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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 6th, 2023

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  • Ehhh, i still disagree, because that doesnt make sense. Less congestion with less lanes? The extra lanes are added to ease the growing congestion in an area. OP asked about traffic engineering, there is it very simply. Adding lanes doesnt magically create more cars on the road.

    I’ve seen the exact opposite in places like Hawaii when they expanded H1 at Honolulu, shrinking all the lanes down to the minimum 8ft so they could add another lane. Now at, I think 6 lanes each way, in places. No space to expand, so the lanes were shrunk to make room for another. You know what adding another lane did? Lessen congestion. Sure there’s still congestion, but it’s way better. They, and other big cities (ie- San Fransisco), literally add and change lanes throughout the day (zipper lanes) to ease congestion. Or even legally allow the shoulder to become yet another lane during peak hours. Because more lanes = more flow.

    I’ve also seen what happens when the extra lanes arent open (like the zipper lane cant function because the truck is broke) the whole place is gridlocked taking people up to 9 hours to get home. Because of 2 less lanes.

    Not just in America. Places like Auckland, NZ and their famos Nippon clip-ons. If adding lanes added congestion just because of the fact that there is more lanes, then why are roads expanded in the first place? Everything should just still be 2 lane roads.


  • Not always the case, but you’re not wrong. Most of the times the new road or added lanes was needed because the traffic density had already increased. Kind of a chicken or the egg scenario. For a new road, well roads arent just built for no reason…obviously the road was needed, so now there will be traffic on it. Sometimes even just an influx of people using the new “alternative route” because they think no one will be on it from the old route, yet many other people had the same idea.

    Exception to all this, however is evacuation routes. I grew up in the south, on the gulf of mexico. When hurricanes are coming and everyone is trying to leave, you need those huge highways. 30 years ago you would just have 1000s of people grid-locking 2 lane highways just trying to get anywhere away from the storm, and in some cases being stuck in their car for the storm. Now a lot of those highways are full-on 4 lanes with medians, huge shoulders, etc. These are everywhere across the south, more still being built. Even extra bridges built across bays and sounds that are largely unused (usually have high tolls). 99% of the time the big highways are mostly empty (which makes road trips super nice!) and someone not familiar would think it’s a huge waste. But come an emergency situation, and their purpose is served!


  • Yup, still a thing! Especially if a lot of surrounding villages are doing things, like christmas markets. Or even within a village with lots of small stops, like a bar-hopping type deal. The buses just loop, sometimes in both directions, through all the stops. They are separate from the normal transit buses, you gotta buy their specific ticket (or it’s free) and they are usually travel bus types rather than city transit buses. The inner-village ones are just passenger vans, though.



  • Underground parking garages are very common over here. Most of the times these city squares are exactly that, a huge multi-level underground parking garage because these squares are always event spaces, and they are usually city-center so even when there isnt events, people have somewhere to park when just visiting the city. Yes, there will even be long lines of traffic waiting/hoping for a spot during event periods.

    With that said, they do fill up, usually fast. So most events suggest finding public transportation. This just means people park further away and then take the bus/rail/etc the rest of the way. These Markets arent just for the locals, people travel from all over to come to them. So public transportation for long-distant travel, while totally possible, isnt always as practical (sometimes nor affordable or possible) for everyone. Plus, long distance trains do sell out. We just spent most of the season traveling all over Central Europe going to various markets.



  • Pretty sure that exact feature is built into the native Hue app, as long as you have the bulbs that support those kinds of colors. I see it when i try to make a “wake up” automation, i’d have to look again to see if there is an opposite for sunset. You can automate bedtime or go to sleep automations, and schedule them for sunset/sunrise or specific times.

    Edit- just quickly looked through the app- there IS a sunrise for a wakeup automation, but not seeing any default sunset types. Might have to create your own by fading through some other sunset colors while dimming. Which is done basically like you are sayin; pick a color and and start time, then another color at another start time, etc. you can set whether to snap to these colors or fade to them over a period of time which also picking brightness. BUT- this is just in the native Hue app, i dont know about other Hue compatible apps.


  • Well said! I read the books long before the first movie, and have seen all the screen adaptations, and pretty much agree with you. Hell, my 12 year old Border Collie is named Lyra! However, I actually mostly enjoyed HBOs TV series, even with all the changes and such, which i was expecting because it was a screen adaptation. Didn’t much care for the new characters, but i was able to get over it because of all the other parts that were well done. They did a great job appropriately making you dislike Ms. Coulter! I forgot all about the newer books, though! Thanks for the reminder!


  • French car culture isnt much different than European car culture in general, for the sake of the topic here. Small displacement engines (1.6, or 2.0 liter usually) and small footprint because of space. Scooters and pedal bikes are super common around places like Paris, tho…parking, gas, weaving through the congestion, etc. However, some of the wagon variants of cars and these luxury cars you mention sometimes have a much larger footprint than small and mid-sized SUVs. Unless overhead clearance is an issue, like in parking garages, i don’t quite understand the reason for singling out SUVs here.

    This, of course, is all stated with European sized SUVs in mind that share the same small displacement engines as other cars. Not the giant American sized ones that have much larger engines where emissions issues now come into play. However, all those luxury cars usually have even bigger engines and sometimes the loud exhaust as well…sooo…🤷


  • Ya, it’d be doable for sure with the craze of all the overland van-dweller builds the last few years. Ive seen plenty that meet all your requirements. But, whether it would be cost-effective or not for a work van would be the major issue, especially considering most trucks can do all that without being a special order for probably less than half the price.

    Unfortunately not a lot of demand for such a thing, like you said.

    Years ago i was in a spot where i needed the same as you for basically all the same reasons. The old van kept getting stuck everywhere, and then it actually got rolled from hitting a patch of black ice one winter, so it was totaled. These high-top vans had just started coming to market which was great, but I couldn’t convince the boss to spend the extra money for at least an AWD version, nevermind the higher ground clearance or low-torque options. I still got that thing stuck so many times…having a high-top I could stand up in was nice though.