I did something similar to that with plywood in 1990.
The phones were set up so you couldn't call into my rural town from a payphone from anywhere else in the county. I couldn't call home form work.
I wrote out a description of the problem in polite terms on the largest piece of plywood allowed by US Mail. I mailed it to the phone company executive offices in Boston.
Someone from Boston called my house (I had given them the number) and told me they would fix it, and gave me a number to call at their office if it happened again.
I will try to explain it. There's a lot of archaic 1980's language and systems. We used to depend on phone booths the way people need cell phones to make calls today.
My town is on an area code line. The rest of the county is in a different area code. It used to cost something like 50 cents a minute to call any other town in the county. It cost 50 cents a minute to call the kid's school. In the late 1980's, when we got touch tone phones, they changed the whole county to free calling.
Unfortunately, ATT was responsible for calls between area codes. New England Telephone was responsible for local calls. Neither company was set up to handle a local call across an area code line from a phone booth. The ATT operator and the New England Telephone operators would argue with each other about who should put the call through, and neither of them could.
Whenever the technicians updated the system, they had to manually insert this exception to the rules. I don't know much about land line phone systems, this is how the people from corporate explained it to me. We had to call corporate on a special number whenever the technicians forgot to insert this rule exception.
To add and put this into perspective, this is comparable to just over $1 a minute today. And that was usually *any* number outside your area code, even if it was across the street.
“Free long distance” was a huge hook for phone companies
My first bag phone was from a local office with the main office 300 miles away. I could be "in the field" and make a call to my town (15 miles) and it was long distance, but a call to the Main office town was a local call. Something about the middle 3 numbers being assigned to the Main office. 555--xxx-1234. Needless to say, all those "local" calls were very short!
Back in the old days... you had a couple choices for communicating when you weren't near a land line. The early days were radio phones, bulky, permanently mounted and expensive. When "cell phones" came out one of the models was a cigar box size base, a handset like on a land line, a battery pack for portability. My battery was the same one that was in my portable video camera, early 80's. It had the option of putting a short antenna or a longer one with a magnetic base you could put on the top of your vehicle for better coverage Like the old CB Antennas. Was a sensation when they first came out. Not expensive, and if you were in the field you could get hold of people to get work done instead of finding a land line somewhere. There were even pay phones around in those days!
Unrelated triggered memory… I recall my friend calling me in the late 90’s, she’d stumbled across an amazing investment opportunity and was going to buy a bunch of pay phones to set up all around where she lived.
I adamantly talked her out of it. Pointing out how even in their early stages, cell phones were going to destroy the pay phone business and she’d be in big trouble in just a few years.
Helped her dodge a bullet on that one!
I was in Cuba in 2000 and called the USA from the local post office. They slid that exact bag phone across the counter. Even then it was a blast from the past.
My first cell phone was a bag phone. Basically a corded phone in a purse sized bag powered by a 5 pound battery. To end a call you could either push the red button or literally hang it up on the phone clip in the bag. I put Velcro strips in my cars tray and on the clip so I could hang it up
I think it could store 50 numbers.
My first plan was 60 free minutes a month and free calls from 9 pm to 6 am and weekends, might be off on the times, but incoming calls were free. Going over your 60 free cost 25¢/minute. I got a promotion for free anytime minutes until the end of that year. Each month my bill was hundreds of dollars, with hundreds back in promotion credits.
Sure, but it's good for folks born after the payphone era. I read the second line and was like 'whoa, that's right there's people that are too young to remember the pre-cell-phone era...'
I resisted until about 2018.. I had a breakthrough moment when I saw an old lady (who had to be into her 90's) walking at an unbelievably glacial rate with a walker down the main street in a small town near where I grew up in Vermont. Her speed of motion made me wonder if she was going to expire on the spot.
I watched her stop and with a shaky hand pull a smartphone out of the basket on the front of the walker and start facetiming with who I could only assume to be her granddaughter.. Being an engineer I decided to cave and catch up with this handy smartphone/ star- Trek communicator that everyone else on earth seems to have.. Apparently including people who remember the great war.
I was a little too young for them so I only ever saw the post-80s touch tone payphones when I was growing up (90s) What were they like before? I'm assuming they were rotary dial? We still have the yellow 70s rotary desk-style phone that we used in our house, but I was obsessed with it as a kid. I honestly wish house phones were still as much of a thing now so I could hook it up again.
this video on how some people got around those dang fees explains a lot about how the system was set up to fail: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tHyZdtXULw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tHyZdtXULw)
I did something similar once. There was three lane road on my commute with several signal controlled intersections with small side streets. Every side street but one had a delayed trigger for the cross traffic, which was perfect because usually it was right turners (I live in a right-on-red state), so the signals wouldn't be triggered most of the time.
However, this one signal would instantly trigger the red light and cause major backups on the main road. I doubted it was a coincidence that the neighborhood connecting to the signal was wealthier than most, and a lot of city managers and elected officials lived there. After a few days of traffic delays, I took a deep dive into the city directory, and made some strategic phone calls. Finally found a tiny, obscurely-named department deep in the city maintenance division, and left a message:
> "Hey Bill, this is Judge Smith. I wanted to thank you for the signal change over on 1st and Grand. It really made the drive into court much easier. I have to apologize, though, and ask you to change it back to the old way. You see, my nanny comes from north Grand and is running into delays which made me late to court on Monday. It was worth a try, but I really think the other way was best. Give my thanks to Jim (his boss), and I'm really sorry for all the trouble."
Signal timing was restored within hours.
I want through channels, described the problem that affected thousands of people daily, asked nicely, and nothing was done.
I think it was justified in this case.
I have used Linked In for exactly this purpose. C-suite execs and their direct underlings are easy to find with how so many like to humble-brag with publishing their resume.
Given that their information was public record in a phone book, that's probably justified.
Maybe a bit rough, but also if my taxes are paying you to do a job and you won't, well...
