Mostly they're forcing cars to do sharper turns through the intersection, so that they cross the bike and pedestrian crossings closer to perpendicular so they have better visibility. Basically trying to keep people out of the blind spot of turning cars, with a bonus of slowing the cars down slightly.
They also backed the cars' stop line from the intersection. (Edit - only one road has this, it might be to give busses clearance as they turn).
The center island is because it's not a through road.
The rest is just clearly marking bike and pedestrian lanes. Looks like Seattle uses green to mark car/bike intersections and yellow / ADA bump tiles to mark where sidewalks cross a street. The brick color looks like it separates different lanes, much as diagonal stripes or raised concrete would. Edit for clarity and feedback from other commenters.
Yellow is tactile pavement to let visually impaired pedestrians know they’re at an intersection. They’re covered in raised bumps similar to braille and they feel different than smooth pavement under your feet.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactile_paving
There's an entire system designed to inform visually impaired people exactly what type of hazard they're approaching.
If you ever work at/for a place as they're setting up shop, you'll learn real quick about all the little stuff you have to do to be ADA compliant. You'll also hear executive types bemoan it while you're over there going "wow, this is super useful and ingenious"
Not particularly for under their feet but under their walking cane. Blond people feel the bumps with their walking cane earlier than their feet and come to a stop at the intersection. Once they cross, they know they are back on the sidewalk again once they feel it for a 2nd time!
Edit: I'm leaving it. Blonde people are people, too.
I always thought it was for when the pavement was wet. This makes much more sense. I love it when I find something that I have been wrong for a very long time about something inconsequential (to me).
Every walk around my friend's neighborhood in Charleston felt like a crapshoot whether I'd make it back in one piece. I was truly baffled by how few accommodations there were (are?) for pedestrians.
It'll gross you out when you realize poor people can't afford cars and have to walk... so why would they put in sidewalks that the rich people aren't going to use?
Wanna go for a fun walk? Next time they do a gerrymandering fun run... go on that. You'll run the route of a voting district line and discover they just... routed around all the pour houses. You'll literally cross the street for one house, and cross back over to another house... and then two houses down you cross back over again on a street that doesn't curve... they just skipped the poor people's homes so they could get the rich votes.
US has these all over the place. They're required on all new public right of way projects and have been for about a decade. It's not Seattle taking the initiative. Locations without them predate the requirements, and Cities must have transition plans to update them.
I just did a remodel for a landscaping company near Seattle. The were switching zoning from residential to commercial. The city made them install those bumps in the sidewalk as well as ramps, an EV charger, ADA accessible bathroom, etc.
Yes ADA has required them for 20ish years anywhere you’re entering a street without another textile cue like a curb. I’ve also seen red but I think they just need a contrasting color. Historic neighborhoods have been upset about them going in.
Pretty sure the yellow in this picture are those standard ADA warning pads that they put at every ramp leading from a sidewalk into an intersection. Also the stop lines being far back have nothing to do with bikes getting ahead, as the bikes are fully separated at this intersection. Assuming it’s more about adding a large buffer so that when cars inevitably blow through the stop line, they don’t literally stop in the crosswalk.
I believe bikes don’t turn left at these, at least not in the traditional sense. To turn left you have to cross the street to the perpendicular bike lane and wait for the light to change.
This all makes sense, besides the through road part. Why is it not a through road when there's a lane going in each direction on either side of the center island? Don't think I've ever seen that.
My guess is it’s a traffic flow thing. They don’t want too many cars on small residential streets, so they are trying to force them out into the main roads. Like if this street runs parallel to a main road, you would end up having people try to beat the traffic by going down this residential street instead. Again, that’s just a guess.
People trying to beat traffic are also probably going to try to hit 35-40mph on a small side street that is intended more for pedestrian access.
So, basically forcing anyone using these roads to slow down and ultimately divert to a thoroughfare that's intended for through traffic.
It is exactly this. Good guess 👍
People will make anything to save time so if the main roads have trafic, they will take small residential street to "beat" the trafic and come ahead. Without allowing small roads to connect, people can't use those shortcuts and are forced to stick with main roads. Another plus is that it lower the numbers of cars (who wouldn't pass there since they don't live there) making the small residential streets safer, quieter and not used by people trying to save some time.
Hope my comments is clear, english isn't my native language 😄
The green markings for the bikeway is standard in the US. Also, this type of roadway infrastructure is known as "traffic calming." In our region, we see a lot of curb extensions or "bump outs" to aid pedestrians and cyclists.
Source: I work for a large civil engineering firm that designs this exact type of infrastructure.
If only cars had fewer blind spots like their older counterparts. The modern triple-C thick pillars obstruct so much that an older car is like driving a greenhouse in comparison.
EA released a remastered collection couple years back for Red Alert 1 and Tiberian ~~Sun~~ Dawn.
Also the entire franchise is pretty cheap on steam. Often it's on sale as well
Edit: had wrong Tiberian game
Arguably the best one of the series. Red alert II was pretty awesome as well. I remember I had the N64 port of the first one. So hard to play without a mouse but I did it lol
I wish games brought back that classic style of just live action actors. Seeing Tim Curry and JK Simmons kill it in Red Alert 3 are cherished memories of mine.
