Engineers: Traffic Studies Use Simulation Software, Not Lane Closings 265
Lucas123 writes "The so-called 'traffic study' that closed New Jersey access lanes on the heavily traveled George Washington Bridge last September has left engineers scratching their heads, because in modern America, simulation software is used instead of closing down lanes. One of the best sources for simulation data are video camera systems that use software to count vehicles on roadways. Traffic studies use microscopic traffic simulations to create virtual environments that can model driver behavior to road changes with exacting detail. Instead, the Port Authority, under Gov. Chris Christie, shut down two of the three access lanes for four days last September from Fort Lee to the George Washington Bridge without warning the public, citing a 'traffic study.' 'I would be pretty confident that if we knew exactly which lanes are closed we could replicate that, and it would show exactly how bad the backups are going to be,' said Lorenzo Rotoli, an engineer and vice president at Fisher Associates, a civil engineering firm in New York that works on roads, bridges and signal systems."
In other words ... (Score:5, Informative)
This was a spiteful and petty act of retribution, pretty much much as reported already.
Re:In other words ... (Score:4, Funny)
Exactly. Fuck West Virginia.
Re:In other words ... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:In other words ... (Score:5, Funny)
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They were screwed...by chemicals in their water.
Re:In other words ... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't even understand this story. The smoking gun has already been found, reported, and Jon Stewart did a whole send-up of it last week.
Why would anybody still be trying to figure out if the attempted cover-up was bogus or not?
I realize the guy has aspirations for power, but if he were successful we can be confident he'd appoint the same kind of viscous, vindictive, psychopathic cronies who would do similar things at his behest (irrespective of whether he know about this incident). That's not a tradition we can afford to continue in Washington.
Re:In other words ... (Score:5, Interesting)
I must confess, unless it's just to get page hits, or to demonstrate that nobody could plausibly claim to have really been doing a traffic study ... I find myself asking the same question.
However, in modern politics, you don't refute the facts, you provide your own 'facts' and talk really loud about something else.
Maybe this is just a more reasoned attempt to short circuit that.
Re:In other words ... (Score:5, Informative)
I don't even understand this story. The smoking gun has already been found, reported, and Jon Stewart did a whole send-up of it last week.
Why would anybody still be trying to figure out if the attempted cover-up was bogus or not?
Slashdot got the mathematical modeling angle.
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It's also not a tradition we can stop in Washington, if you haven't noticed.
Re:In other words ... (Score:4, Informative)
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And notably, every single conservative political group eventually got their tax exempt status, even before the "scandal" broke, while at least a few liberal groups got denied, in the end.
I think we can all dream of a world where all those groups got denied the ability to influence our elections while not paying taxes, but no luck yet.
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Well, the trick is that being mostly new organizations, they hadn't done anything yet, that was actually political. There wasn't a meaningful history to judge them on.
I'd wager my last dollar than any that actually raised any money did so entirely for political reasons.
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I assume this is a evidence substantiated sub-theory, rather than absurdly shifted goalposts when reality shows to be the opposite of paranoid claims. Right?
Re:In other words ... (Score:4, Insightful)
I assume this is a evidence substantiated sub-theory, rather than absurdly shifted goalposts when reality shows to be the opposite of paranoid claims. Right?
Nobody is shifting the goalposts, besides you. The original complaint was that the IRS delayed the applications, such that the groups could not participate in the political debate leading to the 2012 US presidential election. The groups in fact were not able to participate. Nobody gives a shit, really, whether they were granted the status afterwards... it is a superfluous detail, only further supporting the original thesis.
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The original complaint was that the IRS delayed the applications, such that the groups could not participate in the political debate leading to the 2012 US presidential election. The groups in fact were not able to participate.
This garbage is getting tiresome. NO ONE prevented those groups from participating, not even a little bit. Their COMPLAINT (which is false) was that they couldn't fund their activities on MY dime as bogus tax exempt groups.
I'm tired of this wah, wah, wah, when not only is the actual complaint a lie, the lie is compounded by posts like yours which claim something even farther from the truth.
Re:In other words ... (Score:5, Interesting)
So your grievance is that groups which should not qualify for the tax status if they are political were delayed with their participating in the political debate?