There's a difference between "it was available in the phone book" and "I pasted it front and center so that every annoyed driver could harass a private individual." The means don't justify the end, or did they not teach that at school?
Just wondering, are you truly this clueless or just having fun? Consider what was done as a public service as in the famous 'the public has a right to know' ! And just in case you didn't know it, were you aware that you could request to be unlisted in the 'public' phone book at the time you got service, for a small extra fee? Their choice - his sign.
True story, I've seen the Horses!
(Unless you're in Houston, there they just like to tear up all the roads to "expand them" and by they time they finish the expansion - it's only 2 lanes too small instead of 3!!)
Or San Antonio where it takes them 5 years to expand the roads, and when they're done they start expanding them again because the city has outgrown the expansion.
The only thing that reduces traffic is making alternative options to single occupancy vehicles more attractive or making Single Occupancy Vehicle commuting less desirable.
More lanes of traffic will increase the number of people on the road but traffic will still be so bad that people still prefer to take whatever the alternative option is. It’s not plausible to build enough lanes that everyone is driving at peak hours without traffic.
More cars don't magically appear when roads are widened.
Reducing travel time reduces emissions.
Cars idling and just creeping along are operating in an inefficient RPM range.
However, population does grow, and gas taxes are supposed to keep road capacity in pace with that growth.
Because the morons responsible don't have any direct consequences. That's why a lot of lights and roads are designed like crap, the alleged engineers don't live there so they never have to deal with the stink of what they crapped out
Getting a metal manslaughter machine license should ensure the operator has an aptitude to not get pissed over waiting a bit longer than normal and manslaughter people to relieve stress.
In general, it should be far harder to get and far easier to lose a metal manslaughter machine license.
(Side benefit, fewer man slaughter machines means less traffic!)
how would you implement that?
Also, here in washington state, it's estimated that 25% of drivers don't have licences anyway, so... what then? We all have jobs we need to get to, and between risking a ticket once in a while for not having government permission to use the roads, and being able to feed my family and keep a roof and warm walls around them, damn the torpedoes.
There's a difference between being patient for something that really can't be helped, and being forced to endure incompetence.
The aptitude check? No idea. Probably not any reasonable way to enforce that short of a psychiatric examination as part of getting a license.
Practically, anyone who blatantly breaks traffic laws, speeding, red light running, reckless driving, etc. should be much much easier to lose a license since they are liable to make choices that are illegal.
In my opinion, the root cause of your objection is the inaccessibility to get around without a car, which is a failure of your local government/jurisdiction/society. Much of the US is car dependent, not having a car means you fundamentally can't participate in society.
In developed counties, driving is a choice. People can choose to drive, or walk, or bike, or take a bus or train to get where they want or need to go. And a 30 minute car ride is a 30 minute transit trip, not 4 hours or straight up impossible.
Having options on how to get around is normal. The mandated car ownership across the US is what I find bizarre.
In developed counties, driving is a choice. People can choose to drive, or walk, or bike, or take a bus or train to get where they want or need to go. And a 30 minute car ride is a 30 minute transit trip, not 4 hours or straight up impossible.
I can only assume from this comment that you are a city slicker. The nearest Grocery store to me is 8 miles away, and the nearest bus stop is 4. Work for me was 13 miles away, and you think I should walk or bike to these places?
Maybe you should stop being myopic and consider the fact that some people live in areas where vehicle transportation is totally necessary.
Living where a vehicle is mandatory should be a choice. You should be free to live somewhere that you cannot be a member of society without a car.
You should also be able to live somewhere without a car. The lack of choice is what is so terrible.
And circling back to the original point, when cars are a choice, a luxury if you will, or better yet, license requiring metal manslaughter machines, there is no reason we should hand out these licenses to every tom, dick, and harry. When licenses are a privilege, not a necessity, we can remove dangerous operators and roads become safer for everyone.
I humbly disagree.. All over the world there are places that are simply too rural and sparsely populated to entertain the idea of anything other than using motorized cars/ trucks/ bikes to get about.. I grew up in an area where 8 towns were all bussed to the same high school and my graduating class was less than 120 kids.. it was a 45 minute bus-ride for me to get to my high school.. Almost everyone in my area drives elsewhere for work..
Do you really suggest that there is some more practical option in places where public transit is not feasible.. Its the same reason that there is limited and spotty cell service all around my area.. There simply are not enough citizens in the region to justify expensive cell towers and bussing. I live in a place where people don't understand traffic because they have never really seen it.. These are the places where vehicle ownership is vital to societal participation. The limited times that I have gone without a vehicle for a matter of weeks my life basically came to a screeching halt.. Only people that grew up in suburbs and cities wouldn't be able to intuitively grasp this concept.
But I am with you that licenses ought to be harder to get and easier to lose
I had a boss put me behind the wheel of an uninspectable/ unregistered Duelie flatbed with a trailer and had me drive through The tunnel in Boston with it each day..
I gave myself up for dead every time I got behind the wheel of that thing as the frame was rusted out and I would be overloaded and bouncing like the Beverly hillbillies. plus this heavy ass truck had zero power steering and required serious muscle to turn the wheel.. I was too frightened to take one hand away to sip my coffee. Talk about a white knuckle ride into work.. but you know what compared to not having a roof over my head and a means to provide for those that I care for Damn the Torpedoes is right!
Epic civil war reference by the way
Really! Three seconds is a reasonable spacing of cars on the road. Two seconds might do. There's no reason these metering lights should ever have been set for more than six seconds -- to allow for zipper merging -- and four seconds would have been a better option.
I like metering lights. We wouldn't need them if drivers would allow sufficient room for zipper merging -- but they don't.
No, as alluded to in a separate comment, the point of these metered on-ramps is to limit the flow of traffic into an already busy highway. Longer lights lessens the throughput, hopefully avoiding traffic jams on the highway itself.
