#Traffic Reduction

[trendynewsnow]

New York City Approves Congestion Pricing Amid Political Backlash

On Monday, transit leaders voted to endorse New York City’s congestion pricing initiative, a decision that has sparked an escalating backlash against Governor Kathy Hochul. Her choice to revive this contentious proposal provides ammunition for her critics, who are keen to renew their attacks. Governor Hochul initially set the congestion pricing plan aside in June, citing concerns over its…

[gpstudios]

Title: Car-Free Day: Embracing Sustainable Transportation and Cleaner Air

Celebrate Car-Free Day on September 22 by exploring alternative transportation options. Experience the benefits of cleaner air and reduced traffic while promoting a healthier, more sustainable lifestyle.

Introduction Car-Free Day, celebrated on September 22, is a global initiative to promote sustainable transportation and reduce air pollution. This day encourages individuals to leave their cars behind and explore alternative modes of transport like walking, biking, or using public transit. Join the movement to experience the benefits of cleaner air, reduced traffic congestion, and a healthier…

[mjalford98]

Discouraging people from driving is popular for improving urban air quality, but it’s unfair and unhelpful without viable public transport alternatives. Read more in my latest Medium article!

[frasermints]

not to be a nimby wrt urbanization on main but what rural america needs is adequate road conditions (re: filled potholes) and bridge repair and stable communication lines and power grids. not 500 ft long bike lanes on county roads that no one will use because there's at least 6 feet of snow in the area 6 months out of the year.

[just2bruce]

Rail freight inducements hope to drive new loads

Several national rail agencies are actively working to increase rail traffic, with a focus on reducing costs and emissions.

This interesting article ties together several efforts by national rail agencies to drum up more traffic. The countries range from Russia to the UK. When you have a national railroad, rather than private enterprise, you can make quick changes that will reduce costs for the kinds of shipments you want. The article focuses on Russia, which is losing lots of cargoes from the Far East headed for…

[townpostin]

Zonal IG Addresses Rising Crime Rates In Jamshedpur Meeting

Akhilesh Jha Expresses Concern Over Increase In Road Accidents And Thefts Police officials receive directives on crime reduction and traffic safety strategies. JAMSHEDPUR – Zonal IG Akhilesh Jha held a crucial meeting with district police officials on Thursday, addressing the city’s rising crime rates and road accident fatalities. "We’re concerned about the increase in crimes like robbery and…

[constructionsafetynetwork]

Essential Safety Equipment for Road Construction

The emphasis on Safety Equipment for Road Construction cannot be understated. Each piece of gear plays a unique role in the collective safety of a construction site. From head protection like hard hats that defend against falling objects, to the high-visibility vests that are the first line of defense in making workers stand out against the backdrop of bustling activity, every item has its…

[marioprobertson]

DMVgo.com and MYimprov.com Join Forces to Empower Users with Defensive Driving Solutions

DMVgo.com and MYimprov.com have partnered to revolutionize defensive driving and traffic court challenges. The collaboration simplifies the process with integrated defensive driving courses and offers exclusive discounts and promotions. Users can enhance their driving skills and resolve traffic issues seamlessly, benefiting from both platforms' expertise. This partnership transforms how individuals approach these challenges, providing a user-friendly solution for improved driving and court compliance.

[greater-than-the-sword]

Legislative agenda:

Limit car headlight brightness to an amount recommended by eye doctors and traffic safety experts

Replace all prison lights with light posts that have caps

Cap all stadium lighting

Replace all public streetlights with warm colored lights

Limit brightness of all outdoor LED's (likely to a similar amount of lumens as the car headlights were limited to)

Create biannual event where city owned lights, including streetlights, and all businesses over 50 employees MUST turn their lights off for a dark sky night

maybe: Require all unoccupied parking lots turn off their lights 10PM-5AM

Proposed benefits:

Tourism

Education

Boost interest in the sciences and arts

Mental health

Physical health (eye disorders and reduction of sleep disorders)

Increased productivity of workers due to reduction of sleep disorders

The human experience

Eco friendly (Benefits animals)

Eco friendly (saves energy)

Cons:

Criminals target dark parking lots

Rebuttal:

Criminals can't target dark parking lots if they're all equally dark

[mindblowingscience]

Over two three-month periods, researchers sampled air quality at five sites along metro Atlanta interstates and highways. When compared to similar sites without vegetation, the researchers found a 37% reduction in soot and a 7% reduction in ultrafine particles at sites with natural or ornamental vegetation. The findings appear in the journal PLOS ONE. “Trees and bushes near roadways don’t solve the problem of air pollution caused by motor vehicles, but they can help reduce the severity of the problem,” says lead author Roby Greenwald, associate professor in the Georgia State University School of Public Health.

