Artwork

A sample of the artwork of Kaust...

Street Smarts

Kaust is pretty new so it doesn't have much traffic yet.  But one day it will.  And when it does, the minor design flaws in the road system will become more than a little irritating.

The first problem is the signage.  It's posted in awkward places and in illogical colors.  When you drive by you notice that the signs are either very high, or else very low, or too far from the curb, or ten feet farther on down the road than you would have liked.  The traffic lights are like this too.  They are so close to the point at which cars stop at an intersection that it can be hard to see them when you're the first car in line.  Alternate light posts for the same intersection may exist, but they're across the intersection at bizarre angles to the driver.  As for colors, some of the street signs consist of white lettering on a light green field.  This may not be too hard to make out when you're standing still at a short distance away, but when you're driving by on a sunny day (of which there are many) it can be very hard to see.

Some of the intersections themselves are unusual in that, instead of the sidewalk corners coming to near-90˚ angles, they are rounded off in broad arcs.  This has several consequences.  When the corners are rounded in this way, there is a larger gap between two opposing corners.  If pedestrians were to cross from arc to arc they would be exposed in the street for a longer amount of time.  The crosswalks at Kaust, like those of an ordinary street, are set back before the arcs begin.  However unlike an ordinary street, they have to be set back further from the intersection.  The result?  Pedestrians walking along the sidewalk who wish to cross the street must take an unnecessary detour.  If you've ever tried it, you know that it can be bothersome.

Normal                                                  Kaust

A second consequence of having the crosswalks set so far back from the intersection is a loss of visibility.  A driver parked farther back from the road will be less able to see past the obstacles on the corner and even a small decrease in the angle of a driver's range of visibility poses a significant disadvantage.  Take the following example.

Normal                                                  Kaust

Suppose we assume the following based on measurements of an actual intersection:

• The road is 30' wide.
• A car stopping at a normal intersection will stop 15' back from the crossing street.
• A car stopping at a Kaust intersection will stop 20' back from the crossing street.
• The driver sits 5' behind the front of the car and 3' in from the center line of the road.
• The roads are bordered by 5'-wide sidewalks.
• There is an obstruction blocking the driver's view to the left that sits 10' back from the road.

The driver that stops at the normal intersection can see 84' down the road to the left before he can no longer see the lane of cars coming from that direction.  By contrast, the driver that stops at the Kaust intersection can only see 66' before his vision of oncoming traffic from the left is totally obscured.  That's a difference of 18'.  For a traffic going 30 mph, that translates to nearly a half-second more of visibility for the car at the normal intersection, a significant difference.

Shopping Carts

Are shopping carts an important part of life?  Not really.  Not at all, actually.  But at Kaust they do an excellent job of representing how things are done.  That is to say, they are a hassle and barely functional.  They are a foolishly designed, terrible product and yet they have been purchased in large numbers.  If anyone had tested them beforehand or studied successful pre-existing models at one of the millions of logical grocery stores all around the world, then this problem would have been avoided entirely.

There is only one problem with the shopping carts at Tamimi, Kaust's only grocery store.  Unfortunately that problem is pretty big, especially considering that you can't really do much wrong when designing a shopping cart.  On a normal cart only the front wheels are on swivels and rotate when a driver turns the cart.  The back wheels, on the other hand, are fixed in position to face forward, much like the wheels of a car.  At Tamimi, all four wheels are on swivels and the wheels all turn freely.  Why is this a problem?

When the two rear wheels are fixed, the cart driver simply has to apply more force to one side in order to cause the cart to pivot and continue on in the new direction.  The driver walks behind the cart and the two move in a smooth arc.  The process is so simple that most people don't even think about it.  In contrast, when all four wheels are on swivels it's like trying to drive on ice.  You apply the same force to the cart and it doesn't move in an arc.  It just spins in front of you.  It rotates but it doesn't progress at all in the new direction that you want to go.  In order to turn such a cart you have to either drag it forcefully sideways or move your body around it until you are facing in the new direction.  It's difficult and silly.  I don't recommend it.

There is a reason that every shopping cart you've ever pushed is the way that it is, Tamimi just hasn't figured it out yet.