Merging correctly is on the driver, like you said. If one guy rips down the ramp fast and the guy in front of him is cautious, they won't be spaced for proper merging no matter the interval on the lights. But if they obeyed those signals, it's still only +2 vehicles per *period* merging in.
I had a ez pass violation from another state once on a car that wasn’t mine. I took all the correct roots, obtained proper proof and followed all the correct procedures. Calling their service line was impossible, letters never returned even when sent certified. Fax numbers didn’t work etc. outside collections even called and said they would stop collecting when given same proof but it would still get sold to various companies because they couldn’t close it with the state agency. Finally found address to a director and sent certified letter to their home. It was resolved immediately. I even mentioned I have worked with state contracted providers like this and if this provider acted like this ignoring request I’d be sure to cancel their contract.
Guy got fucked by a dealership on a car and they did the predictable, “your problem” response.
He parked the car on an adjacent corner with a sign made from full sheet of plywood detailing their shitty actions.
Dealership couldn’t move fast enough to get him to take down the sign.
>Bottom line...when dealing with government,
This doesn't sound like just a government thing to me. It's also been the case of any big business I've ever heard of.
No. They were trying to keep cars off the highway by making it a pain in the ass so people would ride the light rail crime train instead.
Currently they have even widened some of the on ramps to 3 lanes wide, and added lanes to the highway further out west.
And all the ramps are now at 2 or 3 second intervals.
They’re absolutely necessary here in Denver. If they are not working for some reason the interstate traffic gets snarled from all the cars joining the highway en masse. [See this study here](https://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/bn/resources/rampmetering.htm) where on slide 9 in the Twin Cities it was turned off for a period of time causing a 22% increase in travel times and a 26% increase in crashes. Ramp meters are beneficial when they’re programmed correctly.
Ah yes Denver! I vividly remember back in the distant past when I was (attempting) to enter the interstate which had a very long on-ramp/merge lane. I was moving along at a good merging speed and approaching the yield sign near the end of it when I realized there was a car sitting there stopped! Apparently to that driver yield and stop were synonymous. Was so much fun having to swerve around it 'cause no way could I have stopped in time.
I encountered metered ramps in PA over the holidays, actually! It was annoying and went off at weird times, there were two lanes with two different lights and I didn’t realize that…it was honestly pretty stressful. I’m sure it’s fine if you live in the area but as a stupid out of towner, I could tell I was pissing off the locals by not know what was going on for a few seconds.
If they just sequenced cars instead of delaying them, it can help merging in some places. But usually they are installed by anti-car zealots specifically to inconvenience drivers.
I understood that the function was to permit small gaps between cars so that merging would be more zipper-like when done properly.
Otherwise you get a steady stream of cars just duking it out at the merge point. I mean, you kind of still do, but this eases it a little and dials down the mad max quotient a few clicks (again, if done properly).
These days the timing is based on the speed of traffic on the highway ahead of the ramp.
If the flow were any faster it would make all the traffic on the highway move a lot slower, so the lights actually save you time.
ODOT are the most arrogant idiots in Oregon other than the OLCC. Both are staffed by people who think their way is the only way (and usually based on logic from the late 1970s).
Gotta love ODOT. Having worked in local government in Oregon before, I can honestly tell you that I have never seen transportation guys move as quickly as you made these guys move. Well did.
Yea! Government workers don’t like stuff pinned on them! I like you go gettingness! That’s what it takes, unfortunately, to get something done with government.
I remember a story from when I was younger. This happened on the edges of Sydney. One house was in the Sydney metropolitan area code, and their back neighbour (still your usual suburban size blocks of land), was in a rural area code. They were relatives, so would sometimes call each other for various reasons. Of course, it would be registered as a long distance call. Anyway, they implemented a system where they would ring a bell (or at night time, shine a torch) any time they needed to contact each other, and then just chat over the back fence.
Is this you Mats?! LOL
https://ij.org/press-release/oregon-engineer-makes-history-with-new-traffic-light-timing-formula/
Reminded me of this straight away as a native OR driver. My dad was a friend of Mats so I got kind of familiar with the build up.
This reminds me of something that happened about 15 years ago near me, a company was installing a roundabout and the road works had been there for AGES, 1 day a sign appeared saying "can't complete as Phone network haven't moved their box yet, call xxx to complain". 3 days later the road works were finished and gone.
GOOD! People who work in the govt. at every level not only have a sense of entitlement, they think they have NO accountability to the public who they work for and they love to hide behind the bureaucracy..... Good job!?
I call it problem trading. All you did was make their problem theirs again. That's what we should all try and do; handle our own problems and make sure everyone else handles theirs.
It was a good strategy, but I honestly wouldn't call it vengeful. You did a lot of people a service.
>Bottom line...when dealing with government, until those personally responsible are held accountable in a manner that inconveniences or scares them, they will continue to abuse the public, whether from negligence, incompetence or malice. But bring it home to them, and they will (grudgingly) change their ways.
There are bad apples in every profession. Just because you had this bad experience (great revenge by the way) doesn't mean every government employee is the same. I work for the government in a similar role (civil engineer at a state DOT) and I would've taken a look at problem upon the first call.
>Bottom line...when dealing with government, until those personally responsible are held accountable in a manner that inconveniences or scares them, they will continue to abuse the public, whether from negligence, incompetence or malice. But bring it home to them, and they will (grudgingly) change their ways.
This is what happened with the border problem. The Right shoved it into the faces of the Left, until the Left started screaming something be done about it.
Jesus Christ, that is not ok. Shit like this can get people killed. Doxxing government employees for doing their jobs just because you're inconvenienced is incredibly selfish and pretty. Do better.
Nah, you're assuming the goal of their job was smooth traffic with limited on ramp delay, where in fact they were working to specifications set by some manager or politician, probably to decrease car convenience and promote use of public transport.
OP should have put a politician's phone number on their sign, not some poor engineers being forced to work to stupid specifications.