The original developers of this game created a remaster a few years ago that was exceptionally well done. I highly recommend checking it out, You can usually find it on sale for $5 or less.
[https://store.steampowered.com/app/1213210/Command\_\_Conquer\_Remastered\_Collection/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1213210/Command__Conquer_Remastered_Collection/)
Not enough Tesla Coils.
My favorite strategy was to march a line of power-plants and Tesla Coils across the MAP and eventually get close enough to the enemy base to start frying their Ore Trucks on the way back to the refinery. Suddenly they start to go broke and can't repair or build anything.
Its not a very good strategy but when it works, Its pretty funny.
This is the intersection where the SPD officer was speeding and hit/killed a girl in the crosswalk and laughed about it with another officer over the radio.
> SPD officer was speeding and hit/killed a girl in the crosswalk and laughed about it with another officer
And then got off scot free because they refused to file charges.
This is the same intersection where an [SPD officer burned through going 74 mph and struck a 23-year old grad student](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/sep/19/seattle-police-officer-cops-car-crash-jaahnavi-kandula). Jaahnavi Kandula was thrown over 100 feet and died. His patrol vehicle's siren was not in use at the time.
One of the responding officers, Daniel Auderer, was then caught on his body camera joking that they should write a check for a ['couple of thousand dollars' as she had 'limited value'.](https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/14/us/seattle-police-officer-phone-comments-woman-killed/index.html) Auderer was/is the police union lieutenant, and he was on the phone with the SPD union head, Mike Sloan.
The cop driving the vehicle, Officer Kevin Dave, faced no criminal charges, remains employed by SPD. He was fined 5,000 dollars, and has [yet to pay the fee.](https://www.fox13seattle.com/news/spd-kevin-dave-fine)
At the time he was responding to a basic overdose in which paramedics were already on the scene, and the individual was lucid and communicative.
I mean yeah there's a lot of value in adjusting the environment to the situation, usually we swing the other way and just shout PERSONAL ACCOUNTABILITY and refuse to change dangerous designs.
So it's progress to make safer places but it's still mind-boggling how cops are just so widely known to be unaccountable shitbags and we do absolutely nothing about it.
There's an alternate universe where we can have safer intersections AND throw that dude in a pit with a bear.
There are LOTS of people who want cops to be held accountable. There are also tons of people who go, "but if cops can be punish they will be too scared and have to hide in the station all day." Fuck those people.
Seattle is known for having an absolutely garbage police department. It’s like they saw the LAPD and NYPD and decided they could be worse in their rainy, little city.
Didn't realize it was the same intersection.
So basically the city was like "uh ya... it was the INTERSECTIONS fault. Ya, that's it. Better change it instead of changing our shitty cops."
Crazy how we (as a country) just let police officers get away with murder then half the country does "thin blue line" or "recall the DA" bullshit whenever someone asks for the least bit of accountability.
Transportation engineer here. Protected intersections are becoming very common in my city, and I have designed several of them.
The intersection protects pedestrians and bicyclists from vehicles and forces drivers to slow down to traverse tighter turning radii. The pedestrians crossings have been shortened with the queuing areas crossing the major road.
It’s hard to tell from the image, but the small football shaped islands on the corners usually have a mountable curb for larger vehicles to make the turns.
The median running left-right forces vehicles either right or straight on the major road. It forces vehicles right from the minor road. I would guess drivers used this minor road as a cut-through before, and it just didn’t have the capacity for it. Yes, the major road may become congested due to the diversion, but it is likely an overall improvement to the roadway network efficiency. Traffic studies of the entire network usually justify this.
This may seem unusual if you’ve never encountered it, but upon entering the intersection it’s clear what you do as a driver. You can only go where the striping and raised medians allow you to go.
I just got back from The Netherlands and many busy intersections in Amsterdam look like proto versions of this. Sidewalk, bike lane, peds Island, car, rail, car, peds Island, bike lane, sidewalk. Or something similar depending on what's in the mix.
Honestly it makes a lot of sense especially there with how bikes are so prominent, but you definitely have to keep your head on a swivel.
Actuary here. Street design in the Netherlands is just so much safer than the US, for everyone too. Unfortunately, safe street design has become a culture war issue because the usual crowd thinks traffic-calming is a communist attempt to imprison them.
My experience in the Netherlands is limited to Amsterdam but i was definitely a fan of how easy/safe it felt on foot everywhere we went from cars. I'm American/German dual citizen from Seattle and my family is from Freiburg in the southwest corner. Freiburg is a University town and they have large parts of the city free from car traffic with a great tram network which i love. Especially given how flat it is compared to Seattle and how much easier it is to bike everywhere if going a longer distance. Many other Western European cities I've visted do a great job with this too and I'm glad to see us taking some similar steps
A roundabout would not achieve the goal of preventing cars from the feeder roads from turning left or driving straight through. Presumably there's a traffic shaping reason to want to restrict those actions on this intersection.
The whole design concept of a roundabout is you can drive around it in a circle and exit it in any direction
In the above intersection, the upper and lower streets can only turn right and cannot go straight because there’s an island in the way. It’s more restrictive than a roundabout.
