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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 21st, 2023

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  • I live in a suburban part of a medium sized US city. There is a school nearby that has similar problems.

    • situated on a 2 lane collector road with bike lanes
    • lots of no parking signs -they set up a bunch of cones and have crossing guards all around
    • there are school zone flashers

    Despite All This

    • people park in doubled up bike lane/no parking area all the time and the way the cones are set up encourages it
    • people swing their doors open into traffic and cross wherever they want
    • during off times, the school has a sign forbidding use of their parking lot so people park in the bike lanes

    Luckily, the speed limit is only 30 so when school is in letting out I take the lane and anyone that doesn’t like it can choke on a bottle of tire sealant.

    My city is generally responsive when enough people comment on something and in general, you are likely to get a sentence or two back no matter what you comment on. I’m afraid to comment on this because the people picking up their kids in cars outnumber the cyclists and I forsee the school holding firm on closing their lot and they’ll probably quote something stupid like liability or security. Is it not also a liability if a kid steps out from behind a parked car and gets squished by an F350 Crew Cab Mega Hemi Coal Roaler? In any case, I think the more likely outcome would be accommodating the cars and moving the bikes into the road with sharrows or doing something like that.

    If I was in charge, I’d put a speed table at each end of the school zone, narrow all crosswalks to the minimum acceptable distance and put the bike lanes behind a 6inch wide curb to make it more obvious that you cannot park there. I also want these lifted Ford Excursion drivers to watch us casually pedal past the traffic jam they create every single day. I’d force the school to open their lot where capacity permits and I’d start ticketing the shit out of anyone who stows up traffic in the area or parks where it is not allowed. There is a trail just south of the school that leads to a grocery store maybe 1/4 mile away. That’s where the car drivers could best pick up their kids. All the tickets should easily pay for the speed tables and upgrading the bike lanes and walking paths.







  • Your point about the small companies is valid, and it used to be better. When Glassdoor was at its peak, you could find smaller companies more frequently and I would read up on the companies I did business with to get an employee’s perspective on whether they were functioning effectively. If your employees hate your guts or think their job is pointless, that’s also a bit of a red flag for me as a consumer. This Glassdoor research worked well for renovation contractors, larger service providers like electrical or plumbing, commercial real estate management companies. Sometime you could also find info that made it easier to navigate call centers designed to frustrate you into giving up. It looks like someone posted a few alternatives and glass door stopped being useful for company research almost as dramatically as google became ineffective for other research. Someday soon, all we’ll have is the company’s marketing slop and any honest opinion will be buried and hidden into non-existance.

    With regard to review manipulation, I knew a company with an abysmal rating, a real w2 farm. The people I knew spanned entry level to the c-suite. Said company would have bootlickers in HR and elsewhere post 5 star reviews to try to move the needle. They also asked people to rate them well after training had completed and everyone still had “new-job glasses” on. Despite their efforts, I think they were still sitting at a measly 2.7 stars, which is still way higher than the 1.5 they deserved. The 0.5 is mostly based on the bottomless supply of decent coffee in the break room :D

    I don’t have interactions with many people from this company anymore, but what I have heard is basically “different people; same shit”.







  • I’m a longtime CS1 player. I use highways at times. Mostly for the grade separation aspect. I rarely feel the need to go above 2 through lanes each direction and 1-2 auxiliary lanes. Often I place 2 lane rural roads from the highway tab when I start building and leave land to preserve highway and rail corridors and upgrade them into freeways later. Don’t be afraid to leave too much land along a road you intend to upgrade as you can always add infill development later. I usually leave at least 20u in width when I first plop one down. Use the query tool on the segments where the highway meets other roads to determine where traffic is trying to go. Using fully grade separated, free moving designs then running a little highway spur for a few blocks, or even a 2+1 road helps with collecting and distributing traffic instead of having a giant stack interchange dumping right onto a 4 lane avenue with frequent lights. If you play with despawning off, signalized freeway exits can be nightmarish and often necessitate the use of timed traffic lights and significant lane math and movement restrictions.

    Lastly, your industry should have a clear shot to the highway, maybe even designated truck lane(s). If all your trucks have to pass through an urban area with lights and peds to get to the freeway, you’re gonna have a bad time.

    Hope some of this helps and I look forward to hearing other folks commentary. Good question.