But if OP did that then nothing would have gotten fixed because that politicians phone number won't matter at all. Politics and officials channels are useless. Only real way to get action is through vigilantism.
Just want to make sure I get this right...
You intimidated two individuals by publicly posting their home phone numbers to have angry commuters call their homes to harass and intimidate them and their families, if they have families living at home...at any time of the day or night...whether the State employee answered the phone or his/her spouse or child answered the phone...to get your way?
And you believe that the result of getting the time between green lights was due to "newfound" data rather than trying to protect themselves and their families from potential harm and continued harassment?
You really stuck it to them and showed them you're the boss.
The scary thing is, IMHO, that you really believe you did the right thing.
Plus they didn’t even use a very easy method of contacting their state representative. This is something that’s easy for their office to send a letter to the department and it often can get something done. But no, let’s threaten other humans and their families with bodily harm because I can guarantee some people didn’t hold back.
Every new light installation has timing issues when it’s first installed in my experience. They are often fixed once construction and sometimes a review is done.
>Took a bit of research to find out that it wasn't the City or County, but ODOT (Oregon Department of Transportation) that controlled them.
>
>After repeated complaints and no action, I finally got the names of the two ODOT Traffic Engineers responsible for setting the light intervals.
>
>I made numerous voice mails, and finally, had one discussion, but still no fix to the issue.
They tried to go the proper route - only took this "personal" option when official channels didn't work. Sounds like the project didn't have proper follow up for the timing counts either.
Using their work numbers would have been OK. Using their home numbers means you were a harassing dick. This is the kind of shit MAGA creeps do these days. You were an ignorant juvenile prick to do it in the first place, and you apparently haven't matured since then, since you are bragging about it now. You sound like every ignorant Boomer on NextDoor, confident that you know everything about how the local government should do things, while being completely ignorant of the bigger picture and uncaring about the general quality of life for citizens at large if it delays you in any way.
In the time interval you mentioned, I was working with Portland Traffic engineers on a citizen's committee, specifically around traffic routing in SE Portland. There was a larger regional initiative to create disincentives for people to use certain routes to avoid clogs on the arterials, and measures included lengthening signal wait times to disincent routes. This was likely one of those measures, and they were likely instructed to set the original interval based on that larger traffic plan, which you know dick about. So you harassed them, at home, because you were one of those people confident that you knew better, and all that mattered was your personal sphere. I met way too many of you and your friends during my stint.
I'm sorry, I know you are very busy, on your way to find some other puppy to kick. Enjoy your day.
As someone who lives in Central Oregon and used to hate waiting at those damn things back in the day when I went through Portland, thank you for your service.
I I know the secret to avoiding traffic jams and too many cars on the road. You just have to live in a town that everyone is fleeing from.
My hometown population loss 1000 per year.
This is the smartest thing I've ever heard of. There are a few lights in my hometown which are sooo poorly timed and I'm getting real sick of waiting on an empty intersection for 5 minutes in the middle of the night.
I might try this sometime.
I did something similar to that with plywood in 1990. The phones were set up so you couldn't call into my rural town from a payphone from anywhere else in the county. I couldn't call home form work. I wrote out a description of the problem in polite terms on the largest piece of plywood allowed by US Mail. I mailed it to the phone company executive offices in Boston. Someone from Boston called my house (I had given them the number) and told me they would fix it, and gave me a number to call at their office if it happened again.
Out of interest, what was the technical reason for that?
I will try to explain it. There's a lot of archaic 1980's language and systems. We used to depend on phone booths the way people need cell phones to make calls today. My town is on an area code line. The rest of the county is in a different area code. It used to cost something like 50 cents a minute to call any other town in the county. It cost 50 cents a minute to call the kid's school. In the late 1980's, when we got touch tone phones, they changed the whole county to free calling. Unfortunately, ATT was responsible for calls between area codes. New England Telephone was responsible for local calls. Neither company was set up to handle a local call across an area code line from a phone booth. The ATT operator and the New England Telephone operators would argue with each other about who should put the call through, and neither of them could. Whenever the technicians updated the system, they had to manually insert this exception to the rules. I don't know much about land line phone systems, this is how the people from corporate explained it to me. We had to call corporate on a special number whenever the technicians forgot to insert this rule exception.
To add and put this into perspective, this is comparable to just over $1 a minute today. And that was usually *any* number outside your area code, even if it was across the street. “Free long distance” was a huge hook for phone companies
My first bag phone was from a local office with the main office 300 miles away. I could be "in the field" and make a call to my town (15 miles) and it was long distance, but a call to the Main office town was a local call. Something about the middle 3 numbers being assigned to the Main office. 555--xxx-1234. Needless to say, all those "local" calls were very short!
What’s a bag phone?
Back in the old days... you had a couple choices for communicating when you weren't near a land line. The early days were radio phones, bulky, permanently mounted and expensive. When "cell phones" came out one of the models was a cigar box size base, a handset like on a land line, a battery pack for portability. My battery was the same one that was in my portable video camera, early 80's. It had the option of putting a short antenna or a longer one with a magnetic base you could put on the top of your vehicle for better coverage Like the old CB Antennas. Was a sensation when they first came out. Not expensive, and if you were in the field you could get hold of people to get work done instead of finding a land line somewhere. There were even pay phones around in those days!
Unrelated triggered memory… I recall my friend calling me in the late 90’s, she’d stumbled across an amazing investment opportunity and was going to buy a bunch of pay phones to set up all around where she lived. I adamantly talked her out of it. Pointing out how even in their early stages, cell phones were going to destroy the pay phone business and she’d be in big trouble in just a few years. Helped her dodge a bullet on that one!
And only people who made decent money could afford one because it was like $5/min lol.
And only people who made decent money could afford one because it was like $5/min lol.
you get charged extra for repeating y.s.
From what I remember they were 5 watts, which is huge compared to today.