Continue Reading.

[wilwheaton]

The grifters that make up the troll-industrial complex are not okay. "One can see the sheen of desperation in the world of self-identified conservatives who make a living by "triggering" the liberals. The usual dose of outrage bait isn't working as well any longer, so the right-wingers are escalating the provocations. Tucker Carlson, for example, gave a glow-up interview with manosphere "influencer" Andrew Tate, who is being held in Romania on charges of sex trafficking and rape. Daily Wire anti-trans provocateur Matt Walsh is selling plushies of himself clad only in a diaper, which he encourages people to give to children. Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro, on the other hand, made a nearly hour-long video tantrum about "Barbie," complete with setting the dolls on fire. The clawing need to get attention from progressives seems to be driving these engagement farmers a little nuts, as they up the weird-and-evil ante, hoping to get those precious clicks and plays. [...] "The escalation of shock value tactics, on both the right and the pretending-not-to-be-right political classes, are likely rooted in the same cause: The slow motion collapse of Twitter, now rebranded "X," under the leadership of Tesla CEO Elon Musk. While these folks have various outlets, both in the media and social media, ultimately their business model of trolling depends heavily on Twitter. "Grifters need people to harass and a mainstream discourse to counter. As traffic takes a nosedive and Twitter becomes less a part of the conversation, it's going to be harder for these folks to make money," Melissa Ryan, a strategist who helps counter online disinformation, told Salon.

"They need us. We don't need them:" The fall of Twitter is making the trolls and grifters desperate

The clawing need to get attention from progressives seems to be driving these engagement farmers a little nuts, as they up the weird-and-evil ante, hoping to get those precious clicks and plays.

[...]

"What Musk has proven through his actions and his statements is that he's committed to serving the trolls and the fraudsters first and the ordinary good faith users second," explained Brian Hughes of American University, who is the co-founder of the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab (PERIL). But, he noted, Musk is "blinded by his own ideology" and can't see how this is backfiring. "As normal people, for lack of a better term, continue to leave Twitter, that's actually going to cause probably a reduction in the use of the platform by these trolls and these fraudsters. They don't have their audience of targets that they need," he continued.

(bolding mine)

HAHAHAHAHAHA die mad about it, trolls. Full offense.

[probablyasocialecologist]

In a counterfactual exercise estimating CO2 emissions with and without subways, we find they have reduced population-related CO2 emissions by about 50 % for the 192 cities and about 11 % globally. Extending the analysis to future subways for other cities, we estimate the magnitude and social value of CO2 emissions reductions with conservative assumptions about population and income growth and a range of values for the social cost of carbon and investment costs. Even under pessimistic assumptions for these costs, we find that hundreds of cities realize a significant climate co-benefit, along with benefits from reduced traffic congestion and local air pollution, which have traditionally motivated subway construction. Under more moderate assumptions, we find that, on climate grounds alone, hundreds of cities realize high enough social rates of return to warrant subway construction.

[scotianostra]

On June 26th 1970 The Kingston Bridge, carrying the M8 motorway over the River Clyde in Glasgow opened.

It might not have the global fame of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, the impressive backdrop of Sydney’s Harbour Bridge or the history of London’s Tower Bridgee, but Glasgow’s bustling Kingston Bridge, which celebrates its 54th birthday today, is every bit as iconic It was officially opened on June 26th, 1970, by the Queen Mother.

The 52,000-ton structure took three years to build and cost about £11million – the equivalent of more than £180million today. When construction began in May 1967, it was the most expensive road project yet undertaken in Glasgow.

The bridge opening marked a massive reduction of traffic travelling through Glasgow, city centre numbers dropped by a massive 75%!

The Kingston Bridge is 270m long, over 40m wide and crosses the River Clyde at a maximum height of almost 20m.

Today, the bridge carries over 150,000 vehicles a day and is one of the busiest road bridges in Europe. Currently there are moves to have the bridge listed as a structure of historic and architectural interest.

[threestarsaboveclouds]

hi tsac!! can you tell us a bit about your observatory?? what kind of observation equipment do you control? what data do you collect? are there any other iterators you talk to that are similarly searching the stars for solutions to the problem? do you have a favorite astronomical formation?

So many questions! I will answer them in sequence.

