Whoopsie! Sydney’s road planners just discovered induced demand is a thing, after opening a new motorway.
For those outside Sydney, the New South Wales state government recently opened a new spaghetti intersection just west of Sydney’s Central Business District.
It was supposed to solve traffic. Instead, it’s turned into a giant car park:
"For the third straight day, motorists and bus passengers endured bumper-to-bumper traffic on the City West Link and Victoria Road. A trip from Haberfield to the Anzac Bridge on the City West Link averaged an agonising 44 minutes in the morning peak on Wednesday.
"Several months ago, Transport for NSW’s modelling had suggested traffic from the interchange would add only five to 10 minutes to trips on Victoria Road through Drummoyne and over the Iron Cove Bridge during morning peaks.
“Those travel delays have now blown out.”
So what do motorists say when their shiny new road that was supposed to solve traffic instead turns into a massive traffic jam?
‘Dude! Just one more lane!’
From the article:
"[Roads Minister John] Graham and his Transport boss Josh Murray appear reluctant to do what many motorists reckon is the obvious solution.
“That is, add lanes or make changes at the pinch-points that are causing the pain. A three-lane to one merge point from Victoria Road onto the Anzac Bridge, along with two lanes merging into one on the City West Link, are proving to be painful bottlenecks.”
#roads #traffic #cars @fuck_cars @sydneytrains @urbanism #urbanism #UrbanPlanning #motorways #fuckcars
@sping From my perspective as a bicyclist, it is the key to understanding counter-steering:
When one is riding the center of the tire, one is in normal steering.
However, when one is riding the *side* of the tire, then counter-steering is happening, and one is *climbing* on the side-ish part of the tire.
That matches the experience.
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Experience is misleading and not only is what you describe not countersteering, it’s also not how bicycles steer. The primary input is the angle of turn of the handlebars. The complication is that on a balanced vehicle like a bicycle you can’t just point the wheel where you want to go or you’d just fall over to the outside of the turn. So, before you steer where you wan to go, you have to point it in the opposite direction to initiate a lean.
Many people get quite heated, insisting they do not do this on a bicycle, and believe all sorts of other things. But the fact is this is what everyone does and it’s the only way to steer a bicycle, it’s just that it’s quite possible to ride without realizing this is what you’re doing.
@sping I only found counter-steering worked when on road-tires, & leaned waaay over, and from what I’ve seen of Fortnine, he countersteers waaay leaned over, too.
The turn of the handlebars only is primary when you’re upright, not when you’re as-near-horizontal-as-you-can-get.
*shruggeth*
It’s been many years since I bothered with road-bikes, and arguing it is pointless, obviously: what I’m talking about you aren’t describing.
Cheers.
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I have a feeling you’re mixing up the direction of the force you have to apply with the angle of the wheel. Also, countersteering is about how you change the radius of your turn, not about what angle you hold on a steady-state turn.
The effects of the round tire profile are a factor that alter the steering angle for a given turn - conceivably even against to the direction you turn, but as you can see from the Wikipedia page linked that’s not what the term means.
And ultimately, it’s the only way you initiate a turn, no matter how much many people disbelieve it. As the page says “While this appears to be a complex sequence of motions, it is performed by every child who rides a bicycle. The entire sequence goes largely unnoticed by most riders, which is why some assert that they do not do it.”
@sping I now know that there are *2* different, distinct, phenomena, both called “counter steering”, that have nothing to do with each-other.
What you describe is what some call counter steering.
What I’m talking about is when you are in the lean, if you lean the bike a bit more, while steering a few degrees *out* from the turning you are doing, while “climbing through the turn on the sidewall”, the bike goes 'round like it’s on rails, while keeping its center-of-gravity low.
That is what *I*, and some others, mean when talking about “counter steering”.
It has nothing whatsoever to do with what one does with the steering when the bike is upright.
And it wasn’t the Fornine vid I was remembering, so I’ve no idea who it was who also means what I mean.
What a shoddy mess that is: the same label for distinct different phenomena, that are similar.
That is the wrong way of making language “work”.
Cheers.
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What you describe is what some call counter steering.
You’re certainly tenacious - an entire Wikipedia page telling you the definition, not including your definition, and telling you it’s how bicycle steering works doesn’t slow you down!
I think rather than arguing with me you should correct Wikipedia and see how far you get. You should also attend to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_and_motorcycle_dynamics, that weirdly doesn’t seem to mention your special facts on how bicycle steering works.