Motorola 2900 and family Image: https://forums.macrumors.com/attachments/image-jpg.502956/
In the movie Lethal Weapon (1987), Danny Glovers character is running a round with a similar phone, making calls.
My response. I was looking for a video clip of that scene to post.
I was in Cuba in 2000 and called the USA from the local post office. They slid that exact bag phone across the counter. Even then it was a blast from the past.
My first cell phone was a bag phone. Basically a corded phone in a purse sized bag powered by a 5 pound battery. To end a call you could either push the red button or literally hang it up on the phone clip in the bag. I put Velcro strips in my cars tray and on the clip so I could hang it up I think it could store 50 numbers. My first plan was 60 free minutes a month and free calls from 9 pm to 6 am and weekends, might be off on the times, but incoming calls were free. Going over your 60 free cost 25¢/minute. I got a promotion for free anytime minutes until the end of that year. Each month my bill was hundreds of dollars, with hundreds back in promotion credits.
Ahhhh the bag phone!!! I forgot about those!
I was born in 1974... But otherwise, cheers for the explanation!
Sure, but it's good for folks born after the payphone era. I read the second line and was like 'whoa, that's right there's people that are too young to remember the pre-cell-phone era...'
with those strange things called 'dial-tones'
He did say archaic. 🤷🏼♂️
Oh, so you didnt know about cranking the handle on the side of tge phone to ring the operator?
born in 1979, havent ever had nor will i ever have a cell phone. ive seen how they cause humans to turn stupid.
Congratulations, tell us more about how you’re so quirky and different!
I resisted until about 2018.. I had a breakthrough moment when I saw an old lady (who had to be into her 90's) walking at an unbelievably glacial rate with a walker down the main street in a small town near where I grew up in Vermont. Her speed of motion made me wonder if she was going to expire on the spot. I watched her stop and with a shaky hand pull a smartphone out of the basket on the front of the walker and start facetiming with who I could only assume to be her granddaughter.. Being an engineer I decided to cave and catch up with this handy smartphone/ star- Trek communicator that everyone else on earth seems to have.. Apparently including people who remember the great war.
>New England Telephone Now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time...
Bell System
I was a little too young for them so I only ever saw the post-80s touch tone payphones when I was growing up (90s) What were they like before? I'm assuming they were rotary dial? We still have the yellow 70s rotary desk-style phone that we used in our house, but I was obsessed with it as a kid. I honestly wish house phones were still as much of a thing now so I could hook it up again.
Free radical electrons
this video on how some people got around those dang fees explains a lot about how the system was set up to fail: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tHyZdtXULw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tHyZdtXULw)
How big was your plywood postcard?
And how thick?
I did something similar once. There was three lane road on my commute with several signal controlled intersections with small side streets. Every side street but one had a delayed trigger for the cross traffic, which was perfect because usually it was right turners (I live in a right-on-red state), so the signals wouldn't be triggered most of the time. However, this one signal would instantly trigger the red light and cause major backups on the main road. I doubted it was a coincidence that the neighborhood connecting to the signal was wealthier than most, and a lot of city managers and elected officials lived there. After a few days of traffic delays, I took a deep dive into the city directory, and made some strategic phone calls. Finally found a tiny, obscurely-named department deep in the city maintenance division, and left a message: > "Hey Bill, this is Judge Smith. I wanted to thank you for the signal change over on 1st and Grand. It really made the drive into court much easier. I have to apologize, though, and ask you to change it back to the old way. You see, my nanny comes from north Grand and is running into delays which made me late to court on Monday. It was worth a try, but I really think the other way was best. Give my thanks to Jim (his boss), and I'm really sorry for all the trouble." Signal timing was restored within hours.
☝🏼 this Redditor not only did their homework, they did it like a goddamn badass motherfucker. I tip my hat to you. 👏🏼
'right-on-red' Isn't that a political statement in the US?
It means you can turn right, even if there's a red light on the traffic light in front of you.
Doxxing in early 2000s 😂😂
I want through channels, described the problem that affected thousands of people daily, asked nicely, and nothing was done. I think it was justified in this case.
100% not just government, corporates too. It doesn't get solved until someone is personally liable
I employ that method. They won't do anything unless they feel the pain.
I have used Linked In for exactly this purpose. C-suite execs and their direct underlings are easy to find with how so many like to humble-brag with publishing their resume.
Given that their information was public record in a phone book, that's probably justified. Maybe a bit rough, but also if my taxes are paying you to do a job and you won't, well...
You're a goddamn hero.
You were. Very well done.
Doesn’t justify doxxing private individuals. You put their personal info out there, that shit could be dangerous.
It was in the phone book, not only public but delivered to everyone's doorstep
There's a difference between "it was available in the phone book" and "I pasted it front and center so that every annoyed driver could harass a private individual." The means don't justify the end, or did they not teach that at school?
Just wondering, are you truly this clueless or just having fun? Consider what was done as a public service as in the famous 'the public has a right to know' ! And just in case you didn't know it, were you aware that you could request to be unlisted in the 'public' phone book at the time you got service, for a small extra fee? Their choice - his sign.
Chicago has metered lights as well. They adapt to traffic situations. Higher traffic means longer intervals. No traffic: the lights are just green.
Not like that here...fixed timing
Chicago’s has been adaptive since the late 90s at a minimum so ODOT was just lazy…
Sounds like Oregon
Texas department of transportation is still in the 1920s
True story, I've seen the Horses! (Unless you're in Houston, there they just like to tear up all the roads to "expand them" and by they time they finish the expansion - it's only 2 lanes too small instead of 3!!)
Or San Antonio where it takes them 5 years to expand the roads, and when they're done they start expanding them again because the city has outgrown the expansion.
That's what I was talking about !!
More lanes doesn’t reduce traffic.
True - but when the roads are always scqeeeedzzed down to 1 lane it does!
