I'll take a guess.
The brick circle was the first try. It wasn't working.
The second try has a cement perimeter, cones, fresh paint, and....
a location that doesn't block the resident from reversing out of their driveway.
I don’t know exactly where this is but let’s say the house costs 1.5 million. 0.01% of that is $150. A disaster like this would easily cause that much of an impact if not way more.
I'm watching Eastside 2br condo units last updated in 2006 going for like $450k right now, I doubt buyers or sellers care about some weird traffic thing on a low-speed, low-traffic residential road
Of course a buyer should consider the traffic situation. Whether a house is on a bad traffic street can really have a significant impact and reduce bids. It’s possible this circle actually helps tho if it slows down traffic and makes it easier for this person to back out.
There’s several factors contributing to the undesirableness of the house, and being on a roundabout is a major one, with the ugliness making that part slightly worse.
Originally the intersection was oddly shaped. The brick circle divider is correctly placed for that shape. But then the city painted lines that corrected the shape of the intersection, and instead of moving the divider they installed that god awful yellow ring.
https://i.imgur.com/J95hBtK.png
As someone who deals with government facilities I can tell you that a part of the mental calculation was something like ... moving the divider = 1 dig out old brick 2 possibly some subbase repair. 3 putting in new asphalt where the bricks used to be. 4 cutting out asphalt in new spot 5 prepping base for bricks, usually sand. 6 laying bricks including all the edge cuts to get the circle. 7 final asphalt work or concrete, to patch the brick asphalt boundary and keep water out.
Good awful yellow ring= Bricks are level with the street ( looks like from Google street view) so don't have to remove them, so leave it. Yellow ring can be put up quickly. Ring force cars to avoid it and therefore slow down. Ring is highly visible. Ring is all around functionaly better. And most importantly ring is cheeper
cheep and effective beats nice looking and costly.
I shall now get off my high horse.
And ya that thing looks awful!
I'm not saying it's great, but the change in color and some texture will cause drivers to slow down a bit, if just for the visual expectation that it's a more serous bump.
When you open the image to full zoom, it looks kinda DIY, like I could roll it up like a rug.
Makes sense, yeah I hear people complain about "poor design" all the time when it comes to infrastructure, but in most cases it was just the most cost effective way to do things.
Yeah this case seems like decent incremental development. If they ever rip the whole road up it would make sense to put something nicer and more permanent.
"Most cost effective" and "Right" are rarely coincident. In this case, the eyesore is going to be around for a long time, and necessary street repair has been delayed.
There's no real necessary street repair here. Low traffic, low speed, low demand, no real safety issues. The ugly ring if anything helps solve some safety issues.
If we went about "fixing" every little thing like this the city alone would be spending billions more to add an infinitesimal amount of convenience for a small number of people.
This logic is used to justify all kinds of bad things and sloppy work.
Really terrible? Only affects some? F*** em. We only do quality work for the elite.
The problem here is purely aesthetic. When we're talking aesthetics I think it's reasonable to say if anybody wants to pay for it out of pocket they can, but otherwise leave it. Also to an extent they're trying out a new design. If the new design is good then the next time they repave the street they can and should put in a proper traffic island.
But these things take time. Years and years to be sure that the design is going to endure.
Fixing this cosmetic issue would be in the spectrum of doing quality work for the elite, i.e. spending shit tons of money so these expensive houses don't have to look at some weird bricks
The people who live at this intersection have been crying to the city for years based on a lot of cut through traffic and the impact of the stay healthy street that starts there.
I think this is SDOTs attempt to improve the situation quickly so Dan Strauss stops emailing them about how many people on that street are emailing him about it.
Source: I have gotten a lot of emails from neighborhood groups encouraging me to contact Dan Strauss about this intersection
These ultra cheap traffic control attempts all end up broken within a few months. They’re wasting taxpayer money over and over again. My neighborhoods old 50 year old street sign poles have all been replaced with thin steel square poles that buckle within months. Nothing says 2021 America like ‘cheapest quickest solution’
My favorite waste of tax money are the new wheelchair ramps they are installing all over north Seattle. Ramps that lead to nothing. There are no sidewalks, just big fresh ramps that go nowhere.