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The IRS used inappropriate criteria that identified for review Tea Party and other organizations applying for tax-exempt status based upon their names or policy positions instead of indications of potential political campaign intervention. Ineffective management: 1) allowed inappropriate criteria to be developed and stay in place for more than 18 months, 2) resulted in substantial delays in processing certain applications, and 3) allowed unnecessary information requests to be issued. Although the processing of some applications with potential significant political campaign intervention was started soon after receipt, no work was completed on the majority of these applications for 13 months.... For the 296 total political campaign intervention applications [reviewed in the audit] as of December 17, 2012, 108 had been approved, 28 were withdrawn by the applicant, none had been denied.
treasury.gov [treasury.gov]
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Re:In other words ... (Score:5, Interesting)
So, you're saying that the organizations were illegally dedicated to political purposes, in spite of their application for tax exemption?
I don't get the logic here... are you trying to say how unfair it was to scrutinize people for a felony so they couldn't commit a felony?
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> For the record, they started these investigations after specific requests from Congress to make sure
> these nonprofits
I see, and why is it that congress should be making such specific requests and even more so, why is it that the IRS should be listening to them? Congress has many powers, including making the laws and funding the groups that enforce them, and oversight of the same. However, that is not the same as having the power to decide who should be under consideration for enforcement.
It would b
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Re:In other words ... (Score:4, Informative)
That being said, can you provide links for your version of this information?
Here. [bloomberg.com]
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Viscous cronies? So... they're really thick?
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Just like Christie.
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I don't even understand this story. The smoking gun has already been found, reported, and Jon Stewart did a whole send-up of it last week.
That's not a tradition we can afford to continue in Washington.
Well, lets wait till the proof is in before we assume it wasn't an action taken by some over-zealous underling, instead of Christie himself.
After all, the same people rushing to condemn Christie gleefully accept the same excuse from Obama, when he claims he didn't know, and wasn't told.
What I want to know, is why any state's DOT would take orders like that EVEN if they thought it came from the Governor himself.
Most rational state governments do not allow the Governor to micro-manage road and lane closures,
Re:In other words ... (Score:5, Informative)
What I want to know, is why any state's DOT would take orders like that EVEN if they thought it came from the Governor himself. Most rational state governments do not allow the Governor to micro-manage road and lane closures, for non-emergency reasons, and when there is a real emergency need, the DOT is usually well ahead of the elected officials.
Why does New Jersey allow a governor to make that call?
NY and NJ DOTs have nothing to do with it. The GWB is run by the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey [panynj.gov] which separate from the state governments. The only reason the NJ governor's office was able to pull this off was because of their appointees & other cronies inside the PANYNJ.
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Given that the governments in New York and New Jersey don't even give lip service to actually having the best interests of the people at heart, shouldn't the ownership of critical infrastructure, held in trust for the people, be in the hands of someone else?
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I think the real issue now is digging to figure out what level involvement That Gov. Chris Christie had in this.
Being that this isn't a normal process of closing lanes for a study, you may expect some people, stopping and saying what why and perhaps ask for higher authority on if this is really what they want to do.
Now could Christie be responsible? Maybe, maybe not. It is not too hard to think some political suck ups on his team, more then happy to do the Dirty Work, even if he never really wanted it, and
Re:In other words ... (Score:5, Informative)
Not according to Fox. On their opening broadcast when the initial emails were released, the first words out of the talking head's mouth was (as near as I can remember), "There was no smoking gun found in the documents released today about the New Jersey bridge shutdown."
Why would anybody still be trying to figure out if the attempted cover-up was bogus or not?
Again, going back to Fox, they're still wondering why people are so enamored with this story. After the first day they essentially dropped all coverage except for a tiny blurb along the right side of their web page, and then only to keep wondering why the media was so focused on this event.
I realize using Fox as a reference is akin to using the National Enquirer, but I'm just answering your questions.
Re:In other words ... (Score:4, Informative)
For what it's worth, I was watching CNN coverage last night (Piers Morgan, Anderson Cooper) and both had their share of panelists who were also saying there is no smoking gun. I haven't had time yet to look at today's developments, but I haven't seen anything that directly implicates Governor Christie. He just comes out looking incompetent for not knowing what his top aides were up to, which isn't much better.
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Didn't Christie directly say it was a traffic study? Regardless of whether he ordered it or not (abuse of power), he's now engaged in lying and obstruction of justice.
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Alas, I guess pretty much any of the front runners for the office of President fits into this category. I mean, Hillary has her "hit" list, and I'm guessing the Clintons are still pissed at a number of people who they feel threw her under the bus to s
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I for one am shocked, shocked, to hear of political corruption in New Jersey.