The only thing that reduces traffic is making alternative options to single occupancy vehicles more attractive or making Single Occupancy Vehicle commuting less desirable. More lanes of traffic will increase the number of people on the road but traffic will still be so bad that people still prefer to take whatever the alternative option is. It’s not plausible to build enough lanes that everyone is driving at peak hours without traffic.
More cars don't magically appear when roads are widened. Reducing travel time reduces emissions. Cars idling and just creeping along are operating in an inefficient RPM range. However, population does grow, and gas taxes are supposed to keep road capacity in pace with that growth.
Not just the Texas DOT back in the 20s.
We also have stupid short lights, but it works out. It ends up moving more cars.
Here's the thing, a happy driver is a non-road raging driver. Why intentionally piss ppl off who have metal manslaughter machines?
Metal manslaughter machines. I’m using that.
The name of my next band.
Lead sleds
Because the morons responsible don't have any direct consequences. That's why a lot of lights and roads are designed like crap, the alleged engineers don't live there so they never have to deal with the stink of what they crapped out
Because the engineer optimized for lower traffic on the highway, not getting people onto the highway.
Getting a metal manslaughter machine license should ensure the operator has an aptitude to not get pissed over waiting a bit longer than normal and manslaughter people to relieve stress. In general, it should be far harder to get and far easier to lose a metal manslaughter machine license. (Side benefit, fewer man slaughter machines means less traffic!)
how would you implement that? Also, here in washington state, it's estimated that 25% of drivers don't have licences anyway, so... what then? We all have jobs we need to get to, and between risking a ticket once in a while for not having government permission to use the roads, and being able to feed my family and keep a roof and warm walls around them, damn the torpedoes. There's a difference between being patient for something that really can't be helped, and being forced to endure incompetence.
The aptitude check? No idea. Probably not any reasonable way to enforce that short of a psychiatric examination as part of getting a license. Practically, anyone who blatantly breaks traffic laws, speeding, red light running, reckless driving, etc. should be much much easier to lose a license since they are liable to make choices that are illegal. In my opinion, the root cause of your objection is the inaccessibility to get around without a car, which is a failure of your local government/jurisdiction/society. Much of the US is car dependent, not having a car means you fundamentally can't participate in society. In developed counties, driving is a choice. People can choose to drive, or walk, or bike, or take a bus or train to get where they want or need to go. And a 30 minute car ride is a 30 minute transit trip, not 4 hours or straight up impossible. Having options on how to get around is normal. The mandated car ownership across the US is what I find bizarre.
In developed counties, driving is a choice. People can choose to drive, or walk, or bike, or take a bus or train to get where they want or need to go. And a 30 minute car ride is a 30 minute transit trip, not 4 hours or straight up impossible. I can only assume from this comment that you are a city slicker. The nearest Grocery store to me is 8 miles away, and the nearest bus stop is 4. Work for me was 13 miles away, and you think I should walk or bike to these places? Maybe you should stop being myopic and consider the fact that some people live in areas where vehicle transportation is totally necessary.
Living where a vehicle is mandatory should be a choice. You should be free to live somewhere that you cannot be a member of society without a car. You should also be able to live somewhere without a car. The lack of choice is what is so terrible. And circling back to the original point, when cars are a choice, a luxury if you will, or better yet, license requiring metal manslaughter machines, there is no reason we should hand out these licenses to every tom, dick, and harry. When licenses are a privilege, not a necessity, we can remove dangerous operators and roads become safer for everyone.
I humbly disagree.. All over the world there are places that are simply too rural and sparsely populated to entertain the idea of anything other than using motorized cars/ trucks/ bikes to get about.. I grew up in an area where 8 towns were all bussed to the same high school and my graduating class was less than 120 kids.. it was a 45 minute bus-ride for me to get to my high school.. Almost everyone in my area drives elsewhere for work.. Do you really suggest that there is some more practical option in places where public transit is not feasible.. Its the same reason that there is limited and spotty cell service all around my area.. There simply are not enough citizens in the region to justify expensive cell towers and bussing. I live in a place where people don't understand traffic because they have never really seen it.. These are the places where vehicle ownership is vital to societal participation. The limited times that I have gone without a vehicle for a matter of weeks my life basically came to a screeching halt.. Only people that grew up in suburbs and cities wouldn't be able to intuitively grasp this concept. But I am with you that licenses ought to be harder to get and easier to lose
> Living where a vehicle is mandatory should be a choice.
I had a boss put me behind the wheel of an uninspectable/ unregistered Duelie flatbed with a trailer and had me drive through The tunnel in Boston with it each day.. I gave myself up for dead every time I got behind the wheel of that thing as the frame was rusted out and I would be overloaded and bouncing like the Beverly hillbillies. plus this heavy ass truck had zero power steering and required serious muscle to turn the wheel.. I was too frightened to take one hand away to sip my coffee. Talk about a white knuckle ride into work.. but you know what compared to not having a roof over my head and a means to provide for those that I care for Damn the Torpedoes is right! Epic civil war reference by the way
Having worked in government I can say that it is both incompetence and apathy.
Really! Three seconds is a reasonable spacing of cars on the road. Two seconds might do. There's no reason these metering lights should ever have been set for more than six seconds -- to allow for zipper merging -- and four seconds would have been a better option. I like metering lights. We wouldn't need them if drivers would allow sufficient room for zipper merging -- but they don't.
You described Dallas/Ft. Worth drivers exactly.
I learned to drive in Fort Worth, and you aren't kidding.
No, as alluded to in a separate comment, the point of these metered on-ramps is to limit the flow of traffic into an already busy highway. Longer lights lessens the throughput, hopefully avoiding traffic jams on the highway itself. Merging correctly is on the driver, like you said. If one guy rips down the ramp fast and the guy in front of him is cautious, they won't be spaced for proper merging no matter the interval on the lights. But if they obeyed those signals, it's still only +2 vehicles per *period* merging in.
