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Friday Fun Thread for February 14, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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It's not just the difference in straight-line distance. It's also that it's a lot of back-to-back sharp 90 and 180 degree turns, which are slow and exhausting to drive especially in winter conditions.

Admittedly, this observation is based on the base curves not your catboxes - catbox blocks a surprisingly large chunk of the internet, myself included.

slow and exhausting to drive

This is basically a feature, people should be driving slow in neighborhoods.

Sorry, let me rephrase:

With a conventional layout most of a trip is outside neighborhoods, with only a little bit at the start and end that's slow & exhausting to drive, so it's mostly fine.

With this layout you have to travel far further within said traffic-calmed (read: slow and exhausting to drive) area.

Imgur album

The inside radius of the right-of-way lines shown in these images is 30 feet. When you add the 6-foot sidewalk and the 8-foot parking lane, you get an effective inside radius of 44 feet for the travel lanes. (Standard minimum travel-lane inside radii are 25 feet for a passenger car, 30 feet for a single-unit delivery truck, and 40 feet for a shorter multi-unit truck. A long fire truck can swing wide into the oncoming lane.)

Ok, so less sharp than I was imagining. Thank you for the mirror.

I still think the Hilbert curve one would be slow and exhausting to drive, especially in winter conditions. The Peano curve may be alright - though at that point one wonders why you bother with the Peano curve as opposed to just a Boustrophedon.