OT - Pet Peeves Thread

[FearlessF]

I have 2 electrics that do fine on my neck - takes a little more time than the cheeks, but...........

[Wildcat4E]

I was happy with a beard and didn't intend to shave it, but then half the thing turned gray.  I didn't mind the look of gray hair in the beard at all, I couldn't have cared less, but in my case, all the gray hairs turned wiry and curly and could no longer be made to look nice with a beard trimmer.  No matter what I tried, it just looked unkempt.  By the time point I could make it look good, it was trimmed so close that it was hardly a beard anymore.  So I shaved it. 

I see plenty of other dudes with gray in their beard, or full gray beards and they look all nice and tidy.  That annoys me too. 

Not much dark left in mine.  Hair on the back of my head is wavy--I could never push past the curl-up to grow a proper mullet. But keeping the beard 1/4 to 1/2 inch does the trick.  Profile pic is for realz, kind of at the longest I keep it.  Tried to do the Jason Kelce thing for awhile, just looked like a hillbilly, which, was actually the thing for a minute.

[847badgerfan]

[FearlessF]

Not much dark left in mine.  Hair on the back of my head is wavy--I could never push past the curl-up to grow a proper mullet. But keeping the beard 1/4 to 1/2 inch does the trick.  Profile pic is for realz, kind of at the longest I keep it.  Tried to do the Jason Kelce thing for awhile, just looked like a hillbilly, which, was actually the thing for a minute.

nobody's dumb enough to use a real pic

reminds me of Chuck Green

[Wildcat4E]

nobody's dumb enough to use a real pic

reminds me of Chuck Green

Says the dude with all the empty glasses in front of him on the table awhile back.

We're among friends.

Well, mostly.

[FearlessF]

nobody is interested in a poor dirt farmer from Iowa

[Cincydawg]

The city is putting bike lanes all over, at the expense of car lanes.  I walked back along Tenth Street today from a hair cut, I saw one bike in traffic lanes, one bike on the sidewalk, and finally one in the bike lane.  I don't get it.  Tenth borders the park which has paved wide paths for bikes.  

We drove the length of Juniper the other day, about two miles with bike lanes, the only bike was on the sidewalk.  Deliver trucks were blocking one of the two remaining traffic lanes.

You can build it, but folks like their cars.

[SFBadger96]

Curious, have you studied up on urban traffic engineering? And have you listened in to the local agency decision making process?

You all know that I'm a cyclist, and although I wouldn't call myself much of an advocate, I do care a fair amount about traffic safety. It impacts cyclists in a more direct and visceral way on a daily basis.

The primary concern with street modifications tends to be throughput, with safety often a close second. Adding the bike lanes often has a negligible effect on throughput, with a strong increase for safety.

I don't know what's happening in and around Atlanta, but I know that in my neighborhood, people have lost their minds over a project that added a protected bike lane, narrowed a street from two lanes in each direction to one in each, plus a left-turn lane, and hardly touched street parking. The goal was (1) to increase protected bike paths in the city, and (2) reduce the speed of traffic from 35 to 30 to increase pedestrian safety (which has been a problem on that street). The impact on auto throughput wasn't zero, but it wasn't big, either. I think it increased the travel time by an average of 20 seconds or so (which, over a two mile stretch, isn't nothing, but it also isn't a huge problem on a signaled street with a city speed limit. Pedestrian safety was a key aspect of the project, and a good reason to reduce the speed limit. However, generally reducing a speed limit on a sign has a negligible impact; instead the street needs narrowing to convince drivers to slow down. Adding the protected bike lane helps with that. The result of the project is exactly what was intended, moderately reducing traffic speed to increase pedestrian safety, while also adding a protected bike lane to get from one end of town to the other. Framed as it was intended, the project has been a singing success; but people are still mad because there is only one lane now, where there used to be two (with zero regard for actual changes to throughput).