Firstly, I control a number of different telescopes. Most of my telescopes are located on the roof of my can, but I also have several at ground level in the southern quadrant of my facility grounds. They each have different functions.

I have two optical telescopes at the top of my city’s observatory spire- these were primarily used by researchers to study specific objects, as they have a very narrow and detailed field of view.

The largest of my telescopes is my main survey telescope. This telescope has a very broad view and catalogues the positions of celestial objects across the entire sky every few nights. My survey telescope’s data comprise the vast majority of the pearls in my archives, and reduction of this data takes the longest.

On roof level I also have an array of radio dishes and microwave telescopes- these offer me a different view of the night sky than those offered by my optical telescopes, because they are able to detect different wavelengths of light.

There are about a dozen smaller optical observatories scattered throughout my city- these were primarily used by my citizens for teaching and recreational purposes. In their absence I have been using them for my own personal research.

Below my can, at the southern base of the mountain, are most of my radio telescopes. There are several arrays, as well as one large stationary radio dish located in the Temple Sector of my facility grounds. This section of my facility was primarily used by my citizens for ritual purposes- only the highest echelons of the clergy were allowed to approach the temple, meaning this area saw very little foot traffic and interference from radio communications. This allowed my nearby radio telescopes to sit undisturbed.

The array is far enough from my can to be mostly unaffected by the severe rain and snow I produce. The mountain peak also blocks most transmissions from the communications spire to the north, making the temple sector an ideal location for my main radio arrays. I still have to filter out the inevitable radio communications from my distant neighbors, though these signals are growing weaker over time….

Answering your second question about the data I collect: to put it simply, I collect… everything. Images, light curves, spectra, redshift and blueshift... the list goes on. My numerous telescopes generate vast amounts of raw stellar data, which then needs to be reduced and analyzed. After this process, if any trends stand out in the data, it is moved to my archives for further study.

My research focuses on changes in the night sky- monitoring the evolution of the celestial spheres was the primary reason for my construction. The stellar firmament is not static as those long ago believed- it is a living, changing thing. Such changes are hard to notice within the lifetimes of my benefactors, but become apparent on the timescales we iterators are familiar with. Perhaps studying the sky can reveal something about the Cycle. Maybe the Cycle, like the firmament, is not completely immutable.

@the-maddest-robot

I don’t have any space telescopes myself; my instruments are all ground-based. I only have direct access to the instruments located in and around my superstructure. However, there are some others within my field of study who do have space-based instruments. To name a few… Bright Crown, Habitually Stargazing, Quarks Untold, Hollow Intercession, Falling Space, All Mundane Order Towards Unawakened Discovery....

As for other astronomy-focused iterators… there are a few dozen others in my field of study. (This may seem like a large number, but it is a tiny fraction when compared to the demographics of the entire iterator population. My field is rather niche.)

Along with those I mentioned above, I am also familiar with the work of Twelve Endless Nights, Gazing Upon the Stars, Futile Persuit, A Gaze Into the Night Sky, and Firmament of No Stars, among others. We exchange data in our working groups occasionally. Though, I can't say I know any of them personally...

And finally... my favorite astronomical formation? I am quite fond of the constellation known as The Hunter. Within this constellation is a row of three bright stars, which according to mythology, are a string of pearls worn by the Hunter around their waist. These stars are referenced in a poem from the late Green hegemonic dynasty:

"...atop the mountain we saw the Hunter's glittering belt, three stars above clouds piercing the dark of the firmament aloft..."

This poem later became the basis for my own designation, Three Stars Above Clouds.

[ OOC: The iterators mentioned belong to, in order: @singularscissor , @kociamieta , @the-colossal , @enneegon , @overgrownmoon , @darkkeng , @charlie-jpeg , @luminumarashi , and @miikrowelle. I hope you don't mind; I wanted TSAC to mention other iterators in their field and I picked a few astronomy-related iterators that came to mind. Let me know if you don’t want to be mentioned and I’ll remove the tag. ]

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

I just needed somewhere to say this Elanor, because everyone else thinks I am OTT, but I hope you will understand on some level:

On the school-run this morning, I had the radio on so fy mab - 10 years old, super into football - could catch a bit of World Cup chat on his way in. Don’t know which station it was, as I’d let him tune in while I was driving. Anyway, pointless scene-setting aside, they were discussing the Wales V England match, and I had to sit there in traffic and listen to a Very Smug Person on the radio say how the “hatred” was only one way… IE: that it was *only* the Welsh who hated the English, and not vice-versa. Let me politely and truthfully state that I do not care about football results - winners are winners, yay sports - but the way the presenter spoke, just that one sentence, so dismissive and reductive; the presenter’s tone so laughing and mocking, so “oh silly little Wales, always taking things to heart” has boiled my piss this morning. Nothing like casual cultural gaslighting to ruin my whole day. I’m so cross.