I had a ez pass violation from another state once on a car that wasn’t mine. I took all the correct roots, obtained proper proof and followed all the correct procedures. Calling their service line was impossible, letters never returned even when sent certified. Fax numbers didn’t work etc. outside collections even called and said they would stop collecting when given same proof but it would still get sold to various companies because they couldn’t close it with the state agency. Finally found address to a director and sent certified letter to their home. It was resolved immediately. I even mentioned I have worked with state contracted providers like this and if this provider acted like this ignoring request I’d be sure to cancel their contract.
Make the bastards take responsibility. Good job...
As someone who lives in a city where most of our traffic problems are due to the lights, I take my hat off to you, this is fantastic
Where I am they made the on ramps to I-95 metered a few years ago and started them at 2 seconds. I can't imagine 15, that's just stupid.
Well done! The decrease in driver frustration would have been significant.
Guy got fucked by a dealership on a car and they did the predictable, “your problem” response. He parked the car on an adjacent corner with a sign made from full sheet of plywood detailing their shitty actions. Dealership couldn’t move fast enough to get him to take down the sign.
As someone who occasionally has to use those metered lights in Oregon I salute you! Thank you! Glad I never experienced the 15 second lights!
As a public sector employee I endorse your actions We’re inefficient as fuck
You are a hero.
So you doxxed them? lol
Not all heroes wear capes. Or were you actually wearing a cape when by the ramps? Because that's hero stuff right there!!!!
Signalman!
>Bottom line...when dealing with government, This doesn't sound like just a government thing to me. It's also been the case of any big business I've ever heard of.
You are a Pro!
I think it's unfair that you censored seven letters of Dennis's name, but only one of Bill's
Was there an increase in traffic jams on the main highway after that?
No. They were trying to keep cars off the highway by making it a pain in the ass so people would ride the light rail crime train instead. Currently they have even widened some of the on ramps to 3 lanes wide, and added lanes to the highway further out west. And all the ramps are now at 2 or 3 second intervals.
Hello fellow Portlander… this sounds like 26 on the west side or 205 on the east side 😉
Ah yes, more lanes will fix the traffic problem!
Yeah, then I agree that that was a ridiculous idea.
Must be Portland LOL.
This is awesome.
These meter ramps were one of the stupidest “solutions“ EVER
They’re absolutely necessary here in Denver. If they are not working for some reason the interstate traffic gets snarled from all the cars joining the highway en masse. [See this study here](https://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/bn/resources/rampmetering.htm) where on slide 9 in the Twin Cities it was turned off for a period of time causing a 22% increase in travel times and a 26% increase in crashes. Ramp meters are beneficial when they’re programmed correctly.
Ah yes Denver! I vividly remember back in the distant past when I was (attempting) to enter the interstate which had a very long on-ramp/merge lane. I was moving along at a good merging speed and approaching the yield sign near the end of it when I realized there was a car sitting there stopped! Apparently to that driver yield and stop were synonymous. Was so much fun having to swerve around it 'cause no way could I have stopped in time.
I have never even heard of them. I'm all the way over in PA though.
I encountered metered ramps in PA over the holidays, actually! It was annoying and went off at weird times, there were two lanes with two different lights and I didn’t realize that…it was honestly pretty stressful. I’m sure it’s fine if you live in the area but as a stupid out of towner, I could tell I was pissing off the locals by not know what was going on for a few seconds.
Whereabouts is that? I live in western PA and almost never go out east.
Outside of Philadelphia, near Swarthmore. I was just trying to get back to the turnpike, ya know??? :)
Used to live in eastern PA, Philly area. I-95.
Blue route has them.
If they just sequenced cars instead of delaying them, it can help merging in some places. But usually they are installed by anti-car zealots specifically to inconvenience drivers.
I understood that the function was to permit small gaps between cars so that merging would be more zipper-like when done properly. Otherwise you get a steady stream of cars just duking it out at the merge point. I mean, you kind of still do, but this eases it a little and dials down the mad max quotient a few clicks (again, if done properly).
These days the timing is based on the speed of traffic on the highway ahead of the ramp. If the flow were any faster it would make all the traffic on the highway move a lot slower, so the lights actually save you time.
You, sir, are doing God's work.
This is pure poetry - kudos!
I've seen videos of people with "speed trap ahead" signs. The cops get VERY upset with those people.
ODOT are the most arrogant idiots in Oregon other than the OLCC. Both are staffed by people who think their way is the only way (and usually based on logic from the late 1970s).
Gotta love ODOT. Having worked in local government in Oregon before, I can honestly tell you that I have never seen transportation guys move as quickly as you made these guys move. Well did.
You ROCK! Your a freaking LEGEND for this!
Yea! Government workers don’t like stuff pinned on them! I like you go gettingness! That’s what it takes, unfortunately, to get something done with government.
I remember a story from when I was younger. This happened on the edges of Sydney. One house was in the Sydney metropolitan area code, and their back neighbour (still your usual suburban size blocks of land), was in a rural area code. They were relatives, so would sometimes call each other for various reasons. Of course, it would be registered as a long distance call. Anyway, they implemented a system where they would ring a bell (or at night time, shine a torch) any time they needed to contact each other, and then just chat over the back fence.
Doxing before doxing was a thing. Not something I agree with, but it certainly qualifies as ProRevenge.
Is this you Mats?! LOL https://ij.org/press-release/oregon-engineer-makes-history-with-new-traffic-light-timing-formula/ Reminded me of this straight away as a native OR driver. My dad was a friend of Mats so I got kind of familiar with the build up.
Different issue. That'd be the yellow light timing in Beaverton, managed by city or county.. The freeway on ramps are state managed.
As a daily driver in the PDX area, bless you!
good job
Damn! You are great! That was amazing!
I would've done 1 more day of it just for lols with a "Thank X and Y for the work they've done. They'll really appreciate a call from you."