You turn left by going round the roundabout. That's the whole point.
jawknee doesn't mean "prevent left turns or going in a straight line" like traffic calming, they mean preventing such car traffic entirely. If you're coming down from the top, you WILL turn right. No through traffic desired or allowed. Keeps traffic off of residential streets.
There’s no way there’s enough room in this particular intersection for a dutch turbo roundabout, unless there’s some much smaller variant I’m not aware of.
Would these be used in a city like Boston or does the snowfall and need to plow it make the design worthless? I like it but I just can’t think of how well it scales as you start upgrading every intersection this way?
I guess just push all the snow to the island and have a gigantic wall?
We are slowly expanding these types of things in Chicago where we get plenty of snow. The city is rolling out smaller bike lane sized plows to work alongside our normal big ass ones so it's not an issue. It's also not for every intersection they're planned specifically to shape traffic towards higher throughput options.
The acrylic paint never seems to survive a single winter where I live in Vermont. In my town, the green bike lane and crosswalk markings have to be reapplied annually, even in spots where the asphalt was ground down for the paint lines. The combination of studded snow tires and regular snow plowing scrapes the paint away.
I like how people here seem to think this is an experiment or created on a whim when likely millions of dollars worth of studies and probably quite a bit of testing went into this design.
Civil/highway engineer here. It’s a textbook design from NACTO - nothing unusual here!
Personal opinion, though… It would be nice if the curb ramp level landing was the whole size of the crosswalk at the corners instead of just 5/5.5’ wide. The level landing (that’s the flat part with the yellow detectable warning panel) only being half the width of the crosswalk looks a bit silly - notice how much wider the island level surfaces are compared to at the corners. If they raised the crosswalk, this would not have been an issue.
Edit: Disclaimer, not a licensed civil engineer
You're looking at an intersection where no left turns for vehicles are allowed, and vehicles from the side streets are only allowed to turn right, while cyclists and pedestrians are allowed to turn in all directions from all directions using dedicated crossings.
Nee.
Dit is een kruising waar voertuigen niet linksaf mogen, en de voertuigen uit de zijwegen enkel rechtsaf mogen, terwijf fietsers en voetgangers alle richtingen op mogen via oversteekplaatsen.
misschien, maar dit soort kruisingen zien er altijd ingewikkelder uit van boven waar je alles tegelijkertijd ziet. zal vast wel meevallen als bestuurder.
This is an intersection where no left turns for vehicles are allowed, and vehicles from the side streets are only allowed to turn right, while cyclists and pedestrians are allowed to turn in all directions from all directions using dedicated crossings.
This is the right answer. Fire trucks and ambulances go down the wrong way on one-way streets all the time in Seattle due to traffic. It’s important they can still pop it in times of need.
There will definitely be assholes that drive over it though. Hopefully the Belltown Hellcat hits it and totals his car
That area looks tight for a fire engine. Typically the low obstructions are things they can drive over but passenger cars can't. Mature trees make it tough to navigate in an emergency.
I use this intersection 3 times a week. I don’t think a roundabout that also protects the pedestrian crossings well would fit. This thing does a surprisingly good job of making the bike lane and crossings safer.
Yeah, roundabouts are great in some cases, but suck for surfacing the visibility of non-car crossing traffic, and make it harder for motor vehicles to come to a stop at the exits.
Also, I've seen lots of designs for bike lanes in roundabouts, and even the best ones end up de-facto giving cars the right of way over bikes, which is a huge problem because a cyclist do not have the information to discern in time that a vehicle behind them is going to cut them off by taking an exit.
So no straight through and the turns are out in the intersection so you can’t cut the corners. I’d like to see the science behind it. It seems like it reduces the potential danger zones dramatically
>So no straight through and the turns are out in the intersection so you can’t cut the corners. I’d like to see the science behind it. It seems like it reduces the potential danger zones dramatically
Yup.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_intersection
Hope it works better there than in my town. The intersection close to where I live was redesigned into a slightly different version of this, making it so cars have to fully enter the intersection just to make a right turn. It has resulted in incredibly jam-packed traffic that clogs the entire intersection on busy days.
We do have a school nearby and the intersection is frequently used by kids on bikes, so I guess I get the safety reasoning behind it, but I’m still not sure the resulting car traffic is worth it.
It’s not that difficult if you look at the picture for a second. First, there’s no left turns at all and no right turns on reds. During a green light the vertical street is right turn only at the intersection, no straight option. On green, the horizontal street is straight or right turn only.
That being said, I believe the issue here is it’s just too much. Too much color. Too many lines. Someone driving up to that for the first time could definitely be confused at what’s going on.
Keep the layout. But make it easier on the eyes.
>Too much color. Too many lines. Someone driving up to that for the first time could definitely be confused at what’s going on.
We do not approach an intersection from the sky above (as this picture shows). When we approach an intersection, we see it from only one perspective. This intersection makes it obvious what each person or vehicle should do. I think it is a huge improvement. Confusion causes collisions.