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I for one am shocked, shocked, to hear of political corruption in New Jersey.
Then you will be SHOCKED to hear there is a lot more in Washington DC..
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When a legitimate whistle blower becomes a world wide hunted "criminal" and you don't notice, that's a problem.
When the FBI and the CIA start enforcing movie company copyrights with trans-boarder raids, and you don't notice, that's a problem.
When the CIA has presidential airplanes from foreign countries detained and searched in third countries, and you think its normal, that's a serious problem.
Re:In other words ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Good luck getting elected now ya meathead. Rand Paul can run circles around this guy.
Rand Paul? Ok, you are one of those people. Cruz has more name recognition and you won't find many confused Rand with Ron (his father) which is a serious problem because Ron is NUTS.
About Christie, All I can say is it really sucks being the perceived "front runner" because *everybody* is gunning for you. It's easier to fund raise, but at three years out you'd rather not draw such attention and fund raising is not exactly in full swing yet. Nobody would care about a "traffic study" if he was #3 or #4 on the list of contenders.
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The private sector doesn't get to show up with guns and force me to do something (if they're truly private).
Most egregious abuses of private-sector power usually involve corruption of the public sector...
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Those are called "Laps"
Either way it is something Christie has never done.
Christie probably hasn't seen his lap (or anything in it) since the 6th grade.
---Ok, mean spirited, but I couldn't resist.
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It was a traffic study (Score:4, Funny)
He was studying how playing traffic god would impact his political career
Re:It was a traffic study (Score:5, Funny)
He was studying how playing traffic god would impact his political career
There really needs to be an Android game called "traffic god".
Re:It was a traffic study (Score:5, Informative)
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needs work (Score:2)
News for Nerds? (Score:5, Interesting)
Or is this just because Christie is a republican. 2016 is starting early around here.
The democrat governor of MY state closed the DMVs in all the districts that voted in republican delegates. Didn't make the news at all. And now he's a U.S. Senator.
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Sucks to be the perceived front runner, especially if you have the "R" after your name.
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I know, right? You look all over the place for credible reports of Democrats being this shady, and all you get are unconfirmed internet comments about unnamed Democratic governors closing down DMVs, without a source or even the name of the state it supposedly happened in. Then the liberal media doesn't report it, for lame reasons like "it didn't really happen".
Fairness in reporting demands that they report on Democratic scandals too. And if they can't find one, they need to make one up.
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Seriously. The Liberal Media would never report on any wrongdoing by a Democratic Governor. Rachael Maddow broke this story with her liberal-y liberal liberalness, but where was she during the Blagojevich scandal in Illinois? Dead silent!
Oh wait, no she wasn't [youtube.com].
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Here's a citation [dailypress.com].
It's a pretty big hassle when you have to drive an hour away and stand in line for four hours to renew your drivers license. Especially when it's just because you had the nerve to vote against the governor's party.
After that, he turned the Virginia side of the D.C. Beltway into a foreign owned toll road. Then he ran a dirty smear campaign for Senate and won by convincing the general public that his opponent was trying to ban the birth control pill (a lie).
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Riggghhhht. Warner will run for president and nobody will dig out the massive scandal that you have uncovered. I'm willing to accept that there are slimeballs on both sides. I am not willing to accept that one side will escape media scrutiny.
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LOL. Thank you for confirming that you're totally delusion (and saving me from reading any of your other links/articles). Mark Warner will be president? He was a front runner in 2008?
(a) I'm a political junkie and I've never heard of this guy before today. (b) Mark Warner did not even RUN for president in 2008. (c) Neither did he make the cut for vice-presidential candidate. (d) Pssst, let me to introduce you to someone named Clinton.
"In 2006 he was widely expected to pursue the Democratic nomination in the
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Re: News for Nerds? (Score:5, Informative)
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if demographics is any guide, the republican areas are the most sparsely populated parts of the state and should have been the first ones to be closed. and the ones in the more populated areas left open
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the leader of my country wasn't even born in America!
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What I expect is closer to the truth.
Those Republican run districts are also districts that have a lower population/density (Republican tend to flourish in more rural areas. Where there is less need for government services except for farm subsidies which most republicans push). Meaning having a DMV office in such an area is expensive to maintain. Because you still need a minimum staff and building costs. So those DMV could be closed to save money, meaning a smaller portion of the population will be inconve
It wasn't a traffic study... (Score:2)
Um, duh... (Score:2)
If you believed for one moment that it was an actual traffic study, I have a closed bridge to sell you.
