering firm in Germany and program managed the main highway from Athens to Thessalonikki from feasibility study, through the tender process and finally the commissioning of it. Based on their experience I’d say they can be considered as SME’s.

[DM8]

...using what capacity we currently have more efficiently.

Further to prove my point about correcting the alignment of several of our roads, to make them continually flowing routes which reduces the dependency of congestion caused at points where two 'routes' share the capacity of one road.

A good example of two notable congestion hotspots around; Edward Street/Raglan Avenue cross-traffic needing to utilize South Road for 100m; causing congestion to the existing South Road traffic. Same goes for the Daws Road & Springbank Road intersections with Goodwood Road.

One for the wishlist would be aligning Marion/Holbrooks/Kilkenny/Hanson Roads - thereby creating a decent alternative to South Road.

Very simple modifications would improve conditions dramatically - they've already done this with intersections like Portrush/The Parade and Hampstead/Regency/Mullers Road intersections (although in these examples, they were federally funded under Auslink - I don't know why this hasn't happened on South Road given that it is now supposedly part of the national network all the way to Darlington).

One very simple (and very cheap) thing that would bring about immediate improvement is introduce a brief right turn arrow from South Road southbound on to Raglan Ave - especially on Saturday mornings. The bank up of traffic trying access Castle Plaza is ridiculous.

[Xaragmata]

One for the wishlist would be aligning Marion/Holbrooks/Kilkenny/Hanson Roads - thereby creating a decent alternative
to South Road.

A strategy has apparently been developed for this corridor - "strategy" may be code for doing nothing, but with the vacant Cycle Works
being demolished at the HBR end of Marion Road recently, it might be a start to realigning Marion & Holbrooks.

[drwaddles]

perhaps a brief summary of your experience that would make you an SME in this area.

Sure, my CV is on its way...

My point was that you have no idea of the background of people posting in this forum and it is essentially irrelevant - focus only on the arguments at hand.

Just because someone appears to be a SME in an area does not mean that they are always right.

[drsmith]

The Texans know how to build freeways.

http://www.texasfreeway.com/Houston/pho ... _290.shtml

[DM8]

The Texans know how to build freeways.

That they do! Some great pics there!

.... and we're still waiting for a north south freeway *sigh*.

[mattblack]

...using what capacity we currently have more efficiently.

Further to prove my point about correcting the alignment of several of our roads, to make them continually flowing routes which reduces the dependency of congestion caused at points where two 'routes' share the capacity of one road.

A good example of two notable congestion hotspots around; Edward Street/Raglan Avenue cross-traffic needing to utilize South Road for 100m; causing congestion to the existing South Road traffic. Same goes for the Daws Road & Springbank Road intersections with Goodwood Road.

You do realise that Adelaide is one of the most carefully planned cities in the world. Yes there are a few issues but overall Adelaide is held up as a model all over the world. Its actually one reason that freeways through the city were not regarded as essential (although there are differing views emerging now), the grid layout of the streets allow for the movement and spead of traffic very effectively. The main issue now is urban sprawl and the constainment that the hills and gulf on the cities growth. Look at older cities that did not have the benefit of planning like London, Paris, Amsterdam even Sydney, ive lived in them all and all are a nightmare for traffic and a real mishmash of roads. It forces traffic onto freeways and larger roads to get anywhere.

[camaro68]

DM8, i feel your pain, however as long as this state is run by conservative Draconians it will not happen!!!

This state needs a premier like Jeff Kennett, not the short sighted media driven imbeciles that we have.

[Shuz]

@Mattblack;

My opinion is that, Adelaide is a beautifully designed and well planned city within the parklands, compromising both North Adelaide and the C.B.D. Outside of the city - it is not. A lot of the roads that were built outside of the city centre were built with the intention of servicing the suburbs that currently existed or just being developed. There was little thought put into catering for "further growth" into the medium-long term timeframe, hence the ridiculous amount of diversions, T-intersections, dead ends, etc. found all over the place. I'll conjure up something on Google Maps to show in more detail what I mean.