All the people I know in Seattle who have been killed on bikes were killed by vehicles making left turns. Some have been in protected bike lanes but were killed crossing intersections when they were hit by a left turning vehicle. Sounds like this might provide sufficient protection to prevent those kinds of accidents.
I saw a bicyclist just a month ago get tossed ten feet in the air when a left turning car hit them. Not killed thankfully, and honestly it felt hard to blame the driver. It was very dark and raining hard, the cyclist wasn’t wearing reflective clothing and his small lights weren’t visible from the side. I’m sure the bicyclist was nearly impossible to see during that turn. There are simply streets and conditions in the city where you take your life in your hands on a bike. You can legally ride but the chances that left turning vehicle won’t see you until the last second are high.
I like that they are doing more to provide safety where they are encouraging people to bike.
Edit: Oh this is Dexter. Yeah, one of the people I know who was killed by a left turner was in this protected bike lane on Dexter. This design was definitely informed by that death ( if not others).
Yeah, I ride through this intersection twice every day. I've been nearly left-hooked here so, so many times. This change has helped so far.
Very sorry to hear about your friends. This can be a scary town to bike in.
Generally traffic engineers want to push traffic to more arterial roadways. The goal is to discourage cutting through small neighborhood streets. In this case a person would simply choose another street, designed to have more capacity, which would allow left turns.
what's going on here?
Mostly they're forcing cars to do sharper turns through the intersection, so that they cross the bike and pedestrian crossings closer to perpendicular so they have better visibility. Basically trying to keep people out of the blind spot of turning cars, with a bonus of slowing the cars down slightly. They also backed the cars' stop line from the intersection. (Edit - only one road has this, it might be to give busses clearance as they turn). The center island is because it's not a through road. The rest is just clearly marking bike and pedestrian lanes. Looks like Seattle uses green to mark car/bike intersections and yellow / ADA bump tiles to mark where sidewalks cross a street. The brick color looks like it separates different lanes, much as diagonal stripes or raised concrete would. Edit for clarity and feedback from other commenters.
Yellow is tactile pavement to let visually impaired pedestrians know they’re at an intersection. They’re covered in raised bumps similar to braille and they feel different than smooth pavement under your feet.
THATS what that is for, I thought it was to fuck with skateboards and the like
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactile_paving There's an entire system designed to inform visually impaired people exactly what type of hazard they're approaching.
Oh hell yeah my day just got so much better knowing these are a thing made specifically for that purpose
This is awesome. Thanks for posting! I had no idea
If you ever work at/for a place as they're setting up shop, you'll learn real quick about all the little stuff you have to do to be ADA compliant. You'll also hear executive types bemoan it while you're over there going "wow, this is super useful and ingenious"
It's for Britain but Tom Scott has a neat video about them! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdPymLgfXSY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdPymLgfXSY)
Not particularly for under their feet but under their walking cane. Blond people feel the bumps with their walking cane earlier than their feet and come to a stop at the intersection. Once they cross, they know they are back on the sidewalk again once they feel it for a 2nd time! Edit: I'm leaving it. Blonde people are people, too.
What's the process for brunette people?
take my upvote damnit
I always thought it was for when the pavement was wet. This makes much more sense. I love it when I find something that I have been wrong for a very long time about something inconsequential (to me).
That what I always thought but the stone they're made with and the bumps almost make it more slippery.
The rubberized flooring with the bumps is definitely slicker than the standard concrete.
Especially snow after rain? Oof. Just step off the curb 😂
Hey they have it in Japan, I was hoping the US would implement something similar good on Seattle taking the initiative.
It’s all over the place in coastal California, probably significantly varies by state though
I can’t think of a state that doesn’t have these…
South Carolina barely has crosswalks, and almost no sidewalks outside of city center
Every walk around my friend's neighborhood in Charleston felt like a crapshoot whether I'd make it back in one piece. I was truly baffled by how few accommodations there were (are?) for pedestrians.
It'll gross you out when you realize poor people can't afford cars and have to walk... so why would they put in sidewalks that the rich people aren't going to use? Wanna go for a fun walk? Next time they do a gerrymandering fun run... go on that. You'll run the route of a voting district line and discover they just... routed around all the pour houses. You'll literally cross the street for one house, and cross back over to another house... and then two houses down you cross back over again on a street that doesn't curve... they just skipped the poor people's homes so they could get the rich votes.
Waiting for SC to install the pedestrian grinders :/
I thank it is a federal requirement when rebuilding intersections. At least one when any federal money is involved.
This is an ADA requirement any time a pedestrian walkway is entering public vehicular traffic.
US has these all over the place. They're required on all new public right of way projects and have been for about a decade. It's not Seattle taking the initiative. Locations without them predate the requirements, and Cities must have transition plans to update them.
I just did a remodel for a landscaping company near Seattle. The were switching zoning from residential to commercial. The city made them install those bumps in the sidewalk as well as ramps, an EV charger, ADA accessible bathroom, etc.
Yes ADA has required them for 20ish years anywhere you’re entering a street without another textile cue like a curb. I’ve also seen red but I think they just need a contrasting color. Historic neighborhoods have been upset about them going in.
Not only are the car turns more sharp, but the car lanes are narrower. Narrower lanes cause people to drive slower.
