And what if you have to cross over lanes of traffic after a turn to get into the other turn? The more I look at this idea, the more it looks like disaster.
From my experience visiting and driving in Germany, you guys use the passing lane properly and merge well. In the US you have stupid folk clogging up passing lane, won’t look ahead of time to match speed to merge and treat the merge point like a traffic light.
We practically already have this road design all over Michigan and its bad enough with heavy traffic, but this design forces traffic to the left or right and that would be nightmare fuel in bad traffic.
My state recently decided to start putting roundabouts everywhere and NOBODY seems to know how to use them, especially the double lane roundabouts. I hate it
That doesn't make sense. There's four outlets. Any intersection will stop functioning if more cars enter it than leave. But nothing obstructs the exits. They empty, and the back pressure is released.
Let's be accurate with our words. The claim is "it will never unlock" when "there's [ever] a gridlock".
The claim was not "those exits will backup". Assuredly they will backup. But this isn't an inter dependency lock. I had to understand how those arise and how to prevent them in system designs. It's not for traffic, but the principles are the same. This empties. It's impossible for it not to.
I do think exits backup. I've never driven in SoCal.
There could be a light system that only activates when traffic reaches a certain density / at certain times of the day. The lights would block one stream of traffic to allow the crossing stream to cross and vice versa similar to normal lights. During low traffic, no one has to engage their brake, stop, sit and wait.
You want to go straight left to right? How about a right hand turn, quick cross 2 lanes if traffic to u turn to cross 2 more lanes of traffic, then make a right turn. Yeah that won't cause more traffic issues than a stoplight
ok but i think you are all missing the point. sure it has all these drawbacks, but on the plus side it's also definitely much more expensive to build than a roundabout.
There's a weird off ramp in my city where two roads merge and basically everyone from the right lane is trying to get to the left lane and almost everyone from the left lane is trying to get to the right lane in a short distance like in this animation... it's a fucking nightmare.
This is like that, but only you have to do it twice in order to go straight.
Can attest. Some genius decided to make the on ramp the off ramp within like 100 feet of each other on a busy highway I frequent. Everyone drives like assholes and there is no end to the traffic and accidents caused by this.
There's a pub every 10 minutes in the UK. You could be on top of a mountain, in a forest, or on some tiny island off the coast.. there'll be a pub near by
That doesn’t seem to random. Owler Bar is not a drinking bar, Bar refers to something like a nature reserve. And there’s a car park there so likely lots of people visiting to hike in the area, I’m sure they get hungry.
Edit: they both appear to be restaurants, but I’m sure they serve alcohol too.
Nevermind the fact that you have to cross all lanes on BOTH highways just to continue going on the same direction if you're coming from the right or the left.
I think its Philly that has some super highway that does this. I was there as a kid, it was something like....
EDIT: It is in fact 3 lanes each, not 4. Roosevelt Blvd in Philly.
4 lanes going west
median
4 lanes going west
Median that allows U Turn
4 lanes going east
median
4 lanes going east
AKA, you had to drive WAY passed the point you wanted to get to, in order to make sure you made the turn fast enough. Thing was a nightmare for a tourist.
I can’t really picture this despite living near Philly for most of my life, but I can verify the roads there are some of the worst I’ve been on. Both in design and upkeep.
My province tried to propose one of those u-turn situations (called an R-cut) after a major collision on a highway intersection that doesn’t have lights.
Problem is, a shit ton of farmers use that crossing and would therefore need to do the crossing all lanes and then u-turning a tractor with a damn trailer attached.
It was pointed out that farmers would just go a couple miles up or down the highway to cross on a gravel road there, and they decided to rework the plan.
There are a lot of flaws with this, but that one has to be the worst. To keep going straight you have to exit your road, merge onto a new one where you have to immediately cross all lanes to exit your road, merge onto a new one, then cross all lanes to merge onto a new road.
It's sort of interesting from a "Imagine if roundabouts and traffic lights were forbidden" perspective, but really very impractical. It's kind of more fun to think of it as the answer to: "how can you give cars the most opportunity to crash into each other at an interaction, regardless of which direction they are going?"
Just take out the direct path through the middle that some cars have the option to use now, make it more symmetrical and equally shitty for everyone, and it would be perfect.
Yes unfortunately. A lot of people don't understand that slowing/breaking at the wrong times is actually extremely dangerous. I'm constantly screaming at people to stop treating the roundabout as a 4-way stop.
Oh great I love when I’m merging on to a road and immediately have to merge all the way to the opposite lane. Just kidding, I actually fucking hate that.
I saw this on the NJ sub and came here to see how fast I'd find the Rt. 22 reference. Can confirm it is in fact a death trap and hope to never see this design anywhere ever again.
This only works with driverless cars. No fucking way some dude in a pickup isn't going to speed up from 15 to 60mph to cut me off and then slow to 30mph to merge into the wrong lane because the street signs were too complex for their simpleton brain. Then they'll have to make a U-turn about 3 miles down the road and road rage the entire time. No way that doesn't cause this intersection to be ass to ass traffic at least for 5 hours a day.
It would really suck to be coming from the east or west in this model trying to cross. Can you imagine? Make a right, then merge, then a u, then merge again, turn right again, now you’re finally across the intersection.
Hahaha crossing over lanes to the right like that would kill so many people. Anyone notice nowadays with the advent of google/apple maps that people completely fucking disregard others and just do whatever their phones say to do? Just put on that blinker and everyone needs to kneel to you.
Wow, this is wildly inaccurate… he needs to increase traffic density by at least 250%. Half of them need to be high on something, the other half need to be angry at all the bad drivers and therefore drive bad themselves. Also where’s the construction blocking lanes??
This would work if cars were networked and we standardized infrastructure. I wish a city would make self driving mandatory and specifically design the infrastructure geared towards it.
An engineer that has never driven before. The way the model is working would make every highway and road look the same. It has everyone doing a similar speed, perfect merges, pedestrian traffic all perfect.
And all it needs is for people to understand how to merge while not being a piece of shit to every other driver around them…
…
…
……………. This will never work.
This is interesting in a similar way as the Euthanasia Coaster is.
You just overcomplicated an intersection and sprinkled in 8 added potential points of failure and probably congested both of those roads at certain times in the day.
Then there's the 'Michigan Turn' consisting of all major roads divided by islands, and signalled U-turns cutting through them, near all intersections. Basically the same idea, replacing left turns against opposing traffic with U-turn right turn combinations within the flow of traffic. The engineer here is just using more concrete.
people can't drive in a circular round about... the strip from getting on and getting to the U turn would be "The Strip of Carnage." No laws. No rules. Only the fast and furious survive!
This is dumb. I can't go straight from one of the roads unless I want to make a right turn and then a left turn and then another right turn? That's going to cause a lot more accidents.
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u/snuggly_beowulf 14h ago
Ok but what happens when there's a backup on the curves because people are waiting or slowing to merge?