We are here today because either we love Jane, or we love someone that loves Jane.
And I suppose that love sums up what Jane was all about.
Over the last few days, our family assembled a list of some of the qualities that might be used to describe Jane.
Perhaps you recognize some of them: Continue reading
The road less travelled by:
Picture by John S. Quarterman for Okra Paradise Farms, Lowndes County, Georgia, 16 May 2013.
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This is a road, at least a hundred years old, after a prescribed burn:
Those are mostly slash pines (Pinus elliottii), with one or two longleaf and some oaks.
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Waiting, boarding, and watching it go after the return:
the train at Jesup.
Gretchen Quarterman at the Amtrak Station, Jesup, Georgia, 17 and 25 Feb 2011, along with a bunch of women from Brunswick on their annual outing to NYC, and around a dozen other passengers. Videos by John S. Quarterman.
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Picture of icicles from roof to ground taken in Lancaster, NY by John S. Quarterman. The homeowner removed them later with a hammer.
Picture of icicles on a motel near Cincinnati, Ohio, 23 Dec 2010 by John S. Quarterman. Model: Gretchen Quarterman.
Three types of transportation.
This is the SS429 to Siena, approaching Castelfiorentino.
Canopy Roads of mid-Tuscany, video by John S. Quarterman, 24 Nov 2010.
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This is a main highway, the SS 429 between Pisa and Siena.
The canopy trees are Pinus Pinea, Italian Stone pines.
Video by John S. Quarterman, Molin Nuovo, Tuscany, Italy, 24 Nov 2010.
Asked about typical modern shopping corridors, Texas A&M Assistant Professor of
Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning
Eric Dumbaugh replied:
“from a traffic safety perspective, the modern commercial arterial is a perfect storm of bad planning and design. These roads are designed to support high operating speeds, making it difficult for drivers to stop quickly to avoid a crash, and the presence of commercial and retail uses on these roads means that drivers will routinely need to stop quickly in order to avoid crashing into pedestrians, bicyclists, and especially vehicles turning in and out of driveways.”The 2006 article, Safe Urban Form: Revisiting the Relationship Between Community Design and Traffic Safety, by Eric Dumbaugh and Robert Rae, notes: Continue reading
Beta New Urban Network reported 1 September 2006 that
Research: trees make streets safer, not deadlier:
Proposals for planting rows of trees along the roads — a traditional technique for shaping pleasing public spaces — are often opposed by transportation engineers, who contend that a wide travel corridor, free of obstacles, is needed to protect the lives of errant motorists.The study asks a key question: Continue readingIncreasingly, however, the engineers’ beliefs about safety are being subjected to empirical study and are being found incorrect. Eric Dumbaugh, an assistant professor of transportation at Texas A&M, threw down the gauntlet with a long, carefully argued article, ”Safe Streets, Livable Streets,” in the Summer 2005 issue of the Journal of the American Planning Association. A follow-up article by Dumbaugh, in the 2006 edition of Transportation Research Record, will present further evidence that safe urban roadsides are not what the traffic-engineering establishment thinks they are.
Though engineers generally assert that wide clear areas safeguard motorists who run off the roads, Dumbaugh looked at accident records and found that, on the contrary, wide-open corridors encourage motorists to speed, bringing on more crashes. By contrast, tree-lined roadways cause motorists to slow down and drive more carefully, Dumbaugh says.
Dumbaugh examined crash statistics and found that tree-lined streets experience fewer accidents than do “forgiving roadsides” — those that have been kept free of large, inflexible objects. He points to “a growing body of evidence suggesting that the inclusion of trees and other streetscape features in the roadside environment may actually reduce crashes and injuries on urban roadways.”