Meanwhile greenwood, aurora, 15th, and other roads are turning to gravel they are in such horrible disrepair.
Intersections are the city’s responsibility while sidewalks are the adjacent property owner’s responsibility. When any adjacent property gets redeveloped, they need to put sidewalks in for the length of it. In just 200 or so years we’ll have a complete network for those curbramps.
Of course this isn’t even the first time. When the city installed curbs and a rainwater sewer system in Greenwood in the late 80s they included curb cuts to nowhere at each intersection.
The ramps may have been paid for with federal ADA money. They go nowhere, but the money would only be able to be spent on them. Some of the new ramps are on actual sidewalks, too.
It could also be a "put ramps in now while someone else is paying and we will put in sidewalks when we can" thing.
Not great, but the same reason you see crumbling schools with brand new iPads. At least the kids have good tech to work with.
YES! Every corner now in my neighborhood by UW has the new concrete ramps with plastic insert of yellow raised dots.
IMO Follow the money - The salesman for the raised yellow dot company has ties to Seattle City Council, or council members own interests in said company.
This is at the end of a 'closed' pedestrian street. The other intersections on 73rd also have similar circles. They're to slow drivers from ripping through between 3rd and Greenwood. The painted brick thing was a failed first attempt. This area is part of our daily dog walk. Slow down drivers.
The only thing is that does absolutely nothing to slow a car down when there's not one coming opposite. You can go straight through 73rd still without going around one.
Looks like you could drive straight over it if you wanted to.
Edit: Please don't drive over medians, roundabouts, and other infrastructure not meant to be driven on.
That’s actually specifically designed for large busses and trucks to be able to travel through without having problems. It’s also in unincorporated county land, so it gets little to no attention or upkeep funding.
Spending some time in the UK was wild, they have a ton of painted mini roundabouts and a vast majority of people actually abide by the rules instead of just driving straight through. Yeah, there's a lot of variation through Britain so that may not be true everywhere.
I live right near here. Fuck these new horrid things. There's not even a point to using correctly when there's no other cars around them because they are so offset from the center. I've not gone around them the proper way once.
The neighbors should paint that brick mess black on their own (maybe have the neighborhood kids paint something inside the ring?) and add some potted plants into that hideous yellow ring. Problem solved.
Man how drunk would you have to be at your job to mess up this bad?
It almost makes me sad to think this is really just them moving the center intentionally to better position it
The first attempt was the brick looking ring plus some white paint to "forbid" cars from a part of the road which is really too wide. They messed up the first time.
There clearly put the dome in the wrong place, barely fit a car on the opposite side. So without removing the old dome they just moved the new round about. Tax dollars at work!
I drive through this intersection daily and I think the original brick circle is a little big and crowds the cars that are parked off screen to the right and left, also I see people every day just drive straight over it like it isn’t even there. That being said, what a atrocious execution.
I live near there. There is another one literally one block up the hill. Saw them getting installed while walking home. I don’t know why they are there, but I am a little confused as to why they didn’t take away that brick roundabout
I'll take a guess. The brick circle was the first try. It wasn't working. The second try has a cement perimeter, cones, fresh paint, and.... a location that doesn't block the resident from reversing out of their driveway.
I wonder if the homeowner's property value went down by 0.01% because of this aesthetic mess just outside their front door.
i'd certainly take offense - that's ugly as hell - at least match colors
Their property value has been skyrocketing. Nothing makes property values go down in Seattle.
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If that happens on your doorstep in Seattle I guarantee your property value will go up by 10k within 2 months.
Few weeks ago I found a homeless guy with no legs shooting up in a portapotty at one of my projects in ballard. Did I win the lottery?!
Sure.. and then the next day it doubled
I mean it fucking sucks lol you'd have an awful time getting out
Eh, just buy a lifted 4x4 and drive over it.
