If you had asked me yesterday, “Bill, can you prevent pedestrians from crossing a bridge during construction?” my answer would have been “Sure.” And I would have been wrong wrong wrong: From the 2009 Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD): 04. If the TTC [Temporary Traffic Control] zone affects the movement of pedestrians, adequate …
Category Archives: Professional
Job Transition
Earlier today, this was my business card. Now, I’m just plain ‘ol William M. Ruhsam, Jr., PE, PTOE Or, if you prefer, I have a more playful one. Unfortunately, due to the business climate around here, and to a couple of just-plain-bad-luck items, Greenhorne & O’Mara shut down the transportation and environmental group here in …
My Desk
This is what my desk looks like when I’m creating traffic diagrams. Surrounded by thousands of dollars worth of equipment and software and still the best way to do what I’m doing right now is to just mess with pen and paper.
Ramp Meters
Cross posted from Talking Traffic. Go there to comment. Alluding to yesterday’s post concerning the inaccuracies in an Atlanta Journal Constitution article about Ramp Meters, I have an anecdote: My wife and I go to plays at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta every few months. In order to get there from our house (during rush hour), …
Why Trees are Evil
Mike L. would say that Trees are Evil because they pump volatile organic compounds into the air, thusly causing global warming and smog. If we cut down all of the trees, there will be no VOC’s to mix with the other pollutants. Go us! I, however, would say the trees are evil because you can …
New Paper Format
I read a few academic papers now and then. For one, I edit my wife’s papers before they head out the door. For another, I get research papers that deal with transportation issues. This article illustrates a new way to write that will ensure publication and tenure! Thanks be to SF Signal for clueing me …
"Oh What Fun, it is to drive…"
In case you’re new to me or this blog, I am a traffic engineer. Better yet, I’m a certified traffic engineer: a Pee-Toe (PTOE, Professional Traffic Operations Engineer). This involves doing several different things like studying how new construction will effect affect existing traffic patterns. Typically, we look at the current year, whatever year the …
Keyboard Shortcuts
If you are ever searching, like me, for new ways to make life with MS Windows easier (and you’re married to the keyboard), try this link. It contains nice keyboard shortcuts that include the funky windows menu key to the right of the right-hand ALT key. Some nice ones for calling up windows or minimizing …
On Tangents and Other Necessary Brain Cleansers
Frequent readers will realize that not much has occurred on this blog for the past month or so. There’s been some spats, but not vast torrents like today. The deluge has a simple explanation: it’s writer’s block. Seriously. I’m sitting at my work computer trying to write a report that defends the indefensible in a …
Continue reading “On Tangents and Other Necessary Brain Cleansers”
So, You Want to be an Astrophysicist?
ScienceBlogs contains a large number of useful, cogent, and entertaining blogs. One of them I was popping around on has a series of posts titled, So you want to be an Astrophysicist? Ahhh, where was the internet when I was in High School? Oh, yes. It was called DARPA and Prodigy and Bulletin Boards… These …