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You'd think making everyone sit through a left turn stoplight before getting onto the highways, would be enough punishment! Why not just make it a LOT harder to get a license in NC?
So annoying. I'll take traffic over having to sit behind people making merging dangerous. Tos ramps always slow things down right at the merge point because people don't know how to hit their gas to get o the highway, slowing everyone else down in the process.
Looks like this guy Lacy is real open minded about it - "yeah everyone else does it, so not approved yet but it will be" - nice job being objective jerk. Wonder who's pocket you have your hand in?
It looks like the DOT is considering ramp meters for some of the heavily congested highway on-ramp exchanges. I've used them on business trips and vacations in larger cities and they do seem to help.
Is this from the same people that brought us the traffic circles and flashing yellow turn arrows? Didn't people have to pass a test to get their license? I have been in cities with the ramp signals - they are a joke and don't help. I can't wait for someone to get in a wreck and claim "Well, the light was green, so I just went".
Is this from the same people that brought us the traffic circles and flashing yellow turn arrows? Didn't people have to pass a test to get their license? I have been in cities with the ramp signals - they are a joke and don't help. I can't wait for someone to get in a wreck and claim "Well, the light was green, so I just went".
Both of the things you cite as failures of the DOT, I would cite as overwhelming successes. There has been exactly one poorly designed roundabout (Hillsborough Street, later fixed) and dozens of ones that work great. I love the flashing yellow turn arrows. Gives us the ability to turn left when traffic is clear, where previously we would have just gotten a red light.
Ramp meters are great. The place I always thought this would be helpful would be Harrison Ave onto I-40 east. Traffic piles up at the SAS traffic signal and comes in waves. You get a huge batch of 30 cars heading down the onramp in less than a minute, followed by several minutes with only a few cars. When that batch of 30 cars comes along all trying to merge over two lanes at once to get to I-40, it causes stop and go traffic. (This phenomenon was much worse before the recent I-40 widening but it still happens.)
Ramp meters spread the cars out so that it's a steady drumbeat with no more than, say, 15 cars merging in a minute, which the highway can handle much better.
Location: Chapel Hill, NC, formerly NoVA and Phila
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Quote:
Originally Posted by orulz
I love the flashing yellow turn arrows. Gives us the ability to turn left when traffic is clear, where previously we would have just gotten a red light.
Doesn't a solid green light function the same as a flashing yellow? That's what I see most places.
This will only work if people learn how to push the gas pedal and understand that "merge" means to insert your car into pattern along with the others. Not break the pattern and cause an accident because you are merging onto 40 going 35mph.
If they can't do this now with an entire on-ramp, I fail to see how giving them half of one will make it better.
I've seen ramp meters in Atlanta. They work very well in most cases, giving entering traffic adequate time to find an opening without having to deal with pressure or competition from cars behind them. The cars on the highways also don't have to slow down or get over to let cars on. This is especially help in areas with high ramp density. Generally ramp meters are used during high congestion periods. I've always liked that on the beltline, there are continuous exit only lanes, increasing the period that drivers have to merge. The proximity of the Wake Forest (off) and Capital Blvd (on) ramps and the curve does present a problem but I wouldn't recommend ramp meters here because of the hill.
Doesn't a solid green light function the same as a flashing yellow? That's what I see most places.
It does, except when the traffic going straight doesn't have a green. The flashing yellow helps in this scenario:
- Oncoming traffic has green lights for both straight and left turn. Traffic going straight in your direction as a red. Without a flashing yellow arrow, you have to wait for the straight traffic in your direction to the get green. With the flashing yellow, you can go even if straight traffic is still on red, provided you yield to oncoming traffic of course.
It also helps prevent yellow trap, where lights in opposite directions are phased to turn red at different times, and drivers mistakenly turn in front of oncoming traffic under the assumption that oncoming traffic is also stopping.
I always wondered. Is there any penalty for not following the spacing? It sounds like folks in other places just blow through them.
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