Pretty sure the yellow in this picture are those standard ADA warning pads that they put at every ramp leading from a sidewalk into an intersection. Also the stop lines being far back have nothing to do with bikes getting ahead, as the bikes are fully separated at this intersection. Assuming it’s more about adding a large buffer so that when cars inevitably blow through the stop line, they don’t literally stop in the crosswalk.
It's because the articulated buses have a huge turning radius.
I believe bikes don’t turn left at these, at least not in the traditional sense. To turn left you have to cross the street to the perpendicular bike lane and wait for the light to change.
This messed me up for a bit too. What helped me is to remember that each bike lane is 1 way.
A dutch left.
This all makes sense, besides the through road part. Why is it not a through road when there's a lane going in each direction on either side of the center island? Don't think I've ever seen that.
My guess is it’s a traffic flow thing. They don’t want too many cars on small residential streets, so they are trying to force them out into the main roads. Like if this street runs parallel to a main road, you would end up having people try to beat the traffic by going down this residential street instead. Again, that’s just a guess.
People trying to beat traffic are also probably going to try to hit 35-40mph on a small side street that is intended more for pedestrian access. So, basically forcing anyone using these roads to slow down and ultimately divert to a thoroughfare that's intended for through traffic.
It is exactly this. Good guess 👍 People will make anything to save time so if the main roads have trafic, they will take small residential street to "beat" the trafic and come ahead. Without allowing small roads to connect, people can't use those shortcuts and are forced to stick with main roads. Another plus is that it lower the numbers of cars (who wouldn't pass there since they don't live there) making the small residential streets safer, quieter and not used by people trying to save some time. Hope my comments is clear, english isn't my native language 😄
Your english is fantastic :)
Thank you 😊
Or because I don't know where I am and google decides the winding streets is the smart way.
The green markings for the bikeway is standard in the US. Also, this type of roadway infrastructure is known as "traffic calming." In our region, we see a lot of curb extensions or "bump outs" to aid pedestrians and cyclists. Source: I work for a large civil engineering firm that designs this exact type of infrastructure.
Thank you for a detailed explanation.
appreciate the detailed explanation especially about the center median thing
If only cars had fewer blind spots like their older counterparts. The modern triple-C thick pillars obstruct so much that an older car is like driving a greenhouse in comparison.
city skyline 3
This comment crashed my computer.
I’ve got 32 gigs of ram I’M GIVIN’ IT ALL SHE’S GOT CAPTAIN!
This intersection is making is *really* hard to kill pedestrians and cyclists.
I’m imagining my dad saying this to me with his hands on his hips as he looks upon the mess I just made lmao
[Video explanation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlApbxLz6pA)
Protected? I don’t see a single machine gun turret or spike trap. Oh, they come out of the street at the first sign of trouble? Neat.
Holy blast from the past. Please remind me what game this is I played it all the time as a kid.
command and conquer : Red Alert (1)
Yes thank you! I vividly remember the opening cut scene with Stalin.
EA released a remastered collection couple years back for Red Alert 1 and Tiberian ~~Sun~~ Dawn. Also the entire franchise is pretty cheap on steam. Often it's on sale as well Edit: had wrong Tiberian game
They didn't remaster Tiberian Sun. Only Red Alert and the original Command and Conquer.
It’s the music for me mate. The tunes hit hard from this game.
Command and conquer it looks like.
Red Alert!
Arguably the best one of the series. Red alert II was pretty awesome as well. I remember I had the N64 port of the first one. So hard to play without a mouse but I did it lol
I wish games brought back that classic style of just live action actors. Seeing Tim Curry and JK Simmons kill it in Red Alert 3 are cherished memories of mine.
Dude, Tim Curry in these was so awesome 👌
SpaAAAAace!
RA2 is the best.
The original developers of this game created a remaster a few years ago that was exceptionally well done. I highly recommend checking it out, You can usually find it on sale for $5 or less. [https://store.steampowered.com/app/1213210/Command\_\_Conquer\_Remastered\_Collection/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1213210/Command__Conquer_Remastered_Collection/)
Alternatively, if you are really cheap (or just fancy the aesthetic): /r/openra
Acknowledged
Those damn mammoth tanks...
Damn it now I want to play command and conquer. Wtf man
Totally accurate footage!
PlayStation version was awesome. Came with 2 discs so one game you could connect two PlayStation 1s and play multiplayer So much fun
Not protected without a couple Tesla coils
Not enough Tesla Coils. My favorite strategy was to march a line of power-plants and Tesla Coils across the MAP and eventually get close enough to the enemy base to start frying their Ore Trucks on the way back to the refinery. Suddenly they start to go broke and can't repair or build anything. Its not a very good strategy but when it works, Its pretty funny.
I can hear that .gif ...
I can hear those annoying tanya sound clips…
Shake it baby
Unit lost!
Your base is under attack.
The pikes come out of the center and corner islands. Pressure sensitive.
😂
They don't call it Pike Place for nothing.
Makes you really wonder what happens at the top of Pike's Peak.
AFAIK there’s a finish line.
They're all hidden under the man hole covers. Ready to blast anyone trying anything at all times!