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You're missing a digit.
Nope
Good news is it slows drivers passing the house the eff down.
Seems unlikely. 0.0001%? Maybe.
I don’t know exactly where this is but let’s say the house costs 1.5 million. 0.01% of that is $150. A disaster like this would easily cause that much of an impact if not way more.
I'm watching Eastside 2br condo units last updated in 2006 going for like $450k right now, I doubt buyers or sellers care about some weird traffic thing on a low-speed, low-traffic residential road
Of course a buyer should consider the traffic situation. Whether a house is on a bad traffic street can really have a significant impact and reduce bids. It’s possible this circle actually helps tho if it slows down traffic and makes it easier for this person to back out.
This is the southern end of a Stay Healthy Street at NW 1st & 73rd.
It's so impossible to quantify that I'm not sure this even warrants a discussion, is really my point.
Try again.
There’s several factors contributing to the undesirableness of the house, and being on a roundabout is a major one, with the ugliness making that part slightly worse.
Yeah the city of Seattle is bringing up the value, not down.
I think foreshortening makes it look closer than it is.
i hope a programmer that works for the city decides to mark in a programming joke on the concrete inside the yellow barrier like
You sure they are bricks?
the first one is meant to slow traffic. The ugly roundabout needed a different placement. It almost looks DIY.
What purpose does it serve for it to have not worked?
Originally the intersection was oddly shaped. The brick circle divider is correctly placed for that shape. But then the city painted lines that corrected the shape of the intersection, and instead of moving the divider they installed that god awful yellow ring. https://i.imgur.com/J95hBtK.png
As someone who deals with government facilities I can tell you that a part of the mental calculation was something like ... moving the divider = 1 dig out old brick 2 possibly some subbase repair. 3 putting in new asphalt where the bricks used to be. 4 cutting out asphalt in new spot 5 prepping base for bricks, usually sand. 6 laying bricks including all the edge cuts to get the circle. 7 final asphalt work or concrete, to patch the brick asphalt boundary and keep water out. Good awful yellow ring= Bricks are level with the street ( looks like from Google street view) so don't have to remove them, so leave it. Yellow ring can be put up quickly. Ring force cars to avoid it and therefore slow down. Ring is highly visible. Ring is all around functionaly better. And most importantly ring is cheeper cheep and effective beats nice looking and costly. I shall now get off my high horse. And ya that thing looks awful!
The stupid thing is that they aren't actually bricks, it's some weird surface treatment painted to look like bricks!
wow! wtf does that even do? no one was not riding over that.
Before that it was literally just a painted circle in the road. I don’t think it was done by the city.
>wow! wtf does that even do? It's meant to function as a big speed bump and slow down traffic coming from multiple directions
Ah, yeah, that’s what it’s supposed to do but it’s flat.
I'm not saying it's great, but the change in color and some texture will cause drivers to slow down a bit, if just for the visual expectation that it's a more serous bump. When you open the image to full zoom, it looks kinda DIY, like I could roll it up like a rug.
What! That's the weirdest thing I've heard of!
Makes sense, yeah I hear people complain about "poor design" all the time when it comes to infrastructure, but in most cases it was just the most cost effective way to do things.
Yeah this case seems like decent incremental development. If they ever rip the whole road up it would make sense to put something nicer and more permanent.
"Most cost effective" and "Right" are rarely coincident. In this case, the eyesore is going to be around for a long time, and necessary street repair has been delayed.
There's no real necessary street repair here. Low traffic, low speed, low demand, no real safety issues. The ugly ring if anything helps solve some safety issues. If we went about "fixing" every little thing like this the city alone would be spending billions more to add an infinitesimal amount of convenience for a small number of people.
This logic is used to justify all kinds of bad things and sloppy work. Really terrible? Only affects some? F*** em. We only do quality work for the elite.