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You tried showing it to me, but there was too much traffic so we never got there.
This is Jersey... (Score:2)
Your high falutin' traffic engineers don't give the Sopranos the contract to do traffic studies.
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Isn't that "Joyzee"?
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No, it's "Jersey". No one speaks like that here. It's the people on Staten Island (New York) who talk like that.
Well that doesn't explain... (Score:2)
``Eventually these models will get sophisticated enough to be able simulate "really odd driver behaviors"``
Well that doesn't explain car pool lanes, where the lane next to the carpool lane is full of people who go slow on the theory you can illegally pass them on the left. If the model could account for that, there'd be a lot fewer of the things.
Actual scientific traffic sim (Score:3)
Oh look (Score:3, Insightful)
Another reason to talk about the "Bridgegate" scandal instead of, I dunno, real news like Obamacare, unemployment, our moribund economy, the ongoing blunders in foreign policy, NSA surveillance, etc.
Please, let's talk about Chris Christie some more.
Re:Oh look (Score:5, Insightful)
Unemployment is a constant news story. It keeps coming up, most recently in the disappointing job numbers for Dec 2013. Moribund economy is another constant news item. NSA surveillance is a constant news item. Foreign policy, Syria, Israel, Egypt constantly in the news.
Just come out of the echo chamber to realize how much Democrats have been trashed by the press.
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WTF are you listening that isn't talking about any of those things. There's an NSA story here almost as often as as BitCoin story, I hear about Romneycare or unemployment every day. This is actually the first time I've heard the name "Chris Christie"...
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Also BENGHAZI BENGHAZI BENGHAZI amirite?
At least have the honesty to admit you'd rather the conversation be about the bad things the Other Team are doing rather than what Your Team is doing wrong.
what about some high speed EZ-pass lanes there (Score:2)
what about some high speed EZ-pass lanes there that may help a lot.
I love the capacity whores (Score:2)
Here you have somebody indicating that they use simulations to determine if lanes should be closed. The root cause is that there doesn't have to be a reason for the various transportation departments to close roads or lanes. In this case we all know this was political retribution but how many of the incessant lane closures on bridges and highways are just because of incompetence? We've been dealing with an ARRA funded road project for the past 5 years and they close lanes, redirect traffic, block access
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These "capacity whores" you're whining about wouldn't cause such negative impact if our highways were growing in pace with need over the last few decades. If you don't have any breathing room, doing anything is harder, but doing nothing is worse.
Ha ha ha (Score:3)
Seems goons like that are attracted to offices he got in which brings to mind why perhaps the NSA gets it's way because they have so much stuff to smear anyone and use that as leverage to get to play their little boys power games.
Re:duh (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the real question is, has politics stooped so low that political staff (and possibly politicians) feel entitled to act like petulant little children and expect to get away with it?
And, if so, why is society prepared to live with their politicians and staff acting like such douchebags?
I don't care what political stripe you are, fucking with the traffic patterns to seek retribution against a political foe makes you an asshole.
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"No, the real question is, has politics stooped so low that political staff (and possibly politicians) feel entitled to act like petulant little children and expect to get away with it?"
I hear there was a Chicago Alderman who was removed from office because he decided to get back at his ex-wife by defunding snow removal to her neighborhood...
"And, if so, why is society prepared to live with their politicians and staff acting like such douchebags?"
Because if we don't vote for our petulant douchebag, the wron
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I hear there was a Chicago Alderman who was removed from office because he decided to get back at his ex-wife by defunding snow removal to her neighborhood...
That simply means he didn't realize she still had more connections than he did.
My understanding from my Chicago acquaintances is that snow removal and pothole repair are two significant political tools.
Re:duh (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the real question is, has politics stooped so low that political staff (and possibly politicians) feel entitled to act like petulant little children and expect to get away with it?
This question has long since been answered. Anyone who follows local politics knows that this sort of thing is a daily occurrence. The difference is that most of these politicians don't have aspirations of being president, they just want all the perks and kickbacks that come with the position. So none of it ever gets the attention it deserves.
If you're stuck in a city or town that has voted in the same party for decades then there's corruption and nepotism on a level you can't even imagine. So the fact that it tricks up to state level isn't surprising at all. Sometimes it makes it all the way up to Federal government, but those guys are operating on a whole other level.