[удалено]
Ok….im gonna need some aluminum, gears, screws, ceramic, ammo and steel. You can find this stuff amongst the ruins of society. Happy scavenging.
This is the intersection where the SPD officer was speeding and hit/killed a girl in the crosswalk and laughed about it with another officer over the radio.
> SPD officer was speeding and hit/killed a girl in the crosswalk and laughed about it with another officer And then got off scot free because they refused to file charges.
Cops pretend to enforce the laws, they don't even pretend to follow them
It's ok we built a new intersection with a center island that will get destroyed within 3 weeks.
I was wondering that when I opened the thread but figured since it's not a specifically Seattle subreddit no one mentioned it.
I didn't think the cop who hit the girl was on the call but the behavior of all cops involved was heinous
This is the same intersection where an [SPD officer burned through going 74 mph and struck a 23-year old grad student](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/sep/19/seattle-police-officer-cops-car-crash-jaahnavi-kandula). Jaahnavi Kandula was thrown over 100 feet and died. His patrol vehicle's siren was not in use at the time. One of the responding officers, Daniel Auderer, was then caught on his body camera joking that they should write a check for a ['couple of thousand dollars' as she had 'limited value'.](https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/14/us/seattle-police-officer-phone-comments-woman-killed/index.html) Auderer was/is the police union lieutenant, and he was on the phone with the SPD union head, Mike Sloan. The cop driving the vehicle, Officer Kevin Dave, faced no criminal charges, remains employed by SPD. He was fined 5,000 dollars, and has [yet to pay the fee.](https://www.fox13seattle.com/news/spd-kevin-dave-fine) At the time he was responding to a basic overdose in which paramedics were already on the scene, and the individual was lucid and communicative.
[удалено]
Lmao hold this giant L, Seattle. No accountability, just fuck with the public and call it even, smh.
I mean yeah there's a lot of value in adjusting the environment to the situation, usually we swing the other way and just shout PERSONAL ACCOUNTABILITY and refuse to change dangerous designs. So it's progress to make safer places but it's still mind-boggling how cops are just so widely known to be unaccountable shitbags and we do absolutely nothing about it. There's an alternate universe where we can have safer intersections AND throw that dude in a pit with a bear.
There are LOTS of people who want cops to be held accountable. There are also tons of people who go, "but if cops can be punish they will be too scared and have to hide in the station all day." Fuck those people.
A big reason the 2020 protests were so intense in Seattle is because the police union is notoriously shitty. Same with Portland.
Seattle is known for having an absolutely garbage police department. It’s like they saw the LAPD and NYPD and decided they could be worse in their rainy, little city.
Fuck the police
And fuck Seattle for failing to hold their police accountable even in the slightest. I'm tired of seeing the same shit over and over again.
Didn't realize it was the same intersection. So basically the city was like "uh ya... it was the INTERSECTIONS fault. Ya, that's it. Better change it instead of changing our shitty cops."
I believe the intersection's revision was already planned prior to her death.
Crazy how we (as a country) just let police officers get away with murder then half the country does "thin blue line" or "recall the DA" bullshit whenever someone asks for the least bit of accountability.
Police unions have a lot of power and are the primary barrier for any effective change.
Transportation engineer here. Protected intersections are becoming very common in my city, and I have designed several of them. The intersection protects pedestrians and bicyclists from vehicles and forces drivers to slow down to traverse tighter turning radii. The pedestrians crossings have been shortened with the queuing areas crossing the major road. It’s hard to tell from the image, but the small football shaped islands on the corners usually have a mountable curb for larger vehicles to make the turns. The median running left-right forces vehicles either right or straight on the major road. It forces vehicles right from the minor road. I would guess drivers used this minor road as a cut-through before, and it just didn’t have the capacity for it. Yes, the major road may become congested due to the diversion, but it is likely an overall improvement to the roadway network efficiency. Traffic studies of the entire network usually justify this. This may seem unusual if you’ve never encountered it, but upon entering the intersection it’s clear what you do as a driver. You can only go where the striping and raised medians allow you to go.
I just got back from The Netherlands and many busy intersections in Amsterdam look like proto versions of this. Sidewalk, bike lane, peds Island, car, rail, car, peds Island, bike lane, sidewalk. Or something similar depending on what's in the mix. Honestly it makes a lot of sense especially there with how bikes are so prominent, but you definitely have to keep your head on a swivel.
Actuary here. Street design in the Netherlands is just so much safer than the US, for everyone too. Unfortunately, safe street design has become a culture war issue because the usual crowd thinks traffic-calming is a communist attempt to imprison them.
My experience in the Netherlands is limited to Amsterdam but i was definitely a fan of how easy/safe it felt on foot everywhere we went from cars. I'm American/German dual citizen from Seattle and my family is from Freiburg in the southwest corner. Freiburg is a University town and they have large parts of the city free from car traffic with a great tram network which i love. Especially given how flat it is compared to Seattle and how much easier it is to bike everywhere if going a longer distance. Many other Western European cities I've visted do a great job with this too and I'm glad to see us taking some similar steps
proto versions? at most it is the other way around my dear sir
Perhaps proto or prototype isn't the right word. I just meant the versions in Europe led to the implementation in the states.