Diolch am ddarllen.

Oh yeah, that's pretty standard. The one that makes me angrier, actually, is the English people who will be a right cunt to you and go on and on about how shit Wales is and how stupid the language is etc, and then will turn around and without irony declare that "There's no real animosity between England and Wales, it's all just a bit we do, it's not real."

Nah, mate, I want to stuff you personally arse-first in a bin and drop you into the Celtic Sea, actually. Something something to you it's just Tuesday something something.

[phoenixyfriend]

Possible verbiage for calls to senators and representatives, emails to the same, and public calls to action:

This past weekend, an American service member, active duty, self-immolated in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington DC. We are told that this man, Aaron Bushnell, age 25, truly believed in the ideals espoused by the US military, that he truly believed in liberty for all and a person's right to self-determination. What he did was not an act of mental illness, but rather an act of protest. It was premeditated. It was clearly stated. It was public, and recorded, and he has died making a statement, and it is truly inappropriate to try and dismiss it as simply a matter of mental illness.

It's a tragedy, but he is someone who has made choice to follow in the footsteps of many who have come before. Self-immolation is, after all, a protest tactic that has been in use for centuries, including in the US. If you have any true care for military personnel and veterans, as you and so many other politicians claim to, then you should be asking yourself, "What it is about this war that has caused such a choice in someone who really and truly believes in the ideals that the US claims to uphold? What it means that someone in this military, in this country, cannot stand to continue being part of that institution, in light of what the United States is enabling with aid packages to Israel, and refusal to enact any kind of censure?"

What caused the death of Aaron Bushnell was not a mental health crisis. It was a humanitarian one.

If you claim to care about protecting children, Israel must be censured. Israel must be sanctioned. Israel must be stopped.

We are seeing Israel seed the beginning of its own future devastation. It has created thousands, if not tens of thousands of orphans, and has reportedly disabled the majority of the children in Gaza, from what we are hearing. Israel has also demanded the dismantling of UNRWA, is even now blocking aid trucks and has been for weeks, despite the fact that the agency is currently the only thing that appears to be standing between the children of Palestine and death, between everyone in Palestine and a death by mass starvation. We know, have now gotten confirmation from the World Health Organization, that a famine is in progress. If you care about any power that the United Nations should have to prevent atrocities, then Israel must be stopped. Aid must get to the children, and to all the civilians of Gaza who are currently dying of bombing, and hunger, and disease.

Civilians are exiting to Egypt, a country that is already unstable, not yet having recovered from the Arab Spring. The economy of Egypt is already under strain, from the Civil War, the new administrative capital, the reduction of traffic in the Suez, and they have not yet cleared themselves of the Muslim Brotherhood. Will those orphans Israel created be found by extremists who share many of the same goals as the one that Israel claims to be trying to extinguish? Will Israel start a war with Egypt when those children they have orphaned in Gaza grow old enough to seek revenge? What of its other border, where Hezbollah has increased attacks, or the months of impact by Yemen on international trade? Israel is not extinguishing the threats to its people, but increasing them. If you care about Israeli civilians, as you claim, then Israel must be stopped.

Recently, in Russia, a political opposition member died in an arctic prison under mysterious circumstances. This was very high-profile, and the US enacted sanctions within a week. Those sanctions were deserved, yes, but it is a very poor look on behalf of the United States that we enacted sanctions on Russia for the death of one man, but nothing on Israel for the death of nearly thirty thousand, half of which are children. If you care about the reputation that the United States has on a world stage, Israel should be under censure.

And finally, if you care about your own party and your own hide, Israel must be stopped. You are losing Michigan. You are losing Georgia. You are losing Arizona. Some of these states won us the 2020 election. Some of them won on the power of the Arab-American vote. We cannot afford another four years of Trump.

Even if you don't have the heart to care for the hundreds of thousands of children that are dead or dying, you should have the brain to care about Michigan.

A member of the Air Force died to make you listen. A loyal soldier to the US decided that rather than die for his country fighting a war, he would die to stop one.

Listen to him, and to all who tell you that the US cannot be complicit in what, every day, is more likely to be remembered forever as a genocide.

(Call your reps)

(A more general post on how to talk to your reps)

This has not been proofread but I keep rolling phrases around in my mind and had to get at least something down in the page.