![]() If we in the engineering profession can't step back and acknowledge the absurdity of this situation - the absurdity that mindless adherence to standards has created - how can we expect to be taken seriously as leaders by a country going through a difficult and painful economic transition? Suggestions that red decorative brick or yellow markings on the sidewalks would make it so are absurd. This interchange is not "friendly" to pedestrians or cyclists. If you watch the original video that my comments were based off of, the gentlemen giving the tour was touting how pedestrian- and cycling- friendly this interchange was. But Chuck's response is abundantly fair and (literally) on the money: Did he? Maybe, given that positing a mid-America freeway interchange against central Amsterdam isn't exactly an apples-to-apples comparison. The empire struck back, and Chuck apparently got hammered by commenters for going over the top in his comparisons. ![]() There is little that Chuck enjoys more than going after his fellow engineers, and he contrasts the unwalkability of the diverging diamond with the true walkability of places like Amsterdam that really do put pedestrians and cyclists first. He has some fun with this one, doing an entertaining edit of an video someone sent him to illustrate (with approval) the state's attempt to engineer the intersection to accommodate pedestrians and cyclists. Chuck believes that we need more attention to walkable streets and fewer dollars going into insanely expensive, over-engineered highways. My pal Chuck Marohn of Strong Towns has started a bit of firestorm by going after the diverging diamond both in concept and in this particular instance. (There's not much going on in the northeast quadrant.) The location is a place as American as apple pie with, starting in the southeast quadrant and going clockwise, a Waffle House and Econo-Lodge a Walmart Supercenter and a Lowe's. And it's gaining some Internet notoriety for its design, which includes either an earnest attempt to create some walkability in a place that is ridiculously unwalkable no matter what you do to it, or a pro forma attempt to comply with new engineering standards regardless of context, depending on how you look at it. This particular one, west of Springfield, Missouri, marks the intersection of two major freeways. Don't ask me to explain how it works or why it's called that by civil engineers. You are looking at something called a "diverging diamond" interchange.
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