My point is many people--and I don't know if this is you--assume (1) narrowing/reducing lanes reduces throughput; that isn't necessarily true--there is lots of engineering on this; and (2) that this is all done just for a handful of knucklehead cyclists; while cyclists are often the biggest advocates, pedestrian safety is often an important part of the puzzle that gets overlooked because of all those jerks on their bikes running stop signs (and now doing so on electric "bikes" that travel pretty darned fast).

[Cincydawg]

Juniper Street near me went from four lanes to two, and one lane often is blocked by a delivery vehicle.  The impact on car traffic has been severe.  Meanwhile, no bikes, almost ever.  What's the point of bike lanes when almost nobody rides bikes?  We walk or drive along Juniper often, it's VERY rare to see a bike.  Now, maybe those folks in Ansley Park are going to sell their BMWs and buy bikes someday?  Not a chance.

I firmly believe in 5-10 years the city will restore Juniper to the way it was.  And no, I am not a traffic engineer.  What I heard from the Midtown Alliance was a lot of "build it they will come" crap that makes no sense to me, at all.  And in the six months since the bike lanes opened, they almost never feature a bike.  So, what did this help?  Two or four bikes a day?  And how many cars?  Thousands.  It was a four lane one way street going south, parallel to the Downtown Connector which often is stop and go.

This isn't Copenhagen and never will be.

[MikeDeTiger]

Traffic in ATL sucked 30 years ago.  Can only imagine what it is now.  

[Cincydawg]

Traffic for us usually is not an issue, but we avoid driving between 3 and 6 PM, and we stay on side streets.  After a while, you figure out where to get somewhere, usually, to avoid stuff.  we get caught in "it" once or twice a month.  One thing is that the freeways are build for rush hour, so driving on them out of rush hour often is a breeze, except for outside the Perimeter.  In reality, we could live here without a car at all.  My wife drives more than I do.

Today we walked over to Home Depot and I got a haircut, stopped for lunch on the way back, got a few things at Trader Joes, probably 3 miles total, it's pretty humid, we got a serious storm last night apparently.

[Cincydawg]

So imagine I decided to ride a bike.  I could take the bike lane on Juniper to Tenth, fine, then a block with no bike lane east, then a bike lane (with no bike traffic of course).  Then no bike lane on Monroe for two blocks, then a parking lot and up some stairs to another parking lot, lock up the bike and get my hair cut.  Doable, sure.  Probably quicker than walking.

On return, stopping at TJ's I need some kind of rack for the produce I bought.  But it's 1.3 miles as I walk, which takes me 23 minutes, maybe a bike saves me 9 minutes one way.  Yay.  Folks who ride bikes here aren't GOING anywhere, they ride recreationally, which is great, but you can easily do that in the park all you want.  This isn't reducing traffic, it makes it worse.

[SFBadger96]

Steering into local Atlanta politics?
https://www.midtownatl.com/project/juniper-street-transformation-project

Looks like one of the two lanes was removed for the protected bike lane, the other was for wider sidewalks. 460 reported safety incidents in the five years prior to the project. Bikes were a part of this; pedestrian safety and traffic calming were intended, if not the featured talking point.

The slower throughput was a feature, not a bug. 

Delivery vehicles blocking the lanes does seem like a problem.

Curious how this all went down at the local level before it got approved and funded.

[utee94]

Steering into local Atlanta politics?
https://www.midtownatl.com/project/juniper-street-transformation-project

Looks like one of the two lanes was removed for the protected bike lane, the other was for wider sidewalks. 460 reported safety incidents in the five years prior to the project. Bikes were a part of this; pedestrian safety and traffic calming were intended, if not the featured talking point.

The slower throughput was a feature, not a bug.

Delivery vehicles blocking the lanes does seem like a problem.

Curious how this all went down at the local level before it got approved and funded.

"Safety incidents."  Could be defined in almost any way one wanted, if one had an agenda to push.

Unusued bike lanes are the running joke in Austin as well.  Scores of millions of dollars spent over the past 20 years.  Still no bikes.

Edited to Add: I'm a cycling enthusiast myself, and appreciate some of the larger more "thoroughfare" type bike lanes that exist.  Of course they existed long before the recent decades push.  They were used then, and they are used now. 

This, isn't that.