Just follow through this link. I've put a small compilation of the sort of things i'm talking about.
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8& ... e43fc59637

[DM8]

Interesting map - when you put it in that perspective, Adelaide looks like one great mess (although realistically, it's overall better structured than other capitals).

[rhino]

Shuz, you make me laugh sometimes. William Light was a surveyor, of course those roads line up.

The reason they stuff up along the River Torrens is because they were originally dividing farm allotments, which were supposed to be similar in size to one another. In order to achieve this, and also give an approximately equal ammount of land to each allotment abutting the river, the neat grid got cocked up in the vicinity of the river. Just as an aside, all tose north-south roads are exactly one mile apart. Not sure what happened with the survey of Unley Road though, as there's a definite bend in it if you look down the road. It's hardly noticable on a map. Henley Beach Road has a big deviation at Lockleys because it skirted the base of a large sandhill that was there. There's still a (very slight) rise there now. Closer to Henley Beach it has a big S-bend, I believe, to achieve the slightly higher ground through the Weetunga Swamp (The Reedbeds into which the Torrens debauched, and which drained into the sea at Port Adelaide through what we now call the Port River).

[Shuz]

From what I've observed, the intention of the road network outside of the CBD was to be laid out in a rectangular format - all north-south routes spaced 1 mile apart, all east-west routes spaced 1.7 miles apart. Not sure why 1.7 miles? I've heard of the "golden rectangle" rule of 1.638... or something like that. Maybe they were trying to do that?

Anyway point is. Those intentions came about in _some_ form. But it has since maligned and deformed exponentially.

[camaro68]

Nice plan Shuz, but have you considered the following:

1) Theory of induced demand, if we make the roads easier to use then people will use them and they'll get clogged up and then we'll have to build more and so on and so on.
2) We need to get people out of cars and into busses; we should look at public transport before we spend any more money on improving our roads
3) Who is going to pay to buy all the houses you'll need to make it work???
4) Have you considered the backward/conservative/draconian minority groups that seem to run this state???
3) Change for change sake does not make sense.

I'm sorry but i could not think of any other crap reasons to kill any progress, I disagree with your proposal because it will mean change and us cha drinking, blue rinse wearing pre WW1 morons will not allow this!!!!!

You should be exiled out of this state for having any forward thinking!!!

[Shuz]

Uhhh... it wasn't a plan. :s

I was simply highlighting how the mistakes of our past have contributed to the misalignment of our road network today; therefore creating all the congestion that occurs. I never said that is what should be done to correct it.

Anyways if you want to see plans; go to the Visions thread. I've conjured up a few ideas in there. Tell me what you think then.

[Aidan]

@Mattblack;

My opinion is that, Adelaide is a beautifully designed and well planned city within the parklands, compromising both North Adelaide and the C.B.D. Outside of the city - it is not. A lot of the roads that were built outside of the city centre were built with the intention of servicing the suburbs that currently existed or just being developed. There was little thought put into catering for "further growth" into the medium-long term timeframe, hence the ridiculous amount of diversions, T-intersections, dead ends, etc. found all over the place. I'll conjure up something on Google Maps to show in more detail what I mean.

It makes me wonder what you think of Light's original plan, where the roads through the parklands followed the countours more and King William Street ended at T junctions with North and South Terraces

Just follow through this link. I've put a small compilation of the sort of things i'm talking about.
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8& ... e43fc59637

Wow, straightness so obsessive that one of the roads goes through a reservoir! But what's the point? It would've been far more expensive to construct than what we have now, but the result wouldn't actually be much better.

What is it you've got against curves? Do you think there's anything at Glenelg North that Cross Road traffic would want to go to? And are the Morphett and Hutt Street extensions meant to be instead of the existing roads? Or as well as them?

This reminds me of the abandoned plan to realign the parklands part of Goodwood Road with Morphett Street. Some people would be better off, others would be worse off.