Variable Speed Limits on i285 to start Sunday

[toll_booth]

Originally Posted by samiwas1

There's also that whole batch of people who follow the "zipper merge" idea and will stay in whatever closed lane until the last possible second, then attempt to get over. I still cannot buy how this is more efficient than getting over ahead of time when you have a more clear space.



These signs are already showing 65 on my morning commute every day, so I think you may be in luck.

Yeah. I already like how they seem to "anticipate" slowdowns ahead, telling drivers to slow down in advance of the problem so they don't resort to go-stop-go-stop tactics. Any traffic engineers around here, feel free to say otherwise, but I'm pretty sure that having traffic go a nearly constant, moderately slow speed actually decreases the travel time in the long run.

Bonus: This encourages people to actually read the road signs!

[sedimenjerry]

Originally Posted by toll_booth

Yeah. I already like how they seem to "anticipate" slowdowns ahead, telling drivers to slow down in advance of the problem so they don't resort to go-stop-go-stop tactics. Any traffic engineers around here, feel free to say otherwise, but I'm pretty sure that having traffic go a nearly constant, moderately slow speed actually decreases the travel time in the long run.

Bonus: This encourages people to actually read the road signs!

When a large amount of cars stop at once it takes a lot longer for them all to start moving again. Just look at red lights with too much traffic. If you're far back enough you can watch the light turn red again before you even move. So often I'll coast to a light while someone passes me, they stop but I time it right and never stop. I'm going 10-15 mph when the light changes and the car that passed me up is still sitting at the light and takes a while to catch up. I also use less gas than they do. When stopping is unavoidable, you want as few cars stopping as possible. Only way to do that is to control the inflow. If you put a line across the freeway and counted cars that crossed per some unit time, 70 mph traffic would have more cars than 45 mph traffic. Just like turning the sink faucet on to full blast will overfill a cup much faster than a faucet that's barely open. You get everyone to slow down a little before the clog, the delay shouldn't be as bad since you won't have as many cars stopping.

[netdragon]

Originally Posted by sedimenjerry

When a large amount of cars stop at once it takes a lot longer for them all to start moving again. Just look at red lights with too much traffic.

This is the biggest problem with cars, and take-offs should be handled by an autopilot system with cars packed together closely instead of manually by the driver to decrease these latencies, then cars spread out and driver takes back over when it's up to speed. It'd have one of the most significant impacts of anything anyone could possibly due to ease the effects of traffic congestion.

[sedimenjerry]

Originally Posted by netdragon

This is the biggest problem with cars, and take-offs should be handled by an autopilot system with cars packed together closely instead of manually by the driver to decrease these latencies, then cars spread out and driver takes back over when it's up to speed. It'd have one of the most significant impacts of anything anyone could possibly due to ease the effects of traffic congestion.

That'd be interesting but I imagine at that point of technology cars would probably be self driving anyway.

Now if only there was something that poked a driver when a light changes green and they're looking at something in the back seat...

[billl]

These signs are a joke, and pretty much a waste of money.

We were on the west end perimeter yesterday afternoon heading south from I-75. Traffic was about what you would expect for a Friday afternoon. These variable speed limit signs pretty consistently showed us a limit that was well beyond what we could achieve. We could see just ahead that everyone was stopped and the signs still read 65. At one point we passed two signs -- on either side of the road -- where the one on the left read 65 and the one of the right read 35. Which one are we supposed to follow? Didn't really matter as traffic was only doing about 20 at that point anyway.

Quite useless.

[rcsteiner]

Originally Posted by billl

These signs are a joke, and pretty much a waste of money.

We were on the west end perimeter yesterday afternoon heading south from I-75. Traffic was about what you would expect for a Friday afternoon. These variable speed limit signs pretty consistently showed us a limit that was well beyond what we could achieve. We could see just ahead that everyone was stopped and the signs still read 65. At one point we passed two signs -- on either side of the road -- where the one on the left read 65 and the one of the right read 35. Which one are we supposed to follow? Didn't really matter as traffic was only doing about 20 at that point anyway.

Quite useless.

I've seen the multiple-speeds-on-a single-sign pair twice near the NW corner (35 on one, 65 on the other near the 285/75 intersection), and I've also seen the speed limit go from 65 on both signs to 35 and back to 65 because of road construction on the other side of the freeway.

There are obviously some weirdnesses with the new signs, but I admit I like them in some ways. They're certainly easy to see when they're actually on!

[toll_booth]

Does anyone know how to contact GADOT to let them know about malfunctioning variable speed limit signs? Do you have to go through the main contact line, or is there an easier way to get to whomever would be able to help?

[PKCorey]

I would just call 511.