Interesting graphs and charts department

[glatt]

June 2005 is when Google Earth was introduced by Google.

There used to be this lure of the open road in the US that went hand in hand with the whole car culture. But where is the lure when you can just go there in Google Earth in seconds? There is no mystery any more.

[Clodfobble]

I also wonder how telecommuting has affected this? Even at the height of "driving for pleasure," it still was a drop in the bucket compared to a person's daily commute.

[glatt]

And ordering stuff online instead of driving around to the malls.

[Undertoad]

I wonder how many miles GPS is saving.

OK I forgot: there was a massive price spike in 2005, which was shocking and probably led to a lot of changes in habitual driving. But still!

Also, around here the roads are well at capacity during rush hour. It is hard to get miles in when you're going 10 MPH. There has been an upswing in passenger miles on the commuter trains.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by glatt

Plus, who wants to jump in the car to sit in traffic?

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Also, around here the roads are well at capacity during rush hour. It is hard to get miles in when you're going 10 MPH. There has been an upswing in passenger miles on the commuter trains.

That's a biggie, Los Angeles synced their 4400 traffic lights to increase the average speed of traffic from 15 to 17.5 mph.
I've done the Philly to mid-state Massachusetts run a bazillion times, in every conceivable weather/time of day/day of week condition, since 1966.
NYC in the middle adds another dimension, as well as Governor Christie.
That trip has varied between 3hrs-57min and 23hrs-22min due to external forces I couldn't influence... no mechanical failures or personal foibles. Mostly increased volume, but self absorbed clueless drivers with no lane discipline are as big a contributor. When did fathers start telling their teens to drive in the left lane and never leave it no matter what? I guess you never know when you'll want to make a left turn... through the guardrail, across the median.

Christ, there are only two rules...
1- Don't hit the car in front.
2- Don't block the car behind.
how hard is that?

[footfootfoot]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

Christ, there are only two rules...
1- Don't hit the car in front.
2- Don't block the car behind.
how hard is that?

I think it is hard for people who think they are the only car on the road, or the only car that matters...

[Gravdigr]

Originally Posted by glatt

...the only road building I see is putting in more lanes and higher capacity interchanges and stuff.

Yep. Only new subdivisions get new roads.

[Gravdigr]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

When did fathers start telling their teens to drive in the left lane and never leave it no matter what?

In Kentucky, if a Trooper (or anybody else with blue lights and a gun) observes you driving more than a mile in the left lane (fast lane), without passing traffic in the slower lanes, you can be given a ticket. Lane obstruction, I think.

Also, it's a state law here that you have to go completely into the left lane if you pass a cop with someone pulled over, or writing up an accident, or whatever, on the interstate. On a regular road, you must get as far over as is prudent for traffic conditions. And slow down significantly.

[Clodfobble]

We have that same law. If there's a cop pulled over on the side of the road, you must change lanes away, or if that's impossible, slow to 20 mph below the posted speed limit.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Same here, new law on changing to the left lane or slowing way down if you can't, when a cop's on the shoulder. There seems to be a wave of these laws being passed across the country. I would speculate the problem was being out on the shoulder is incredibly dangerous and when someone hits the cop, his car, or the car he stopped, he could rarely charge the driver.

Hey, that's why they call them accidents, bro.

That's left the cops vulnerable to carefully executed "accidents", but this law helps prevent accidents real and staged. But of course that would never be discussed in the open.

A lot of states have the get-the-fuck-over laws but the cops are usually too busy to observe, no less enforce them unless you're right in front of him. I remember being on I-84 in Ct late at night. I'm in the right lane, very light traffic, and I see flashing lights coming up from behind in the left lane. When the cruiser catches up with me he's got colored light flashing, headlights strobing and the siren blaring. He's also 2 inches off the rear bumper of some guy who was oblivious... or dead. The cop must have been furious because about a minute later the cop passed him on the median, even though my lane was open.

It's one of those catch 22 things, the cop has to be elsewhere or he might have been tempted to shoot the fool, but if he didn't have to be elsewhere it wouldn't have happened in the first place.

[xoxoxoBruce]

The Scottish Owl Centre.

With a Scottish accent I wasn't sure if it was birds or wolves... it's birds.

[Gravdigr]

Pretty cool.

[Spexxvet]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

...
That trip has varied between 3hrs-57min and 23hrs-22min ...

I'd like to hear about that trip

[footfootfoot]

“Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era—the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run . . . but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant. . . .

History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of “history” it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time—and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.

My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights—or very early mornings—when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder's jacket . . . booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end (always stalling at the toll-gate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change) . . . but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: No doubt at all about that. . . .

There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . .

And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by Spexxvet

I'd like to hear about that trip

Sunday afternoon, 3PM in MA, 8" of snow and falling fast. I got a phone call from Philly, strike's over, have to be back at work tomorrow.
I-91 was one lane, bumper to bumper, mostly trucks because anyone who didn't have to be on the road wasn't. I-95 was the same. We came to a halt at two salt laden plows parked on the side with their yellow lights flashing. There was a low spot in the road where the snow had drifted in and a car got stuck so the plows refused to risk hitting the car. This is I-95, the fucking pavement is 40 ft wide, ferchristsakes. The car was a Datsun 2-seat roadster, so one of the truck drivers rounded some of us up and we picked up the car and dumped it on the side. From New Haven there were four 25-cent tolls in CT and one just after the NY line where the state police blocked the road. "Sorry folks, road closed, turn around"... (John Candy at Wally World) WTF!

Can't argue so U-turn, take the first exit to US-1, and get out the map in a truck stop lot. A guy dressed in white scrubs says he has to get to work at a hospital in NYC. If I give him a ride he'll get me there. Damn if he didn't, by driving underneath the elevated highways where the roads were impassable. There was 23" in Manhattan, but wind pushes it off buildings into the canyons, a lot of side streets looked 10 or more ft deep.

Cool, just schlep to NJ by one of the two tunnels Wrong, tunnels are closed. OK there's three bridges. Bridges are open, roads to them are closed.
About five hours later they open the tunnels, get to NJ, on my way now baby! Nope gotcha, turnpike and Garden State are closed. Head slowly down US-1.
Looking for food, I spot a service road into the back door of a Turnpike rest area and found out the wind had blown most of the snow off the pike but is was icy and they were afraid the wind would push vehicles off the side.
I ain't scairt.
Drive around the barriers, over the lawn, onto turnpike. Come over the Walt Whitman bridge a little after 2 PM on Monday and there isn't a damn flake on the ground... it was maybe 50 degrees and sunny. Then I called my boss to tell him my tale of woe.

Now aren't you sorry you asked.

Originally Posted by footfootfoot

...—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil.

Then we became old and evil.