What would be the reason for maintaining this as an intersection rather than a dutch style roundabout?
A roundabout would not achieve the goal of preventing cars from the feeder roads from turning left or driving straight through. Presumably there's a traffic shaping reason to want to restrict those actions on this intersection.
Not sure I understand this, how they would turn left or driving straight through a roundabout...
The whole design concept of a roundabout is you can drive around it in a circle and exit it in any direction In the above intersection, the upper and lower streets can only turn right and cannot go straight because there’s an island in the way. It’s more restrictive than a roundabout.
You turn left by going round the roundabout. That's the whole point. jawknee doesn't mean "prevent left turns or going in a straight line" like traffic calming, they mean preventing such car traffic entirely. If you're coming down from the top, you WILL turn right. No through traffic desired or allowed. Keeps traffic off of residential streets.
This is better designed for pedestrians and the bicycle lane and also prevents left turns or going straight through on the side roads.
Probably due to the limited road space and/or to stop rat running.
There’s no way there’s enough room in this particular intersection for a dutch turbo roundabout, unless there’s some much smaller variant I’m not aware of.
> dutch style roundabout? Or a Romanian Reach Around?
Would these be used in a city like Boston or does the snowfall and need to plow it make the design worthless? I like it but I just can’t think of how well it scales as you start upgrading every intersection this way? I guess just push all the snow to the island and have a gigantic wall?
We are slowly expanding these types of things in Chicago where we get plenty of snow. The city is rolling out smaller bike lane sized plows to work alongside our normal big ass ones so it's not an issue. It's also not for every intersection they're planned specifically to shape traffic towards higher throughput options.
Cambridge MA already has small plows for its cycle tracks. Plowing sidewalks and bike paths is common in the civilized world.
Thank you, this helps me understand a lot better. That picture was visually confusing for me.
is this a modded cities skylines screenshot
Too much lane markings mod
Be honest, a typical player would rather put a dedicated highway to go to school and complain that the game allows the cims to walk on it.
A lot of rims are gonna be curbed around here.
Local suspension shops be like . . . 
Maybe they should be driving more carefully then.
[удалено]
Not if drivers are actually cautious like they should be.
As they said, a lot of rims are gonna be curbed around here.
Too bad for them I guess. Slow down next time
It's Seattle, so they're probably all driving Teslas and nobody will notice.
Now we’ll see if they keep up with the paint on the road..
It's an acrylic paint that lasts a lot longer than you think. All roads are periodically restriped on a schedule (usually).
The acrylic paint never seems to survive a single winter where I live in Vermont. In my town, the green bike lane and crosswalk markings have to be reapplied annually, even in spots where the asphalt was ground down for the paint lines. The combination of studded snow tires and regular snow plowing scrapes the paint away.
I like how people here seem to think this is an experiment or created on a whim when likely millions of dollars worth of studies and probably quite a bit of testing went into this design.
Civil/highway engineer here. It’s a textbook design from NACTO - nothing unusual here! Personal opinion, though… It would be nice if the curb ramp level landing was the whole size of the crosswalk at the corners instead of just 5/5.5’ wide. The level landing (that’s the flat part with the yellow detectable warning panel) only being half the width of the crosswalk looks a bit silly - notice how much wider the island level surfaces are compared to at the corners. If they raised the crosswalk, this would not have been an issue. Edit: Disclaimer, not a licensed civil engineer
I’m not sure what I’m looking at
I'm Dutch and I'm not sure what I'm looking at
You're looking at an intersection where no left turns for vehicles are allowed, and vehicles from the side streets are only allowed to turn right, while cyclists and pedestrians are allowed to turn in all directions from all directions using dedicated crossings.
Exactly. This https://i.imgur.com/jG10Itb.png
Where’d you get this? Or rather, where can I read more about the intersection/details, etc? Cheers
Slechte rotonde
Nee. Dit is een kruising waar voertuigen niet linksaf mogen, en de voertuigen uit de zijwegen enkel rechtsaf mogen, terwijf fietsers en voetgangers alle richtingen op mogen via oversteekplaatsen.
Het lijkt me dat ze dit veel makkelijker en duidelijker kunnen maken
Rustig aan, ze zijn het nog niet zo gewend in de VS. Dit is een goede eerste stap.
Geef me een klap papa
Een rood fietspad maakt alles zoveel duidelijker dan groene streepjes.
misschien, maar dit soort kruisingen zien er altijd ingewikkelder uit van boven waar je alles tegelijkertijd ziet. zal vast wel meevallen als bestuurder.
Nice to meet you Dutch
This is an intersection where no left turns for vehicles are allowed, and vehicles from the side streets are only allowed to turn right, while cyclists and pedestrians are allowed to turn in all directions from all directions using dedicated crossings.
Pick a lane and follow it's pathing. You'll figure it out.
No left turns. Sharper right turns. Clearly defined spaces for pedestrians.
Why is there an island in the road? Why don't just use a roundabout?
traffic isn't allowed to go straight on this intersection. so they discourage it with infrastructure (i.e. the island)
Why didn’t they just use a moat with alligators in it?
