Not that rare in California. Off the top of my head: Sonoma, Napa, Mendocino, Santa Clara, San Mateo, Santa Cruz, Monterey, San Diego, San Bernardino, and Alameda counties all have cities of the same name. Seems rare in most other states though.
It is rare in most states, I believe. It is very common in South Carolina (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_counties_in_South_Caro...), which has counties named things like "Greenville" and "Spartanburg" after their largest cities - it feels to me like those should be "Green" and "Spartan". And then there are states like Georgia where there are counties, and cities with the same name that are in different counties, because the county-namers and the city-namers were pulling their names from the same pool of well-known people but weren't talking to each other.
Also, in California: San Luis Obispo, Riverside, Sacramento, Fresno, Santa Barbara.
They’re saying all brands use planned obsolescence to force consumers to buy lightbulbs (from any brand) more often, increasing sales for the whole industry, not one specific brand.
This is how the Phoebus Cartel worked for incandescent bulbs. Every brand was in on it, it wasn’t about improving market share for specific brands.
San Francisco avoids this particular problem by having the walk signal turn on automatically when the car signal is green — no need to hit a button (most intersections don't have buttons at all, and the ones that exist aren't even hooked up to the light).
I don't know if this would translate well to other cities — SF has a very pedestrian-friendly layout with narrow, slow streets , small blocks, and short light cycles — but it works well enough here that it might be worth trying elsewhere.
When I visited Barcelona, I was struck by their intersection design. It's great.
Instead of squares, their streets intersect in diamonds, where the (largely one-way) streets come out of the corners. They're a bit larger than a square intersection-- it's like you took the square, and then filled in four right triangles at each of the corners.
The main effect is that crosswalks are significantly pushed back from the intersection center. As a pedestrian, there's far less ambiguity about where the cars are going (regardless of whether they use their signal). Same for drivers: you never have to wonder which way a pedestrian is gong to cross when they're standing at a corner where two crosswalks meet, because there are no such corners.
Of course, this also makes intersections much bigger. This is offset by having parking spaces along the edges of intersections.
That might be great if you're visiting or just out for a stroll.
But let me tell you, it can be infuriating if you're walking to actually get somewhere. The city I live in has been replacing 2-way and 4-way stops with roundabouts, which has a similar effect of moving the crosswalks away from the intersection. Now it takes much longer to walk anywhere because you keep having to detour out of your way to cross the street.
I posted here and was contacted by the founder of a startup the same day. Got invited for an interview and received an offer a week later. I don’t recall getting much spam from that post.
Note that cars must stop before turning right on a red, so it’s not a total free-for-all. The stopping forces them to yield to pedestrians most of the time.
And to be fair, if these drivers were all properly following the law as written, the problems would be far fewer.
It's not uncommon to have stop lines farther back from the crosswalks for middle lanes to help improve visibility for the right lane - but even the ones that aren't worn down are often ignored by inattentive drivers. You're supposed to fully stop before the crosswalk even when turning right, but many drivers turning right don't fully stop at all - and are at best planning to stop with the crosswalk blocked. You're not supposed to speed up when you see a yellow light. All these things are ticketable offenses, in theory.
Between lax enforcement, lax punishments, lax driver education, and driving while texting, sleepy, high, or just plain drunk... well, I usually don't encounter problems from all 4 directions when crossing a street, but 1 or 2 is pretty common. I feel decently safe crossing, but only because I keep my head on a paranoid swivel. Occasionally I have to kinda hang out in the middle of the crosswalk for a few seconds while I wait for some idiots who failed to yield, and I'll throw up my hands in pantomimed exasperation...
It guarantees no cross traffic. Turns are still a threat.
I’ve seen the type of light you describe (all pedestrians walk in all directions at once while all cars have a red) in the US but they’re exceedingly rare. In cities there’s always pedestrians and cars waiting in every direction so it would be too slow to be practical.
It looks like the Long scale is falling into disuse in English speaking contexts from that article. I don't ever think I've ever seen the word "billion" in English refer to 1e+12 .