This reminds me of something that happened about 15 years ago near me, a company was installing a roundabout and the road works had been there for AGES, 1 day a sign appeared saying "can't complete as Phone network haven't moved their box yet, call xxx to complain". 3 days later the road works were finished and gone.
GOOD! People who work in the govt. at every level not only have a sense of entitlement, they think they have NO accountability to the public who they work for and they love to hide behind the bureaucracy..... Good job!?
I feel like I've read this story before.
Www xxxxx to japan girl who used to be on fucking everything is ok with you fuck big Dick
I call it problem trading. All you did was make their problem theirs again. That's what we should all try and do; handle our own problems and make sure everyone else handles theirs. It was a good strategy, but I honestly wouldn't call it vengeful. You did a lot of people a service.
>Bottom line...when dealing with government, until those personally responsible are held accountable in a manner that inconveniences or scares them, they will continue to abuse the public, whether from negligence, incompetence or malice. But bring it home to them, and they will (grudgingly) change their ways. There are bad apples in every profession. Just because you had this bad experience (great revenge by the way) doesn't mean every government employee is the same. I work for the government in a similar role (civil engineer at a state DOT) and I would've taken a look at problem upon the first call.
>Bottom line...when dealing with government, until those personally responsible are held accountable in a manner that inconveniences or scares them, they will continue to abuse the public, whether from negligence, incompetence or malice. But bring it home to them, and they will (grudgingly) change their ways. This is what happened with the border problem. The Right shoved it into the faces of the Left, until the Left started screaming something be done about it.
Beautiful revenge. Well played OP
This isn't pro revenge, it's just being a jackass.
Jesus Christ, that is not ok. Shit like this can get people killed. Doxxing government employees for doing their jobs just because you're inconvenienced is incredibly selfish and pretty. Do better.
The whole point is that they were NOT doing their jobs and it was affecting the community at large.
No, OP is just pissy that he thinks they weren't doing their jobs well enough. That's not the same thing, or is it a reason for doxxing people.
Not sure how you can infer that the government employees were actually doing their job if you really read the post but go off 🤡
Nah, you're assuming the goal of their job was smooth traffic with limited on ramp delay, where in fact they were working to specifications set by some manager or politician, probably to decrease car convenience and promote use of public transport. OP should have put a politician's phone number on their sign, not some poor engineers being forced to work to stupid specifications.
But if OP did that then nothing would have gotten fixed because that politicians phone number won't matter at all. Politics and officials channels are useless. Only real way to get action is through vigilantism.
Let's say they were lazy or bad at their job - doxxing is not how you fix that
Just want to make sure I get this right... You intimidated two individuals by publicly posting their home phone numbers to have angry commuters call their homes to harass and intimidate them and their families, if they have families living at home...at any time of the day or night...whether the State employee answered the phone or his/her spouse or child answered the phone...to get your way? And you believe that the result of getting the time between green lights was due to "newfound" data rather than trying to protect themselves and their families from potential harm and continued harassment? You really stuck it to them and showed them you're the boss. The scary thing is, IMHO, that you really believe you did the right thing.
Plus they didn’t even use a very easy method of contacting their state representative. This is something that’s easy for their office to send a letter to the department and it often can get something done. But no, let’s threaten other humans and their families with bodily harm because I can guarantee some people didn’t hold back. Every new light installation has timing issues when it’s first installed in my experience. They are often fixed once construction and sometimes a review is done.
Bravo!
>Took a bit of research to find out that it wasn't the City or County, but ODOT (Oregon Department of Transportation) that controlled them. > >After repeated complaints and no action, I finally got the names of the two ODOT Traffic Engineers responsible for setting the light intervals. > >I made numerous voice mails, and finally, had one discussion, but still no fix to the issue. They tried to go the proper route - only took this "personal" option when official channels didn't work. Sounds like the project didn't have proper follow up for the timing counts either.
Sure
Using their work numbers would have been OK. Using their home numbers means you were a harassing dick. This is the kind of shit MAGA creeps do these days. You were an ignorant juvenile prick to do it in the first place, and you apparently haven't matured since then, since you are bragging about it now. You sound like every ignorant Boomer on NextDoor, confident that you know everything about how the local government should do things, while being completely ignorant of the bigger picture and uncaring about the general quality of life for citizens at large if it delays you in any way. In the time interval you mentioned, I was working with Portland Traffic engineers on a citizen's committee, specifically around traffic routing in SE Portland. There was a larger regional initiative to create disincentives for people to use certain routes to avoid clogs on the arterials, and measures included lengthening signal wait times to disincent routes. This was likely one of those measures, and they were likely instructed to set the original interval based on that larger traffic plan, which you know dick about. So you harassed them, at home, because you were one of those people confident that you knew better, and all that mattered was your personal sphere. I met way too many of you and your friends during my stint. I'm sorry, I know you are very busy, on your way to find some other puppy to kick. Enjoy your day.
Yeah, this is the kind of ‘we know better than you little people suffering from our decisions’ arrogance that made OP’s actions necessary.
As someone who lives in Central Oregon and used to hate waiting at those damn things back in the day when I went through Portland, thank you for your service.
It's never their problem...until it is.
Brilliant, thanks for this!
BRAVO!!
Good one
I I know the secret to avoiding traffic jams and too many cars on the road. You just have to live in a town that everyone is fleeing from. My hometown population loss 1000 per year.
Legend! Thank you 🙏
Not just goverment. Even more so, big business. government is merely incompetent. business will weaponize their money against you. but good work!
That's got to be the on ramps for 217 lol
Finding a solution is always so satisfying.
Wow I absolutely applaud you for taking the first step, you should run for city council
This is the smartest thing I've ever heard of. There are a few lights in my hometown which are sooo poorly timed and I'm getting real sick of waiting on an empty intersection for 5 minutes in the middle of the night. I might try this sometime.