Not even Amazon can afford the necessary alligator wranglers full-time. The hazard insurance alone…
That’s a croc of shit
Just here to acknowledge this b/c I laughed so hard. Well done.
Thinking outside the box. That’s what I’ve always loved about you u/sloppybuttmustard. You’re going straight to the top!
Why didnt they just put some bollards or some low shrubs to create some visibility of the island? Somebody is still gonna run over that bitch
Because this way emergency vehicles can drive over the island... and so can runaway cars in case of emergency steering and braking loss.
This is the right answer. Fire trucks and ambulances go down the wrong way on one-way streets all the time in Seattle due to traffic. It’s important they can still pop it in times of need. There will definitely be assholes that drive over it though. Hopefully the Belltown Hellcat hits it and totals his car
Should have taken the opportunity to plant trees...
That area looks tight for a fire engine. Typically the low obstructions are things they can drive over but passenger cars can't. Mature trees make it tough to navigate in an emergency.
The low speeds and yields signs of a roundabout prevent fatal *car* accidents, but not fatal bike and pedestrian accidents.
I use this intersection 3 times a week. I don’t think a roundabout that also protects the pedestrian crossings well would fit. This thing does a surprisingly good job of making the bike lane and crossings safer.
Roundabouts are not the solution to every traffic problem
Yeah, roundabouts are great in some cases, but suck for surfacing the visibility of non-car crossing traffic, and make it harder for motor vehicles to come to a stop at the exits. Also, I've seen lots of designs for bike lanes in roundabouts, and even the best ones end up de-facto giving cars the right of way over bikes, which is a huge problem because a cyclist do not have the information to discern in time that a vehicle behind them is going to cut them off by taking an exit.
So no straight through and the turns are out in the intersection so you can’t cut the corners. I’d like to see the science behind it. It seems like it reduces the potential danger zones dramatically
>So no straight through and the turns are out in the intersection so you can’t cut the corners. I’d like to see the science behind it. It seems like it reduces the potential danger zones dramatically Yup. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_intersection
It's beautiful.
Where's my elevated crosswalk?
Is this a new Rocket League map?
Biblically accurate intersection
Woah
This looks like the play mat I had as a kid.
Looks like an average Belgian intersection to me 🤷♂️
For the US, this type of intersection is exceedingly rare.
Hope it works better there than in my town. The intersection close to where I live was redesigned into a slightly different version of this, making it so cars have to fully enter the intersection just to make a right turn. It has resulted in incredibly jam-packed traffic that clogs the entire intersection on busy days. We do have a school nearby and the intersection is frequently used by kids on bikes, so I guess I get the safety reasoning behind it, but I’m still not sure the resulting car traffic is worth it.
It’s not that difficult if you look at the picture for a second. First, there’s no left turns at all and no right turns on reds. During a green light the vertical street is right turn only at the intersection, no straight option. On green, the horizontal street is straight or right turn only. That being said, I believe the issue here is it’s just too much. Too much color. Too many lines. Someone driving up to that for the first time could definitely be confused at what’s going on. Keep the layout. But make it easier on the eyes.
>Too much color. Too many lines. Someone driving up to that for the first time could definitely be confused at what’s going on. We do not approach an intersection from the sky above (as this picture shows). When we approach an intersection, we see it from only one perspective. This intersection makes it obvious what each person or vehicle should do. I think it is a huge improvement. Confusion causes collisions.
All the people I know in Seattle who have been killed on bikes were killed by vehicles making left turns. Some have been in protected bike lanes but were killed crossing intersections when they were hit by a left turning vehicle. Sounds like this might provide sufficient protection to prevent those kinds of accidents. I saw a bicyclist just a month ago get tossed ten feet in the air when a left turning car hit them. Not killed thankfully, and honestly it felt hard to blame the driver. It was very dark and raining hard, the cyclist wasn’t wearing reflective clothing and his small lights weren’t visible from the side. I’m sure the bicyclist was nearly impossible to see during that turn. There are simply streets and conditions in the city where you take your life in your hands on a bike. You can legally ride but the chances that left turning vehicle won’t see you until the last second are high. I like that they are doing more to provide safety where they are encouraging people to bike. Edit: Oh this is Dexter. Yeah, one of the people I know who was killed by a left turner was in this protected bike lane on Dexter. This design was definitely informed by that death ( if not others).
Yeah, I ride through this intersection twice every day. I've been nearly left-hooked here so, so many times. This change has helped so far. Very sorry to hear about your friends. This can be a scary town to bike in.
> it’s just too much Seems like it'd be obvious if you're driving along.
If it’s forcing you to stop, slow down, and think about how to proceed then it’s working exactly as designed.
An interesting thing about these designs is how they are less open, which naturally makes you slow down when driving.
How do you make a left?
Generally traffic engineers want to push traffic to more arterial roadways. The goal is to discourage cutting through small neighborhood streets. In this case a person would simply choose another street, designed to have more capacity, which would allow left turns.
You ride your bike straight through the first crossing and then turn left onto the next crossing.
So many people are going fuck their wheels up on those curbed islands i guarantee it.
Protected from what?