Istanbul Isiklarius traffic lights(artlebedev.com) |
Istanbul Isiklarius traffic lights(artlebedev.com) |
For example, Lebedev designed bus stops for the city of Perm with tremendous fanfare, see here: http://www.artlebedev.ru/everything/perm/bus-stop/ . There were hundreds of press articles about it, which is surely unusual for a bus stop design.
It then turned out that the bus stops could not be built with rounded corners with the specified materials (http://pics.livejournal.com/denis_galitsky/pic/000220ap/), and that lighting couldn't be connected to most of them, and that the benches are too high and narrow (http://pics.livejournal.com/denis_galitsky/pic/0001h036/ - this is called "the Lebedev pose"), and that the flat roofs are inappropriate to the climate and now look like this: http://denis-galitsky.livejournal.com/33098.html .
It doesn't help that Artemy Lebedev is a giant, giant douche nozzle - if you read Russian, you can convince yourself of this by browsing his blog.
Anyway, Lebedev apparently didn't give much thought to how these stops would actually be built (or used, for that matter), leading someone to say that the sketch was by Studio Art. Lebedev, but the actual industrial design was by Vasya the welder - who had no choice but to pick up the burden where the Studio dropped it.
It doesn't help that Artemy Lebedev is a giant, giant
douche nozzle - if you read Russian, you can convince
yourself of this by browsing his blog.
there is an English version of it here: http://www.artlebedev.com/mandership/
which is a translation of http://www.artlebedev.ru/kovodstvo/sections/
(I don't know if this is the blog you were referring to)
That's a pretty original concept of industrial design - all product designers I know follow the product from sketch to engineering drawings to casting molds to the prototype to the production line, to make sure every little squiggle is just right. Now, if he wants to be a sketch artist, as opposed to a product designer, that's fine too, but that's not what he gets hired to do.
You may remember the disaster of the "Optimus Maximus" keyboard - this is the $1500 keyboard with LCD displays on all the keys. It ended up being years late and looked nothing like what was promised - he couldn't handle the engineering of placing the LCDs on the keys, so the keys became transparent with the LCDs under them. Now, that was a privately-developed product, but he's done this to paying customers any number of times as well, leaving them with a misdesigned product and late to the market. He then explains in his charming manner (see above) that this is all their fault.
He is a fantastic walking self-promotion machine, which is why the studio seems unsinkable despite being kind of lousy in terms of actual product design firepower.
Cars were getting signal from traffic ligjts and you as a driver got a warning sign like: "drive 30 km/h" to hit green light without stopping.
These share taxis depart from the terminal only when a sufficient amount of passengers have
boarded, and the name is derived from Turkish for "apparently stuffed" for this reason.How does that work??
That said, I want them for my city immediately.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34436730/ns/us_news-life/t/energ...
It's not an entirely obvious problem, but one that is being dealt with often in colder climates. Unintended consequences of design.
In most of them bottom wall is absent or tilted in such direction that snow or dust does not build-up there.
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705366962/Blowing-wet-sno...
The Swedish system is a mechanical ticker placed inside the push button box, like a very loud clock that ticks slowly at one tick about every other second during red/yellow, and then picks up pace to about 7-8 ticks per second during green, cleverly aimed towards the listeners' intuition, telling them to "slow down" and "hurry across". I remember how this even served a good purpose and reminder for me as a kid, when I was too young, too impatient and too reckless to pay attention to the streeth lights - but the loud and clear sound signal and its intuitive meaning never escaped my attention.
What's used where you live?
but this proves my point about art lebedev. they got an assignment to redo traffic lights, and just made then square. ...oh, and use the newest led tech buzzword! don't forget the latest led tech buzzword.
but because 100% of traffic lights were i live are square. nothing new.
also, besides being square, they have sensors in the asphalt that detects cars (and bikes in bike lanes) toadjust for optimum wait time.
I don't see how new traffic lights would change this.
Btw did you visit Istanbul in the end of 80's I believe it was the only time The city was packed enough and that situation maybe seen because I can remember those times, now its different though many of the traffic lights have cameras that trigger with a red light pass, even there were accidents the first few months cameras were installed people were braking harder than usual to make sure they stop :)
As for deadlocks, Istanbul transport authority changed thousands of streets to one way or changed the rules of many areas to stop that in the last 5 years, when were you last in Istanbul seriously :) ?
And police does care, if you are involved in a red light violation and police is around you are not screwed but definitely get a ticket.
Also Cairo is definitely worse than Istanbul.
Over the past 10 years something weird happened, people started buying cars, and some people would buy more than one but as most people live in apartments in Istanbul it appears as though there are more cars on the road than there are parking spaces in some areas (I know this is the case where my in-laws live near Nisantasi).
In my experience Istanbul drivers will mostly adhere to traffic lights, but not necessarily to things like zebra crossings and road markings. The worst drivers tend to come from the countryside as they don't necessarily know the road layout and drive as though they're in a village or open countryside.
I've been told quite a few times that the only reason the fatality rate from car crashes is not as high as it should be is because for most of Istanbul it's hard to drive faster than 50kmh for any period of time.
Of course, if you really want to see what 'driving by inshallah' is like, then you need to go to Saudi Arabia. When god determines whether or not you live or die, there's no point in driving properly.
And only the old Istanbul (historic peninsula) is claimed to be built on seven hills.
Given these circumstances, just imagine the stress on the drivers.
But the best part: I live in Asia and work in Europe. My 2hrs is an intercontinental journey.
If you are able to drive in Istanbul, you can drive in everywhere.
As an aside - I don't know anyone who cycles in Istanbul. Is there a cycling commuter community there?
As for traffic violations and police stops, don't make me laugh. Driving in Istanbul is carefree - do whatever you want whenever you want (which is why there are so many road deaths... I don't think I know a single Turk who doesn't know of someone relatively close who has been lost in a traffic accident). You'll rarely if ever be stopped by the police. The only time I've been stopped or seen people stopped is by late night alcohol checks or trafik polis running spot checks - both of which you can always pay your way out of (and I have).
I know Turks are generally nationalistic and proud, but please learn to have some introspection, look inwardly, critcise and laugh. Too many subjects on the internet concerning Turkey or Turks get mobbed and trolled by Turks trying to put a positive spin, just because they don't want to see their country portrayed in any bad light internationally.
When I was there most crossings looked somewhat like this (warning: terrible video quality): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cYdHUmG100 (I had a green light when I passed this crossing as a pedestrian).
You seriously can't come up with a better way to solve this problem than replacing a very efficient, very robust light source with a very inefficient, very delicate one, secure in the knowledge that as it runs all year round, some tiny fraction of the huge amount of waste heat it generates will go towards melting snow?
Although I'll note in your defense that "incandescent lightbulbs" are more accurately described as "heat lamps", and one potential solution might well involve a specialized heat lamp which only activates when the light itself is obstructed.
Or some kind of centralized switch.
Totally doable of course, but it does make them more complicated, more expensive and less reliable.
You would need to calculate the tradeofs. It's not automatic either way.
Apropos of nothing, but this just made me look up "defroster" on Wikipedia... "For primary defogging, heat is generally provided by the vehicle's engine coolant via the heater core; fresh air is blown through the heater core and then ducted to and distributed over the interior surface of the windshield by a blower. This air is in many cases first dehumidified by passing it through the vehicle's operating air conditioning evaporator." Wikipedia makes everything so cool.