[HN Gopher] A turn lane in Rhododendron
___________________________________________________________________
A turn lane in Rhododendron
Author : apsec112
Score : 33 points
Date : 2025-10-26 18:58 UTC (8 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.greentape.pub)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.greentape.pub)
| geophph wrote:
| "No way this is about the Rhododendron on the way up to Mt. Hood"
|
| ...
|
| Sure was.
| oftenwrong wrote:
| Would a wider road not embolden drivers to increase their speed?
| wredcoll wrote:
| I don't know, would it?
| ineptech wrote:
| The issue isn't people going too fast, it's people turning
| left. 26 basically connects Portland on one end and Mt Hood
| recreation stuff on the other, and it used to be that there
| wasn't that much in between. Over the last few decades, a lot
| of development has gone up, meaning a lot more businesses and
| neighborhoods along both sides of 26, plus the highway has
| gotten a lot busier.
| BigTTYGothGF wrote:
| I don't believe I've been on that stretch of road, but it seems
| to me that if the concern is safety there are other alternatives
| to adding a turn lane, the most obvious of which being a
| reduction in the speed limit.
| hamdingers wrote:
| A reduction in design speed of the road has to accompany a
| reduction of speed limit for it to be effective. Narrower
| lanes, etc.
|
| It sounds like the residents are opposed to, well, anything.
| throwaway173738 wrote:
| Actually many of the residents were in favor of changing the
| road. One person decided to fight the entire project on the
| basis of a cairn of rocks that 5 or 6 archaeologists agreed
| had no cultural significance.
| onionisafruit wrote:
| In the picture the stone pillars look like a decorative feature
| marking a neighborhood entrance. Does anybody know their origin?
| I assume if they were installed in the past 100 years there would
| be some evidence to counter Mr Jones' claims.
| onionisafruit wrote:
| I clicked through looking for some novel civil engineering
| because I assumed a rhododendron is a geometric shape I hadn't
| heard of. The actual story was a good read too.
| seemaze wrote:
| rhododendron is a flower
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhododendron
| fritzo wrote:
| The only grave being disturbed is Robert Moses' by his turning
| libraryofbabel wrote:
| The larger issue, of course, is that eccentric individuals and
| niche special-interest groups are able to use the planning
| process and the legal system to jam up all sorts of
| infrastructure projects in America, from simple turn lanes all
| the way to high-speed rail. This is not the only reason America
| has trouble building infrastructure, but it is an important
| reason. See Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson's new book _Abundance_
| for a long-form analysis of this... or for a contrast with the
| US's "lawyerly society" (and, of course, the disadvantages of
| leaning too much in the other direction) Dan Wang's _Breakneck:
| China 's Quest to Engineer the Future_ that just came out.
|
| Both are excellent books and will probably appeal to a lot of
| Hacker News folks with an engineering/builder mindset.
| cholmon wrote:
| Freakonomics interviewed Dan Wang about his book Breakneck back
| in September, see episode #647. It's a very interesting lens
| through which to view both societies, worth a listen!
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| Found the rock pillars, FWIW. Gorgeous trees around this area!
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/7gBd3MuvnmscNLUr6
|
| And you can go back to 2007 to see the old highway,
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/Qd9evKz7vUnxt1FQ6
| bell-cot wrote:
| <sigh/> At what point do you assume that the still-objecting
| NIMBY's either have personality disorders, or are motivated by
| malicious self-aggrandizement?
| threetonesun wrote:
| Four lane roads like this, in any context, or any part of
| America, are an absolute disaster of civil engineering. I get
| that in the 60s or whenever they were built you had a situation
| where some cars could barely accelerate up an incline but by the
| 70s they should have all been reworked.
| jonah-archive wrote:
| Among the many reasons that stretch of 26 is dangerous is that
| the approach from Portland is essentially a freeway from Gresham
| through Sandy, and then turns into a rural highway until it
| begins the climb up to Hood. This is because of a remnant of the
| Mount Hood Freeway construction, which resulted in a lot of
| little oddities that linger in Portland to this day:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Hood_Freeway
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-11-03 23:01 UTC)