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"And, if so, why is society prepared to live with their politicians and staff acting like such douchebags?"
Because if they didn't vote for a lizard the wrong lizard might get in.
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Well, yeah, that's not really the fault of the people. Game theory dictates that the kind of electoral system we have in the US pushes towards large, dissimilar alliances being able to capitalize on division of others into smaller groups. Political parties evolve and reproduce like a living thing, and success at elections drives that meme reproduction.
If you burned the two existing parties to the ground, made a law that said "you can't identify as democrat/republican, liberal/conservative, whatever" and s
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No, the real question is, has politics stooped so low that political staff (and possibly politicians) feel entitled to act like petulant little children and expect to get away with it?
Yes it has. What do you think the IRS scandal was/is? At the very best the IRS scandal was almost exactly what Christie claims his "traffic study" was. Some appointed underling did something for the political advantage of their appointer in order to try and sway an election. Of course the person in charge "didn't know" and was "surprised to learn" that his appointee did it. I call it plausible deniability because it's very likely they actually didn't know, they just appointed people who just instinctivel
Ahh, the ignorance is rampant in this thread. (Score:2)
To quote another poster:
And this is a perfect example of how, if you repeat your false story enough times, people will believe it. The IRS office in question flagged groups from all over the political spectrum to determine if they were engaging in political activities that would prevent them from being tax exempt charities. Yes, they used "Tea Party" as a flag for further investigation, but they also used "Occupy". They were attempting to enforce the law passed by Congress, albeit in a very bad, possibly il
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I don't care what political stripe you are, fucking with the traffic patterns to seek retribution against a political foe makes you an asshole.
Um, aren't "politician" and "asshole" synonymous?
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Your naivete would be cute if you were 6 and an innocent child.
In an adult, it's just sad.
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The real question is whether it ordered by a rogue official(s), or the governor himself. If information comes out that the governor was involved then he just lost himself a chance at being president.
I dunno, the way the media works it doesn't really make a difference. What I expect will happen is that this will quiet down, the media will support him until he gets the nomination, and then at the last moment they'll hammer on this to affect the outcome of the general. Christi pretty much doesn't have a chance at the white house, although it'll be entertaining to watch him try.
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If information comes out that the governor was involved then he just lost himself a chance at being president.
Even if he wasn't involved, if somehow we informed all of America, and if they all believed it in this day of partisanship, it would still be a huge problem for his Presidential chances. After all, what kind of an administration does he run where he hires people who are prone to this sort of petty political madness and who manage to pull it off without him getting a whiff of it?
One is malice and conspiracy. The other is somewhere between incompetence and bad judge of character. Neither looks good.
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The problem is that the reasoning ability is low and the length of memory is short.
The same conundrum can be seen in Florida's governor, Rick Scott. He presided over a company involved in what was to that time the biggest Medicare fraud in U.S. history. He was either incompetent or a full fledged criminal. And what happens... people in Florida made his governor.
If people thought through things I would agree, but come vote type old Fat Farmer Joe is going to pull the lever marked "Republican Straight Tick
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The real question is whether it ordered by a rogue official(s), or the governor himself. If information comes out that the governor was involved then he just lost himself a chance at being president.
If Bush won, anybody can be president.
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She can't get her head over the steering wheel, but you can see here angry fist waving in the air.
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Hey Slashdot, how about a "Local News That Doesn't Matter" or "American Regional Minutiae" section so we can filter stuff like this out?
Unless you're all interested in how the province I live in kinda forgot that you have to maintain bridges and as a result they're all (literally) falling down. Two out of three lanes? You've still got one left! Lucky bastards!
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Considering there are only three roads into Manhattan (many jobs) from Jersey (many residents), it is a big deal when someone intentionally fouls up the already terrible rush hour traffic on one of them.
It's also somewhat comical because this same Governor single handedly scuttled a shovel ready (and mostly paid for) project to build a new rail tunnel into Manhattan... it's almost like he wants to encourage residents to move to the same state they're employed in, which would *not* work out for Jersey at al
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I'd rather have it in bitcoins please.
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I don't understand this guy's claims. the purpose of traffic modeling is to simulate different scenarios, i.e. if you add another traffic lane. The purpose of a traffic study is to count cars so you can get good base case for the modeling or accurate current conditions for whatever other purpose. it makes no sense at all to study the impact of cutting off traffic lanes. or to model it for that matter.