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November 28, 2006
Where are they going?
|
| For some reason my thoughts seem to be stuck
on traffic. Which is better than being stuck "in" traffic.
It's probably residue
of my trip to the Bay Area, although I have to say we avoided any serious
traffic during the trip (we traveled only at midnight... in hot air
balloons). Anyway, while googling a wiring diagram for my failing 1980's home thermostat I ran across an interesting pdf file at the city web site. That should tell you a lot about either my internet research skills, or my ability to focus. Either way the pdf file was at least moderately interesting so I thought I'd provide a link to it. The pdf shows traffic counts (I assume trips-per-day) for many of the major streets in Chico (image above is from file). The data comes from a variety of sources including the City of Chico traffic engineering folks and BCAG. There are some interesting numbers, like the fact that the highway 99-Skyway intersection has ~37,000 cars east of 99, and ~26,000 west of 99. Highway 99 at that point carries 27,000 cars. I think all of the additional traffic east of 99 is probably headed to McDonalds for a happy meal. At least that's what I got from the information. They couldn't be headed to Walmart, everybody hates that place. The file is located on this web page. Here's a couple of pointers. First, save it to your hard drive, when I opened it from the web site the traffic data didn't show up. Second, you have to zoom in really close to see the data. On a side note I was watching an old episode of Cosmos, where Carl Sagan described a Googol (10^100 power, or 10 followed by 100 zeros). Based on the size of the internet and the size of Google, maybe they should change the spelling of their name. |
Posted by Lon at November 28, 2006 09:48 PM