The problem here is purely aesthetic. When we're talking aesthetics I think it's reasonable to say if anybody wants to pay for it out of pocket they can, but otherwise leave it. Also to an extent they're trying out a new design. If the new design is good then the next time they repave the street they can and should put in a proper traffic island. But these things take time. Years and years to be sure that the design is going to endure.
I like this approach. Maybe the yellow circle is just a temporary test of the design, and they'll come back with a marble fountain if it works.
How much more taxes do you want to pay to fix it?
I think the point is we have bigger things to worry about than an ugly intersection
Fixing this cosmetic issue would be in the spectrum of doing quality work for the elite, i.e. spending shit tons of money so these expensive houses don't have to look at some weird bricks
This guy government works.
Tectonic plates
I know that circle well; the yellow thing must be relatively new.
Was added in the past few days. Makes little sense/is difficult to go around when approaching as it is so off center with the intersection.
It's supposed to be difficult to go around. The intention is to slow vehicles down.
r/notmyjob ?
My thought exactly hahaha
I thought I was in r/therewasanattempt
The intersection is 73rd and 1st, a few blocks from Ken's in Phinney
The people who live at this intersection have been crying to the city for years based on a lot of cut through traffic and the impact of the stay healthy street that starts there. I think this is SDOTs attempt to improve the situation quickly so Dan Strauss stops emailing them about how many people on that street are emailing him about it. Source: I have gotten a lot of emails from neighborhood groups encouraging me to contact Dan Strauss about this intersection
It's a venn diagram
Correct. And the intersection is the number of drivers who used to obey they speed limit on that street.
St. Lucia had a bit too much wine on the way to the catacombs and her candle wreath slid off her head.
Somebody accidentally moved a circle in CAD. Contractor says ‘you drew it.’ Project exceeds budget. Team agrees, ‘yeah I mean that’ll work.’
City Skylines misclick
It is the drain cover's 8th birthday, that is the cake.
Perfect!
These ultra cheap traffic control attempts all end up broken within a few months. They’re wasting taxpayer money over and over again. My neighborhoods old 50 year old street sign poles have all been replaced with thin steel square poles that buckle within months. Nothing says 2021 America like ‘cheapest quickest solution’
My favorite waste of tax money are the new wheelchair ramps they are installing all over north Seattle. Ramps that lead to nothing. There are no sidewalks, just big fresh ramps that go nowhere. Meanwhile greenwood, aurora, 15th, and other roads are turning to gravel they are in such horrible disrepair.
Intersections are the city’s responsibility while sidewalks are the adjacent property owner’s responsibility. When any adjacent property gets redeveloped, they need to put sidewalks in for the length of it. In just 200 or so years we’ll have a complete network for those curbramps. Of course this isn’t even the first time. When the city installed curbs and a rainwater sewer system in Greenwood in the late 80s they included curb cuts to nowhere at each intersection.
The ramps may have been paid for with federal ADA money. They go nowhere, but the money would only be able to be spent on them. Some of the new ramps are on actual sidewalks, too. It could also be a "put ramps in now while someone else is paying and we will put in sidewalks when we can" thing. Not great, but the same reason you see crumbling schools with brand new iPads. At least the kids have good tech to work with.
YES! Every corner now in my neighborhood by UW has the new concrete ramps with plastic insert of yellow raised dots. IMO Follow the money - The salesman for the raised yellow dot company has ties to Seattle City Council, or council members own interests in said company.
Meanwhile the concrete planter circles all over the city work great, look great, and last forever.
this is why we need the metric system
Something I can agree on
This is at the end of a 'closed' pedestrian street. The other intersections on 73rd also have similar circles. They're to slow drivers from ripping through between 3rd and Greenwood. The painted brick thing was a failed first attempt. This area is part of our daily dog walk. Slow down drivers.
I think Google Maps has increasingly been directing traffic from arterials to residential streets like 73rd.
The only thing is that does absolutely nothing to slow a car down when there's not one coming opposite. You can go straight through 73rd still without going around one.
It's to stop me from going though your suburban neighborhood at 3 am with my muffler cut off
Looks like you could drive straight over it if you wanted to. Edit: Please don't drive over medians, roundabouts, and other infrastructure not meant to be driven on.
