This may mean that an entrance connection to, say, a business parking lot or private residence requires a special permit.
Some roads in my state are posted with a similar sign “Connection by permit only.”
“Road service by permit only” means that the tow truck coming to pick up broken down cars need a permit to be on the Parkway. I’ve only ever seen those signs on the smaller parkways, maybe it has something to do with all the short underpasses we have around here.
In New York City, towing disabled cars and trucks from parkways is a very lucrative business. The city puts out bids to towing companies to get permission to enter that particular parkway, and tow a vehicle. Years ago, before this started, a distress call from a stranded motorist would bring every tow truck in the vicinity, racing to the scene to get the job. Think of that chaos. Now, if your 911 distress call brings a cop to the scene, his dispatcher will take the next tow truck licensed to respond on that particular parkway, from a list, and send just one truck. If that truck is not available, the dispatcher goes down the list until he finds one available. The list goes in rotation. So, if your next door neighbor, Clem, has a tow truck, you can’t call him personally. Even then, he would have to be on the list. The truck that shows up has to come off the list. My kid brother did this for a living years ago.
FWIW
Years ago a friend wanted to open a car detail business. He found a company that uses the “black bungee cords” to count traffic. I’m sure as somebody suggested that they are probably pneumatic. He had them do a traffic study in several locations, number of cars in a particular time of day and such. With study in hand he decided on the best location for his business.
Jim
A better idea for a motorcyclist would be to go up on your back wheel while crossing both cords, so it doesn’t register a complete pair until the next car crosses. Analysts would either have to deal with the sudden appearance of 60-foot long cars that are tailgating each other, or find out who’s riding a unicycle at 40 mph.
Do they use the speed measurements strictly for statistical analysis, or do they ever use them to nab speeders, too?
Looks like y’all’ve got the traffic counters figured out. Here the road service by permit refers to wrecker service. You have to be licensed and registered with the proper authorities to service any vehicles roadside. That includes towing and/or professional mechanical assistance. Lots of money and “kickbacks” involved. Last tow charge I saw was for about two miles and the total bill was over $300. :eek:
It’d probably be easier to increase funding through “common sense” because what people think about traffic is generally wrong.
I counted cars for three years. The counting machines can handle about seventy pulses per second. One hose across the road can only count the number of pulses and give you no other information. Now they have double hoses that may look like one hose, those can get two lanes of traffic and so could do directional counts. Multi-axle vehicles will throw these counts off some, depending on how many travel down the road.
With two hoses separated by six or ten feet, one can get information on direction of travel, speed of travel, class of vehicle, and a few other things, IIRC. This can be done across two opposing lanes, though for two lanes headed the same direction one will need four hoses, IIRC. For class of vehicle, they can use the wheel base: The time it takes to go from the first hose to the second hose gives the machine the speed, and then knowing the speed it can calculate the wheel base by the time between the first strike of the first hose, the second strike of the first hose, etc. If you look at an eighteen wheeler, you’ll notice that it’ll probably be difficult to get a bunch of hondas to accidently mimic the tire pattern of a semi.
On a typical count like this you’ll get a few vehicles that can’t be categorized by speed, class, etc., but on the whole they seem to do pretty well. They’re not going to be that easy to fool because the software designers know that people will mess with them. If a motorcycle does a wheelie across a set of hoses, the machine will see that something ain’t right and toss out that anomaly.
Traffic counts are essential for establishing road maintainence needs for a given stretch of highway.
This happened to my step-mother. Drove over the cable, the bolt holding it to the ground came loose, it sprang up/across and slashed her tire. The real :smack: of the story is that the county had placed the cable on their private driveway. They were nice enough to pay for her new tire.