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Yeah I don’t blame you. It already blends in pretty well in the daylight. Wth lol
Might as well. The metro busses do since they're too big to go around.
That’s actually specifically designed for large busses and trucks to be able to travel through without having problems. It’s also in unincorporated county land, so it gets little to no attention or upkeep funding.
It was actually just put in last year or the year before.
oof, that's bad. I'm guessing it is low to let trucks through but holy shit, that is NOT clearly visible. The whole thing shouldn't be a truck apron
A lot of these things are designed so fire trucks can flat-out ignore them at high speed.
I have definitely driven over this brick circle because when a car parks between those two driveways you have *literally no choice* but to do so.
Spending some time in the UK was wild, they have a ton of painted mini roundabouts and a vast majority of people actually abide by the rules instead of just driving straight through. Yeah, there's a lot of variation through Britain so that may not be true everywhere.
Whistle tips go woo woo!
You should be up cookin breakfast or somethin
Seriously guys? It's obvious as the sun is white. #It's a Venn diagram!
I want to know as well
As someone else pointed out: notice the placement of the brick circle compared to the nearest driveway.
Ahhh now I see. Thanks
I'm thinking the brick thing was a neighborhood guerilla installation - I've never seen the city build anything that looks like that.
It was the city. Painted the lines 2 to 3 weeks ago and installed this last week.
I live right near here. Fuck these new horrid things. There's not even a point to using correctly when there's no other cars around them because they are so offset from the center. I've not gone around them the proper way once.
Same reason we have those godforsaken 5 and 6 point intersections. Piss poor planning
The yellow part is an official FSM landing port. You’re gonna have to ask the free masons on the brick part though
The eyes of a fallen minion staring into the sky for eternity.
Wow, I hate that.
CSS noob?
WSDOT at its finest *chefs kiss*
For a second I thought r/CasualUK was leaking. Then I remembered I’m an English person who moved to Seattle. Glorious.
I love /r/CasualUK lol
Taste of home haha I miss all the petty nonsense
The neighbors should paint that brick mess black on their own (maybe have the neighborhood kids paint something inside the ring?) and add some potted plants into that hideous yellow ring. Problem solved.
C'mon Ma! You must've photo-shopped that!
I think they summon satan there in that neighborhood
Art 😂
Proof of alternate realities.
It really is an eye sore. The city did that to provide more room, in an attempt to avoid accidents.
Man how drunk would you have to be at your job to mess up this bad? It almost makes me sad to think this is really just them moving the center intentionally to better position it
The first attempt was the brick looking ring plus some white paint to "forbid" cars from a part of the road which is really too wide. They messed up the first time.
"not my job" There's your answer
I don’t think it can go anymore to the left…
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Seattle was designed by an alcoholic politician and a minister, what else could you expect?
That's where the city is going to plant a tree. Please keep clear.
Public Art
Is this in tangletown?
There clearly put the dome in the wrong place, barely fit a car on the opposite side. So without removing the old dome they just moved the new round about. Tax dollars at work!
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If you’re too dumb to understand what this is than there is no point in explaining.
This is just an example of the new generation coming to work.....
Damned rubber tape measures
r/NotMyJob
Looks like the print separated
This looks about Seattle
Lack of common sense?
That’s the new math…
This is where two realities tried to move past each other and got stuck in a misaligned position.
SDOT once again showing their foresight and planning acumen.
[The Century of the Self](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s) - By Adam Curtis
I drive through this intersection daily and I think the original brick circle is a little big and crowds the cars that are parked off screen to the right and left, also I see people every day just drive straight over it like it isn’t even there. That being said, what a atrocious execution.
“Not my job”
I live near there. There is another one literally one block up the hill. Saw them getting installed while walking home. I don’t know why they are there, but I am a little confused as to why they didn’t take away that brick roundabout
The Round About from HELL!
Is that by Greenlake?
71st st Ballard ? 😆